fascism in America?

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1

From the Washington Post
Hannah Allam

‘Headline: Simmering threat of violence comes to fore with search of Trump property’

[b]'For months, right-wing agitators with millions of followers have peddled the idea that a moment was coming soon when violence would become necessary — a patriotic duty — to save the republic.

With the FBI search Monday of Donald Trump’s compound in Florida, that moment is now, according to enraged commentators’ all-caps, exclamation-pointed screeds urging supporters of the former president to take up arms. Within hours of the search at Mar-a-Lago, a chorus of Republican lawmakers, conservative talk-show hosts, anti-government provocateurs and pro-Trump conspiracy theorists began issuing explicit or thinly veiled calls for violence.'[/b]

‘"Today is war. That is all you will get on today’s show,” right-wing podcaster Steven Crowder announced Tuesday to his nearly 2 million followers on Twitter, referring to the program that goes to his YouTube audience of 5.6 million.’

‘Extremism researcher Caroline Orr Bueno compiled a collage of dozens of screenshots of tweets calling for violence in response to the search, or “raid” in the parlance of Trump supporters. “I already bought my ammo,” one person boasted in the sampling. “Civil war! Pick up arms, people!” ordered another.’

[b]'Orr Bueno said it was ominous to see “a disturbing number of elected Republicans and influential right-wing figures joining in on the ‘civil war’ rhetoric.”

“This whole situation is red meat for their base. They use events like this to feed into this fantasy they’ve co-created with their supporters, and defusing the situation would require stepping out of that alternate reality,” said Orr Bueno, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Maryland who studies disinformation. “They’re not going to do that, particularly with 2024 right around the corner.”'[/b]

How seriously is this to be taken? Is there anything in America “here and now” that is the equivalent of Hitler’s Brown Shirts, the Sturmabteilung/Storm Troopers.

Recall that just after the January 6th assault at the Capitol, there was a barrage of media predictions that there would be an explosion of violence to follow. Never happened.

How big a threat is this?

Stay tuned.
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[no pinheads please][/size]

2

i made a funny reply to that crowder tweet that got 180k impressions so far that shit has been draining my phone battery all day.

3

washingtonpost.com/opinions … -violence/

Dana Milbank at the Washington Post

[b]'I would like nothing more than to be wrong about this. But the reckless response by the GOP-Fox News axis to the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago makes it feel as though we’re falling into the abyss.

The threat of political violence from far-right extremists has been growing for years, but calls to arms reached a fever pitch in pro-Trump social media after Monday’s court-ordered search at former president Donald Trump’s Florida compound: “When does the shooting start?” “Summertime was made for killing fields.” “Lock and load.” “Tomorrow is war.” “Pick up arms, people.”'[/b]

Yes, it’s been growing in the media and online…but where is it? On the other hand, if all of this leads to Trump being indicted, being arrested…?

The crucial question becomes this: is there a gap between rhetoric and reality?

What does the FBI and other such government agencies know of the actual capacity for wide-spread violence.

There certainly wasn’t any doubt about it in Germany when Hitler was rising up through the ranks.

Even January 6th needs to be put in perspective. It was hardly the sort of insurrection that can only be launched with the backing of the armed forces. No, the main threat [to me] still seems to revolve around MAGA taking full control of the Congress next January and then the White House in January of 2025.

They already own and operate the Supreme Court.

More slowly but nonetheless surely legislating fascism into existence? Reconfigure government itself to be in sync with MAGA?

4

Did the F.B.I. Just Re-elect Donald Trump?
David Brooks at the NYT

nytimes.com/2022/08/11/opin … -raid.html

[b]'Why is Donald Trump so powerful? How did he come to dominate one of the two major parties and get himself elected president? Is it his hair? His waistline? No, it’s his narratives. Trump tells powerful stories that ring true to tens of millions of Americans.

The main one is that America is being ruined by corrupt coastal elites. According to this narrative, there is an interlocking network of highly educated Americans who make up what the Trumpians have come to call the Regime: Washington power players, liberal media, big foundations, elite universities, woke corporations. These people are corrupt, condescending and immoral and are looking out only for themselves. They are out to get Trump because Trump is the person who stands up to them. They are not only out to get Trump; they are out to get you.

