The (further) Nazification of America, 2

Your daily reminder Republicans are festering piles of shit.

Poll: More than half of Republicans would support postponing 2020 election

...Our survey is only measuring reactions to a hypothetical situation. (...) However, the results shouldn't be simply dismissed, the academics said, because they indicated that there was a high number of Republicans who were willing to buck democratic norms. (...) The poll also found that 56% said they would support such action — which would be taken to stop alleged voter fraud — if it was supported by both Trump and Republican members of Congress.

That's the scariest item yet (except for the saber rattling.) Why did someone suggest it?

I'm over my WashPost quota for the month. What was the exact wording?

>3 timspalding:

1. If Donald Trump were to say that the 2020 presidential election should be postponed until the country can make sure that only eligible American citizens can vote, would you support or oppose postponing the election?
2. What if both Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress were to say that the 2020 presidential election should be postponed until the country can make sure that only eligible American citizens can vote? Would you support or oppose postponing the election?

Also:

Roughly half of Republicans believe Trump won the popular vote — and would support postponing the 2020 election.

Nearly half of Republicans (47 percent) believe that Trump won the popular vote, which is similar to this finding. Larger fractions believe that millions of illegal immigrants voted (68 percent) and that voter fraud happens somewhat or very often (73 percent). Again, this is similar to previous polls.

Moreover, 52 percent said that they would support postponing the 2020 election, and 56 percent said they would do so if both Trump and Republicans in Congress proposed this.

>1 LolaWalser: US right-wingers have never been committed to democracy. Today, they share a visceral embrace of strongmen like Putin and strongman-wannabes like Trump.

>4 davidgn: Nearly half of Republicans (47 percent) believe that Trump won the popular vote, which is similar to this finding. Larger fractions believe that millions of illegal immigrants voted (68 percent) and that voter fraud happens somewhat or very often (73 percent)

How bizarre. I wonder how often a party that wins an election claims voter fraud is a widespread problem?

And the shit still does it:

Donald Trump retweets alt-right provocateur after condemning white supremacists

Fascist leader of fascists.

This UNBELIEVABLE shit:

Trump Defends Initial Remarks on Charlottesville; Again Blames ‘Both Sides’

Former KKK leader David Duke thanks Trump for 'condemning leftist terrorists'

This is it, people. This is the line, this is the crossing of the line. Get rid of him now or it won't happen without more carnage.

And as for you, you Killarian fucks, Putin apologists, conspiracy theorists, go jump off a bridge. Go sit on a tiki torch. Fuck you from here to eternity.

Equivocators have set off on an eternal whatabout. But Ivanka will have to explain to her Jewish children why grandpa Donald embraces Neonazis.

I have no trouble condemning Nazis, nor condemning Trump. I'll even say that in most respects, "Killary" -- a term I'm pretty sure I've never used up until now, but I wouldn't want to disappoint -- would have been a vastly superior president to the present cretin-in-chief. I don't think I was ever unclear about that. But I'm not going to stop calling things as I see them just because you can't forgive anyone who voted third party.

And in the "let's double down on our hate for people against us" department, there's a reported effort underway to get people to protest/harass/whatever you care to call it at Heather Heyer's funeral.

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/08/daily-stormer-website-sending-nazis-to-harass-fu...

#29--it should be kept in mind that a lot of those protesting against Trump and all the fascists, nazis and klanners at Charlottesville did not vote for Hillary Clinton in the last election. You can start with just about everyone associated with antifa--who a lot more than less identify themselves as anarchist. Then you have those who identify as socialist.

>31 rastaphrog: I don't know how Heather Heyer voted (and even if I did it would be distasteful to bring it it up), but I do know she was with the DSA (which also seems to be becoming a popular affiliation among old acquaintances of mine). That organization is evolving quickly and growing by leaps and bounds under Trump. I may well wind up in that orbit myself.

>28 margd: Strong words from Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman to their fellow Jews, including Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump: https://medium.com/@vanzorn/to-our-fellow-jews-in-the-united-states-in-israel-an...

The time for mealy-mouthed pussyfooting around is over. Anyone still defending Trump at this point is showing the true nature of their character.

In the NYT Opinion: "I voted for Trump, and I sorely regret it" -- https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/opinion/sunday/i-voted-for-trump-and-i-sorely...

Anyone who was actually so self-deluded as to have not recognized Trump's racism during the election or while he was appointing white supremacists as his closest advisors has nowhere left to hide after this week.

>33 2wonderY: The Chabon Waldman plea is to the point.

#32--I've been thinking about that too.

Not to be forgotten:
https://twitter.com/ModerateRadio/status/899060439904124928

>25 RickHarsch: was very timely (at the time) and is not to be missed.
Much as I dislike VICE, they do great reporting and documentaries on occasion.

Meanwhile, from Paul R. Pillar:
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu continues to call the tune for U.S. policy in the Middle East, going so far as to avoid criticizing U.S. neo-Nazis to not offend President Trump, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar describes.
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/08/20/israels-quiet-reaction-to-us-neo-nazis/

>37 LolaWalser: You thought Pillar was kidding?

https://twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/899302802924687360
https://twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/899418909492879360

https://www.cnet.com/news/neo-nazi-sympathizers-crowdfunding/
This caught my eye. Talk about start-ups from hell!

Boxed out of mainstream crowdfunding sites, hate groups have taken a new tack: They're building their own financing platforms.

