They’re also chipping away at the most fundamental freedom of all: the right to vote – restricting everything from mail-in voting to ballot dropboxes.
But their chipping away at freedom is even bigger than all this.
Can you really be free if you’re saddled with medical debt and have to routinely pay outrageous health care costs?
Can you really be free if you have no voice in your workplace and your employer refuses to let you organize with your coworkers for the right to collectively bargain?
Can you really be free if you’re not paid a living wage and have to choose between feeding your family or keeping your lights on?
A living wage, the right to join a union, guaranteed healthcare, the right to vote – these are the foundations of real freedom.
Yet Republicans oppose all of these.
There’s a reason the historic 1963 rally was called The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Because freedom also means the ability to work in a job that pays enough to provide food, clothing, shelter, and medical care.
What Republicans want to preserve isn’t freedom, it’s power. The power to impose their narrow ideology on everyone else, no matter who suffers. Don’t let their propaganda convince you otherwise.
The D.C. showdown, from all angles, appears unlikely to be the start of Trump’s “revenge”, but rather the beginning of the end for him
His law suits crashing left and right, his own party “rebelling” against the endless repetition of unsubstantiated fraud claims, and then he pressures his own VP to reject the electoral college vote on January 6th, something that he has no legal power to do.
All in all it’s not been going well recently for Trump. The trend is very likely to continue as the various desperate and potentially illegal tactics play out in what appears to be building to some sort of crescendo on or before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on January 20th.
No, sir, he does not:
The Vice President has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors.
The Constitution does not give the vice president any such power, period.
“Proud Boys” leader Enrique Tarrio was arrested on destruction of property charges. The judge ordered him to stay out of Washington D.C. and then released him on his own recognizance. Unless he defies the judges orders, he will therefore not be present for the planned “wild” demonstrations that Trump has called for in Washington DC on January 6th.
Since carrying a gun is already against the law in Washington D.C., and Washington DC’s mayor has called in the the National Guard to help local authorities, as needed there is a concerted effort to minimize any potential for violence. According to various local officials, the troops will not be armed and they will be there to assist with crowd management and traffic control.
To borrow a phrase from Trump himself, this, most likely, will add up to a “nothing burger” and a lot of flag waving and yelling and swearing. Meanwhile the electoral count may be delayed by the various objectors but the outcome, a “landslide” win for Joe Biden, does not appear to be in any doubt.
And, although the Right has talked in terms of a “civil war” either in the larger sense of violently pitting Trump “forces” against the entire rest of the US population, and in another sense, between one wing of the Republican party and another, it remains unlikely that either one will be much of a “war” at all in the scariest sense of the word.
Looking at the most extreme opposing view, there is also the fact that all 10 living former secretaries of defense, both as Republicans and Democrats, issued a statement , in the form of an opinion article in The Washington Post questioning, implicitly, Trump’s willingness to follow his Constitutional duty to peacefully relinquish power on Jan. 20. Although they did not mention him by name, they referred to his failed law suits and attempts to overturn the election results.
This warning is meant, it appears, to also be a tacit rebuke of any current pentagon officials that may be considering aiding Trump’s possible plan to engage the armed forces or declare martial law, at any time before January 20th, if there is indeed such a plan in the works. The rumors and evidence, that there may indeed have been consideration of such a plan, involving ideas credited to Retired Lt. General Michael Flynn, former national security advisor and newly pardoned admitted felon, has been discussed in the media and by political insiders, and roundly rejected as both unconstitutional and alarming.
Needless to say, any election related actions involving the military, in any form whatsoever, domestically or internationally, potentially as some sort of distraction or diversion, would be highly dangerous and shocking, to say the least.
Trump tweeted an invitation to his followers to come to Washington D.C. on January 6th for a “wild time”. There are many tweets and a social media barrage to make this into a public spectacle, ardently in the hope that a large turn-out will somehow have an effect on the official counting of the electoral votes. It won’t.
In typical Trump style, the plausibly-deniable-adjective “wild” is meant to imply, depending on which way you spin it, to be harmlessly “high-energy” or a kind of veiled threat of violence by the militant fringes of the far-right.