This narrative has a core of truth to it. Highly educated metropolitan elites have become something of a self-enclosed Brahmin class. But the Trumpian propaganda turns what is an unfortunate social chasm into venomous conspiracy theory. It simply assumes, against a lot of evidence, that the leading institutions of society are inherently corrupt, malevolent and partisan and are acting in bad faith.

It simply assumes that the proof of people’s virtue is that they’re getting attacked by the Regime. Trump’s political career has been kept afloat by elite scorn. The more elites scorn him, the more Republicans love him. The key criterion for leadership in the Republican Party today is having the right enemies.

Into this situation walks the F.B.I. There’s a lot we don’t know about the search at Mar-a-Lago. But we do know how the Republican Party reacted. The right side of my Twitter feed was ecstatic. See! We really are persecuted! Essays began to appear with titles like “The Regime Wants Its Revenge.” Ron DeSantis tweeted, “The raid of MAL is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime’s political opponents.” As usual, the tone was apocalyptic. “This is the worst attack on this Republic in modern history,” the Fox News host Mark Levin exclaimed.

The investigation into Trump was seen purely as a heinous Regime plot. At least for now, the search has shaken the Republican political landscape. Several weeks ago, about half of Republican voters were ready to move on from Trump, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll. This week the entire party seemed to rally behind him. Republican strategists advising Trump’s potential primary opponents had reason to be despondent. “Completely handed him a lifeline,” one such strategist told Politico. “Unbelievable … It put everybody in the wagon for Trump again. It’s just taken the wind out of everybody’s sails.”'[/b]

Also, will all of this leading to Trump’s indictment and arrest be to his base what Alito and company’s Supreme Court Roe v. Wade ruling is to the liberal base? Even if Trump is not able to run in 2024, his son Don Jr., and other MAGA superstars will be.

Then it all comes down to the extent to which MAGA is, for all practical purposes, the equivalent of fascism.

‘What happens if a prosecutor charges Trump and he is convicted just as he is cruising to the G.O.P. nomination or maybe even the presidency? What happens if the legal system, using its criteria, decides Trump should go to prison at the very moment that the electoral system, using its criteria, decides he should go to the White House?’

You tell me.

‘I presume in those circumstances Trump would be arrested and imprisoned. I also presume we would see widespread political violence from incensed Trump voters who would conclude that the Regime has stolen the country. In my view, this is the most likely path to a complete democratic breakdown.’

Uh-oh?

‘America absolutely needs to punish those who commit crimes. On the other hand, America absolutely needs to make sure that Trump does not get another term as president. What do we do if the former makes the latter more likely? I have no clue how to get out of this potential conflict between our legal and political realities.’

In other words, there’s winning the battle. And then there’s losing the war.

5

Here is a liberal rendition of the same concerns:

nytimes.com/2022/08/11/opin … -raid.html

Michelle Goldberg at the NYT:

[b]'Yet after the F.B.I. executed a search warrant at Trump’s beachfront estate this week, some intelligent people have questioned the wisdom of subjecting the former president to the normal operation of the law because of the effect it will have on his most febrile admirers.

Andrew Yang, one of the founders of a new centrist third party, tweeted about the “millions of Americans who will see this as unjust persecution.” Damon Linker, usually one of the more sensible centrist thinkers, wrote, “Rather than healing the country’s civic wounds, the effort to punish Trump will only deepen them.”

The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta described feeling “nauseous” watching coverage of the raid. “What we must acknowledge — even those of us who believe Trump has committed crimes, in some cases brazenly so, and deserves full prosecution under the law — is that bringing him to justice could have some awful consequences,” he wrote.'[/b]

Again, there’s the way some folks actually imagine American democracy works — out of a high school civics text – and the way it actually works instead: sustaining the interests of those with wealth and power.

'In some sense, Alberta’s words are obviously true; Trumpists are already issuing death threats against the judge who signed off on the warrant, and a Shabbat service at his synagogue was reportedly canceled because of the security risk. On Thursday, an armed man tried to breach an F.B.I. field office in Ohio, and The New York Times reported that he appears to have attended a pro-Trump rally in Washington the night before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The former president relishes his ability to stir up a mob; it’s part of what makes him so dangerous.

