American Fascism

  By Julia Conley Common Dreams (9/20/18) Confirming the fears of many immigrant families who have declined to step forward and claim children who are being held in detention facilities, a new report shows that more than 40 people have been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after doing just that. CNN reported Thursday that between July and early September, at least 41 people have been detained after attempting to retrieve their young family members from government-run detention facilities, which are now at 92 percent capacity with more than 13,000 children in custody. Just 12 of the arrests were of people…

  “There is no question we are witnessing its successes here.” By Jeff Schechtman Who.What.Why (9/21/18) A country does not have to be fascist or have a fascist government in order to be riddled with fascist politics. This is the scary premise Jason Stanley argues in his recent book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University, is Jeff Schechtman’s guest on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast. Stanley reminds us that while 63 million Americans voted for President Donald Trump, a man who taps into America’s worst impulses, historically there is nothing new about the kind…

By Ed Weathers Memphis Flyer (9/6/18) Recently some younger Trump supporters I know — folks in their 20s and 30s — have expressed disdain toward fast-food workers who are asking for higher wages. They claim that such low-skilled jobs don’t deserve higher wages and that a higher minimum wage for them would just devalue the work of more skilled folks like themselves — first responders, welders, mechanics, construction workers, and the like. These young Trump folks also resent anyone on welfare and, of course, most immigrants. They see all these folks as somehow damaging their own economic prospects or undermining…

Twitter By Jake Johnson Common Drems (9/2/18) Responding to continued efforts by President Donald Trump and right-wing media outlets to exploit the horrific murder of 20-year-old Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts to push their racist, anti-immigrant agenda, Tibbetts’ father penned an op-ed on Saturday denouncing those who have “chosen to callously distort and corrupt Mollie’s tragic death to advance a cause she vehemently opposed.” “At the outset, politicians and pundits used Mollie’s death to promote various political agendas. We appealed to them and they graciously stopped. For that, we are grateful. Sadly, others have ignored our request,” Rob Tibbetts wrote in the local Des Moines Register….

  By First Amendment The Daily Kos (8/25/18) How do you feel watching this reunion of a mother and father with their now very distant child, after months of separation? It makes me feel ill and so empty inside. The ACLU is spot on here. Trump jailing and separating children from their families has caused real human destruction. The consequences of this heinous act by Donald Trump and his cronies will last a lifetime for many and devastate families. Decades of research have concluded that child separation is connected to long term trauma. According to Johanna Bick, a psychology professor who studies this subject, there is no greater threat to a child’s emotional…

  By David Neiwert Southern Poverty Law Center (8/23/18) Claiming that the “violent left” is preparing an insurrection designed to grab “illegitimate power,” the Oath Keepers’ president and founder Stewart Rhodes this week announced on their website that his group is organizing training sessions around the United States aimed at helping militiamen and “Patriots” prepare for “lethal force” at far-right events in cities targeted for right-wing protests. Appearing on Infowars with host Owen Shroyer on Monday, Rhodes explained that Oath Keepers is organizing “Spartan Training Groups” in every state with the aim of bolstering efforts to combat “antifa and the far…

  The Young Turks (12/17/15) David Duke first rose to prominence in the ‘70s and ‘80s as a modern, more photogenic representative of the white supremacist movement, abandoning the Ku Klux Klan’s robe and hood in favor of business suits and trading overt racist appeals in exchange for more “acceptable” coded language that involved disparaging “welfare queens” and “racial set-asides.” Duke eventually left the Klan to found the “National Association for the Advancement of White People,” served one term as a Republican in the Louisiana state house, published two books, one on “Racial Understanding” and the other on “Jewish Supremacism,”…

  Weekend Edition Sunday / NPR (8/26/18) NPR’s Melissa Block talks with Jenn, a foster parent based in Michigan who has taken in three migrant kids who remain separated from their parents. Link to 7-Minute Audio

