In April of 2018, a 25-year-old man killed 10 people in downtown Toronto and injured many more. A Facebook post hinted that the killer was part of the incel movement, a mostly online community of men obsessed with their own involuntary celibacy. Last week, an interview transcript and video removed all doubt the perpetrator claimed to be launching an uprising against attractive and average men because women refused to date him.

But the interview didnt just confirm what we already knew. It described an inchoate form of terrorism in a surprising way: not as isolated acts inspired by an internet echo chamber, but as something like an organized movement. With growing pressure to fight violent far-right movements based on racism and nationalism, incels are demonstrating more clearly than ever what a terrorist group motivated by gender looks like. And that could be completely intentional.

The interview took place soon after the attack, although it was only made public last Friday. Speaking with a detective, perpetrator Alek Minassian who now faces multiple charges of murder and attempted murder described a process of being radicalized by incel ideology online. He called himself part of an uprising or a rebellion to overthrow society as it currently exists, all for the purpose of forcing women to reproduce with the incels.

Moreover, Minassian claimed (apparently without evidence) to have actively corresponded with at least two other mass murderers before their attacks, including Elliot Rodger, an incel who killed six people in 2014. We were plotting certain timed strikes on society in order to confuse and shake the foundations, just to put all the normies in a state of panic, he said. Minassians claims arent publicly verified, but the goals hes describing mirror those of other violent far-right hate groups which, over the past couple of years, have increasingly been kicked off web platforms and scrutinized by law enforcement.

Extreme incels have been described as terrorists before. After the murders in Toronto, Voxs Zack Beauchamp wrote that Minassian wasnt taking revenge on a specific woman who wronged him; he wanted to instill terror in society writ large. The label was previously applied to Rodger, who fantasized about a mass movement that would kill huge numbers of women. And gender-based terrorism attacks meant to instill widespread fear, not just kill individuals has a much longer history. Canadas most deadly modern mass shooting, the 1989 massacre at Montreals cole Polytechnique, was aimed at keeping women away from science and engineering work.

Historically, its been hard to make the terror label stick to misogynist violence, in part because that violence is so varied and so common. Many mass shooters, who are overwhelmingly male, have a history of violence against women; in fact, its one of the most common traits among them. While most homicide victims are male, nearly half of women killed in the US over the past decade were murdered by male intimate partners, who are often motivated by mainstream gendered ideas about power and control not extremist ideology. Drawing a line between those two things can seem almost futile unless, that is, a group is actually trying to be seen as terrorists.

Thats exactly what Minassian insists incels are: not only a unified, radical force with a common goal, but one with a leader who was supposedly trying to coordinate attacks. Thats strikingly at odds with the standard narrative for all kinds of internet-inspired terrorism, let alone gender-based violence. Beauchamp, for example, described incels as a mutually supportive echo chamber with no centralized planning, no incel equivalent to of Osama bin Laden. Other far-right terrorists are often spuriously described as isolated lone wolf killers who were inspired by propaganda. But Minassian portrays incels, or at least a subset of them, as an outright organized hate group closer to the far-right group Atomwaffen than your average 4chan forum.

In some ways, the terrorism comparison is a poor fit. Incels arent putting forward new ideas about gender. Like other parts of the manosphere, a loosely defined group of male-supremacist subcultures, they build on existing ugly tropes about women in their case, women are shallow and only date handsome jerks. And some go online just to commiserate with other lonely people.

But a highly visible subset of incels take their complaints to surreal and uniquely nihilistic extremes. Instead of simply complaining that lots of women wont date them, they posit that literally all women are viscerally disgusted by all men who dont meet an objective, universal, and ridiculously high standard of male beauty. Theyre monomaniacally focused on romantic relationships as the only worthwhile goal in life, and they resist basically any solution except forcible revolution. Its the kind of apocalyptic fundamentalism that you can find on a far larger scale in Islamist and white supremacist terrorist movements. While some posts are probably internet hyperbole, people like Minassian still act directly on their ideas and are celebrated for it.

Some mainstream thinkers have echoed incel-like ideas. Self-help guru Jordan Peterson used Minassians case to make an argument for vague and apparently non-forceful enforced monogamy, and Catholic New York Times columnist Ross Douthat invoked incels to score points against the sexual revolution. But even if you find Peterson or Douthats ideas retrograde, theres still a huge gap between those viewpoints and extreme incels fatalistic millenarianism the same way theres a gap between condoning racial discrimination and wanting to imminently establish an all-white ethnostate.

Of course, weve had trouble drawing these lines in other areas. Online groups like Atomwaffen can be identified and studied on their own, but the government has trouble when they intersect with racism in conventional politics. In the US, Republican politicians pushed the Department of Homeland Security to ignore far-right terrorism out of fear that it would demonize mainstream conservatism. Singling out fringe hate movements can also let people downplay harm from less extreme groups. Bigotry exists on a spectrum and big, impersonal social structures can cause huge amounts of damage in their own way.

But violent fringe groups pose a specific kind of threat thats worth addressing. And while incels arent a defined organization like a militia or a cult, theyre a movement built around specific gathering places like the subreddit r/Braincels which was banned a few days after the interview video was posted as part of a larger Reddit purge. These spaces arent all hateful, but some clearly are irrevocably poisoned by violence, to the point of jokingly adopting Rodger as a saint. Combine these factors, and you get a distinct movement with an unusually radical belief system not just a free-floating group of trolls or a simple reflection of offline sexism.