Many are on edge ahead of this attempt to turn the 6th into something dangerous sounding – and it is right to remain vigilant with all the bizarre twists that have already happened.
As we have stated before, in previous articles, whatever “malarky”, to use Joe Biden’s go to phrase, Trump and his wacko band of followers are planning they will fail and fail miserably.
The telegraphed, scheduled-coup attempt has awoken counter-measures, you can be certain
The massive failures can be easily predicted for one simple reason: everything beyond a “peaceful” and benign protest is against the law and we still have laws and a constitution. For each illegal act the response by the “state” will be 100 times larger and more consequential. And, of course, it won’t take more than a tiny response by law enforcement to quell this fake unrest.
”The massive failures can be easily predicted for one simple reason: everything beyond a “peaceful” and benign protest is against the law and we still have laws and a constitution.”
— D.L.
Trump will whine and bellow that it is not the sate, but rather the “deep-state” that is against him, as it has been (in his mind) all along. He will try to turn himself into some bizarre kind of martyr- hero who is at the same time also a carnival-barker clown.
In his mind, just as with the original run for the presidency, it’s a no lose situation. Either he somehow manages to succeed beyond all reason, or he can continue to monetize the chaos and his position as King of Fools, a world where his marks are, at the same time, his most ardent followers.
There will be no need for him to end up like Mussolini, or to be taken seriously with his tin-pot army. It’s highly likely now, actually, that the military, FBI, CIA and all the rest of the national security apparatus is receiving two messages, related to this publicly telegraphed “coup” attempt.
Be on heightened alert for any activities inspired by Trump’s, basically ridiculous, stunt, and at the same time, do not say or do anything to draw attention to its existence.
Even if there are small disruptions and illegal acts by his most crazed “supporters” these will be small, not-coordinated and local. Washington D.C. will be, as we have seen in Portland and elsewhere, a lot of pick-up trucks with waving flags and people wearing silly red hats.
There is no reason not to be on guard, considering the statements and thinly veiled threats that have been made by so many
This is not to say don’t remain alert. It is truly sad that this kind of behavior is being drummed up by Tump and the least informed and most gullible amongst the population. At the extreme edge, of course, organizations such as Qanon and Proud Boys are very deranged and should not be excused or tolerated in any way.
But the veiled threats that some kind of uprising to bring down democracy and execute a coup by a deluded minority is about to take place , both in the general population and among lawmakers, is just wishful thinking by a deranged man that still, technically, remains president for a few more weeks.
More likely, we will all be witness to Trump’s greatest day of failure in his entire life. Bigger than his 6 chapter 11 bankruptcies, bigger than his many humiliating business and personal defeats, this will be the day that every hope he has to milk some kind of benefit out of losing the 2020 election will die.
And, afterwards, starting on January 7th, 2021 he will have to decide wether he should flee the country and go into exile, or stay and try to avoid the arrests, convictions and incarcerations that are likely in his near future.
What does it take to expose the tactics of online hate mongers?
Talia Lavin, describes herself as a “schlubby, bisexual Jew living in Brooklyn” and as an unapologetic anti-racist. She has contributed her writing on right-wing activities to major publication outlets including The Washington Post, The New Yorker, New Republic and more. As a result, Lavin describes having been a frequent target for extremists. For her latest book, “Culture Warlords”, she created fictitious online characters and identity in order to infiltrate and better understand how and why this radical subculture (i.e. white nationalism) is started and expose it.
Click to see “Culture Warlords” and help independent bookstores. Also available on Amazon.
In an article for the Daily Beast, she told the reporter: “There is no economic class, education level, or geographical region that is not part of the organized racist movement,” and continued “These people are from every walk of life. There are a lot of reasons for anger, and the people I have reported on take natural feelings of loneliness and turn them on vulnerable and marginalized people. And that’s what makes me angrier. They are human people making human choices to do evil.”
Her success in being accepted into the community, and with key members, was based on using one of her created characters, a sexy, blond, alter ego to gain trust and pry honest statements from her targets. The shockingly racist and extreme admissions of hate and even criminal “dreams” they expressed seemed to more than make up for the unorthodox catfish-like charade she used to gain their trust.
