Trump 'jumps the shark' and goes full Steve Bannon – can we call him a fascist now?
Or is that still impolite?
/jd
‘…President Donald Trump declared himself a “nationalist” during his rally here on Monday night, officially tagging himself with the label that has long defined his populist rhetoric and protectionist policies.
“A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly not caring about the country so much. You know, we can’t have that,” Trump said, prompting boos from the crowd.
“You know what I am, I’m a nationalist,” he added, as the crowd erupted in “USA! USA!” chants. “Use that word.”…’
Centrists Are the Most Hostile to Democracy, Not Extremists
‘…research suggests that across Europe and North America, centrists are the least supportive of democracy, the least committed to its institutions and the most supportive of authoritarianism…’
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/05/23/opinion/international-world/centrists-democracy.html
Belly poetry starts at 23 secs
‘…”A lot of people don’t understand that refugees especially, are fleeing situations that are affecting their livelihood and their children’s livelihood,” Belly told ABC News. “If they’re willing to go through everything they go through to try to find a safe haven, it’s not because they wanted to leave home; it’s because they had to. I think that’s one thing that a lot of people miss out on.”…’
‘…Teachers at a German school have reported themselves en masse to a far-right party after it asked pupils to spy on their political views so it could compile a list of its critics.
The AfD party has set up a system through which students can report and denounce their teachers to the party if they criticise it in class, or express related political views.
But teachers at the Lina Morgenstern School in Kreuzberg, Berlin, wrote a joint letter to the AfD asking for all their names to be voluntarily added onto the “denunciation list” it is compiling.
“We attach great importance to being on this list because we will continue to ensure that school students are empowered to understand the character of your party,” the teachers wrote, according to a copy of the message made public through the GEW teachers’ union.
“Of course, we will do this in the classroom and are in line with the Beutelsbach Consensus [a policy on the presentation of controversial subjects] and Article 1 of the Berlin Education Act. We will inform our students when members and officials of your party engage in racist, inhumane, sexist, historical revisionist, antisemitic or anti-democratic activities that jeopardise our peaceful coexistence in society.”…’
Explosive device found near the home of George Soros in an upscale New York suburb
‘…An explosive device was discovered on Monday near the home of billionaire George Soros in an upscale suburb in New York.
[….] Soros was recently accused by U.S. President Donald Trump of funding a caravan of migrants heading towards the Mexico-U.S. border — an allegation that many have said lacks evidence…’
Maybe the New York antisemitic bomber was inspired by this Republican Party advert?
/jd
‘…Following an ancient anti-Semitic script, a Republican attack ad portrays a Jewish financier as the puppetmaster behind non-white social unrest.
The ad, literally titled “Owns,” ties Minnesota congressional aspirant Dan Feehan, a Democrat, to George Soros, the currency speculator turned philanthropist whose demonization has become central to authoritarian nationalist projects in Hungary, Russia and beyond.
In “Owns,” funded by the National Republican Campaign Committee, Soros is an Oz-like figure hovering over stacks of cash…’
https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-ad-taps-anti-semitism-to-portray-george-soros-as-puppet-master
The Violence Central American Migrants Are Fleeing Was Stoked by the US
‘…“Hundreds of thousands of people were displaced in the 1980s,” said Elizabeth Oglesby, an associate professor of Latin American studies at the University of Arizona. “People were fleeing violence and massacres and political persecution that the United States was either funding directly or at the very minimum, covering up and excusing.” Violence today in those countries, she said, is a directly legacy of US involvement.
[….] “The war in Guatemala was really a genocide,” Oglesby said, adding that an estimated 200,000 were killed in the subsequent 36-year-long civil war, which stretched from 1960 to 1996. “The history is important because it went so far beyond anti-communism—the purpose was to destroy people’s vision of the future. It had a terrible impact on the country, hundreds of thousands of people were displaced.”
[….] “I get asked all the time, Why can’t Central Americans just stay in their country and strive for better?” Oglesby told me. “I want people to understand, Central Americans have been trying to do that for decades, and the United States put itself on the wrong side of those struggles, and now we are reaping the consequences.”…’
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvnyzq/central-america-atrocities-caused-immigration-crisis
the wars of President BushClintonBushObama never ended with Trump
/jd
How American Racism Influenced Hitler
– Scholars are mapping the international precursors of Nazism.
