Republicans Are Learning To Enjoy The Taste Of Fascism

While the vandals holds the White House they also hold the Congress and the Judiciary as hostages. We can change the Congress. The courts are more permanent.

The New Yorker reports on Trump's plan to nail his regime into place via lifetime court appointments.

In Newsweek, Robert Reich describes how Trump's regime is using strategies used against organized crime to shut down the free speech of his opponents.

In the Guardian we learn that Session's DOJ is using video produced by the bogus propaganda outfit Project Veritas as evidence against people who protested at Trump's inauguration.

Recognizing the ironies won't save us. Irony is passive. We need outrage.

Think Trump is too outrageous for most people’s taste? He may win out by becoming ever more outrageous, the way Roy Moore has done, the way many outrageous autocrats have done down through history, by outrunning norms, by harnessing the anger of a minority to cow everybody else. By turning “He won’t do that” into “He did that."

At this point the Republicans in Congress seem uncomfortable with him but they are enabling him. A year ago when he boasted about sexual assault they abandoned him then quickly crawled back to him, a process they have repeated several times since as he has said and done increasingly outrageous, hateful, and insane things.

The Republicans are creeping toward fascism. They are saying they dislike it but are obviously trying very hard to get used to the taste. Soon they will ask for seconds. Then they will put it on the menu. Then it will be the only menu item. Then the menu will be made compulsory.

By refusing to seat judges appointed by an elected president for two years they violated norms. By seating and supporting this president (who the evidence increasingly indicates gained office with the help of a foreign enemy, who boasts about sexual assault, who lies daily, who hurls insults at our foreign allies and flatters foreign enemies, whose businesses have apparently engaged in massive money laundering for decades, who obsesses over conspiracy theories any ten year-old would know are bogus, who is loudly racist, who admires Nazis and Klansmen and foreign dictators, who appears to be losing his mind) the Republican Party is engaged in a bizarre ritual. They say they abhor the behaviors of this president then they solidly support and defend him.

As if they have discovered a gang rape in progress––for the past year they have said they are not in favor of what is going on and plan to halt it… just as soon as they have had their turn…

Fascists And Republicans Have Colluded Before––Are They The Same?

I keep asking: when are the stories about the Russian attack on our election and infiltration of our politics going to make the necessary comparison with the German American Bund, a fascist infiltration run by and from a foreign enemy, designed to turn America into a lesser power unlikely to challenge the Nazis' global ambitions?

The Nazis organized the Bund to neutralize America’s traditional friendship with Britain and other European democracies, to make America neutral and isolationist. Russia used Trump to neutralize and isolate American power in the world, to split up the western alliance, NATO, and similar alliances we had around the world, to bust up trade agreements, to sow discord within the United States itself. They achieved this goal far beyond any rational expectation. Trump, by his appointments to key posts and non-appointments, has also achieved a overall degradation of our democratic institutions and systems of government: the State Department, the EPA, the FCC (the agency that is supposed to keep foreign bots and trolls from dominating our public communications), the various bureaus and departments tasked with making our systems function properly and fairly. The Trump/Putin win in this election has also turned the Department of Justice from a department focused on protecting Americans’ rights into a tool for white supremacy and white minority rule, a deportation machine, a device for making America less attractive and less admired in the world.

The German goals with the Bund dovetailed neatly with Republican goals in the 1930s, so there were two machines working to derail FDR’s New Deal and America’s alliance with Europe’s democracies. As this short BBC documentary describes, in 1933 and 34, just after FDR began his first term, groups funded by Wall Street began organizing a coup. The coup failed, but the movement continued, calling itself The Liberty League, championing corporate power and opposing workers’ rights and efforts to rebuild our infrastructure by putting Americans back to work with government spending. So this neat alliance between foreign fascists and American Republicans is not new.