Big-name internet companies moved quickly to boot neo-Nazis after violent clashes between white nationalists and protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia left three dead in August. Crowdfunding platforms, like Patreon and GoFundMe, shuttered fundraisers for far-right causes, while Apple Pay and PayPal cut off services to white nationalists and merchants selling items that promote racism, like clothes bearing Nazi symbols.

To fill the void, neo-Nazi entrepreneurs are building crowdfunding sites of their own. The websites list free speech and fighting censorship as motivation. But critics say their names -- Counter.Fund, Goyfundme and Hatreon -- underscore a darker purpose: financing hate speech.

Bold text is mine, because... wow, seriously?

by Jonah Goldberg

One of my longstanding gripes is how when conservatives do something bad, it’s proof of the inherent badness of conservatives and conservatism. But when liberals do something bad, it is immediately turned into an indictment of America itself. Joe McCarthy’s excesses were a window into the nature of conservatism, according to historians, intellectuals, and journalists. But when liberals — Attorney General Palmer, Woodrow Wilson, et al. — did far worse, the villain was America itself. When conservatives are racist, it is because they are conservatives. When liberals are racist it is because racism is an “American sin.” In other words, liberalism is never wrong.

Wow - as a Conservative I thought I would skim by and see what was going on here.
Pretty surprised - in fact shocked at the vitriol.
I am Canadian but would be happy to vote for Trump.
And yes I am a White Male.

According to comments above - that makes me collectively guilty of the worst crimes of all men.
You don't even know us and yet it is not possible to have a discussion/disagreement.

Pretty sad.

>40 Molly3028:

Barney

plenty --plenty!-- of "liberals" are unable and unwilling to recognize just how much they, as individuals, can exhibit the same ugly faults which they deplore in those they identify as the source of our social ills: those of sexism (I'm talkin' to _you_, sexist liberal feminists), racism (I'm talkin' to _you_ "White-men-are-a-plague-upon-humanity"-style 'racist' "liberals") and other assorted bigotries.

From this, the fact that there are some really, really, blind, foolish and morally-ugly people who collect and act under the banner of "liberals" to this, that, "In other words, liberalism is (never) (also) (usually) (always) ---choose your favorite to fill in the blank before--- "' wrong'," is just not a feasible or justified step.

>41 JGL53: You're hilarious, why not drop in more often?

Acting ICE director wants politicians in sanctuary cities charged with crimes

Further, he vowed, "I'm going to significantly increase our enforcement presence in California -- we're already doing it."

California had "better hold on tight," Homan said. "They're about to see a lot more special agents, a lot more deportation hours in the state of California."

Last week, GOP Congressman says it's time to 'purge' FBI of anti-Trump elements.

A term more commonly associated with authoritarian dictators than democratic societies.

Echoes of this from a year ago:

Newt Gingrich wants to fire federal employees who voted for Clinton

Our tax dollars at work...Sickening video posted by WaPo (below) and also Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-border-patrol-mexico-water-bottles-video-migrants-kick-over-video-illegals-mexicans-hispanics-a8165591.html)

Border Patrol accused of targeting aid group that filmed agents dumping water left for migrants
Amy B Wang | January 23, 2018

Last Wednesday, a nonprofit group that provides humanitarian aid to migrants in the Arizona desert released a lengthy report alleging Border Patrol agents were intentionally destroying supplies left for migrants in the desert, the group said, to “condemn border crossers to suffering, death and disappearance.”

What received wider attention, however, was a video that the Tucson-based aid group, No More Deaths, also distributed with its report. The footage, taken between 2010 and 2017, showed Border Patrol agents kicking over water jugs that had been left in the desert. In one clip, a male agent sneers at the person filming him, demanding to know whom the water is for, as he empties a gallon bottle of water onto the ground.

Now the aid group is calling the arrest of one its volunteers suspicious. On Wednesday, Border Patrol agents arrested Scott Warren, 35, in the desert near Ajo, Ariz., about eight hours after the No More Deaths report and video were released...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/01/23/border-patrol-accu...
_________________________________________________________________________

Another video of our tax dollars at work... This is same kind of search that stopped teenager in an ambulance in TX. Never mind 4th amendment, my understanding is that American citizens are not required to carry/produce citizenship papers inside the country. If a train or bus or hwy is routinely inspected, American citizens who rightfully refuse to produce papers could really gum things up.

Border Patrol agents boarded a bus and asked for citizenship papers. Is that legal?
David J. Neal | January 22, 2018 Updated January 23, 2018 04:45 PM

U.S. Border Patrol agents took someone (a Jamaican grandma who had overstayed tourist visa visiting her grand daughter for the first time) off a Greyhound bus (Orlando to Miami) outside the Fort Lauderdale station after allegedly asking everyone on board for proof of citizenship, according to witness video and immigration advocates.

...The Border Patrol’s Miami section confirmed Monday: Yes, that’s us, and we can do that.

...what might appear to be a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, has been common practice for years...

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article196016724.html

>46 dypaloh: I watched a John Oliver segment on the BP, and from the way he explained it, BP has legal authority to ask for your identification. I forget the argument, now, but basically a border entry point can be located inland of the border.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnW5EjwtE2U

This bothers the libertarian in me because it's an invasion of my rights as a U.S. Citizen. There are checkpoints in Arizona everyone has to go through, and I suppose the agents could ask for ID if they felt justified. I've gone through these checkpoints and I've never been asked for ID but I think that's because I'm white.

I hate sobriety checkpoints for the same reason. Why should I be impeded on my way on a public road by the police for a field sobriety checkpoint? It's an abridgment of my civil liberties. I comply, but it irks me.