Minassian almost certainly isnt offering an accurate portrait of what extreme incels are doing. Like other mass killers from internet hate subcultures, it can be hard to separate his attempts at irony from straightforward extremism or delusion. At one point he straight-facedly references Pepe the frog being worshipped quite frequently on 4chan, referring to a well-known forum meme. Minassian also offered no proof that hed corresponded with other killers. The claim could easily be self-aggrandizing mythmaking for Minassian specifically or the movement in general.

But incels real violence and hateful rhetoric amid an overall epidemic of mass shootings may be having an effect. Minassians video was released a few days after the US Army warned service members that incels might attack screenings of the film Joker, apparently based on a bulletin from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And that followed weeks of speculation that Joker would appeal to the subculture, since its protagonist is a socially outcast male loser who turns to violence. (Based on early reviews, the Joker is not an incel, just a broadly disaffected and isolated man.) Manosphere-tracking blog We Hunted The Mammoth documented some incels who were upset about being tarred as the next ISIS. But thats exactly how Minassian describes them. Its definitely what Rodger who urged fellow incels to start envisioning a world where women fear you wanted.

Meanwhile, US and Canadian law enforcement face increasing pressure to treat domestic terrorism as seriously as they have groups like ISIS. The US Department of Homeland Security recently named violent white supremacy as a major security threat. This year, Canada added two far-right groups to its terror watchlist for the first time. The president of the FBI Agents Association has also asked Congress to make domestic terrorism a federal crime, which could be largely symbolic, but may still make investigating and prosecuting it easier. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) both proposed domestic terrorism bills in the wake of this summers mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, which would make it far easier to crack down on ideologically extreme groups.

Incels, again, dont seem remotely as powerful, organized, or numerous as far-right militias or members of a group like ISIS. But theres still every reason to treat them as an ideologically motivated extremist movement rather than lumping them in with broader trolling. Among other things, it offers a clearer case for specifically deplatforming the most hateful parts of the movement the way that sites like the Daily Stormer have been driven off many social media platforms, domain registrars, and payment processing services. It means less debate each time platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit consider banning accounts that deal in specifically incel-related misogyny. For a movement that exists almost entirely online, thats potentially a big deal.

This all ignores one huge question: do we actually want to define more kinds of hate as terrorism? The War on Terror of the 00s gave rise to sweeping surveillance and torture programs. Law enforcement has gone after potential ISIS recruits with aggressive sting operations that may not actually make us safer. More generally, companies and policymakers have responded to mass shootings with exhaustive and debatably useful social media monitoring, and law enforcement has infiltrated activist movements along with hate groups. Urging them to heavily monitor internet subcultures like the incel movement could erode online civil liberties in the process although based on the Army memo, that surveillance might be happening already.

Deplatforming also raises real questions about how infrastructure companies should police content. You can leave Facebook and Twitter to start your own website, but domain registrars and DDoS protection services are low-level systems that can control whether any site stays online. To what extent do we want private companies making huge decisions about online speech with essentially no oversight? But were already asking these questions about other kinds of hate content adding incels to the list doesnt substantially change the conversation.

Soon after Minassians attack, Wired writer Nicole Kobie criticized breathless and over-detailed coverage of incel terminology and beliefs. Because violence against women inexplicably isnt seen as terrorism, such sites and their messages are viewed as mere curiosities, she wrote. She argued that the focus on incels amounted to suggesting men who violently hate women is an intriguing, new, internet-only trend rather than a familiar form of hate crime.

Strangely, though, treating incels as a distinct phenomenon whether thats a terrorist group, a hate movement, or something else might help us parse the hugely complex problem of gendered violence. If Minassian wants to conjure the specter of a militant misogynist uprising, maybe we should take him at his word.

Link:
Should we treat incels as terrorists? - The Verge

Dr. Herbert Kleber, a man who pioneered substance abuse research and treatment, was honored by Google on Tuesday in the form of a Doodle.

On Tuesday morning, people looking for answers to life's questions opened the search engine's homepage to find an ode to Kleber. The Doodle, illustrations that Google creates to honor people or mark special occasions, showed Kleber with a notepad in hand sitting across from a woman, who could be presumed to be a patient.

Kleber was assigned to a prison hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1964. At the prison hospital, thousands of inmates were being treated for addiction and Kleber noticed that after the vast majority were released, they'd relapse. So, he decided it was time to develop a new approach.

His wife, Ann Burlock Lawver, told Google that her husband didn't see addiction as a "moral failing," but as a medical problem that he wanted to use science to solve. Instead of punishing or shaming patients, Kleber carefully used medication and therapeutic communities to help patients stay on the road to recovery and avoid relapse.

While President George H.W. Bush was in office, Kleber was appointed and served as deputy director for demand reduction at the Office of National Drug Control Policy. He implemented programs for prevention, education and treatment that led to a decreased demand for illegal drugs.

He also co-founded the National Policy Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, which is now the nation's leading science-based nonprofit organization dedicated to changing how America addresses addiction. Along with conducting research, the organization helps shape public policies as a public health issue.

"One way I see Herb's visionary brilliance is through his ability for problem-solving, whether domestically or professionally. When everyone else was looking in one direction, Herb would (metaphorically) turn his head and his thinking to somewhere completely differentand come up with original, viable solutions," Lawver said.

In 1996, Kleber was elected to be a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science, and the Doodle was intended to honor the 23 year anniversary of his election.

Over his 50-year career, Kleber authored hundreds of articles, wrote multiple books and served as a mentor to other medical professionals. He passed away on October 5, 2018, at the age of 84. At the time of his death, Kleber was traveling with his wife and children in Santorini, Greece.

In the wake of his passing, Lawver told Google she was going through his papers and found multiple letters from people who thanked him for his support. She noted that he was more than just an academic mentor to people, but "championed" their professional and personal lives as well.