The new Russian strategy sold via bots and trolls and agent provocateurs fits neatly with decades-old Republican strategies of divide and rule. Divide white workers from black and Latino workers. Divide men from women. Divide by religious belief. Divide the religious from the non-religious. Divide regions against each other (note how Republicans opposed relief after Hurricane Sandy…of course they now demand relief for their own disasters.) The motives and sentiments expressed by the Russians in their global mischief probably appeared very familiar to Republicans who were targeted. So familiar it didn’t seem foreign or wrong. It fit previous Republican instructions. Ingredients in the Russian playbook include race resentment, global grievances and feelings of unjust decline in status, hatred of more successful and prosperous countries and groups, fierce religious prejudices, and overall an almost medieval tribalism. So it may be hard to sort the con game from a free choice made by Republicans and independents susceptible to the Russian/Republican pitches.

Bill Moyers has this helpful, factual, timeline of the Trump/Putin relationship and how the Republicans were cool with it.

This reporting from McClatchy and the New York Times explores how the Russians did it and might help explain why Republicans were so comfortable going along with it.

The Steele Dossier, which is being proven out in many of its concerns and suspicions, reminds us of how the Russians also used political blackmail to enforce Trump's compliance with their plan.

If a majority chooses fascism in an election is it still democracy? Remember: Hitler was elected in a democracy, which enabled him to close it down and install a fascist autocracy.

Were Republicans duped or were they willing collaborators? You might point out that the Russians were spreading lies and fake news. It was a trick. The Trump answer to that is to say the news networks were fake news too. When it’s all lies the public tends to choose sides, revert to tribal loyalties.

There has been another Republican defense that says “All politicians lie.” This is a vast expansion of the fact that no politician is ever able to fulfill all of his or her promises. And political oppositions force compromises to achieve anything. Are compromises a lie? This is another familiar totalitarian smear against democracies, but Republicans have run on it for decades. The goal among antidemocratic politicians has been to degrade confidence in our system and our democratic norms, to degrade our institutions to make Americans frustrated and distrustful of them, to make Americans long for a strong man, a dictator. Dictators are so much more efficient because they order something and it gets done. The problem is totalitarians make decisions that benefit themselves, letting lesser benefits trickle down… and that pathetic promise is also familiar. It counts on Americans being so busy fighting amongst themselves for the diminished benefits that they don’t organize against the power that has diminished, actually stolen, those benefits.

In our recent fight over “entitlements” and prosperity the Republican strategy has been to say “some other group” has stolen your prosperity or feels falsely entitled to what you are legitimately entitled to, while the Republican machinery has actually been taking that prosperity and redistributing it upward. They’ve also distributed the tax burden downward, off of the wealthy classes and onto the working class. The enemy isn’t taxes, which pay for roads and schools and hospitals, it’s their redistribution. The dysfunction this unfair redistribution has caused has dried up the revenue that keeps our infrastructure functioning. There is another similarity here between Russia (a kleptocracy) and the Republican juggernaut. In Russia wealthy tax evaders have been laundering their stolen wealth abroad, apparently through people like Donald Trump and Paul Manafort and others, impoverishing their country, hollowing it out, lowering its GDP disastrously and lowering life expectancy dramatically. Will similar kleptocratic behaviors by the Republicans and their clients do the same here?

When the news becomes bad nobody wants to believe it. People tend to blame it on others. When systems fail we blame the people who have tried to keep those systems working, we don’t tend to blame the political party that degraded the tax revenue that kept the systems operative, that updated safeguards and installed backups. For three decades, if you listen to the Republican rhetoric, you can see how much they agree with the Russians: they want to hollow out America the same way Russia’s leadership and oligarchy has hollowed out Russia. The Republicans want a lower paid, obedient, servile working class, which is a basic fascist goal. They know this is unattractive, but they know that when things stop functioning that Americans will long for a strongman to make it run again, doing so by good old corporate dictatorial powers.