Then back to not knowing the extent to which Trump and his MAGA fanatics are or are not the equivalent of Hitler and the Nazis.

[b]'It should go without saying that Trump and his followers, who howled “Lock her up!” about Clinton, do not believe that it is wrong for the Justice Department to pursue a probe against a presidential contender over the improper handling of classified material. What they believe is that it is wrong to pursue a case against Trump, who bonds with his acolytes through a shared sense of aggrieved victimization.

It was Trump himself who signed a law making the removal and retention of classified documents a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Those who think that it would be too socially disruptive to apply such a statute to him should specify which laws they believe the former president is and is not obliged to obey. And those in charge of enforcing our laws should remember that the caterwauling of the Trump camp is designed to intimidate them and such intimidation helped him become president in the first place.'[/b]

That’s how the fulminating fanatic minds work. Hypocrisy is only applicable to the other side.

Only Goldberg comes down on the side of the civics text:

‘Trump shouldn’t be prosecuted because of politics, but he also shouldn’t be spared because of them. The only relevant question is whether he committed a crime, not what crimes his devotees might commit if he’s held to account.’

Again, though, if his devotees use his “persecution” to send him [or his equivalent] back to the White House? With a MAGA Congress and a MAGA Supreme Court?

So be it!

6

nytimes.com/2022/08/13/opin … e-fbi.html

Maureen Dowd at the NYT

[b]'WASHINGTON — It was inevitable that the Scofflaw and the Law would clash.

Still, it is one of the most bizarre loop de loops in Donald Trump’s dark, crazy reign over Republicans that he turned a party that was pro-law and order and anti-Evil Empire into a party that trashes the F.B.I. and embraces Vladimir Putin.

It is the greatest con of the century’s greatest con man: hijacking his own party.

The Republicans are echoing “unhinged leftists from 1968,” Tom Nichols, The Atlantic writer, noted Friday on “Morning Joe.” “‘The F.B.I. is the enemy, the F.B.I. is the Gestapo, the F.B.I. is the enemy within.’”

President George H.W. Bush resigned his N.R.A. life membership when the N.R.A., just before the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, sent out a fund-raising letter, calling federal agents “jack-booted thugs.”

It’s Pavlovian now. Republicans don’t even hesitate before protecting Trump, even though he’s being investigated for possibly violating the Espionage Act.

His casual attitude toward classified material is nothing new. The Times’s Mark Mazzetti wrote that “officials who gave him classified briefings occasionally withheld some sensitive details from him” because they saw him as a security risk.

The lord of Mar-a-Lago assumes that whether he’s in or out of office, all top-secret papers are his, to tweet, wave around, declassify or deploy as political weapons. He didn’t think he would appear as a traitor — the word he used to describe Edward Snowden — when he stashed classified material in his Florida Xanadu, with its approximately 58 bedrooms and 33 bathrooms.

As an autocrat at heart, Trump simply conflates himself with the republic. That’s why he probably never thought he was committing sedition on Jan. 6 when he egged on the mob to overthrow the government he was running. Part of that mob was Ricky Shiffer, who was killed by the police on Thursday after he attacked an Ohio F.B.I. office after Trump denounced the agency’s raid.

Trump is also an expert at projection. As Peter Baker wrote in The Times, “Throughout his four years in the White House, Mr. Trump tried to turn the nation’s law enforcement apparatus into an instrument of political power to carry out his wishes.” Now, he is accusing the F.B.I. of being a political weapon for his successor.

Trump expects that kind of obeisance. Peter Baker and Susan Glasser report in their new book, “The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021,” that Trump told his chief of staff John Kelly that he wished his generals were as loyal as Hitler’s were.'[/b]

Trump the autocrat. Hitler the autocrat. Trump wishing his generals were as loyal to him as Adolph’s were to him. Hitler sustaining that actual loyalty.

Is that where the comparison end?

On the other hand, no one doubted that Hitler himself was a fulminating fanatic objectivist. If not a pinhead.