Same goes for the police who may stop you in a public place and ask for your ID. Unless you have probable cause, leave me the hell alone. I'm unaware of any law stating I must carry identity on a daily basis except when driving, or traveling by air.

>48 LolaWalser: A BP checkpoint can be up to 100 miles from the border, which means the entirety of some states and a number of major metropolitan areas fall within the BPs "jurisdiction".

https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone

Basic info on checkpoints

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol_interior_checkpoints

>49 proximity1: Thanks. I thought it was something like that. Though I CAN live with it, I hate it as I see governments doing this as an affront to civil liberties.

On the anniversary of Charlottesville, Unite the Right planned a rally in Washington DC. Their small numbers (several dozen) and thousands of counter-protesters, caused them to speed their rally, finishing and dispersing before even the official starting time.

This left poor Dan on his only lonely way to the meet-up. Sunday was Dan's 19th birthday and he treated himself to a trip from Long Island to meet with his soul bros. Dan believes in “peaceful cleansing” of Latinos and blacks from the United States.

I wonder what he means by that.

https://www.vox.com/identities/2018/8/12/17681444/unite-the-right-rally-dc-charl...

>33 2wonderY: best guess - shoot people with a silenced pistol in the middle of the night and quietly remove the bodies so as to not inconvenience passerby in the morning.

Not that anyone's surprised...

The White House won’t join a global pledge to combat online extremism

POTUS opening the hunting season on elected women of colour.

In hoc signo vincet.

The Trump-Jugend has arrived.

Trump attacks ‘Squad,’ Mueller, fires up young conservatives in speech

This young dickhead shit (yes, pretty much all male) cheered on Trump's olden golden hits.

Why we should cull men, example #409776.

Fate appears to cutting down the American Century to about an 80-year span ~ WWII to the present.

>37 LolaWalser:

A trademark his empire can be proud of!

No doubt the political ploy is to put as many women supporters as possible behind trump and the cameras at his rallies, plus what few black people there are in the building, but one can quite easily see that far from all of trump's most enthusiastic supporters are men - there are plenty of women.

trump would not have been elected in the first place without a very large plurality of women voting for him. What, these women were not aware what scum trump truly was/is? No, they support him because they are scum also. Ignorant red neck racist scum.

The "conspiracy of men theory" is fucked up shit.

Case god damn closed.

In the name of the Goddess can we all move the fuck on now and rejoin reality in progress?

>41 JGL53:

"There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture" ...

>40 Molly3028:

This one's no less à propos...! lololololololllll... one couldn't invent this shit...

Creator of fake presidential seal hails 'absolute hero' who pulled off Trump stunt

I'm not at all sure any "heroism" was involved. If Trump's audience of "bright young things" saw nothing wrong staring them in the face all that time, nor wondered why the polycephalic eagle was clutching a bag of golf sticks, why should his staffers be assumed to be any smarter?

Trumpista SS stands for Stupid Scum.

Peak cretin.

#44--FWIW most people in the military especially those who have been in combat are very attenuated to the symbols of military and of state so this doctored seal of the presidency would not slip by. They don't brag to make themselves bigger and they hate those who do. A lazy or a slow mind would not get the problem with this--they would.

>45 lriley: Did you mean “attuned” rather than “attenuated”? The latter word seems to undermine what you meant to say.

I strongly dislike the guy Trump is and don’t care for much of his politics. Even so, if I were a President and had seen the seal on several hundred occasions over the past 2½ years, I’d not be surprised if I failed to notice the one time it was cleverly changed, especially if preoccupied with a speech to be delivered momentarily. That could just mean I’m a “peak cretin” (a characterization that makes me smile) but it’s not like we have a lot of data points to see how other Presidents would have fared if placed in this situation.

#46--yes--a brain fart on my part.

>46 dypaloh:

Whatever--he's an idiot through and through. But at least he could claim to have had his butt turned on it most of the time. BUT THE BLOODY AUDIENCE...!!

>46 dypaloh:

For Trump agonistes you ought to have ended your comment with its first sentence. For others, myself included, your comment has a good example of the kind of good-sense and fair-minded perspective which so many of Trump's critics need but can't afford. You miss their point: "dis" (-credit, -resepct, -dain, etc.) Trump and all who don't despise everything about him sufficiently and openly, first, last and always. No "ifs", "&s" or "buts".

trump is a walking/talking bundle of disrespect, for anything and everyone who is not himself - he only has a high regard for one thing: himself.

I do not owe ANY respect for an out-of-control narcissist, no matter what his capacity or title in life may or may not be.

The word or label "trump" has now become a synonym for all that is embarrassing and just plain silly regarding human existence as an on-going project. Full stop.

>50 JGL53: The word or label "trump" has now become a synonym for . . .

You might like the word “trumpery.”

Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th edition, ©2008):
trumpery . . . n [ME (Sc) trompery deceit, fr. MF, fr. tromper to deceive]
1 a: worthless nonsense;
1 b: trivial or useless articles.

I’ve been trying to spread it around so that it will become part of the common vocabulary of our times. So far no luck. Maybe baseball caps labeled RAFT (“Rescue America from Trumpery”) would help.

^ Another case of great minds think alike, lol. I.e., a few months ago I also posted this dictionary definition of trumpery.

The Third Reich meets the Three Stooges...

Further weaponization of racism:

Baltimore Residents: Trump’s Attacks on the City Are Rooted in “Racism and White Supremacy”

Twittler didn't mention his son-in-law is one of Maryland's slumlords... if a maggot meet a maggot mucking through the rye, need a maggot cry?