"Even though we were very different as individuals, I being a photographer and he being a scientist, he gave me absolute support in all my endeavors," Lawver said. "His confidence in me and loving support of my work helped me grow as an artist and as a person. I miss marvelous Herb beyond words."

This article has been updated to reflect that the Doodle ran on Tuesday, not Monday, as was originally scheduled.

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Who Is Herbert Kleber? Google Honors Doctor Who Pioneered Addiction Research and Treatment - Newsweek

Its business as usual this weekend for Bears left tackle Charles Leno Jr.

Despite playing on a different continent, Leno plans to treat the Bears trip to London like he does any other road game.

His main concern is that hes well-rested for the game Sunday against the Raiders.

Leno didnt seem too interested in sightseeing or trying new food. In fact, he actually dissed Londons culinary scene (more on that later).

Many other Bears agreed with Lenos business trip mentality. But some see the benefit of being part of the NFL International Series this season.

Wide receiver Allen Robinson, who had been to London several times during his four seasons with the Jaguars, believes an international trip is good for team bonding.

Youre in a whole nother country with just your teammates or maybe a couple of your family members and stuff like that, but everybody is staying in the same hotel, said Robinson, who said he might venture off during the teams downtime with the receiving corps. You want to get on the same accord. You dont want to do stuff by yourself. So just naturally youre going to do stuff with your teammates.

Cornerback Prince Amukamara, who went to London with the Jaguars in 2016, wants to take advantage of his brief trip abroad. He plans to check out Abbey Road and Buckingham Palace.

But before the Bears packed their bags and embarked on their London adventure, Leno joined the Sun-Times in this weeks Chat Room.

You said youve been to London before. What are you most looking forward to on this trip?

Charles Leno Jr.: Im most looking forward to playing in Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. ... Its brand new, and they put a bunch of money into it, so I just want to see what its like. And Im a soccer fan, so I want to see what type of stadiums they play in. Ive been to a soccer game before, but Ive never been to the Tottenham Stadium.

Whats your favorite team?

CL: I dont have a specific team. I just like players. Im always looking at a lot of games. ... In the English Premier League, on Tottenham, I like Dele Alli. I like Kevin De Bruyne on Manchester City. I like Mohamed Salah on Liverpool. I mean, I like a lot of different players.

Other than playing in the $1 billion stadium, what else are you looking forward to doing or trying? Maybe sightseeing or the food?

CL: Hell, no. Foods not good in London. I will tell you that right now; foods not that great. But I am looking forward to sleep on that Friday after we get done with practice because Im going to need it. Thats what Im looking forward to.

If you find yourself with some free time, who are five guys from this locker room that you would want to be in a guided London tour with?

CL: Id pick Roy [Robertson-Harris, who sits by Lenos locker, then proceeds to dap him]. Id pick Cody [Whitehair]. Id probably pick Bob [Massie], Tarik [Cohen] cause hes gonna be hilarious. And then Prince [Amukamara] because he might complain the whole time.

Who would be the tour guide?

CL: Oh, probably me. I like to do a lot of cool, fun stuff.

How do you plan to pass the time on the eight-hour flight?

CL: Im reading a few books. Im reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. Nothing on Netflix, but I have been watching a show on HBO, The Righteous Gemstones. That show is pretty funny, so Ill be watching a little bit of that.

Switching gears to a more personal level, what do you like to do outside of football?

CL: Ive got a few hobbies. Not just video games and stuff like that. I like to go to the shooting range every once in a while. I dont golf, I dont do any of that. But some of my hobbies are just, like, reading books and stuff like that. Just kind of hanging out with my dogs.

What breed are your dogs?

CL: Two shorty bulls, Kobe and Khaleesi.

What genre do you enjoy reading?

CL: I like self-help books. The ones where you can continue to get better types of things like that.

What music are you into at the moment?

CL: Right now Im probably listening to my boy Rexx Life Raj. Thats my best friend from back in California. Im also listening to Larry June; hes also from California. Ive been listening to the new Kevin Gates album; thats pretty solid. So Im just hip-hop mostly.

Link:
Charles Leno Jr., a soccer fanatic, shares what hes most excited about for Bears London trip - Chicago Sun-Times

A popular argument levied by opponents ofuniversal basic income (UBI) an unconditional, periodic payment given to all members of a society is that recipients will use the money onfrivolous purchases.

But the first data is finally trickling in from a UBI experiment in Stockton, California and it seems most of the 125 people in the program used the $500 they received each month for food, utility bills, and clothing.

A new Associated Press storybreaks down the spending: recipients spent about 40 percent of the funds on food, 24 percent on sales and merchandise, and 11 percent on utility bills. They spent the remainder on car maintenance, medical expenses, insurance, education, self care, and even donations.

One recipient, Zhona Everett, 48, told the AP that she and her husband a truck driver each earned barely $100 a day.

Before the UBI program, they were struggling to make ends meet and were late on their bills but after they began receiving the UBI, Everett set up automatic payments for the couples monthly utilities, paid off some outstanding purchases, and even donated a bit of money to her church.

I think people should have more of an open mind about what the program is about and shouldnt be so critical about it, she told the AP.

Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs is hopeful the new data will help win over skeptics of UBI and potentially convince lawmakers to take the program nationwide.

In this country we have an issue with associating people who are struggling economically and people of color with vices like drug use, alcohol use, gambling, Tubbs told the AP. I thought it was important to illustrate folks arent using this money for things like that. They are using it for literal necessities.