Needless to say with her real identity now known, and her first hand descriptions in the book out in the public sphere, she has all the more reason to fear backlash or acts of revenge. Her courage in taking on this dangerous task, and then speaking and writing about it, is heroic, to say the least.
Her wish for readers to take away from her book is this is an important issue and something that can and should be fought for, as Americans, it is our responsibility to speak out. She ends her interview saying, “we need a lot more anti-fascists out there.”
To read more information about Talia Lavin’s book, please see publisher details below. Her book is available for purchase as of October 6, 2020. Click to see and help independent bookstores, also available on Amazon.
Culture Warlords: My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy
Culture Warlordsis the story of how Lavin, a frequent target of extremist trolls (including those at Fox News), dove into a byzantine online culture of hate and learned the intricacies of how white supremacy proliferates online. Within these pages, she reveals the extremists hiding in plain sight online: Incels. White nationalists. White supremacists. National Socialists. Proud Boys. Christian extremists.
In order to showcase them in their natural habitat, Talia assumes a range of identities, going undercover as a blonde Nazi babe, a forlorn incel, and a violent Aryan femme fatale. Along the way, she discovers a whites-only dating site geared toward racists looking for love, a disturbing extremist YouTube channel run by a fourteen-year-old girl with over 800,000 followers, the everyday heroes of the antifascist movement, and much more.
By combining compelling stories chock-full of catfishing and gate-crashing with her own in-depth, gut-wrenching research, she also turns the lens of anti-Semitism, racism, and white power back on itself in an attempt to dismantle and decimate the online hate movement from within. Shocking, humorous, and merciless in equal measure, Culture Warlordsexplores some of the vilest subcultures on the Web-and shows us how we can fight back.
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Now more than Ever Democracy needs an Informed Populace to Survive
After the recent alleged murder of a police officer by a “Boogaloo Boy, the indictments in a conspiracy plot to kidnap and murder the Governor of Michigan (Gretchen Whitmer) and with Trump “inciting the Proud Boys” during the Presidential debate saying, “Stand back and Stand By” (rather than condemning them and telling them to stand down), many of us are very wary of the possible dangers to Democracy swirling around the 2020 election.
These threats, although likely impotent, are still very real. So now would be the perfect time to consult history, and those who are experts on history, in order to know more about the potential dangers of fascism and wannabe dictators to democracy and the democratic rule of law.
Book burning is impossible Today but the Truth is still being Attacked from all sides
Just as Trump cries and whines daily about “fake news” a term originally coined to describe his penchant for constantly lying, Hitler wanted to banish history from the minds of his German subjects by exhorting them to set libraries ablaze in bonfires meant to banish all but his mandated “truth”. Those bonfires are, to this day, a symbol of absolute evil, no less so than concentration camps and mass murder.
Fortunately there are recent classic as well as new, important titles coming out at this critical time. While many in the masses might be easily fooled into admiring those that primp and preen and bluster like Mussolini once did, or attack a designated “other” group like Hitler (the Jews) and Trump (Mexican immigrants and other asylum seekers as well as the imaginary threat of ‘antifa’) anyone who has studied history, and in particular these books, will know that the path to freedom, justice and real democracy lies and the exact opposite direction. Always.
The Origins of Totalitarianism begins with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe in the 1800s and continues with an examination of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of World War I.
Arendt explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our time–Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia–which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left.
From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination. Click here to see “Origins of Totalitarianism” and help independent bookstores. Also available on Amazon.
Click here to see “Rigged” and help independent bookstores. Also available on Amazon.
Russia’s interference in 2016 marked only the latest chapter of a hidden and revelatory history. In Rigged, David Shimer tells the sweeping story of covert electoral interference past and present. He exposes decades of secret operations–by the KGB, the CIA, and Vladimir Putin’s Russia–to shape electoral outcomes, melding deep historical research with groundbreaking interviews with more than 130 key players, from leading officials in both the Trump and Obama administrations, to CIA and NSA directors, to a former KGB general.