I [and others] suspect that with Trump, however, it’s not about idealism or ideology. Or the Fatherland. It’s about himself.

He is basically a narcissist who will do almost anything to be the one that everybody is talking about.

He is dangerous only to the extent that he can fool most of the people most of the time. If he gets reelected, fascism or not will still come down to him winning over the armed forces to do his bidding.

That’s what has to be grappled with. What is the thinking of the Joint Chiefs of Staff regarding America’s future.

Also, in my view, something as dramatic as a fascist America would have to revolve around a truly significant crisis. A sustained economic calamity coupled with widespread civil unrest or a truly dangerous resurgence of one or another viral pandemic.

7

There is already socialist fascism in America enforced by the FBI and praised by the entire “Democrat” socialist party (actual global communists). That is what they are using against Mr Trump and his supporters.

Fascism is a tactic of socialist countries.

And they always say - “We have to go to extremes to stop those wrong-think people from being fascists.” - which of course IS fascism (exactly the same as the ANTIFA fascists (“beat them up because they speak evil!”).

8

K: My advice is to loosen the tin foil hat you have on… its squeezing your brain
a little too tight… and you have a whole lot less oxygen getting to your brain…

proof… fascism is a right wing ideology, not a left wing ideology…

Kropotkin

9

No pinheads, please.

Well, unless gib becomes one…again. :sunglasses:

10

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post

[b]'The apparent position of Republicans loyal to Trump is that any law enforcement activity targeting him is by definition illegitimate, no matter how grave the suspected activity. So a GOP-controlled House next year would likely undermine investigations into Trump any way it can, regardless of what is learned about Trump in the interim.

'But the precise nature of this threat is poorly understood. While many have noted that a GOP House could stage phony Benghazi-like hearings, there’s another possibility: using specific parliamentary tools to, in essence, defund the investigators.

‘Such a tactic could badly complicate efforts to hold Trump accountable and could lead to government shutdowns and other chaos. The prospect is even more dire when you consider that a GOP House would contain a large faction of feral Trumpists who see making Trump untouchable by the law as their highest calling.’[/b]

This is basically my argument. Forget about an armed insurrection leading to fascism. That would require the Joint Chiefs of Staff going along with the Proud Boys and their ilk. And I doubt that the ruling class and the folks on Wall Street want that until it is absolutely necessary. Economic chaos might result. Instead, MAGA forces in control of both the Congress and the Supreme Court would be the start. Then if Trump or his facsimile take control of the Executive branch as well, what would stop them from legislating and then enforcing an American rendition of fascism?

A working-class rebellion? Hardly likely since the bulk of Trump’s base is the white working class. Trump and the ruling class keep them focused on “value voter issues” like race and homosexuality and abortion and immigration. Snickering all the way to the bank.

11

A particularly Insightful opinion piece today from Carlos Lozada at the NYT.

nytimes.com/2022/09/22/opin … -joke.html

[b]'The Inside Joke That Became Trump’s Big Lie

‘When politicians publicly defend positions they privately reject, they are telling the joke. When they give up on the challenge of governing the country for the rush of triggering the enemy, they are telling the joke. When they intone that they must address the very fears they have encouraged or manufactured among their constituents, they are telling the joke. When their off-the-record smirks signal that they don’t really mean what they just said or did, they are telling the joke. As the big lie spirals ever deeper into unreality, with the former president mixing election falsehoods with call-outs to violent, conspiratorial fantasies, the big joke has much to answer for.’[/b]

The Big Joke and the Big Lie basically revolving around the assumption that many Republican politicians know that Trump’s narrative is basically just bullshit; but they sustain it themselves because they recognize in turn that millions of Trump fanatics among the white working class “masses” and the evangelicals [all voters] really are dumb or ignorant enough not to get the joke themselves. So, in order to win elections themselves, they have to go along with it.

Hitler and most of his fascist crew really did believe that Mien Kampf was the Bible. But if “semi-fascism” does prevail here in America it may well all revolve around “the joke”.

Personally, I don’t believe that Trump himself doesn’t get the joke. It’s all about sustaining his own narcissistic personality. Whatever it takes to keep it all about him.