READ MORE: $500 a month for free: Data shows how people spent the money [The Associated Press]

Read more on UBI: Study: Universal Basic Income Wont Make People Work Less

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Basic Income Recipients Spent the Money on Literal Necessities - Futurism

COMMUNITY NEWS

100 Men Who Care Los Alamos, a group of men dedicated to providing immediate and meaningful financial support to local organizations, will be holding its next quarterly event Thursday, October 10 at the Sheriffs Posse Lodge from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Organized like a Shark Tank for nonprofits, the event is only 90 minutes long and in that time the group votes on one of three organizations to support based on short presentations by each. Each group member then writes a check for $100 directly to the winning organization. In prior events, LA Cares received $4000 to purchase fresh vegetables for their food bank, and Self-Help received $4700 to support victims of domestic violence.

The event is modeled after the successful Los Alamos group for women. The two organizations coordinate events and nonprofits eligible to apply in order to spread the wealth.

The 100 Men Who Care Los Alamos group is open to all men interested in participating. Each member commits to contributing $100 once a quarter. In addition, members may nominate their favorite local charity. For more information and to sign up, visit http://www.100menwhocarelosalamos.org.

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100 Men Who Care Quarterly Meeting Is Thursday At Sheriffs Posse Lodge - Los Alamos Reporter

The increase in the importance of self-care has given rise to a variety of Instagram influencers, self-help gurus, and trendy hashtags, shows and songs,making a mental health journey seem like the greatest thing to ever happen to your life. And it can be! But it can take lot of self-work to get to the point of a life-changing breakthrough.

Everyone loves thinking about the sort of a-ha moment, Natalie Burns, a clinical social worker in the Department of Psychiatry and the Department of Social Work at the University of Michigan, told HuffPost.

I dont necessarily believe that its one a-ha moment that sort of says, now everythings fine. I think its more common that its the product of a lot of hard work, a lot of self-reflection, a lot of curiosity as to why we do the things we do.

What people dont often tell you is that therapy, while transformative, can be really hard. Healing is not going to happen overnight and the life-changing lessons and breakthroughs that were looking for arent always going to feel good. In fact, sometimes things are going to feel worse before they feel better.

Lucy Lambriex via Getty ImagesWhat people dont often tell you is that therapy, while transformative, can be really hard.

People engage in habit; life and habits are hard to change, Burns said. Therapists offer and suggest trying new ways of coping, but the reality is that theyre not going to feel as good or work as well in the beginning. We have to give it time to work.

However, if you have just entered therapy or youve been on your journey for a while yet you arent seeing any progress dont get discouraged.HuffPost asked peopleto share their therapy breakthroughs to show how varied they can be over the course of several months (in some cases years!) in therapy.

Below, seven people share the best advice and most important lessons theyve learned in therapy and how they try to continuously apply it to their lives. If youre feeling discouraged or unmotivated, their stories may help you stay the course and keep doing the work. Because the work to manage your mental health will not always be easy, but itll be worth it.

laflor via Getty Images"For any type of therapeutic journey, it requires quite a bit of courage and bravery. At times thats hard," said therapist Natalie Burns.

During one of our sessions I was discussing how a situation made me very upset, and she was able to lead me to understand that it was my anxiety that made me upset.

She gave me two sheets of papers on how I can 1) deal with the situation and 2) how to take myself out of that feeling so I can work on myself and then come back stronger.

I noticed I wasnt getting angry as often, and it really helped my anxiety. I would get so anxious about school, but now I noticed that my anxiety has decreased because of those sheets. I read them over and was able to apply them to stuff I do in my daily life.

Also, its nice to just have someone to talk to. Of course, I have great friends and a wonderful boyfriend, but sometimes you need an unbiased person to just hear you out. Thats what I like the most about having a therapist. I can really see improvements and when I see it, its such a great feeling. -Kenosha from Maryland, in therapy for one year

The therapist told us this little tidbit that gave us the courage to make a life together.

Early in my relationship with my husband, I went to his therapist with him. He was worried about starting a new relationship with me because hed been divorced and didnt want to make the same mistakes.

We were (and are) very much in love and showed up holding hands and giddy with our delight in each other. The therapist told us this little tidbit that gave us the courage to make a life together: Love is liberating. It frees each of you to be your authentic selves.

And so, 27 years later we find ourselves still holding hands and free to be exactly who we were meant to be. We have both blossomed. -Katie from New Mexico, in therapy for one year at the time

One of the most significant lessons I learned was that my mom being emotionally abusive and neglectful wasnt because she didnt love me, but rather due to the emotional abuse she endured by her Holocaust-survivor parents during her own childhood, which led her to the toxic, verbally, emotionally and physically abusive relationship with my dad.

Ive learned a lot through therapy that has really helped me process the trauma that I endured my whole life, and those lessons have really allowed me to actually live and be OK with being my own person. -Rebecca from Philadelphia, in therapy for six years

Lucy Lambriex via Getty Images"Therapists offer and suggest trying new ways of coping, but the reality is that theyre not going to feel as good or work as well in the beginning. We have to give it time to work."

I learned that anger is a useful tool.It moves you to action. It shows whats important to you: You dont get angry about things you dont care about. And righteous anger can be very helpful to create real change.

I lose my temper fast and hard. I used to complain to my therapist all the time about this until she pointed a few things out. I almost always lose my temper standing up to a man who has treated me or women in general badly.

My anger has done a few things. Firstly, it challenged the man on his point of view (luckily Im articulate even in anger). Second: It made me stand up on behalf of women who dont feel as entitled to speak up as I do.

