Unsurprisingly for a magazine founded by a waxed-anus Fascist, Vice Magazine has bent the knee to Trump

theintercept.com/2024/11/19/vi…

#Fascism #ViceMagazine #Media #trump #FarRight

9. Ask anyone who has ever lived in a police state or who has good historical knowledge of how police states function what life will be like for us – all of us – as all of this is set into motion.

10. If Trump enacts this barbaric plan, do not expect the so-called "guardrails," including especially the corporate media, to act as the conscience of the nation or to resist the barbarism. To the contrary….

All to solve a made-up problem….

#Trump #fascism #cruelty #immigrants #violence
/5

7. Violence begets violence begets violence. Once you set it in motion in this way from the top of the government, it involves and threatens everyone.

8. When people see that their lust to hurt targeted others is blessed and encouraged by their leaders, that lust to hurt thrives, grows, spreads and begins to turn a society into hell on earth.

#Trump #fascism #cruelty #immigrants #violence
/4

5. All of these possibilites are compounded by Trump's promise to seize direct control of the military and turn militarized force against immigrants.

6. History shows us that any time a would-be strongman dictator takes control of the military and turns it on targeted segments of the population, everyone – especially dissidents and social outcasts – ends up being targeted.

#Trump #fascism #cruelty #immigrants #violence
/3

2. If a nation's government engages in acts of immense barbarism and cruelty, every citizen of that nation is affected and implicated.

3. We may imagine that an act like this will affect "only" them, and not us.

4. Set barbarism and cruelty into motion from the top of a government, and it eventually reaches you and me and not just the targeted others.

#Trump #fascism #cruelty #immigrants #violence
/2

Suppose for a moment that Trump carries through on his wildly popular promise to round up, incarcerate, and deport millions of immigrants. We can hope this does not happen. But all indicators tell us that some version of this plan is already in place, to begin immediately after he's sworn into office.

Ten points to consider:

1. Rounding up, incarcerating, and deporting millions of people will be an act of immense barbarism and cruelty.

#Trump #fascism #cruelty #immigrants #violence
/1

"Kennedy has devoted his life to destroying public health. He’s obsessed with a confused, quasi-fascist idea of purity, which leads him to attack medical interventions like fluoride, pasteurization, and vaccines, as well as perceived outsiders like Asians and Jewish people. That makes him a good fit for Trump and Trumpism. It also makes him a massive danger to the US and to the world."

~ Noah Berlatsky

#Trump #fascism #cruelty #future #RFKJr
/3

publicnotice.co/p/rfk-jr-publi…

RFK Jr. is a massive public health threat

Dems like Jared Polis shouldn't pretend otherwise.

^{Aaron Rupar (Public Notice)}

"Let’s not make the mistake of thinking the only reason Trump wants to use recess appointments is to get his team of deplorables confirmed. He’s not even back in office, but he’s already at work manipulating elected officials into a position where the Constitution can be tossed aside at will."

#Trump #fascism #cruelty #future
/2

"Trump’s demand for recess appointments is a way of breaking the Senate early on. Once they’ve bypassed the Constitutional dictate that they confirm the president’s appointees, there is no standing on principle to insist on strict adherence to the Constitution."

~ Joyce Vance

#Trump #fascism #cruelty #future
/1

joycevance.substack.com/p/what…

What Letting Trump Use Recess Appointments Could Mean

Donald Trump’s stated desire to use recess appointments is about more than putting his cabinet secretaries and other appointees in place without a fight.

^{Joyce Vance (Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance)}

"This is no longer a post-electoral moment. It is a pre-catastrophic moment. #Trump voters are caught in the notion that Trump must be doing the right thing if #Harris voters are upset. But Harris voters are upset now because they love their country. And Harris voters will have to get past the idea that Trump voters should reap what they have sown. Yes, some of them did vote to burn it all down. But if it all burns down, we burn too." #TimothySnyder

snyder.substack.com/p/decapita…

#Fascism

Decapitation Strike

Preserving America from Trump's Appointments

^{Timothy Snyder (Thinking about...)}

Matt Gaetz: Trump Picks Literally Worst Person You Know for Attorney General
newrepublic.com/post/188395/tr…

Of all the people in the universe, Donald Trump has settled on Florida Representative Matt Gaetz to lead the Justice Department.