12

Probably he is a borderline believer, since he may have learned something from the annals of fairly recent history, when a similar charge was leveled against Nixon,but quickly abated with his dramatic operatic overture of opening the Chinese dragons curtain of irony.
And knowing how pinheads if left not galvanized fail to draw magnetic appeal. It simply aims high and misses it’s mark.

13

Once again, I really don’t have a clue as to what it is that you are trying to convey…

Oh, and over at KT:

I’m assuming he means Meno…you.

And here [if he does] we are almost on the same page.

On the other hand, with Mr. Chickenshit, every time I attempted to bring him down out of clouds of [at times] what to me sounded like intellectual gibberish, he’d only go up further into them.

Same with you here.

You know, if “I” do say so myself.

14

To Mr chickenshit who or wherever you are

The reason the clouds are so troublesome to deal with is because they are blown away before the chance of rain can touch the ground . Places of constant overcast don’t ever have to worry for lack of light taking clouds for granted , hence never requiring any ecological concerns.

Please don’t mess with us chickenshit because in essence biggy and me are pretty much on the same page and it’s offensive to imply otherwise in such an abtruce manner.

15

Everyone using more than one username or pretending to hold positions they don’t really hold, like Kierkegaard, should be tarred & chicken-feathered and dropped off at the edge of town and not allowed to come back without training in the martyrdom arts. Ok fine you can stay.

16

Note to Mr. Chickenshit:

Did you put him ip to this?

17

Here we go again…?

[b]'Soon after the F.B.I. searched Donald J. Trump’s home in Florida for classified documents, online researchers zeroed in on a worrying trend.

Posts on Twitter that mentioned “civil war” had soared nearly 3,000 percent in just a few hours as Mr. Trump’s supporters blasted the action as a provocation. Similar spikes followed, including on Facebook, Reddit, Telegram, Parler, Gab and Truth Social, Mr. Trump’s social media platform. Mentions of the phrase more than doubled on radio programs and podcasts, as measured by Critical Mention, a media-tracking firm.

Posts mentioning “civil war” jumped again a few weeks later, after President Biden branded Mr. Trump and “MAGA Republicans” a threat to “the very foundations of our republic” in a speech on democracy in Philadelphia.

Now experts are bracing for renewed discussions of civil war, as the Nov. 8 midterm elections approach and political talk grows more urgent and heated.'[/b] New York Times

In other works, back to the media accounts of how, post January 6th, there were endless stories of how the attack on the Capitol Building was just the tip of the iceberg. That in the coming weeks and months violent attacks would be exploding from coast to coast.

Instead, virtually nothing.

Same thing now? Is it all more about the media itself fanning the flames in order to attract readers and subscribers?

And then of course the part where even if the attacks – the “civil war” – unfolds as predicted it can all be linked to “semi-fascism” in America.

18

Here we go…

nytimes.com/interactive/202 … s-out.html

[b]'Donald Trump and his business empire are currently the subjects of no fewer than five major simultaneous investigations, a truly extraordinary challenge for anyone, let alone a former and possibly future president of the United States. These are complicated investigations, with long and winding paths to resolution. They involve scores of federal and state investigators and witnesses across the country, from politicians eager to shield themselves from scrutiny to employees turning on their colleagues to a former president who knows how to navigate — and manipulate — the legal system like no one else.

‘The public has very little visibility into how these investigations are proceeding day by day, as government officials quietly gather evidence and plan their next moves. Any number of unexpected developments — surprise witnesses, hung juries and perhaps even a special counsel empowered to oversee Justice Department investigations — could slow or derail their work. The announcement of Mr. Trump’s candidacy for president does not halt any of these investigations, but it could affect how prosecutors weigh their options, and his uniquely polarizing status could affect how judges and juries resolve any cases that make it to trial. Were he to win the election, he could put an end to any pending federal prosecutions or investigations once in office. Even at this stage, some potential scenarios are possible to discern, including the possibility — however improbable it may seem — that all of the investigations resolve in his favor, with no conviction and no serious legal consequences. Based on interviews with experts and analysis of media reports, as well as of the law itself, here is a close look at some of the paths by which such an outcome could come to pass.’[/b]

Now, here, my own assumptions revolve around the belief that to the extent that Trump and MAGA pose a serious threat to American democracy…perhaps even resulting in one or another rendition of American fascism?..it revolves not around an actual insurrection [like the overblown January 6th attempted “coup”] but around the political process itself. What if, in 2024, MAGA really does gain control of all three branches of the federal government. A right-wing Christian Supreme Court, a radical right-wing Congress and a radical right-wing Trump in the White House.