Lastly, it shows women who have been thoroughly gaslit and may not believe their own feelings that Im thinking the same thing as them and shouting it loudly. So, while I do need to work on my anger issues, I can recognize the positive aspects of it and be less angry with myself for my anger. -Mimi from South Africa, in therapy for 10 years

My biggest lightbulb moment was learning to never tell myself anything I wouldnt tell my best friend. I replaced negative self-talk and self-deprecation with positive self-talk and gratitude and my life hasnt been the same in the best way possible! -Cassandra from Maryland, in therapy for eight months

I struggle with anxiety and depression, and I dont know what other issues I have. I take rejection very hard, and I cant often get out of bed with the depression. I tended to see [things] from my perspective only. I learned not to take things personally. Often its not about you, but a whole lot of other factors. -Sonia from New York, in therapy for 15 years

Big_and_serious via Getty Images"My biggest lightbulb moment was learning to never tell myself anything I wouldnt tell my best friend."

When I met the Black woman therapist Im seeing now I asked her, Can you tell me what your definition of intersectionality is? She said, I cant quote the exact definitions, but what I do know is youre Black and youre queer and youre oppressed on both fronts, and my job is, how do I help you heal through both sides where youre oppressed? And she does, she just gets me.

For the past few years, Ive been dealing with imposter syndrome. Feeling that even when I make a huge accomplishment, I have to do something else to top that. And she challenged me asking: Do you think youre operating out of fear or operating out of faith? Do you believe that something good can happen to you, and you dont have to fear that it will be taken away?

The way I saw the world was jaded because of trauma, because of the unique family history that I have as a Black person in this world. She understands; she never shuts me down and she always gives me a new perspective. -Jon from California, in therapy for 14 years

Quotes have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Taking care of your mental health is critical but theres still a stigma about seeking therapy to manage your own wellbeing. In our series, This Could Help, well explore how to get started with therapy and fit it in to your life and your budget. Well answer the questions youve been wondering, and show you the ways therapy can benefit you and the people you love. Whether youre struggling or just want to make sure youre on the right track, support is available, and it really can help.

Also on HuffPost:

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7 People Share The Best Advice They Learned In Therapy - HuffPost Canada

HONG KONG From afar, the red brick sidewalk along Kings Road in Hong Kong appears to be covered with a mottled white carpet that stretches for dozens of yards. Closer up, the white reveals itself to be a mosaic made up of sheets of paper glued to the pavement, each featuring a bespectacled man with a self-confident smile.

The faces belong to Junius Ho, a local legislator, and this is not an election campaign gambit. It is a very public gesture of disdain.

In recent weeks, Mr. Hos image has been plastered on sidewalks and footbridges across the city, and its purpose is immediately apparent: to force pedestrians to walk on his face.

Hes human trash, said Stella Wong, 57, a school administrator as she gleefully tromped on Mr. Hos nose one recent afternoon. A teenage boy, dancing on his brow, spit out an expletive.

In a city roiled by months of protest and increasingly riven by political animus, Mr. Ho, 57, has emerged as one of its most polarizing public figures. A pro-China lawmaker whose rural constituency leans right, Mr. Ho gleefully antagonizes democracy advocates while emboldening those who favor a more hard-line government approach to the ongoing unrest.

His growing stature as a provocateur coincides with a new and potentially perilous chapter in Hong Kongs increasingly fraught political drama. The leadership invoked emergency powers for the first time on Friday by imposing a ban on face masks, standard gear for the protesters. After another round of violent clashes overnight, the city settled into an eerie quiet on Saturday, belying the undercurrent of anger over the governments decision.

Though Mr. Hos extreme positions are not shared by most pro-Beijing leaders in the city, he has become the standard-bearer of an incendiary brand of politics that has been gaining traction as the protests grow ever more violent. Such views could help reinforce the thinking of Chinese leaders who have largely misread the source of protesters anger, repeatedly underestimating the yearning for genuine democracy and the broader publics support for the movement.

Mr. Ho, who spent the politically important National Day last week celebrating with top leaders in the Chinese capital, has demonized the protesters as thugs, generously praised the citys embattled police force and openly advocates closer relations between Beijing and this semiautonomous city-state, which enjoys liberties unknown in mainland China.

He was also one of the earliest advocates of criminalizing the wearing of face masks during protests.

Why have so many young people forgotten their roots and ancestry and disavowed their Chinese identity? he asked during a recent interview with Global Times, a nationalistic, government-backed newspaper on the mainland. I hope people from both sides stop now and behave the way Chinese people should behave.

Mr. Ho certainly knows how to shock. He has called for advocates of Hong Kong independence to be killed without mercy, merrily welcomed intervention by Chinese troops to quell the unrest and uttered profanities against his political opponents in the Legislative Council.

Public rage against him mounted in late July, after a mob of men swinging wooden poles rampaged through a train station in Mr. Hos district, indiscriminately beating protesters, passengers and journalists, and leaving 45 injured. As the city was processing the spasm of violence, a video emerged of Mr. Ho glad-handing with the thugs and calling them heroes.

Mr. Ho said he was simply greeting his constituents, but he also suggested the perpetrators were trying only to protect their community from the maelstrom of political protest.

Guarding your homeland is a very basic thing, he said at a news conference he organized the next day, during which he pushed back against those who accused him of having a hand in the attack.

The demonstrations, prompted by a now-abandoned bill that would have allowed the extradition of criminal suspects to the mainland, have morphed into a cri de coeur against Beijing and its efforts to chip away at Hong Kongs hallowed freedoms. The leaderships decision to invoke emergency powers for its mask ban only heightened fears about the erosion of civil liberties, prompting more violent protests and clashes with the police on Friday night.

Though Hong Kongs chief executive, Carrie Lam, has refused to concede to demands of free elections and amnesty for detained protesters, she and other pro-Beijing moderates have nonetheless tried to soothe tensions by avoiding strident rhetoric and appealing for dialogue.