I don't even want to go to the shit that started around David Simon but that's just another example of how stupid and racist a lot of republicans are.

But anyway if the Donald thinks that Baltimore is such a dump why isn't he interested in doing anything at all to fix it? And the answer to that is because he's a racist asshole who hates black and brown people.

It's a battle cry, a dog whistle to every mangy cur in his base, an order and an invitation to violence. He'll get people killed yet before Nov 2020 rolls around.

Accelerating:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/baltimore-donald-trump-comments-al-sharpton-1.5229...

"Just a conman at work!" Trump wrote on Twitter.

>52 JGL53: I should have remembered that—I replied to your original post. I liked the word then and I’m sticking with it still.

>59 LolaWalser:

That's quite a find — that is if it's not photoshopped.

I suspect I grasp what's intended, but it's so ungrammatical and inarticulate that however I unpack it there's no clear meaning to be had.

The meaning is crystal clear. The intention is crystal clear. And it worked.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/controversial-gun-store-billboard-calling-four-cong...

On Tuesday, the owner of Cherokee Guns spoke to WTVC-TV. He said the billboard had only been up for a few days, but it had already brought him more business.

Walser, one of the few people sharp enough to warn at one and the same time about the dangers of the U.S. as a neo-Nazi nation and the dangers of the citizenry's widespread ownership of firearms.

Attenion!: Now hear this! The U.S. have become or are a potential Nazi nation and it's urgent that firearm ownership by ordinary citizens there be prohibited.

Got that, folks?

1. The U.S. is overrun these days with organized Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist groups who all dream of a chance to overthrow our government and make the Republic of Gilead a reality.

2. The only thing that stands between them and their dream is the U.S. government - i.e., the U.S. military.

3. So, as usual, prox had got things bass ackwards.

Conclusion:

Same shit, different day.

Another Nazi move: in the wake of attacks on a group you victimise, use those attacks to deepen their persecution, threaten them even more. At least that's the rhetorical gambit (no less effective for that)--in practice, this is laying ground to sabotage gun crime prevention measures.

Trump suggests tying gun measures to immigration after shooting that targeted immigrants

>61 LolaWalser:

I did have a faint hope that it was an altered photo. It's horrible. And I would judge that this business is rather more than 1 mile on the right.

Ha, safe bet.

>63 JGL53: Proximity, of course, is a fervent supporter of Trump.

It keeps happening...

1. The Greenland circus. Imperialism goes with the US like pork with cabbage, but the style in which the tendency is expressed does make a difference. For the orange asshole and his minions, it might still be the 19th century, all other (smaller) countries the Congo, and he the King of the Belgians--and they have shown readiness to ACT on this premise.

2. The push to criminalize the "antifa", continuing previous attempts to criminalize protest. Since "antifa" is not an organisation but encompasses any and all antifascist (obvs. anti-Trumpist) protest, this is a general threat to everyone who is anti-Trump. Outlaw the opposition--a Nazi move.

3. Accusing Jews of "disloyalty". Specifically those voting for the Democrats--but it's not the sort of distinction that will hold for long in the Trumpist atmosphere. Or even registers with his base at all. "Jews will not replace us."

#68--Anti-fa has always been a very loose organization of people who come and go. They are called violent by people on the right because they're willing to physically push back against the most extreme right wing ideologues. I have no problem with that. The people of Anti-fa don't kill or permanently injure people either. They're not running around shooting up schools or malls or menacing unarmed and peaceful people with firearms or the threat thereof. The people they conflict with are people who wear white hoods or walk around with Nazi flags sieg heiling. Not everything is physical confrontation for them either--they will follow right wingers around doxing/exposing them to their communities, co-workers and bosses. Nothing wrong with that either. Anyone whose parents or grandparents fought against the likes of Hitler in WWII should be appalled that the right wing along with at least a good % of the republican party have embraced these white supremacist would be genocidists. Trump having no problem being endorsed by Nazi's though gives them a lot more cover and leeway. He is a shitbird.

In Trump's demented worldview any Jewish person who doesn't support the apartheid like polices of the Netanyahu led Israeli govt. is a bad Jew. It's funny how he walks this line between accommodating Nazi's in this country with support for a fascist right wing govt. in Israel. The Trumpian way to peace is through crushing poorer people wherever they happen to be. The thing to him is to have power for its own sake--not to use it well or wisely.

>69 lriley:

To my mind, the Mango Mussolini perfectly illustrates how an inherently and helplessly weak person compensates by finding and bullying those he deems to be weaker still.

And today we learn* that the Second Coming has happened right in front of us! Who knew that this time Jesus would be orange? No more improbable, I suppose, than the first appearance as a peasant in a colonized backwater.

* in The Guardian

>70 librorumamans:

Yeah. We coulda had Hillary instead. Now there's a well-adjusted person! LOL!

#70--If I had a takeaway from yesterday--he's insane. This Greenland thing--just the idea is beyond idiotic and then his reaction to the Danish head of state was beyond bizarre. Soaking up praise from some hapless sycophant proclaiming him the second coming. He can't remember that he was talking about tax cuts for the middle class the day before and yesterday it's like he never said it. I'm a layman but there seem to be some clear signs of mental and actually they've been there all along. OTOH it's not like he doesn't always understand what he's doing--his obsessions on immigration are clearly focused and clearly racist.