But here I am convinced in turn that the need for fascism by the ruling class “deep state” will only manifest itself in times of true crisis. The economy collapses, social unrest explodes, the covid pandemic comes roaring back with a new, deadlier mutation. Or the war in Ukraine leads to an actual nuclear exchange.

Short of that, there does not appear to be the need for radical change. And those who own and operate the economy will not sanction policies that will result in a great disruption to the cash cows emanating out of Wall Street and K Street.

I just don’t see fascism without the need for it. After all, look at the plight of Germany between the two World Wars.

And Trump does not appear to be a Hitler. What the hell does he really believe in at all except Trump?

So, I’m still convinced there are powerful forces behind the curtain here that will ultimately decide Trump’s fate. As Reagan’s fate was decided during Iran-Contragate, as Nixon’s fate was decided after Watergate, as the Warren Commision was put together in the wake of the Kennedy assassination to decide the fate of America.

19

nytimes.com/2022/12/07/opin … party.html

Thomas B. Edsall at the New York Times

'In the weeks immediately surrounding the midterm elections, Donald Trump called for the “termination” of constitutional rule, openly embraced the conspiratorial QAnon movement, pledged support for the Jan. 6 rioters and hosted, over dinner at Mar-a-Lago, the white supremacist Nicholas Fuentes and Ye (once known as Kanye West), both of whom are prominent antisemites.

Okay, as some have noted, of late Trump has been stumbling a bit. And Edsall goes on to speculate about the political implications of that.

But suppose it is just a stumble “here and now”. Suppose by 2024 he and MAGA come roaring back. After all, between now and then who knows what events might unfold to make that possible.

Suppose Trump is back in the White House in January 2025 along with a MAGA House and Senate and Supreme Court.

Again, it’s not the Proud Boys and the horn helmeted Jacob Chansleys who stormed the Capitol that are likely to usher fascism into America. The stormtroopers are just there in case that becomes necessary.

Instead, it’s the political process itself that can be reconfigured into autocracy.

Oh, almost forgot:

Next up: :obscene-moneypiss:

20

Meanwhile, fascism elsewhere…

nytimes.com/2022/12/07/worl … rests.html

Katrin Bennhold and Erika Solomon

[b]'BERLIN — The plan was to storm the German Capitol, arrest lawmakers and execute the chancellor. A prince descended from German nobility would take over as the new head of state, and a former far-right member of Parliament would be put in charge of a national purge.

'To facilitate the coup, the electricity network would be sabotaged. Satellite phones to communicate off grid had already been bought.

'That is what German prosecutors and intelligence officials say a nationwide far-right terrorist network was plotting before 3,000 police officers and Special Forces fanned out across the country on Wednesday to raid 150 homes and arrest 25 suspected co-conspirators. They included an active duty soldier, a former officer in the elite special forces, a police officer and at least two army reservists.

'Among the items uncovered was a list containing 18 names of politicians considered enemies, possibly to be deported and executed, among them Chancellor Olaf Scholz, people familiar with the raids told The New York Times, requesting anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation.

‘This was the latest of a series of plots discovered in recent years of extremist networks preparing for a day the democratic order collapses, a day they call Day X, the subject of a New York Times podcast series last year.’[/b]

Again, how seriously to take this? In my view, only to the extent that these fanatics have the support of the actual armed forces. Whether in Germany or here in America. Or the extent to which they are able to be “voted into power” as the Trumpsters are attempting to do here.

Clearly, with the turbulence now embedded in global economy, covid still hovering over everyone and sustained autocracies in Russia and China, not much can be entirely ruled out.