Strong men get into power by promising what they have no intention of delivering. Democrats, both small-d and capital-D, actually mean to deliver on their promises, sometimes they fail or succeed only partially. An unfulfilled promise is not a lie when the politician persists in trying to achieve what he or she promised. In a democracy, compromises are not lies, they are how democracy works. I suppose you could also say Trump was telling the truth when he promised to do harm to millions of Americans; he meant to do these things and will still try to do them if he can. He promised to shut down whole departments of government. Not a lie: he has installed department heads dedicated to making poisons flow into our water and air again, to re-accelerate climate change, to put the internet firmly into the hands of corporations and restrict its use by the rest of us, to keep poverty wages below the poverty line, to re-accelerate health insurance rate hikes and make it harder for sick people to get care. He’s honest about the things he plans to do, but he lies about how those things will affect us. He promises we will get tired of winning when he intends to restrict the winning to himself and his class of rich people, powerful people, the kinds of people his prosperity gospel preachers say are blessed by God because they are rich. Is that a lie? Most con games are lies sold with partial truths. The way the Nazis “persuaded" the German people. The way Putin manipulated his way into dictatorship. It’s a con game and one political party in America seems very adept at it and very comfortable with it. It’s exactly what the Republicans want. It's a con game. This is why they nominated a con man to run it for them.

No political party or movement or figure has lied so massively and so constantly as this Republican president and this Republican Party. It’s as if the Russians had grafted their fascist DNA onto the Republican Party, along with their aggressive use of lies and wholehearted willingness to believe lies and rationalize them. As Republican Duncan Hunter said about Trump: “He’s an asshole but he’s our asshole.” This is tribalism. This is an absence of values. This is what Orwell wrote about in 1984, a system turned upside down and inside out. This is what Sinclair Lewis wrote about in It Can’t Happen Here. It didn’t happen in the 1930s, but it appears to have succeeded in this decade.

NeoReaction = NRx–––The New Disguise For American Fascism

The new philosophy shaping White House policy is called neo-reaction. (You can make that an ISM if you like.

Or just call it NRx. (Which makes it sound like a skin treatment. Maybe it is.)

NRx is another way of saying Alt Right. Which means White Supremacy. Which is a pure white All-American variation on German fascism.

All of them are disguises for the old idea that the best government is tyranny by rich white males over the diverse crowd of people who do the work.

The Atlantic reports how Trump's main handler and advisor is deeply invested in NRx.

“White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has been in contact via intermediaries with Curtis Yarvin, Politico reported this week. Yarvin, a software engineer and blogger, writes under the name Mencius Moldbug. His anti-egalitarian arguments have formed the basis for a movement called “neoreaction.”
"The main thrust of Yarvin’s thinking is that democracy is a bust; rule by the people doesn’t work, and doesn’t lead to good governance. He has described it as an “ineffective and destructive” form of government, which he associates with “war, tyranny, destruction and poverty.” Yarvin’s ideas, along with those of the English philosopher Nick Land, have provided a structure of political theory for parts of the white-nationalist movement calling itself the alt-right. The alt-right can be seen as a political movement; neoreaction, which adherents refer to as NRx, is a philosophy. At the core of that philosophy is a rejection of democracy and an embrace of autocratic rule."

Steve Bannon is the murderer planning to kill American democracy. Trump is the weapon he’s using to kill it.

Here's another take on the hard right turn, from The New Republic.

White nationalist groups are showing faster growth than ISIS. Says The Independent.

“Donald Trump is a prominent subject among white nationalists on Twitter. According to the study, white nationalist users are “heavily invested” in the Republican’s candidacy. Tweets mentioned Mr Trump more than other popular topics among the groups.”

New white power groups and groups are forming. Some call for the U.S. to reshape itself more like the old Confederacy.

The Southern Poverty Law Center reports on the bullish prospects for an armed white interstate defense force across the South. Somebody play Dixie.