I don't understand how people can support him. They must see how clearly incompetent he is. That he never listens to advice or reads anything--doesn't understand how the other bodies of government work--he's unable to nuance anything--that he's swept up in his own grandiosity. How he's cynically manipulated by everyone from Netanyahu to Hitler lovers to the NRA and this horde of believers hanging on his every word like he is the second coming. He's not the only one who is insane.

Overt misogyny and racism was a staple of closed societies such as the college fraternity houses for decades; now there is an increase in incidents of white boys/teens/young men displaying Nazi salutes etc. in public, i.e. in front of larger groups that are not necessarily homogeneous, and/or regardless of the likelihood that the behaviour will be recorded and publicly disseminated.

School reopens inquiry into teens giving Nazi salute as new clips emerge, reports say

I saved this photo from a news item earlier this year but failed to associate the link, does anyone recall which institution this was? Presumably a graduation celebration:



ETA: found the photo, this was in Wisconsin: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a25017095/baraboo-wisconsin-nazi-salute-hi...

So, Republican Allegheny County (PA) councilman Sam DeMarco, who also chairs the county’s Republican Party, is calling boycotting businesses owned by Trump supporters a fascist tactic. I'm going to have to think about that take.

Local Effort To Boycott Businesses Owned By Trump Supporters Brings Strong Response From GOP

“If there is a specific ideology that you don’t support, you are well within your rights not to hand that money to someone who supports that ideology,” says (Brian) Broome. “Trump supporters have boycotted everything from Keurig to Nike, so I don’t know why, quote-unquote, the other side can’t decide not to give their money to businesses as well.”

The new website promises to include, “a database of Trump-supporter owned businesses in the Pittsburgh area, as well as tips for how to get those specific businesses closed down.”

“They want to cost people their livelihoods just because you don’t agree with them politically?” asks Allegheny County councilman Sam DeMarco, who also chairs the county’s Republican Party.

“It’s not just absurd, but I believe it’s dangerous.”
…
DeMarco calls the effort fascist.

“Look at what they’re trying to do. People who they just don’t agree with, they want to take and punish. I absolutely believe this is a fascist behavior, and I totally reject it,” says the GOP chairman.

DeMarco compares it to the Nazis drawing Stars of David on Jewish-owned businesses to urge Germans to boycott.

“I absolutely see a parallel. They’re trying to place a mark on a business to boycott it, to not frequent it, not to utilize it and try to make it unacceptable,” DeMarco says.

I don't follow the reasoning behind placing that item in this thread. Is it the "both sides do it" card? Like Trump and his supporters go "no, YOU are racist" to people of colour, and claim the antifascists are fascist? You want to entertain such claims seriously?

You may want to look up Nazi race laws and persecution of Jews before the start of WWII. It was not merely a question of calls to boycott nor did it end with marking Jewish businesses.

Equating Jewish victims of Nazism with Trump supporters is a swinishness of first order--but clearly par for the course for Republicans.

An example of what a consumer boycott can achieve:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delano_grape_strike

"The strike began on September 8, 1965, and lasted more than five years. Due largely to a consumer boycott of non-union grapes, the strike ended with a significant victory for the United Farm Workers as well as its first contract with the growers."

Were those fascists?

#74--same people who support bakers who refuse to bake wedding cakes for gay people?

Conservatives in this country are as ignorant as fuck. They can't get terminology right. The right has been calling people on the left commies for decades and decades--whether they were or whether they weren't. Unable to differentiate between the various social movements and ideologies--they would lump together everyone from the Suffrage movement to the Civil Rights movement to various political groupings of anarchists and socialists to Trade Unionists--pretty much anyone poor, marginalized, disenfranchised or disaffected and who didn't know their place as nothing but dirty red communists--vermin that needed to wipe out.

But these days the 'Fascist' label stings the most and Fascists have always come from right ideologies and particularly those with nationalistic and racist ideologies--and those who will make God's out of charlatans like Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Pinochet and Trump. I'm so fucking sorry if that's what floats your boat but that label is all for people like that. Own and wear your own political beliefs.

I don't think 2wonderY sides with Trump, but saying (unironically?) that a Republican's claim that boycotting is a "fascist tactic" is something to make one think, shows the reach of Trumpist bullshitting beyond his base.

The US is a right-wing country, never has been anything else, and that orientation is difficult to overcome.

By the way, in case my response yesterday wasn't clear enough: no, boycotting isn't a "fascist tactic". Boycotting is a political tactic without inherent ideological content. It's who uses it for what reason and goal that make a boycott right or left-wing, unjust or just.

If you boycott black-owned businesses because you want to run black people out of your environment, you're a racist.

If you boycott businesses owned by racists, you are fighting racism.

Same tactic, very different agendas.

>78 LolaWalser: Now, see, that's the kind of dialog I hope for here.

>79 2wonderY:

Um... okay. I didn't realise something that banal needed spelling out.

There are plenty of examples of famous boycotts from left to right, if you need more examples. The US boycotts Cuba (and does/did other Communist and socialist countries). The BDS movement is supported mostly by the left. Many governments boycotted South Africa because they didn't want to reward apartheid.

In short, whether you look at the practice or theory of boycotting, there's nothing that makes it specifically a "fascist tactic".

FWIW the word boycott comes from the last name of a British absentee landlord in the West of Ireland in the 19th century. He or maybe it was his land agents surname--had been abusing their peasant farmers for a long time and these tenant farmers got tired of this shit and they started a campaign of ostracism and undermining the economic well being of these assholes and it worked and was used again and again to good effect. In a way it's kind of reminiscent of the old Brehon laws that existed in Ireland before the English showed up. There's a play by Yeats titled The King's Threshold that kind of describes how even the lowliest peasant could hold the most powerful men to account. It's passive resistance and it can be quite effective. But the movements behind Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez were all about passive resistance too.