Mr. Ho does not seem to be interested in kumbayas.

The mainstream parties in the pro-Beijing camp still value civilized behavior, but Junius Ho doesnt care if he alienates people in the middle, said Ivan Choy, a political scientist at Chinese University of Hong Kong.

His political opponents are more blunt.

This is how Mao started the Cultural Revolution, said Claudia Mo, a pro-democracy lawmaker. Junius Ho is fanning the fires, which is unconscionable, but he seems to be seriously enjoying himself.

Eddie Chu, a liberal legislator, echoed the sentiments of those who view Mr. Ho as a local proxy for Chinas Communist Party, which regularly lionizes him in the state media as a defender of social harmony and Chinese dignity.

I wouldnt be surprised if we see more militant figures like Junius Ho in the next legislative council elections, he said.

Mr. Chu has had a firsthand taste of that militancy. Two days after the train station attack, he and Mr. Ho sat side by side on a television news program to discuss the incident. It did not go well.

The two men shouted over one another and Mr. Ho became especially enraged by Mr. Chus refusal to support a ban on future protests. The show ended abruptly after Mr. Ho pounded the table, ripped off his microphone and stormed away while calling his legislative colleague a profanity. Later that day, Mr. Ho issued what sounded to many like a death threat on Facebook.

Mr. Ho did not respond to interview requests by phone, email and text message. But since his election in 2016, he has avidly courted media attention, often by staking out contrarian positions on social issues like gay marriage (opposed) or by organizing rallies to support the adoption of patriotic loyalty tests for Hong Kong judges.

Mr. Ho has his defenders, especially among those of an older generation who tend to be more conservative. And he can reliably count on voters in so-called indigenous villages whose residents trace their roots back generations. Robert Chow, a former journalist who leads the group Silent Majority, said Mr. Ho gave voice to those too afraid to openly express their love for China.

Junius is a patriot who gives people hope, he said.

The son of a police officer who became wealthy off land deals, Mr. Ho grew up in the New Territories, a large, lush expanse adjacent to the mainland that has faced issues with organized crime. After earning a law degree in the United Kingdom, he returned home to join his brothers law firm. He says he is a Christian, and the part owner of an Australian-bred racehorse named Hong Kong Bet.

Mr. Ho is wildly popular across the border, with nearly 800,000 followers on Sina Weibo, Chinas equivalent of Twitter. His followers on Twitter, which is blocked in China, number fewer than 300.

Mr. Hos ascension to the Hong Kong legislature was not without intrigue; he won his seat three years ago after a rival candidate dropped out at the last minute, claiming he had received death threats from men he described as mainlanders.

Among those Mr. Ho thanked after his victory was the central liaison office, the Chinese government headquarters in Hong Kong.

During a recent visit to Tai Wan Tsuen, an indigenous village adjacent to the station where the July attacks took place, many people were uninterested in talking about politics or Mr. Ho. Several claimed they were out of town or sick in bed the night of the bloodshed, though a few defended the attackers. One man, stepping out of his house for a cigarette, quietly praised Mr. Ho.

He represents those who stay silent, he said.

Mr. Hos antagonists have been anything but silent. In the days after the train station violence, attackers ransacked his district office and vandalized his parents graves. A few days later, the citys Lands Department said the tombs violated zoning rules and suggested that Mr. Ho could be forced to excavate his parents remains and reinter them in a smaller plot.

Two weeks ago, the Hong Kong Jockey Club canceled Wednesday night races after word spread that Mr. Hos horse was set to run and protesters threatened to besiege the iconic racetrack. Mr. Hos response, perhaps tongue in cheek, framed the cancellation as a violation of his horses right to gallop. Animals have their basic rights too, he told reporters.

Still, the recent blowbacks appear to have left him undaunted. Late last month, Mr. Ho organized volunteers to clean up some of the citys so-called Lennon Walls, the agglomeration of Post-it notes and posters that are a hallmark of Hong Kongs pro-democracy movement.

And earlier this week, amid public outrage over the police shooting of an 18-year-old protester, Mr. Ho made it clear that he not sympathetic. We dont know whether those madmen are students or just thugs, he said of the young protesters during a Facebook live video he broadcast from Beijing, but all of them have been seriously brainwashed.

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A Provocateur of the Hong Kong Protests Gains Growing Stature - The New York Times

SCOTTISH artists are being given the freedom to fail in a unique new project. The initiative is allowing them to work with others from four different countries on the topic of failure.

Called Push+, it is funded by Creative-Europe, the European Unions programme supporting the cultural, creative and audiovisual sectors.

The project is being led by Imaginate, the national organisation in Scotland for the promotion, development and celebration of theatre and dance for children and young people.

Our society, including the arts sector, is not usually very supportive of failure yet to be successful at anything you need the right to fail, said Imaginates creative development director Fiona Ferguson.

A year of activity around the initiative has begun with a Failure Lab in Belgium where three artists who are based in Scotland, have been working with 12 artists from Belgium, Norway, Ireland and Denmark during a 10-day residency.

READ MORE:The Monster and Mary Shelly tours Scotland to mark 200 years

The Scots include dancer and theatre maker Emma Jayne Park, from Gretna, who told the National she felt the topic was particularly important at the moment.

Society is failing more visibly than I have ever experienced and we are living in a capitalist system where people now seek to profit from our feelings of failure just look at the self-help and mindfulness industry, she said. Very few people are managing to get by with the impact of austerity and current political chaos.

I feel the topic is experiencing a bit of a zeitgeist moment because a lot of people feel like they are failing chronically which is exacerbating the current mental health crisis.

