American Fascism

  By John Kiriakou Reader Supported News (7/25/17) Several friends of mine were arrested recently and convicted of federal crimes. Two were sentenced, and a retrial was ordered for the other one. Their crimes? One laughed during Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s confirmation hearing during a peaceful protest against the nominee. The others defended her. Seriously. Desiree Fairooz, Lenny Bianchi, and Tighe Barry, all members of Code Pink, attended the hearing in January 2017. At one point, Senator Richard Shelby, a Republican from Sessions’s home state of Alabama, said that Sessions’s record of “treating all Americans equally under the law is clear and…

  By Lance Williams The Center For Investigative Journalism (7/21/17) Long before Donald Trump’s election ushered in an era of resurgent white nationalism, a disaffected Republican named William H. Regnery II was brooding about the demographic plight of white people and plotting their rescue. Like Trump more than 20 years later, Regnery, the wealthy scion of a famous GOP family, had an increasingly dark view of a changing America: As he wrote, the U.S. had become a crime-ridden society with bad schools, high taxes, an intrusive government and a penchant for political correctness that was “morphing into an intellectual tyranny.”…

  By  Cecilia Saixue Watt The Guardian (7/11/17) The cookout offered free food, a face-painting booth and a “protest sign-making station” – a pile of cut-up cardboard boxes, paint markers and rolls of packing tape. A group of neighborhood boys, each no older than 12, gathered around. They wanted signs to tape to their bicycles, so they could ride around and “tell Trump” what they thought of him. One grabbed a piece of cardboard and wrote in big letters: “TRUMP’S A BITCH.” Max Neely quickly stepped in. “I’m not sure you should use that word,” he said, his voice taking on…

    Tom Ashcroft On Point / WBUR 97/17/17) With the death of China’s Nobel Prize-winning dissident Liu Xiaobo, we look at human rights under the Trump administration. China’s only Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo, died in state custody last week. He was China’s highest-profile political dissident. He died silenced. Then he was cremated and his ashes dropped at sea, leaving no place for admirers to rally. The White House said President Trump was “deeply saddened,” but the same day Trump called Xi Jinping a “great leader” devoted to doing what’s right for China. This hour On Point: Human…

  The Center for Investigative Reporting (7/13/17) President Donald Trump has been in office for six months. On this week’s podcast special, Reveal host Al Letson speaks with someone who helped get him there – Roger Stone. Stone is a former campaign adviser to Trump and helped set the tone of the 2016 election. For decades, he’s played hardball politics as a Republican strategist and now is the subject of a documentary. He and Letson discuss political dirty tricks, white supremacy and Russian meddling in the November election. Link to 27-Minute Audio

By Timothy Snyder The Guardian (7/15/17) In his committed mendacity, his nostalgia for the 1930s, and his acceptance of support from a foreign enemy of the United States, a Republican president has closed the door on conservatism and opened the way to a darker form of politics: a new right to replace an old one. Conservatives were skeptical guardians of truth. The conservatism of the 18th century was a thoughtful response to revolutionaries who believed that human nature was a scientific problem. Edmund Burke answered that life is not only a matter of adaptations to the environment, but also of…

By Julia Conely Common Dreams (7/11/17) A hearing is scheduled for Thursday [today, 7/12] in the American Civil Liberties Union’s suit to block several new anti-reproductive rights laws that have passed in Arkansas, which would impose severe restrictions on women’s abortion access in the state. The group has joined with the Center for Reproductive Rights to keep the laws from going into effect, starting at the end of July. Law would require any woman seeking an abortion to get permission from the man who impregnated her. “Instead of protecting women’s health, Arkansas politicians have passed laws that defy decency and reason just…

  By Marcelo Rochabrun ProPublica (7/6/17) The head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit in charge of deportations has directed his officers to take action against all undocumented immigrants they may cross paths with, regardless of criminal histories. The guidance appears to go beyond the Trump administration’s publicly stated aims, and some advocates say may explain a marked increase in immigration arrests. In a February memo, Matthew Albence, a career official who heads the Enforcement and Removal Operations division of ICE, informed his 5,700 deportation officers that, “effective immediately, ERO officers will take enforcement action against all removable aliens encountered in the course…