>78 LolaWalser:

If one despises women simply because they are women, one is sexist.

Similarly, if one despises men simply because they are men, one is sexist.

However, Walser wants to harp on the first of these as a feature and defect of men generally while she tries to practice the second with impunity--i.e. without, herself, being denounced as a sexist.

Remembering the Greensboro Massacre of 1979, When KKK & Nazis Killed 5 People in Broad Daylight

Hundreds gathered this weekend to mark the 40th anniversary of the Greensboro massacre, when 40 Ku Klux Klansmen and American Nazis opened fire on an anti-Klan demonstration in Greensboro, North Carolina, killing five anti-racist activists in a span of 88 seconds. Those killed were members of the Communist Workers’ Party. Ten other activists were injured. No one was convicted in the massacre, but a jury did find the Greensboro police liable for cooperating with the Ku Klux Klan in a wrongful death.

Gotta love Cornel West: "Brother Trump is a bona fide gangster"

Cornel West: There is 'a neo-fascist in the White House' | UpFront

(Al Jazeera video from November 29)

>84 LolaWalser:

One racist anti-intellectual buffoon interviews a racist pseudo-intellectual buffoon. Pathetic.

Nazis killing communists.

I have mixed feelings about that.

About the Greensboro Massacre.

I was almost there. I had planned to go. I was going to school in Charlotte, and had a class paper to give on Saturday morning. I weighed the options, and figured out I had to stay and give the paper. (It was on Dietrich Bonhoeffer.) The friend I was planning to attend with showed up to my door that afternoon in tears. Her mother, brother, and sister-in-law were there. (All members of Workers Viewpoint Organization, later the Communist Workers Party.

I got to know two of the widows fairly well. I was no longer in North Carolina for the trial, and was shocked at the verdict. When asked why five CWP members were killed, but no klansmen, Ray Caudle said, "Because we were better shots."

Hi, Arctic, how have you been?

When asked why five CWP members were killed, but no klansmen, Ray Caudle said, "Because we were better shots."

What a bizarre question to ask anyone let alone the killer. Perhaps some context is missing.

It was asked as a challenge to their claim that the CWP was shooting at them.

I been busy, but fine. I am now doing urban ministry in a city in Oregon, Medford. We run a food bank, bag lunch program, emergency shelter, and resource center for the unhoused in our area.

>89 Arctic-Stranger:

Ah, got it, thanks.

Homelessness is on the rise in all the neoliberal paradises. Dividends must be paid!

The commies brought clubs to a gun fight. That was their problem.

Army and navy academies investigate possible 'white power' hand signals

What about the police?

When a thread gets abandoned because of an excess of material.

Communism is not the recommended cure for nazism.

No one much cares for nazism, and no one much cares for communism.

That is why this thread has wrapped up.

Full stop.

Facebook takes down Trump ads featuring symbol used by Nazis to mark political prisoners

Masha Gessen: The Weaponization of National Belonging, from Nazi Germany to Trump

While Trump and the right wing exaggerate the Antifa threat:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/19/intel-report-warns-far-right-extremists...

US soldier accused of planning attack on own unit

Ethan Melzer, 22, stands accused of sending sensitive details about his unit to the Order of the Nine Angles.

The US Department of Justice calls it an "occult-based neo-Nazi and racially motivated violent extremist group".

He was allegedly planning for information to be passed to jihadists, who would then carry out an attack.

>100 LolaWalser: I'd love to hear what his unit members' reactions were to that revelation.

I'm wondering how many more like him there are. One might suppose hundreds at least.

Weaponising racism. Mobilising hate.

Opinion: The link between anti-Black racism and Trump’s ‘kung flu’ comment

Frank H. Wu, who was the first Asian American to serve as a faculty member of a historically Black law school (at Howard University), has thought deeply about the need for solidarity between Black Americans and Asian Americans, noting that both communities have suffered from violent attacks, housing segregation, and even lynchings, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chinese immigrants had to carry permits to prove they had entered the United States legally, just as Black people in an earlier era had had to prove that they had permission to be away from places where they were enslaved or employed.

“Asians, especially Chinese, have faced a history in America of being described as dirty, the source of contagion,” wrote Wu, now a professor at UC Hastings College of the Law. “In San Francisco before the 1906 earthquake, for example, the bubonic plague outbreak was attributed to Chinese immigrants. The characterization of Chinese as filthy, living in a squalid Chinatown, as if they had chosen hyper segregation, was used in turn to justify continuing exclusion and further discrimination.”

While Asian Americans have not in the aggregate experienced the level of racism and violence that Black Americans have, rising anti-Chinese sentiment has been associated with hate crimes, including a recent stabbing in Texas.

Juxtaposing... in Canada, shocking levels of abuse:

Half of Chinese-Canadians have been called names over COVID-19: poll

Trump Attacks Anti-Fascists But Is Silent on Boogaloo & Far-Right Groups Engaged in Deadly Violence

Note: of the 51 court cases for inciting violence during recent protests that the NPR reviewed, NONE are antifascists.

Another Nazi group (of who knows how many) recruiting young men online:

Neo-Nazi militant group grooms teenagers

Rinaldo Nazzaro, founder of The Base, is a 47-year-old American. Earlier this year the BBC revealed he was directing the organisation from his upmarket flat in St. Petersburg, Russia. ...