#MattGaetz #USattorneyGeneral #sycophant #Trumpism #Trump2 #GOP #fascism #authoritarianism

Trump Picks Literally Worst Person You Know for Attorney General

^{The New Republic}

Trump will nominate Rep. Matt Gaetz to be attorney general
npr.org/2024/11/13/g-s1-34072/…

Trump to Nominate and Famously Bad Lawyer Matt Gaetz for Attorney General
motherjones.com/politics/2024/…

* Florida congressman one of the Trump’s most loyal supporters
* builds upon Trump’s long-held views of Justice Department as extension of White House
* Trump threatening to prosecute enemies f. from Nancy Pelosi to media

#MattGaetz #USattorneyGeneral #sycophant #Trumpism #Trump2 #GOP #fascism #authoritarianism

Trump to nominate sycophant, famously bad lawyer Matt Gaetz for attorney general

The Florida congressman is one of the president-elect's most loyal supporters.

^{Mother Jones}

[thread] Matt Gaetz
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Gae…

* lawyer/politician
* FL U.S. Rep. Florida's 2017+
* staunch proponent far-right politics/Trump ally
* accused of sex trafficking/sexual relationships w minors
* voted against the Equality Act, & Respect for Marriage Act
* Nov 2024 Trump nom. Gaetz as U.S. attorney general

#MattGaetz #Trump2 #GOP #fascism #authoritarianism

tariffs, mass deportation – the pieces fit together

I think I’ve squared a circle. Doesn’t mean it’s real; just that I’ve found a way to square it.

Walk with me.

Let’s say you’re Trump and you’ve promised mass deportations and huge tariffs on China and other countries.

Let’s say that mass deportation is incredibly expensive – maybe you’re aware that Hitler’s camps and extermination programme were eating 13% of Nazi Germany’s GDP in the middle of their wars of conquest.

Let’s say you’re also aware that this will take years and years and years, because there’s literally no way to do this quickly. Physically, I mean. 15 million people can’t be thrown out overnight, or even over months. It’ll be years.

Let’s also say you want to keep inflation down, particularly to keep prices from skyrocketing due to your tariff policies. Tariffs are, I remind you, a tax an imports that get paid by the importer, and which are passed on to the customer. They are inflationary, by design. At least, until and unless they torpedo the economy entirely, at which point, well, you’ve set off a second Great Depression, just like Smoot and Hawley.

Now, let’s say that it’s very important to you to keep wages down as well, because nobody wants to pay workers if they can avoid it. If you want to bring back a lot of manufacturing in an already-tight labour market, that’s going to raise labour costs. It just is.

So you assign an amoral monster like Tom Homan – author of Trump’s Family Separation policy – as the “czar” of immigration. He’s promising the largest deportation force in history and recently said his answer to preventing “family separation” is to expel the entire family – citizenship be damned.

(He’s also a contributor to Project 2025 and a visiting fellow at Heritage Foundation. Project 2025 absolutely is the agenda. All of it.)

Then you start talking to people you’re already very friendly with, the operators of private prisons. They are utterly ready and looking forward to the new policies. They see it as an opportunity to double – or better – the size of their evil industry in all its forms.

Your inner circle have already acknowledged you’ll have to build camps – lots of them, big ones. You’ll call them “prisons” or “detention facilities” or “military camps,” not “concentration camps,” you certainly won’t call them that. Let’s say “facilities.”

Prison “facilities” are already well known for requiring prison labour, and for their pennies-per-hour payment to inmates. Private prisons have pushed the envelope on this in many ways; prison labour is a profit centre. One I was working against, before the fascist era.

So.

Imagine, if you would, the very easy jump.

You’ve got to do something with these hundreds of thousands of imprisoned people, don’t you.

Imagine expulsions taking months, then years. Years at a time. Perhaps they stop working so hard on speeding up the process. Perhaps they slow-walk it, timed to, say, suit the availability of “facility” beds.