By Alex Ross
‘…Hitler and Goebbels were the first relativizers of the Holocaust, the first purveyors of false equivalence. “Concentration camps were not invented in Germany,” Hitler said in 1941. “It is the English who are their inventors, using this institution to gradually break the backs of other nations.” The British had operated camps in South Africa, the Nazis pointed out. Party propagandists similarly highlighted the sufferings of Native Americans and Stalin’s slaughter in the Soviet Union. In 1943, Goebbels triumphantly broadcast news of the Katyn Forest massacre, in the course of which the Soviet secret police killed more than twenty thousand Poles. (Goebbels wanted to show footage of the mass graves, but generals overruled him.) Nazi sympathizers carry on this project today, alternately denying the Holocaust and explaining it away.
The magnitude of the abomination almost forbids that it be mentioned in the same breath as any other horror. Yet the Holocaust has unavoidable international dimensions—lines of influence, circles of complicity, moments of congruence. Hitler’s “scientific anti-Semitism,” as he called it, echoed the French racial theorist Arthur de Gobineau and anti-Semitic intellectuals who normalized venomous language during the Dreyfus Affair. The British Empire was Hitler’s ideal image of a master race in dominant repose. “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a Russian forgery from around 1900, fuelled the Nazis’ paranoia. The Armenian genocide of 1915-16 encouraged the belief that the world community would care little about the fate of the Jews. Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, Hitler spoke of the planned mass murder of Poles and asked, “Who, after all, is today speaking about the destruction of the Armenians?” The Nazis found collaborators in almost every country that they invaded. In one Lithuanian town, a crowd cheered while a local man clubbed dozens of Jewish people to death. He then stood atop the corpses and played the Lithuanian anthem on an accordion. German soldiers looked on, taking photographs…’
and…
‘…The Nazis were not wrong to cite American precedents. Enslavement of African-Americans was written into the U.S. Constitution. Thomas Jefferson spoke of the need to “eliminate” or “extirpate” Native Americans. In 1856, an Oregonian settler wrote, “Extermination, however unchristianlike it may appear, seems to be the only resort left for the protection of life and property.” General Philip Sheridan spoke of “annihilation, obliteration, and complete destruction.” To be sure, others promoted more peaceful—albeit still repressive—policies. The historian Edward B. Westermann, in “Hitler’s Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars” (Oklahoma), concludes that, because federal policy never officially mandated the “physical annihilation of the Native populations on racial grounds or characteristics,” this was not a genocide on the order of the Shoah. The fact remains that between 1500 and 1900 the Native population of U.S. territories dropped from many millions to around two hundred thousand.
America’s knack for maintaining an air of robust innocence in the wake of mass death struck Hitler as an example to be emulated. He made frequent mention of the American West in the early months of the Soviet invasion. The Volga would be “our Mississippi,” he said. “Europe—and not America—will be the land of unlimited possibilities.”…’
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/how-american-racism-influenced-hitler
South Carolina Is Lobbying To Allow Discrimination Against Jewish Parents
‘… The Trump Administration is considering whether to grant a South Carolina request that would effectively allow faith-based foster care agencies in the state the ability to deny Jewish parents from fostering children in its network. The argument, from the state and from the agency, is that the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act should not force a Protestant group to work with Jewish people if it violates a tenet of their faith.
The case being made by South Carolina is an extension of the debate around RFRA, which is more commonly associated with discrimination against LGBTQ people, but by no means applies exclusively to that group….’
Plutocrat happy the US military still has respect ????
/jd
Paul Volcker, at 91, Sees ‘a Hell of a Mess in Every Direction’
Mr. Volcker: “Respect for government, respect for the Supreme Court, respect for the president, it’s all gone,” he said. “Even respect for the Federal Reserve.
“And it’s really bad. At least the military still has all the respect. But I don’t know, how can you run a democracy when nobody believes in the leadership of the country?”
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/business/dealbook/paul-volcker-federal-reserve.html
Never forget just how bad the MSM really is.
/jd