What Americans should make of Russia’s attack in 2016 is still hotly debated, even after the Mueller report and years of media coverage. Shimer shows that Putin’s operation was, in fact, a continuation of an ongoing struggle, using familiar weapons radically enhanced by new technology. Throughout history and in 2016, both Russian and American operations achieved their greatest success by influencing the way voters think, rather than tampering with actual vote tallies. Click here to see “Rigged” and help independent bookstores. Also available on Amazon.
With the end of the Cold War, the victory of liberal democracy seemed final. Observers declared the end of history, confident in a peaceful, globalized future. This faith was misplaced. Authoritarianism returned to Russia, as Putin found fascist ideas that could be used to justify rule by the wealthy. In the 2010s, it has spread from east to west, aided by Russian warfare in Ukraine and cyberwar in Europe and the United States.
Russia found allies among nationalists, oligarchs, and radicals everywhere, and its drive to dissolve Western institutions, states, and values found resonance within the West itself. The rise of populism, the British vote against the EU, and the election of Donald Trump were all Russian goals, but their achievement reveals the vulnerability of Western societies. Click here to see “The Road to Unfreedom” and help independent bookstores. Also available on Amazon.
Click here to see “Fascism” and help independent bookstores. Also available on Amazon.
A Fascist, observes Madeleine Albright, “is someone who claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is utterly unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use violence and whatever other means are necessary to achieve the goals he or she might have.”
The twentieth century was defined by the clash between democracy and Fascism, a struggle that created uncertainty about the survival of human freedom and left millions dead. Given the horrors of that experience, one might expect the world to reject the spiritual successors to Hitler and Mussolini should they arise in our era. In Fascism: A Warning, Madeleine Albright draws on her experiences as a child in war-torn Europe and her distinguished career as a diplomat to question that assumption. Click here to see “Fascism” and help independent bookstores. Also available on Amazon.
An explosive exposé of the right’s relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, stop action on climate change, and alter the Constitution.
Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance.
But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect–the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan–and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority. Click here to see “Democracy in Chains” and help independent bookstores. Also available on Amazon.
Donald Trump’s presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we’d be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang–in a revolution or military coup–but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms. The good news is that there are several exit ramps on the road to authoritarianism. The bad news is that, by electing Trump, we have already passed the first one.
Drawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how democracies die–and how ours can be saved. Click here to see “How Democracies Die” and help independent bookstores. Also available on Amazon.
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Mr. Trump, you can cry and whine all you want. You can refuse to “accept” that the ballots, once counted, hand you defeat. But your refusal will fall on deaf ears. And the “Proud Boys” can’t save you. And you know it.
At the first (and possibly last) presidential debate 2020 Trump scowled, ranted and raved about various untruths he felt were “unfair” to him (surprise). And at the end of the debate was asked if he would accept the certified election results, once all the votes are counted. He refused to do so. He went on a nonsensical tirade (his umpteenth of the night) about “ballots in creeks” and “unsolicited” ballots, mentioned the words “rigged” and “fraud” and fraudulent ( no, not in connection with his tax returns, that would be honesty).
Does it even need to be said that all the huffing and puffing about ballots and fraud was itself a fraud?
Isn’t it obvious that when a constant liar repeats the same nonsense figures and examples over and over that it’s just another gambit? The river where all the ballots were supposedly tossed?
There is no river and no ballots that “just happened to be marked Trump” were ever thrown into one. There are trash cans in the world, but no one has been able to corroborate any specific trash can with any Trump ballots ( or Biden ballots either).
It was embarrassing enough when the president’s chief spokesperson effectively and grudgingly conceded that Trump’s “river” references weren’t accurate. It’s quite a bit worse now that the underlying claim about ballots appears to be wrong, too. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported late yesterday:
No Wisconsin absentee ballots were found in mail discovered in a ditch in the Fox Valley last week, the state’s top election official said Thursday.
“There was mail found outside of Appleton and that mail did not include any Wisconsin ballots.”
-Meagan Wolfe, director of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, during a virtual news conference
The truth in all of this and the “message” is that Trump has already conceded the election and is proceeding with the plan of contesting the outcome. 32 days before election day.
In the end all his bloviation amounts to less than the stale windbag-fumes that will leak from the fat-baby-trump blimps that are going to be retired in a few months. And the “Proud Boys”? They’ll all be in jail if they so much as lift a weak imbecilic hand in his defense. What do you think?
