The USA by a slim margin votes for Fascism, Rascism, Mysogeny, Hate.

[Peter Lemkin]

Sorry this post is a bit late, but the Forum was down during the election. I am ABSOLUTELY NO FAN of how the Democrats [really both parties] support US Hegemony, a system of a few rich increasingly stealing from the growing poor, support for an indefensible Zionist Israel's genocidal war on the Palestinians and many other things. That said, Trumpf [family name when they came from Germany] and his Make America Racist/Fascist/Misogynist Again party filled me with existential disgust. A fact much on display during election: that half of the USA's adult population has only a sixth grade (or less) level of English reading/writing/understanding ability showed! It also allowed so many to be fooled by well-known Propaganda techniques to believe absolute fiction, lies, and to vote AGAINST their own interests! That many in the days AFTER the election were JUST beginning to understand that i.e., tariffs would do nothing but increase their costs, and the sad belief of some ethnic minorities that Trump wasn't going to deport and disrespect them showed an almost unbelievable level of naivete, if not stupidity. My entire life I voted for Left Progressive third party candidates, but simply could not this time. I held my nose and voted against Trumpfian Fascism.....little good that did. It was close - but such obscene forces should not even get single-digits in a sane polity. While I'll concede that the USA needs radical change, it needs it in the opposite direction and opposite orientation than what Trumpf and those behind Trumpf are intent on. OK, USA, you fucked-up big-time, and we'll be lucky if we get one last chance. I for one am in the resistance - primarily against Trumpism, but also against Business-As-Usual politics. At least the hidden lies have been laid bare if one cares/dares to see. Racism, Sexism, Regressive Religiosity, Rich over Poor, Men over Women, White over all others, those who feel 'entitled' over the others. Fascism was always lurking in the background in the USA, but now it is in control - or should I say out of control? Shame on the citizenry. You voted for your own punishment, but sadly for that of almost all others in the USA - and beyond. The ONLY ones who will benefit are the Ultra-rich, the seen and unseen Oligarchy (in US and Worldwide), the gun and arms makers. We're all going to "go through some 'things'"......and I fear VERY BAD ONES. While primarily those in the 'ol USA will shortly suffer on a daily basis; this is a HUGE and NEGATIVE event in history that will effect the entire World adversely.

[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]

Heard about PROJECT 2025 - the semi-secret plan behind the Trumpf M.A.G.A. movement's hidden hands - well here it is. Read and worry - then FIGHT against it! Trust me, its intentions are to effect NEGATIVELY every US Citizen (but a handful), and will also have an 'trickle-down' effect on everyone wherever you live. Trump's grandfather used to go to American Nazi meetings; Trump's father went to KKK meetings; and Trump had only one book we reliably know of he ever read - the speeches of Adolf Hitler, which his 1st wife (now buried on one of his golf-courses) said he kept on his night table.

PROJECT 2025

[Peter Lemkin]

The Prime Architect of Project 2025 Appointed to head OMB!

[Peter Lemkin]

..and a Nazi to head Counter-terrorism

[Peter Lemkin]

[Peter Lemkin]

A Film about the January 6 Insurrection

[Peter Lemkin]

While I feel the Democratic Party in the long-term is NOT the answer, to be practical, given the 'baked-in' two-party system in the US, it is the only tool available to fight what is openly FASCISM of the Drumpf regime. I will later speak to what we can imagine in a post Democratic Party world, but for the immediate future it is the only vehicle of opposition, I believe - and we who are more Progressive to Radical can push the Democratic Party further in that direction [and later abandon it], whilst achieving the most important task facing the US and the World since the 1930's - that being the defeat of the resurrection of openly FASCIST regimes, such as the one to come into power Jan. 20, 2025 and which will destroy much of what is good in the US and World and add nothing good. Here is an interesting roadmap for how to hobble Drumpf and his minions and wrestle-back control of the House and Senate in two years.

[Peter Lemkin]

THE SINISTER FORCE THAT IS FASCIST OLIGARCH MUSK
Something sinister is unfolding at the heart of American government. Because it is dangerous in a new way, we lack the language to label it and communicate the extent of the threat. Elon Musk, a billionaire business owner and major beneficiary of contracts from the U.S. government ($3 billion was promised from almost 100 different contracts across 17 different agencies last year alone), has been assigned a job in an incoming Donald Trump presidential administration as co-head of a government entity that does not yet exist.
Although his companies have been the subject of at least 20 recent investigations, Musk will likely neither go through any formal confirmation process nor be vetted by anyone as he ascends to the highest levels of authority. He has already been intervening heavily in Republican politics as a funder, enforcer, diplomat, and de facto policymaker.
So insecure that he reportedly ordered his minions at Twitter to tweak the algorithm to boost his content, Musk has made himself a reference point of the incoming government, always in the frame and right next to the charismatic demagogue, whether at Mar-a-Lago or on Trump Force One. He even showed up at the reopening of Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and other foreign heads of state as though he were their equal.
Actually, Musk would find that last statement insulting. As sociologist Brooke Harrington, author of the Capital Without Borders and Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism, told me in our 2021 Lucid interview: “Ultra-wealthy individuals wield a transnational, unaccountable power…They regard states as play things. The law is their marionette. They interfere in democratic processes and legislative processes.”
We have already seen the results of this arrogance, with Musk threatening to use his money to primary Republican lawmakers who dissent from what he and Trump want in any area. Musk’s styling of himself as MAGA “muscle” has led Anand Giridharadas to coin the term “paramonetary forces” to describe his brand of action. Giridharadas observes that paramilitaries serve as “unofficial forces, operating outside the government and skirting the boundaries of legality, willing to do what the legitimate forces will not.”