Of course you’ll put them to work. A rotating cast of “facility” workers – “prison workers” – worked slowly through the system so there’s no one there quite long enough to start organising.

Paid, technically. At pennies for the hour, as a token, a pretence that it’s not slavery. But, of course, it is. You recoup the pennies you have to pay by charging them for everything. Maybe even their bed.

And just like that you have highly profitable… North Korean-style labour camps, with entire families of workers imprisoned, for who knows how long while they are put to work as factory labour for the private prison companies which become the new internal outsourcers of zero-cost labour.

Slavery, though not by name.

Maybe you’ll tie camp expansions to increases in tariffs. Raise them in parallel, timed so that the internal outsourcing absorbs the cost of the new tariffs. And then look – no price inflation, no wage inflation.

And whole new class of people to look down upon forever, if you like.

It’s quite the plan. Very neat. Very clean. Given that Trump voters actively want “military camps” used against immigrants, it’ll be a very easy sell.

And very, very profitable. Slave camps always have been, really.

And all you have to be is an abomination upon the earth.

And all your supporters have to do is let you be one.

Is that the plan? I don’t know.

All I know is that all the pieces seem to fit.

#fascism #politics #uspolitics

Trump announces Tom Homan as incoming border czar

President-elect Donald Trump announced late that Tom Homan, the former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, will be his administration's "border czar."

^{Megan Lebowitz (NBC News)}

Will people stop preemptively giving in to fascism???

The head archivist at the National Archives reportedly ordered the removal of references to Martin Luther King Jr., the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, the government’s displacement of Indigenous tribes, union organizers, birth control, and more, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Shogan and her advisors have reportedly raised concerns that upcoming exhibits and educational displays might anger Republican lawmakers who control the agency's budget or a potential Donald Trump administration.
#USPol #History #Fascism

msn.com/en-us/news/us/america-…

CISHET MEN: GET ON IT

I am not seeing nearly enough cishet men react proactively to this national wave of rape threats.

Most men listen only to men, particularly on topics like these. These men specifically only listen to men. Not listening to the opinions of women is the point, because as far as they’re concerned, we don’t get to have any.

Right now, these men are testing what they can get away with. They see but don’t care about how women react; if anything, they like the revulsion and anger, and look forward to more of it when they actually start “grabbing women by the pussy.”

But they do want to see how other men will react. They want to know what other men will say or do.

Passivity now, in the face of this, is permission. And your men friends are watching. If you don’t object, they probably won’t either. So if you’re against this – and you fucking well need to be – you need to get ahead of it.

And the next time, and the time after that? Every other time the fash test something? Because they will be testing everything they can?

It’s the same reality.

You have to get in front of it. Independently. Not just a thumbs up to a woman’s post. Preferably in your own words.

And you have to start right now.

#fascism #politics #uspolitics

"Never mind that he was the most pro-union president we’ve ever had. Never mind he is a fundamentally decent man; his character is not in question.

It wasn’t enough apparently. …

Biden didn’t fail America — America failed him."

#Trump #Republicans #fascism #cruelty #future
/16

"Never mind that his administration has been largely scandal free. Never mind that he surrounded himself with some really competent people. Never mind that he took an economy in shambles and turned it around. Never mind that he restored international relations that had been crippled and turned them around, including NATO expansion. Never mind that the infrastructure bill was an incredible accomplishment given the Congress he had to work with."

#Trump #Republicans #fascism #cruelty #future
/15

"What is going on?

I am starting to see editorials and analyses that are blaming the second coming of the convicted felon on Joseph Robinette Biden. It seems like there is a determined campaign to trash his legacy. ...

We haven’t reached the point yet, like that seen under Stalin, where history would be rewritten and photos edited to remove unpersons who had fallen out of favor and been purged.

Not yet."

~ xaxnar

#Trump #Republicans #fascism #cruelty #future
/14

dailykos.com/stories/2024/11/9…

What is with all the Biden hate?

What is going on? I am starting to see editorials and analyses that are blaming the second coming of the convicted felon on Joseph Robinette Biden. It seems like there is a determined campaign to trash his legacy. I could believe the idea is to not..