By Lincoln Blades Teen Vogue (5/9/17) Since September 11, 2001, preventing terrorism in the United States has become one of the main concerns of citizens, policymakers, and law enforcement agencies. Leaders believe that battling “terror” isn’t just done by waging war on jihadists themselves, but also on their ideology. When an attack whose perpetrator is affiliated with Islam occurs on American soil, the nation collectively recoils in horror at the audacious attack, mourns for those we’ve lost, and then subsequently doubles down on rooting out any semblance of pro-extremist thought in our society. When the assailant is identified, intelligence agencies…

TheCommonerCall.org By Jeff Schech WhoWhat Why (5/31/17) In this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, Yale history professor Timothy Snyder talks to Jeff Schechtman about what he sees as the very real possibility that our republic will go the way of history’s other failed democracies, like Athens or even the Weimar Republic. Both 1930s fascism and communism, Snyder warns, were responses to globalization and to rising inequality. We might be tempted to think that our democratic heritage automatically protects us from such threats, but he argues that this is a misguided reflex. Snyder cautions that our institutions, such as the courts, the free…

  By Jesse Valenti The Guardian (4/27/17) When Hulu released a trailer for their adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic The Handmaid’s Tale, some conservatives didn’t realize the series was based on a decades-old novel – they thought it was created in response to Trump’s presidential win. The confusion makes some sense. Much of the show feels familiar in today’s political climate: children being wrenched from their parents’ arms at borders. A lesbian tortured in order, she’s told, to cure her unnatural appetites. Women forced to carry pregnancies after they’ve been raped. But what makes The Handmaid’s Tale so terrifying…

  Democracy Now! (5/25/17) (Editor’s Note: In the course of commenting on Donald Trump’s conversation with Rodrigo Duterte journalist Jeremy Scahill reveals an amazing national security breach that Trump does every single day. – Mark L. Taylor) In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has suggested he might impose martial law across the country, after declaring it this week in his native island of Mindanao. This comes as a transcript of the call of Trump praising Duterte for his controversial drug war was leaked and published by The Intercept. According to the leaked transcript, Trump said, “I just wanted to congratulate…

  By Jason Wilson The Guardian (5/23/17) Earlier this month, hundreds of “alt-right” protesters occupied the rotundaat Boston Common in the name of free speech. The protest included far-right grouplets old and new – from the Oath Keepers to the Proud Boys. But there were no swastikas or shaved heads in sight. Instead, the protest imagery was dominated by ostensibly comedic images, mostly cribbed from forums and social media. It looked a little like an animated version of a favorite “alt-right” message board, 4chan. At least one attendee was dressed as the cartoon frog, Pepe (a character co-opted by the…

  By Maxwell Strachan The HuffPost (5/17/17) Trevor Noah had historian Timothy Snyder on to “The Daily Show” this week to discuss his book On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Snyder is a Yale professor who specializes in Eastern Europe and the Holocaust. He has spent a lifetime trying to understand how fascism and authoritarianism transform from an idea into a reality. He has written book after book breaking down the patterns and signs to look for. “What post-truth does is it paves the way for regime change.” So when Snyder had the stage on “The Daily Show” this week,…

  By Al Letson Reveal (3/9/17) This week, Reveal host Al Letson speaks to Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to President Donald Trump. Usually, Gorka is sent out by the White House to discuss threats outside the U.S. In this special podcast, he and Al discuss domestic issues. Gorka talks a lot about the backbone of America, “real Americans” and the people he calls “the chattering classes.” But who are the “chattering classes”? And what is “the real America”? The outspoken Trump adviser lays bare his views on the country. Link to Story and 13-Minute Audio ***** Trump Adviser Gorka’s PhD…

The 1933 burning of the German Reichstag was used as the pretext for Hitler suspending civil liberties, cracking down on the Communist Party and other opposition parties and groups which then led to the consolidation of power by the Nazis and the unspooling horrors of WW II. While a mentally troubled Polish communist was convicted and executed for the fire, there is strong evidence that the Nazis were the ones who set the fire. Such emergency situations are part of the blueprint for all authoritarians. (National Archives and records Administration/Wikimedia Commons)   By Sarah K. Burris The Raw Story (5/1/17)…