Only an illiterate thug with no concept of history would talk about people who are against Fascism in America as “terrorists”. Unfortunately, the media has joined in the hate parade and keeps stating the “fact” that “antifa” is a “far-far left” radical violent organization, and then mentioning various caveats to show they are not agreeing with the wannabe Fascist in the White House.
Many large news outlets have tried to give a “definitive” overview of the real situation regarding the violent elements of the recent unrest vs. the perception that is being pushed by the current administration. The picture news media paints is almost as warped as the government version.
Poster Art by Paramount Pictures
“Antifa” is short for anti-fascist” and, yes, there is a european history behind the resistance to the rise of fascist regimes leading up to World War II. Bizarrely, no mention is made in these “definitive” accounts of the fact that the Axis powers in Europe, Germany and Italy were in control of fascist dictators and that we, the Alliance, were the enemy of fascism and the heroic liberators of the people enslaved and killed by these dictators.
Although many have indirectly pointed to the similarities between the rise of Trump, or at least his attempted power grabs, and the early period of European history when both Hitler and Mussolini were on the rise.
They too outlawed “terrorists”, which was anyone who they believed were against them. They each had bands of thugs who were used to intimidate with illegal violence anyone that they perceived as a threat. Now we have a “private army” amassed by Bill Barr and an armed “militia” being egged on to use automatic rifles to intimidate elected officials in the Michigan state capitol and in other places.
And “antifa” are dangerous terrorists? Is that some kind of a joke?
High profile american patriots have an obligation to speak out – now
Not long ago Rachel Maddow made a speech on her show saying “The dark days are not coming, the dark days are here”. That was over six months ago and, as everyone knows, much darker days have come since.
What are we waiting for? Where are the people who can see the most obvious facts in front of their faces and then decide to stand up and declare: I am an american patriot and therefore, as has been the case throughout our storied history I stand against Fascism in any form at any time, anywhere in the world, especially here in the USA!
Where are the people who see what is happening before our eyes, journalists, celebrities, powerful public figures and politicians who are ready to say: Stop fascism and the attempt to create a fascist dictatorship now!
Do we want to wait for the country to be under marshall law and then watch while concentration camps are built to hold anyone who dares to call themselves against fascism, and therefore against the wannabe fascist in the White House?
Based on viewing social media video evidence such as the one above, along with official assessments, the two largest contingents of looters and criminals during the recent unrest across America were right wing confederates of Trump trying to start a race war and professionals, sometimes driving up in Rolls Royces and brand new Mercedes sedans, who are clearly not anti-fascists (unless they are very rich ones).
That is a point that should not even need to be debated. The point that matters is that being against fascism is the most pro-american and mainstream heroic stance anyone, from any part of society, can take and has been throughout our history.
Nonsense and lies that are dignified with any kind of measured response, rather than outright rejection, encourages dangerous propaganda that we can not afford to repeat, even to denounce
Where are the “good” fascist dictators? Where is the society that was improved by a fascist power structure? What kind of senseless idiocy is it to debate with someone, someone that has obvious designs on becoming some kind of fantasy dictator who has fascist tendencies, as to who the “real terrorist” is?
Perhaps this common sense “clear as the nose on your face” approach will not be taken seriously by the large corporate media outlets. After all, there is a consensus that “antifa is bad, just not as bad as Trump says”: that is the subtext of many articles being written about the insane pronouncement that Trump has “designated” antifa as a terrorist group.
There is no “debate” required in this discussion. Fascists are the enemy of all Americans and therefore being against fascism is being “for” America and the way of Peace and Justice.
Being against people who are against fascism is to be “for” fascism. If you are a politician talking about “rigged” elections and trying almost daily to incite riots in order to escalate state sponsored violence against peaceful protesters, your opinion of who is, or isn’t, a terrorist has been disqualified. Oh, and if you say racists are “very fine people” then you are standing in solidarity with Racism.
It is for the rest of us to decide who the “good guys” are and to stand together as one with them. Speaking out clearly as being against fascism and the wannabe fascist in our midst is the minimum requirement to patriotic citizenship in these chaotic and dangerous times.