Park said she had always had a strong relationship with failure and had unknowingly been exploring it in her work for years from her failing body in Its Not Over Yet, which documents her remission from Hodgkins Lymphoma, to Experts In Short Trousers which gave five-year-olds the opportunity to show they are experts in their world who should maybe be listened to more.

Now, she said, she wants to use failure explicitly as a subject matter.

As a freelancer, there is a lot of scope to feel like you are failing the whole time, said Park.

The arts are under resourced and, in order to survive, gatekeepers often try to move with trends, find the next big thing, or squeeze budgets which perpetuates the narrative that working in the arts should be competitive. You have to work quickly, self-promote and self-sustain.

Without potential for a regular income, there is ongoing pressure to make ends meet whilst aspiring to a work/life balance. You can also be subjected to a lot of criticism that does not recognise the different constraints being juggled you can pour your heart and soul into something on a very small budget and it will be reviewed to the same standard as a work with a budget of 100,000.

Park added: Unfortunately, I believe the greatest currency in society and the arts at present is the ability to overwork. Those who cant work excessively struggle to move forward unless they are privileged in other ways such as financially or through being part of pre-established networks. If you are from a working class background or have health care needs, it is very difficult to keep up.

I am interested in how we create our own expectations, work to avoid imposing failure on others and recognise that being average is a pretty good place to be because it is the seemingly small things that add up to a quality of a life.

Park said her participation in the Failure Lab would contribute to research for three pieces of performance she hopes to make in 2021.

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European theatre and dance combine in project to tackle the fear of failure - The National

Joaquin Phoenix attends the premiere of Joker in Los Angeles, Calif., September 28, 2019.(Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)The moralistic busybodies were wrong in the Eighties. Theyre wrong today.

When it comes to bad ideas, theres always room at the bottom.

Conservatives used to exasperatedly observe of gun-grabbing Democrats, Imagine how theyd complain if someone tried to treat the First Amendment the way they treat the Second Amendment!

Hold my cappuccino, says Andrew Marantz of The New Yorker. Writing in the New York Times under the headline Free Speech Is Killing Us and Marantz argues that is literally true he argues that the gun-control program should be taken as a template for a speech-control program. He has come to this conclusion, he writes, after having spent the past few years embedding as a reporter with the trolls and bigots and propagandists. Some reporters are embedded in Afghanistan, and some are embedded on Twitter, which is a great place to be embedded in that you can do it while you are literally embedded, at home, in bed. The thing to understand, I suppose, is that this is a war story.

Marantzs argument is drearily predictable. He writes that he does not want to repeal the First Amendment and then makes a case for gutting it, mired in vagueness (foreswearing the position of the free-speech absolutist but offering no controlling principle) with a great deal of not obviously plausible dot-connecting, and then moves on to what this is really about: an enemies list, in this case beginning with Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos, a couple of attention-hungry entrepreneurial charlatans who always have been and always will be found at the margins of public life. He offers many infinitely plastic pretexts under which speech to which he objects might be suppressed, among them equality, safety, and robust democratic participation. He also proposes government subsidies for the kind of speech of which he approves, having discovered that the Constitution prevents the government from using sticks, but it says nothing about carrots, which surely would be news to the nations religiously affiliated schools, among others.

Marantz is the author of a book about online extremists, because the guy who proposes gutting the Bill of Rights is worried about extremism.

The x might plausibly encourage y argument against free speech has been with us for a very long time. It was the basis for the persecution of heretics in the Christian world, the censorship that John Milton criticized in the 17th century, the suppression of war protesters in the United States (the legal justification of which is the origin of the ubiquitous fire in a crowded theater trope), and the effort to censor and marginalize rap music in the 1980s, a project that brought to public prominence a woman called Tipper Gore, at the time Mrs. Al. Mrs. Gores name became, for a generation, the national shorthand for prudish blue-rinsed tight-assery allied to scheming political opportunism. She was a figure of fun, loathed by all right-thinking people.

But Tipper Goreism, like the poor, syphilis, and usury, we shall always have with us.

Director Todd Phillips has made a kind of superhero movie, Joker, which forgoes the usual tights-and-tights comic-book formula to tell a different kind of story, a psychologically realistic account of the interaction of loneliness, despair, poverty, and cruelty. Surprisingly for what is, at after, a species of Batman film, it was awarded the Leone dOro for best film at the Venice Film Festival,and Joaquin Phoenixs nomination for an Academy Award for his performance already is generally assumed.

But we live in philistine times, and the mob demands that art serve them. For that reason, film, television, literature, music, and much else is subjected to a standard of social utilitarianism, meaning that they are not judged on aesthetic criteria but for their value as propaganda, moral instruction, or therapy. Therapeutic notions are at the moment especially prevalent; that is why press criticism of Game of Thrones, to take one example, dealt with questions of demographic representation to the exclusion of almost everything else.

And so Joker is challenged on its fitness for the present political moment, as Sam Adams puts it in Slate. Is this really the time for a story about a frustrated, alienated white man who turns to violence? he asks. Of course it is, which is why there are at least five productions of Coriolanus under way, and the bestsellers lists are full of worked about frustrated, alienated white men who turn to violence strangely, no one criticizes Margaret Atwood on those grounds. (What, The Handmaids Tale and The Testaments arent about frustrated, violent white guys?) Joker is in fact now criticized on the grounds of empathy, or at least suspicion of empathy. Because our point of empathy in the film is Phoenixs troubled Arthur,Jokerbasically dodges the question of whether were supposed to read his acts of violence as redemptive or abhorrent, three (!) authors write in the Hollywood Reporter. The filmmakers, in this view, leave themselves open to such charges of irresponsibility. The New York Times complains:

Joker is also causing deep unease. Some people, including a few rank-and-file employees on the Warner Bros. lot, worry that the violent, hyper-realistic movie is potentially dangerous that rather than critiquing the societal failings that have given rise to Americas mass-shooter crisis, the film legitimizes such atrocities and could provoke more of them.