  Democracy Now! (8/24/18) NSA whistleblower Reality Winner was handed the longest sentence ever imposed in federal court for leaking government information to the media Thursday [8/23]. She is the first person to be sentenced under the Espionage Act since President Trump took office. Winner was arrested by FBI agents at her home in Augusta, Georgia, on June 3, 2017, two days before The Intercept published an exposé revealing Russian military intelligence conducted a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software company just days before the U.S. presidential election. The exposé was based on a classified NSA report from May 5, 2017, that shows…

  By Sen. Bernie Sanders YouTube (8/20/18) Historian Timothy Snyder explains how Trump’s world of fiction is undermining our democracy and how we can fight back. Link to 8+-Minute Video ***** 20 Lessons From The 20th Century On How To Survive Trump’s America By Timothy Snyder Facebook Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so. Here are 20 lessons from across the fearful 20th century, adapted to the circumstances of today. 1. Do not obey in…

    By Chauncey DeVega Salon (8/21/18) A week ago Sunday, white supremacists gathered in Washington to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Heather Heyer was murdered and dozens of other people injured by a racist mob. There was no mass turnout for the “Unite the Right 2” rally. Instead only two dozen or so white supremacists and other members of the “alt-right” were present, vastly outnumbered by at least 1,000 counter-protesters. The racists rapidly skulked off, humiliated and defeated. Their opponents were jubilant. Given Donald Trump’s unrelenting and largely unabated assault on democracy and human rights…

ICE arrested someone before they knew who he was, they didn’t explain why they were arresting him, and then they changed their story about why he was arrested. That is fundamentally corrupt. By William Boardman Reader Supported News (8/21/18) In June of 2014, the ACLU and the International Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School filed complaints with the Department of Homeland Security. And the complaints documented the cases of 116 unaccompanied children, ranging in age from 5 years old to 17. According to these organizations, a quarter of the children said they were physically or sexually abused….

Oh, God, this is rich. I’m guessing this morning little Jason got yelled at for not putting his dirty undies in the hamper and forgetting to rinse out his “My Little Hitler” sippy mug after breakfast. Sad! 2-Minute Video ***** And This Is Probably Who Jason Has A Play Date With This Afternoon WARNING: Vile, ignorant white dude rant. — Ed. 1+-Minute Video (Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2018. Open source and free for non-derivative use with ink to www,thecommonercall.org )

[Editor’s Note: Keep in mind that through the infamous support of six democratic senators for CIA director Gina Haspel and the absolute silence of the Democratic Party to those votes, the democrats have made support of immoral US torture programs bipartisan; they aligned themselves with Trump and his flying monkey republicans in support of torture. When it comes to torture, the dems are now  just another part of the furry flock. — Mark L. Taylor] By Jessica Corbett Common Dreams (8/10/18) Government cables reported in the New York Times on Friday [10/9] “read like torture journaling,” critics said after reviewing the “loud noise, sleep deprivation, forced nudity,…

By Leila Miller Frontline (8/7/18) The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017 was the largest public gathering of white supremacists in a generation. Dozens were injured, and it ended in the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, a counter-protester who was killed after a car crashed into demonstrators. The violence did not come out of nowhere. It followed a series of increasingly bloody rallies in California, New York City, and even Charlottesville. While city and state officials in Virginia had prepared by mobilizing 1,000 first responders, law enforcement largely stayed back while chaos unfolded. In Documenting Hate: Charlottesville, FRONTLINE and ProPublica investigate…

  “Free speech for me but not for thee.” — Nate Hentoff By John Whitehead The  Rutherford Institute (8/6/8) “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.” ― Benjamin Franklin What a mess. As America has become ever more polarized, and those polarized factions have become more militant and less inclined to listen to—or even allow for the existence of—other viewpoints, we are fast becoming a nation of people who just can’t get along. Here’s the thing: if Americans don’t learn how to get along—at the very least, agreeing to disagree and…

  Frontline (7/31/18) The inside story of what happened to immigrant children separated from their parents at the border. The film explores the impact of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, and how both Trump and Obama dealt with minors at the border. Link to Trailer, 55-Minute Video