"[T]he League of the South is calling for all able-bodied, traditionalist Southern men to join our organization’s Southern Defense Force for the purpose of helping our State and local magistrates across Dixie combat this growing leftist menace to our historic Christian civilization. As private citizens in a private organization, we will stand ready to protect our own families and friends, our property, and our liberty from leftist chaos. Moreover, we will be ready to assist our local and State authorities in keeping the peace should they find it necessary to “deputize” private citizens for that purpose”

They believe suppression of and violence towards liberals and persons of other races and religions is the central purpose of our government.

There is also a growing atmosphere of intimidation and aggression toward people who disagree with the ascendant right-wing/fascist white people who hold power.

If you say or write anything opposed to their viewpoint expect to receive threats. Here's one writer's story, posted by Bill Moyers.

"By mid-afternoon, I was getting death threats. “I AM GOING TO CUT YOUR HEAD OFF………BITCH!” screamed one email. Other correspondents threatened to hang me, shoot me, deport me, imprison me and/or get me fired (this last one seemed a bit anti-climactic). The dean of Georgetown Law, where I teach, got nasty emails about me. The Georgetown University president’s office received a voicemail from someone threatening to shoot me.”

Then, sometimes, the behavior trends towards simple insult and abuse, as in this case (reported by RawStory) where a student at an elite university taunted a homeless man asking for money by lighting money on fire in front of his face. This happened in the UK, where things have taken a similar Trumpian turn.

How the GOP is Taking Away Our Right to Vote

During Reagan's rise to power Paul Weyrich made a speech disparaging good government and urging Republicans to make it harder for Americans to vote because the fewer the voters the more Republicans get elected. Paul Weyrich shaped the modern Republican Party around this subversive idea, wrapped it in the flag and went on to found the Heritage Foundation and other antidemocratic groups.

It's still happening. Republicans are attacking voting rights with all the billions of their monied allies. The goal is to reduce our democracy to a plutocracy, in which only the rich can decide policy, in which the rich evade taxes and enact laws to take rights away from workers, suppressing wages as well as voting rights. Imagine a world before Theodore Roosevelt. The bookends of this Republican coup d'etat are voter suppression and billionaires dominating politics via the recent Citizens United decision of the Republican flank of the Supreme Court. Pure politics.

This short video tells the story of an elderly woman's long hard effort to get the GOP-mandated voter ID.

This well-known Tennessee Democrat who left office in 2011 was deleted from the voting rolls in the district he represented for years. If it can happen to him it can happen to anyone.

An 86 year-old veteran found himself barred from voting on Super Tuesday. One of the groups most targeted by Republican voter purges are the elderly.

Who's doing this and how is it being done? It's being done deliberately and concertedly nationwide. The GOP and its corporate allies, notably the multibillionaire Koch brothers and their organization ALEC, which writes voter suppression laws, invites state legislators on junkets to sunny resorts and instructs them how to get their laws enacted. Legislation by remote control.

The actual plan by ALEC to suppress voting state by state, as written by the Koch brothers and their corporate cronies.

A report from Mother Jones magazine

Voter suppression is being prosecuted in a few places, but the effort to hunt down nonexistent "fraudulent voters" is far more aggressive and widespread and it's been legislated and funded by Republicans. But voter fraud is a phony issue, a pretext.

This article is from Washington Monthly.

This is from American Prospect.

How big is this voter fraud boogeyman the Republicans are scaring everybody about? After an expensive investigation in Ohio, it turned out to have happened in fewer than one MILLIONTH of ONE PERCENT of all votes cast. and this is what the Republican Party and ALEC are using to disenfranchise millions of voters. Phantom crimes are useful to right wing politicians. imagined crime frightens people into giving away their rights. And again, there are billions of corporate dollars behind this.

This report from the Brennan Center lays out the pathetic and transparent cynicism behind the GOP's voter purges and voter suppression campaign nationwide. They want power back and don't care whose rights they trample to get there.