In much the same way that the left-wing cultural vanguard that once presented itself as the check on and alternative to corporate power immediately embraced corporate power upon getting its first real taste of it (the Left now is quite satisfied to deputize the HR departments of the Fortune 500 as guardians of political discipline), its members have grown friendlier to suppression of many kinds and more hostile to heterodoxy as their power has grown. Conservative critics of the National Endowment for the Arts once were treated to smug little homilies about how art is supposed to be transgressive, to challenge us, to make us uncomfortable, etc., and now we are treated to smug little sermonettes about the dangerous creation of films that cause deep unease among certain people who work at Warner Bros. or write for Slate or teach at Oberlin. (Arent those exactly the powerful people were supposed to want our art to make uncomfortable?) Reagan-era progressives scoffed when Tipper Gore and her allied church ladies panicked that the rise of rap music would turn Americas streets into a blood-drenched warzone (hip-hop cultures eventual triumphant occupation of the commanding heights of pop in fact coincided with a dramatic decline in violent crime in the United States) or that Ozzy Osbourne songs were turning sweet towheaded kids in the suburbs into dope fiends and satanic little cannibals, or that violent video games were going to leave the real world looking like Grand Theft Auto. (It was enjoyable to remember the video-game panic when watching Ralph Breaks the Internet, in which the GTA ethos is revealed as being so neutered and rehabilitated that it is embodied by Gal Gadot, whose lines might well have been cribbed from self-help manuals.) Power changes everything.

The moralistic busybodies were wrong in the Eighties. Theyre wrong today. They deserved the contempt they received then. They deserve it now. The difference is that free speech and heterodoxy used to have allies in such venues as The New Yorker and the New York Times, where both political and artistic freedom now have so many enemies. But I understand that retro-Eighties nostalgia is hot right now. If were going to bring back big hair and shoulder pads, we may as well resuscitate the public career of Tipper Gore, last seen skulking around Democratic fundraising circles at the junior-varsity level. Perhaps we could bring back Johnny Carson and the constant threat of nuclear annihilation while were at it.

And maybe we can find someone to speak for the cause of art that declines to be subordinated to anybodys political agenda, current social-improvement projects, the tender sensibilities of critics at the New York Times, or the increasingly baroque rules of etiquette that organizes the lives of New Yorker readers as they sway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.

Nuclear annihilation remains the safer bet, but one may still dream.

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Everybody Is Tipper Gore Now - National Review

CultureTVThe BBC2 sitcom expertly deconstructs traditional representations of motherhood, only to lazily cast its characters as school-run Mean Girls

Saturday, 5th October 2019, 07:00 am

Child-rearing has long been irresistible to comedy writers who like to use vomit-stained clothing and curdled sex lives as shorthand for the daily grind. But lately we have seen comedy dramas setting aside gentle farce in favour of something grittier, with the focus shifting towards mothers.

The series gleefully washes its hands of the stereotypes peddled by ye olde sitcoms such as 2point4 Children and My Family, in which the mother is the fulcrum of the family, consigned to standing serenely over a cooker.

It takes a similarly dim view of the concept of having it all a fallacy dreamt up by self-help gurus and glossy magazines that serves to make women, and in particular working mothers, feel as if they are failing.

Instead, it follows the seat-of-the-pants existence of Julia (Anna Maxwell Martin) as she juggles two children, a job in PR and events, and a largely absent partner. For Julia, being a parent is less the pinnacle of female achievement than a test of endurance, during which just getting through the day without anyone dying is a victory.

Thus, in the opening episode, we see Julia racing to buy school shoes on the last day of the holidays, only to find the shelves empty save for a pair of baby shoes and some kitten heels. At the school gate, Julia listens in to fellow parents summer holiday adventures, noting that she had to send her kids to seven different sports clubs, which they absolutely hated. But on a positive, theyre now county level at badminton.

'Motherlands masterstroke lies in skewering the myth of the saintly mother'

We also see her scowl at newcomer Meg (Tanya Moodie), who has just moved into the house opposite. With her brace of children, successful career and sunny disposition, Meg appears to have it all worked out. She cant be a high-flyer and have five kids, Julia carps. Ive got two children and a job I phone in and I already have incredibly low self-esteem. Who does she think she is? Nicola Horlick?

It is here, in addressing competitive middle-class parenting, that Motherland falls down slightly. While the series expertly captures the cycle of panic that balancing kids and work can entail, less edifying is the way it pits women against one another. If its not Julia taking potshots at strangers, its Lucy Punchs cartoonishly coiffed mega-mum looking down her nose at her less glamorous acolytes.

While its one thing to draw attention to the divisions at the school gates related to class and differing family set-ups (among the social outcasts is blunt-talking single mum Liz, played by Diane Morgan), its another to lazily cast them as school-run Mean Girls.

More heartening is that Horgan and co clearly feel no compulsion to make their protagonists likeable. While the popular girls versus scruffy outsider tropes are tiresome, all the characters scheme and manipulate to make their lives easier, or themselves look good.

Motherlands masterstroke lies in skewering the myth of the saintly mother and showing us that atrocious behaviour is by no means the preserve of children.

'Motherland' returns to BBC2 on Monday 7 October at 10pm

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Motherland brilliantly skewers the myth of the perfect parent but does it need to pit women against each other? - iNews