In the American State of Georgia, three members of The Base are currently facing conspiracy charges for allegedly plotting to murder an anti-fascist couple. ...

Matthew Baccari, an unemployed 25-year-old from Southern California, used the alias 'Mathias' to run a notorious website called Fascist Forge, where terrorism and sexual violence were openly encouraged. ...

The forum was central to the case of a boy from Durham, who last year - aged 16 - became the youngest person convicted of planning a terror attack in the UK.

Two other young British members of Fascist Forge, one aged 15, are separately making their way through the youth court system charged with a combined 25 terrorism offences.

>102 LolaWalser: It surely gives the troops a motive for checking each other out as individuals instead of assuming unquestioning mob loyalty.

Trump has consistently supported the Klan, neo-Nazi's, white supremacists and alt-right racists of all ilks pretty much since he's been president. At Charlottesville he called them 'good people'. He's never taken a stand against any of these groups. He's had plenty negative to say about antifa and black lives matter though. Maybe it's because they don't go around killing, injuring, hating, belittling and discriminating like his 'good people' do.

Yep, he's a Nazi tool (pun totally intended).

Trump’s Latest Pitch to Suburbs: Demonizing Cities

Why Portland Became the Test Case for Trump’s Secret Police

A straight line from a racist freak singing at his inauguration to protesters getting murdered by fascists and kidnapped by secret police in unmarked vans.

How is Canada like Argentina? Is it all the hot tanguera/os and convivial asados? In my dreams.

Nope, it's all the fucking escaped Nazis and other fascist scum and sympathisers of the ex-Axis diaspora.

Canada’s Nazi Monuments

“Graffiti on monument commemorating Nazi SS division being investigated as a hate crime by police.” Ordinarily, you’d assume a headline about Nazis as victims came from The Onion (and indeed, they’ve been prescient on this). But it’s 2020; we’re well down the rabbit hole of the American president who calls neo-Nazis “good people,” and this all-too-real article is from the Ottawa Citizen, a major Canadian newspaper. Indeed, the news that Canada has a monument commemorating Third Reich soldiers is just the outer layer of a nesting doll of progressively shocking facts. (...)

Unlike the Jews they had tortured and murdered, these Holocaust perpetrators got to settle down, start families, work, live, and die in peace. Along the way, they rebranded themselves as “victims of Communism” and “freedom fighters” to whitewash their bloody pasts. Once in a while you hear about one of them—some of the last remaining Nazis in the United States were Ukrainian—but most went on to live unmolested and free in North America.

I would point out as well that after WWII the allies as part of their plan to hold communism at bay left a lot of lower level Nazi's and Mussolinian fascists in privileged positions to continue on functioning as politicians, bankers, media heads and industrialists and whatever. That the allies paid for the stay behind armies--made up almost exclusively in Germany and Italy and other satellite states of the former Axis powers of former SS and fascist minded soldiers of those regimes. That the allies (with the help of the Vatican) instead of bringing all the Nazi and fascist murderers to justice escaped out a great many of high level functionaries of those regimes--some to South America--some came to the United States to work on our rocket programs and for other scientific and pseudo-scientific projects for instance one might see a CIA program such as MK Ultra as just one step further along Josef Mengele Avenue. We co-opted a lot of their shit and made it our own and it was always poison.

This thread hasn't been kept updated simply because Trump, his administration and his supporters, have committed and enabled so many fascist acts that no single thread could do them justice.

Rather, this whole group, almost every thread in it, is testament to the decay of the American democracy, its final transformation into an openly fascist system--a system dedicated to the preservation of a plutocratic oligarchy by any means necessary (up to and including civil war), fueled by the fanaticism of right wing religionists and white supremacists.

So the posts here should not be taken as singular events, let alone "milestone". We are long past the warnings...

These are now just tragic echoes.

Trump tells white audience in Minnesota they have 'good genes'

#111---I saw that and that Minnesota crowd cheered him. All I can say to Canadians is keep your borders closed.

Larry, see post 23

#113--no country is perfect Rick. We don't need another one though either.

Canada has its trumpoidals but it's interesting how much more visible they are online than in "the wild".* I can't put solid numbers on this; however, it's certain that a good portion of supposed "Canadians" online are actually Americans of the Trumpist variety. Just go to any Canadian news channel online that allows comments (a few have disposed of the BTL altogether because of the onslaught of trolling)--collect a couple dozen comments, and I wager you'll find that about 99% are pro-Trump and anti-Canadian. If you took those as a reflection of Canada's public, you'd be perfectly justified in thinking that a) Trump was Canada's king b) Canada was hours away from disappearing from the face of the earth, as a more wretched, doomed, terrible etc. country did not exist on the planet.

That's what we get for speaking English.

*Since Trumpo's inauguration I have seen 1 (one) Magat in Toronto. All the way back in Feb or March 2017, a thirtyish dude with a beard, glasses, toddler in a buggy, and the red hat. People on the subway gave him a wide berth, it was quite noticeable. They'd look at his hat and discreetly move away. I was sitting right across. The guy was white (quite unmissably so--blond and freckled), the toddler was PoC or mixed race, and I wondered how, assuming it was his kid or relation, he could bear to cheer for Trump, what he found in it.

I couldn't tell if it was a native or a tourist. Canadian Magats are, I'm told, more visible in smaller white places.

I saw a Magat on Church St, in the gay village of all places a year ago. My friends and I all chuckled when he (of course, he) walked into a lamp post.