^{Daily Kos}

"Joe Biden owned the hardships of the post-pandemic — principally but not only economic — and the public simply rejected his presidency because of that. That’s very similar to what has happened when almost every other incumbent party in the West came up for reelection in the post-pandemic era. ...

Harris and Harris’ campaign are a distraction from this necessary conversation, a form of denial."

Of course, always easier to blame women, no?

#Trump #Republicans #fascism #cruelty #future
/13

Josh Marshall agrees with a TPM reader who says that "digesting the mechanics of campaigns were sort of beside the point now." As he notes, "The problems and the roots of Democrats’ defeat ran far deeper." And "the recriminations conversation" is a colossal waste of time.

He writes,

#Trump #Republicans #fascism #cruelty #future
/12

talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a…

A Follow Up About Harris

In response to today’s Backchannel, longtime TPM Reader LS wrote in to say that while she generally agreed with my evaluation of Kamala Harris’ campaign…

^{Josh Marshall (TPM - Talking Points Memo)}

"As Hitler, so Trump; as Nazi, so MAGA. …

Dorothy Thompson made the same mistake many of us, myself very much included, made in her assessment of the resident strongman: she believed the German people would be sophisticated enough to see through Hitler’s grotesque lies, just like we all believed the American people would be sophisticated enough to see through Trump’s."

~ Greg Olear

#Trump #Republicans #fascism #cruelty #future
/11

gregolear.substack.com/p/sunda…

Sunday Pages: "Who Goes Nazi?"

An essay by Dorothy Thompson.

^{Greg Olear (PREVAIL by Greg Olear)}

"What is true: Trump, and the right, are very good at taking basic respect and empathy for other humans, and portraying that as dangerous: social justice, wokeness, diversity, equity and inclusion have all been converted into terms of mockery. Trump did not win because someone you were on a zoom call with used pronouns, or Latinx, or some college grad corrected you for using the word homeless."

#Trump #Republicans #fascism #cruelty #future
/10

"This is a lazy pre-existing [corporate media] narrative to be sold, not because of any actual analysis of the electorate. These are writers who for various reasons have committed to an anti-woke narrative. And once you have committed to that narrative, you are determined to force it into every story, no matter how misleading."

#Trump #Republicans #fascism #cruelty #future
/9

As Don Moynihan notes, while the media and their fellow travelers pile on in a big gloat fest accusing Democrats of losing support because they're too "woke" and promote identity politics,

"You will never guess who did run on trans issues: Donald Trump."

As the Harris campaign bent over backwards to de-emphasize identity politics….

#Trump #Republicans #fascism #cruelty #future
/8

donmoynihan.substack.com/p/who…

Who is allowed to practice identity politics?

When the right does it, its just politics

^{Don Moynihan (Can We Still Govern?)}

"Choosing to write stories that 'blame elitist Democrats' ignores the real story of what happened on Tuesday. That distraction normalizes the grotesque, existential threat of Trump's electoral victory. Trump could not buy more favorable and helpful coverage if he paid for those stories with Elon Musk’s billions."

~ Hubbell, ibid.

#Trump #Republicans #fascism #cruelty #future
/7

The media have done this persistently for some years now. By trotting out their tired (and mendacious) refrain that the Democrats are out of touch with "real Americans," the media absolve themselves for pre-emptively obeying fascist dictators in the making and abdicate their responsibility to educate us. And they have lots of willing tools among the many pretend-liberals eager to pounce on the Democratic party while pretending fascism is not the real threat.

#Trump #Republicans #fascism
/6

"But the media is (again) sane-washing Trump's depravity. Rather than acknowledge—or even mention—his dominant campaign themes in analyzing his victory, the media insists that Trump won because Democrats are ;elitists; who somehow ;alienated' major portions of the electorate or that Democrats lost because Kamala Harris and her advisors refused to run her campaign in the manner demanded by the legacy media."

#Trump #Republicans #fascism #cruelty #future
/5

"The defining feature of Trump's campaign was its appeal to racism, misogyny, and white supremacy. He pushed those themes despite pleas from his advisers to focus on the economy. Having campaigned on themes of hate and division, he won decisively. The most compelling inference from those facts is that Trump's campaign themes appealed to a broad swath of the voters who supported him."

