American Fascism

  By David Frum The Atlantic (March 2017 issue) It’s 2021, and President Donald trump will shortly be sworn in for his second term. The 45th president has visibly aged over the past four years. He rests heavily on his daughter Ivanka’s arm during his infrequent public appearances. Fortunately for him, he did not need to campaign hard for reelection. His has been a popular presidency: Big tax cuts, big spending, and big deficits have worked their familiar expansive magic. Wages have grown strongly in the Trump years, especially for men without a college degree, even if rising inflation is beginning…

The Center For Investigative Reporting (9/23/17) Since Donald Trump’s inauguration, Americans have increasingly turned to the streets to share opinions about the president and his policies. These tensions reached a boiling point last month as violent confrontations rocked Charlottesville, Virginia. There were more clashes weeks later in Berkeley, California, when members of the anti-fascist movement, or antifa, attacked several right-wing activists. A team of our reporters was on the ground covering the event – literally on the ground, in host Al Letson’s case: Witnessing one such attack, he dove on top of a far-right activist to shield him from blows. Who,…

By David Remnick The New Yorker When is speech no longer just speech? David Remnick speaks with the author of a new and sympathetic book about Antifa, a law professor at University of California, Berkeley, and a legal analyst for Slate, to look at how leftist protests at Berkeley, right-wing violence in Charlottesville, and open-carry laws around the country are testing the traditional liberal consensus on freedom of expression. Also, Jenny Slate reads a story about a magical time of unfettered creativity and zero productivity, before the Internet. What Was It Like Before the Internet? The Antifa Handbook Long a…

  By Julia Conley Common Dreams (8/28/17) As millions of Houston residents faced life-threatening flooding on Monday with the saturated remnants of Hurricane Harvey expected to bring even more heavy rains in the days ahead, journalist Naomi Klein warned against the notion, already being pushed by some on the right, that the disaster shouldn’t be “politicized.” “Now is exactly the time to talk about climate change, and all the other systemic injustices — from racial profiling to economic austerity — that turn disasters like Harvey into human catastrophes,” Klein wrote at The Intercept on Monday. In her piece, Klein warns that the absence of journalists, lawmakers,…

  By Jason Wilson The Guardian (8/20/17) The groups that marched through Charlottesville last weekend with clubs, shields and cans of mace were clearly drawn from the most extreme and violent end of America’s far right. But key elements of the ideology of at least some of them echo themes that have animated populist groups across the political spectrum, including on the left. In their chants and placards, the marchers were explicitly fascist, racist and antisemitic. One of their number is accused of murdering a leftwing activist with his car and injuring many more. They came prepared to do violence…

  By A.C. Thompson, ProPublica, and Karim Hajj, special to ProPublica ProPUblica (8/13/17) The white supremacist forces arrayed in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend — the largest gathering of its sort in at least a generation — represented a new incarnation of the white supremacy movement. Old-guard groups like the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations and the Nazi skinheads, which had long stood at the center of racist politics in America, were largely absent. Instead, the ranks of the young men who drove to Charlottesville with clubs, shields, pepper spray and guns included many college-educated people who have left the…

By David Edwards The Raw Story (8/15/17) he white supremacist website The Daily Stormer is taking a page out of the Westboro Baptist Church playbook by sending self-described Nazis to the funeral of a woman who was allegedly killed by a white nationalist brethren in Charlottesville, Virginia. Conservative journalist Laura Loomer revealed in a tweet on Tuesday that Daily Stormer system administrator Andrew Auernheimer, know as “Weev”, is recruiting like-minded people to protest the funeral of Heather Heyer, a counter-protester who police suspect was deliberately run down and killed by a member of a violent group opposing the removal of…

  By Andrea Germanos Common Dreams (8/9/17) President Donald Trump’s continued silence following the recent bombing of a mosque in a Minneapolis suburb “is an outrage,” Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) said Wednesday. The explosion at the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington, Minn., took place Saturday morning. While no one was injured after an explosive was thrown through the window of the imman’s office, Mohamed Omar, the center’s executive director, said Sunday: “We feel like it’s much deeper and scarier than like something random,” adding, “It’s so scary.” Gov. Mark Dayton, for his part, called the attack “an act of terrorism,” and said the damage done to “this sacred site…

  Democracy Now! (7/26/17) We turn now to look at the man many credit with helping Donald Trump become president: Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News. During the early days of the Trump presidency, many suggested Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, was pulling many of the strings in the Oval Office. We speak to journalist Joshua Green about how Bannon took his hard-right nationalist politics from the fringes of the Republican Party all the way to the White House. Green has been closely following Bannon’s career for years. In October 2015—before Bannon joined Trump’s campaign—Green dubbed Bannon the “Most…