My good friend and former colleague tells me that her son-in-law and grandson are supporters, as well as the male half of her next-door neighbours. I taught him years ago and I'm unsurprised.

We're talking Oshawa and Port Perry here. I suspect that we'd find a lot of supporters in more rural areas. Sad, but likely true. Ford land.

“The Election That Could Break America”: Inside How Trump & GOP Could Steal the Vote

>116 librorumamans:

I haven't been outside the urbs in yonks... but wouldn't Americans WISH for a Trumpo more like Ford? They wouldn't be looking at multiple six-digit covid deaths now...

This is an old idea, no? Part and parcel of the effort to outlaw public protesting:

Florida Governor Proposes Law That Could Allow Drivers to Run Over a 'Mob'

I hoped this thread would end with Americans soundly repudiating Trump and Trumpism. Unfortunately, while Trump is out, the 2020 election was even worse than 2016 in the way it reaffirmed American affinity for fascism.

Biden's tepid advantage can't mitigate the horror of knowing that almost 70 million Americans (of those who voted) even after four years of shameful conduct and policies think Trump is an adequate leader and Trumpism what they prefer.

Biden's administration will presumably try to correct or end some of the worst actions of Trump. Most significantly, the US may at least return to the international discussion of doing something about the climate change.

Overall, however, it's difficult to see what defenses the neoliberal Democrats, bankrupt in every sense, could--or would--set against the indubitably rising tide of the American far right now normalised in and as the Republican party.

>120 LolaWalser: I’m both saddened and alarmed by the election results.

Several studies have shown that @one-third of any given population prefers an authoritarian government, no matter where that government falls on the political spectrum. (If we’ve had this convo before, I apologize for bringing it up again.)

I don’t like this and don’t understand it. Worse, though, is that I don’t see a way out of it. I’m not sure if it’s because life really is hard as granite, because decisions are hard to make and even harder to take responsibility for...or what.

And yeah, the Dems really need to get their asses in gear. A d I don’t see that happening, either. Because money and because power. And because the one enables and then comes to equal the other.

>121 Matke:

Thanks for that comment. It's good to see there are a few anti-Trumpists who don't interpret this election as some sort of return to a "golden" age. I would so like not to sound negative, but I can't help sounding the way I feel--except, of course, had Trump STAYED ON for another four years, I'd... well frankly I don't think I'd be hanging around here at all. It was necessary and it is a HUGE relief that he is gone.

But that's just the start. Four years ago I spluttered in outrage about Americans letting this..I think I called him an incontinent hippo or rhino (grossly insulting blameless animals of course) into the White House, and he had his four years of pissing and shitting over EVERYTHING, and now he's gone, and that's great and worthy of a good loud HUZZAH... but there's still all that piss and shit left to deal with. And MORE.

There is the climate change where four years were wasted when we're way behind already, there are ever-increasing problems with climate migrants as well as refugees from America's Middle Eastern debacles, there is the consolidation of the far right bloc in the States as well as the success of fascists globally... I would despair even of a someone like Sanders achieving success; I'm almost certain Biden-Harris will just delay the official return of Trumpism...

I'm ending here with a book recommendation for those who want to learn on the topic of the US and fascism: Insurgent Supremacists: The U.S. Far Right’s Challenge to State and Empire. The reason for the recommendation is that Lyons' analysis includes perspectives neglected in classic discussions of fascism, and which we have seen in action with the development of the "alt-right" in particular. But I would point out as particularly valuable Lyons' explication of historically present fascism in the US, the fascist elements not just in American society but the doctrine of the land. I mean valuable to most Americans who lack this perspective, and with which they ought to be acquainted.

There is some hope for a transformation of the "American mythology", I'd say, given the recent discussions about racism and slavery that seem to have--finally--entered some "general" sphere (but see for instance Amber Ruffin's disappointment at the closeness of the election and that Nebraska vote on slavery...)

>122 LolaWalser:

That looks like an interesting read, Lola, and it's on the shelf at the library. Its length, however, discourages me; do the introduction and conclusion sufficiently stand for the material that I could get something useful from those alone?

Although it's not relevant to this thread, I'll mention that I've just started Akala's Natives : race and class in the ruins of Empire and am finding it eloquent and compelling.

>123 librorumamans:

Hmm, it's hard to tell for another, but I think you'd get something out of most any part you read... The first half or so is maybe skimmable, it's a detailed analysis of dozens of right-wing movements and groups, but Lyons does (unlike some others I read) analyse as he goes along so...

Thanks for reminding me of Akala, I had listened over the years to many of his interviews etc. and would like to read that.

I’m posting this in two threads as it is relevant to both:

Arkansas police chief resigns after calling for the death of “traitors” and “marxists” who voted for Biden.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/arkansas-police-chief-resigns-after-allegedly-calling...

Note that the link is to Fox News.

I read an opinion this morning (sorry, can’t recall whose) that Fox and Murdoch have distanced themselves from Trump recently because his agitation of his base might turn to sedition; and that’s probably a step too far.

>126 2wonderY: Maybe that was part of their calculation, but I think it’s more about money; with Murdoch, it’s always about money. Trump becomes less profitable? Dump him.

>126 2wonderY:

But wouldn't that imply that the Murdochs have some ethics? I'm readier to believe that, if their distancing is real, the motive has more to do with revenue projections.

Not saying morals are involved. Criminal charges of sedition might be expensive.

The Facade Is Crumbling

Proud Bois Leader Yanks Off His Veil