~ Robert B. Hubbell

#Trump #Republicans #fascism #cruelty #future
/4

roberthubbell.substack.com/p/s…

Sunday morning break

November 10, 2024

^{Robert B. Hubbell (Today's Edition Newsletter)}

'An important lesson from Nazi Germany: Dumb people are more dangerous than evil people. Ignorance will destroy America like it destroyed Germany during the Nazi era."

~ Oliver Markus Molloy

Molly quotes W.E.B. DuBois:

"Either the United States will destroy ignorance or ignorance will destroy the United States."

#Trump #Republicans #fascism #cruelty #future
/3

badchoicesmakegoodstories.subs…

An important lesson from Nazi Germany: Dumb people are more dangerous than evil people.

^{Oliver Markus Malloy (Bad Choices Make Good Stories)}

A lot of people who chose to vote for Trump are now in for a rude awakening. They made their choice thinking that only someone else is going to be hurt.

They're about to find out otherwise. And this includes all those superior beings who think want to waste time now pretending that the Democratic party is the problem, and not the party determined to bring us fascism and the voters who have chosen to give the party free rein.

#Trump #Republicans #fascism #cruelty #future
/2

"When the dust settles, I expect the people who assess elections will tell us disinformation was key in 2024. It wasn’t the economy, it was the disinformation about the economy. ...

It requires education and discernment to separate fact from fiction, and often that's lacking. That’s the problem: educating people so they can make judgments about what’s true."

~ Joyce Vance

#Trump #Republicans #fascism #cruelty #future #disinformation
/1

joycevance.substack.com/p/the-…

The Importance of Information

^{Joyce Vance (Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance)}

A photo by Dorothea Lange of Kimiko Kitagaki, tagged and numbered like the luggage surrounding her, as she and other Japanese Americans awaited their forced removal to an internment camp for Japanese Americans, most of them citizens, in World War II. The photo is in the National Archives, and is available for sharing online at Wikimedia Commons.

It CAN happen here. It HAS happened. And we refuse to learn from our barbarism in the past.

#fascism #cruelty #USA

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil…

"It is much harder to look into the darkness in the hearts of ordinary people with unquiet minds, needing someone to feel better than, whose cheers and votes allow despots anywhere in the world to rise to power in the first place. It is harder to focus on the danger of common will, the weaknesses of the human immune system, the ease with which the toxins can infect succeeding generations."

~ Ibid.

#fascism #Nazis #cruelty
/5

“Germany bears witness to an uncomfortable truth — that evil is not one person but can be easily activated in more people than we would like to believe when the right conditions congeal. It is easy to say: if we could just root out the despots before they take power or intercept their rise. If we could just wait until the bigots die away."

~ Ibid., p. 267

#fascism #Nazis #cruelty
/4

"They are husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, children, uncles, nephews, all gathered at a ticker-tape parade on a brilliant, sunny day celebrating what we know to be a horror….

It was two years past Kristallnacht. They knew that Jewish friends and neighbors had been rounded up, publicly humiliated, taken away, never seen again. And the people in the crowd were smiling and happy."

~ Ibid.

#fascism #Nazis #cruelty
/2

“The Nazis could not have risen to power and done what they did without the support of the masses of people who were open to his spell. I could not stop watching it [i.e., film footage of Hitler entering Berlin on 6 July 1940]. The smiling, shining faces in this carpet of exuberant humanity—this massive number of people could not all be what we would consider evil."

#fascism #Nazis #cruelty
/1

~ Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (NY: Random House, 2020), p. 265

"White Christians made Donald Trump president — again. …

Exit poll data from CNN and other news outlets reported that 72% of white Protestants and 61% of white Catholics said they voted for Trump."

~ Bob Smietana

#Trump #fascism #cruelty #future #Christians #WhiteChristians

religionnews.com/2024/11/06/wh…

White Christians made Donald Trump president — again

(RNS) — White Christians remain an influential force in American culture and politics. Their support, and the support of Hispanic Christians, helped Donald Trump regain the White House.

^{Bob Smietana (RNS)}