Good morning!
Welcome to Issue 42.1 of Digestable, your daily mouthful of real things happening in the world, minus alarmist pandemic news.
Today’s news, fermented:
Now that the dust is cleared, research into just who was in that white supremacist mob is emerging.
Among other alarming characters is ‘the antler guy,’ also known as Jake Angeli. This morning’s edition of Heated not only debunks a right-wing attempt to tie Angeli to ‘left-wing climate protests’ but also identifies Angeli as an ecofascist.
It’s a good time to learn about ecofascism if you’re not familiar, considering that we’re both on the brink of a climate catastrophe and witnessing the rise of fascism. The basic idea is: ecofascists are generally far-right believers in climate change who blame Black, brown, and Indigenous people, as well as poor people, for ‘dirtying’ the planet. According to Naomi Klein, ecofascism at best advocates for tightening borders—supposedly to keep those people ‘out’—and at worst sees climate change as a big ethnic cleansing opportunity.
Now, the climate movement is more committed than ever to outgrowing the ‘concerned middle class white lady’ trope of the environmental movement, and calls to follow the leadership of BIPOC organizers and frontline communities are becoming more mainstream. But many mainstream environmental groups (‘Big Greens’) receive funding from the billionaire population control advocate Fred Stanback; ecofascism is alive and well in the mainstream environmental sphere.
This is particularly concerning in a moment where climate activists saw a staggering double standard between treatment of white supremacist rioters and themselves—not to mention how Wednesday’s few arrests compared to the literal thousands over the summer at Black Lives Matter uprisings.
While the implications of Wednesday’s events are broad and nuanced, we at least must be sure that there will be another Trump-adjacent candidate on the ticket in 2024. Eyes are on Josh Hawley—who, as a youngish politician in a mid-climate crisis race, could easily invoke ecofascist ideologies to attract young right-wing voters.
Lots to be worried about, but at least we know a bit more about how shipworms reproduce—strange clam friends who live in bizarre and endangered underwater forests and may hold important information for the future of medicine.
(via)
The Second Look
Half-baked cultural criticism back next week from Gabriel Coleman.
*Hot Goss*
Brought to you by the superb Latifah Azlan.
It's entirely too early in the day, the week, and the year for me to be writing this ~*Hot Goss*~ but um, Armie Hammermay be a cannibal. I tried thinking of ways to pad the announcement but there really was no other way to say something so... bold. But the actor was trending on Twitter last night for hours after some Instagram messages he allegedly sent to a woman were leaked and now we're all waking up knowing how h*rny Armie is.
To be fair, the authenticity of these messages have not been verified at the time I am writing this column. But in case you were wondering whether or not i was being dramatic with my characterization of Armie as a cannibal, here's the Twitter thread compiling the messages as "proof" -- including messages in which Armie himself says he's a cannibal. I don't know what I believe but Armie did once post a video of his son sucking his toes on Instagram so I know that he's just a little bit psychotic and would totally say something like "I am a cannibal" and probably mean it or at least want it to be true.
So this is how we're going into the second week of January -- by making up for the relative calm of celebrity gossip last year. Who needs coffee when Armie Hammer exists and news of his private life makes the rounds every three months, eh?