[img=550x366.845703125]https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1216,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9f9d6bb9-72b5-488b-837a-e129a32c9e65_1024x683.png[/img]

Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump watch a test flight of a SpaceX Starship rocket, Texas, Nov. 19.

Musk has built his own army of sorts. He has 205 million followers on his X platform, which since he purchased it has been engineered as a far-right radicalization machine. A 2023 dissertation by Trevor Auten found a clear correlation between Twitter users who shared Musk’s content and that of White nationalist/Alt-Right, Anti-Semitic, and anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups. They know what he stands for.
Money is Musk’s main weapon in the battle to consolidate anti-democratic power and influence, and not only in America. As Giridharadas writes, Musk could offer “favorable business deals to foreign leaders so they take actions that benefit Trump — and those payoffs would not be ‘illegal’ because they did not come directly from Trump himself.” Such arrangements are not uncommon in the autocratic world, but here the funds for them are almost limitless.
Whether it’s his posts in favor of the far-right party Alternative for Germany, which harbors Nazi sympathizers, his regular communications with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his support of neo-Fascist Italian leader Giorgia Meloni, or his enmeshment with the Chinese regime, where fully half of his Tesla cars are manufactured, Musk seems fully invested in enabling a new world order favorable to autocracy.
That also means helping the Kremlin help the world’s democracies to decline precipitously, starting with the United States. it’s no secret that Putin longs to have America become like Russia of the 1990s, with a population mired in poverty and desperation, the better for elites to plunder the spoils. The “Department of Government Efficiency” will be an Orwellian test case for disrupting society through economic “shock events” that paralyze governance and create mass misery.
Some people predict that Trump will eventually get rid of Musk, seeing the billionaire as too much competition. That is a misreading of Trump, who can take some humiliation –Russian television has mocked him and has showed nude photos of his wife—if the end goal is more profits and power for him. Autocrats are entirely transactional beings, and Trump and Musk likely have an understanding: each needs the other.
The novelty of Musk’s role was acknowledged by Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries at a press conference on Dec. 19 about the billionaire’s meddling in Republican actions regarding the threat of a government shutdown. “What is Musk’s role? Who is actually in charge in terms of who you’re negotiating with?” asked a journalist. “That’s a good question, and I don’t have a great answer for you on that right now,” Jeffries replied.
That frightening sense of an instability of authority —the opposite of what strongman Trump sold to credulous Americans— makes it important for us to find the language to name the threat and communicate the stakes of Musk at the apex of power. “What are the proper analytical frames for this situation?” I wrote on X about Musk’s place in the Trump transition and next administration. “Hostile takeover? Old fashioned authoritarian cronyism taken to new levels?”

[Peter Lemkin]

From Mother Jones Magazine [a good one!]
[C0-President] Elon Musk Applauds the German Far-Right Party
After rallying behind Trump, the tech billionaire supports AfD and other anti-immigration parties.

Alex Nguyen
Elon Musk appears to be leaning even further into an embrace of far-right extremism. Following his social media assault to block a congressional spending bill meant to avoid a government shutdown, the tech billionaire took to X and described the racist, far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as Germany’s last, best hope. 
“Only the AfD can save Germany,” he posted on X early Friday. He was responding to Naomi Seibt, a young German right-wing influencer—the Washington Post dubbed her the anti-Greta Thunberg for her climate change denialism—whose caption in part read, “The presumptive next chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) is horrified by the idea that Germany should follow Elon Musk’s and Javier Milei’s example.” Similar to Argentina President Javier Milei’s “chainsaw” policies, Musk has promised $2 trillion in cuts to federal spending as co-lead of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 

Olaf Scholz, the current chancellor of Germany, dismissed Musk’s remarks in an unrelated press conference on Friday. “We have freedom of speech, and that also applies to multibillionaires,” Scholz said. “But freedom of speech also means that you can say things that are not right and do not contain good political advice.”
The AfD is controversial even among other European far-right parties because many of its leaders are not shy about expressing Nazi sympathies. In May, France’s far-right party led by Marine Le Pen split from the AfD in its European Parliament coalition after the German party’s top candidate, Maximilian Krah, said that a person was “not automatically a criminal” just because they had been a member of the SS, Adolph Hitlter’s paramilitary organization. 
As my colleague Isabela Dias wrote, many Germans consider the AfD party as ethnonationalists who want to mass deport all “unassimilated citizens” with non-German ethnic backgrounds. The country’s domestic intelligence agency designated the AfD as a “suspected extremist group” back in 2021 and is currently holding the party under observation. 
Reports that AfD members held a covert meeting regarding the mass deportation plan led to protests earlier this year, but despite this, the party is polling in second place at 19 percent —behind Merz’s CDU/CSU political alliance at 31 percent—in the lead-up to Germany’s snap election in February 2025. 
Musk has been amplifying right-wing, anti-immigration voices on X for years and has already questioned criticism aimed at the AfD back in June. In September 2023, he denounced Germany for giving money to charities and rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean Sea. 
In the US, many Republicans support Musk’s growing political influence. “The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said on X early Thursday. “Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk.”
“I’d be open to supporting @elonmusk for Speaker of the House,” wrote Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene, who reposted Paul. “The establishment needs to be shattered.” 
In a world of oligarchies, the richest man in the world is pushing the most destructive policies possible, and it’s marginalized communities like immigrants who inevitably will suffer the consequences. With a looming Donald Trump administration, a Republican majority in both chambers of Congress, and a conservative Supreme Court, this spells trouble for US immigrants—GOP government officials say they intend to end birthright citizenship, limit legal immigration, and enact mass deportation. 
Musk is also increasingly going global with his attempts to influence elections. He previously has shown interest in funding other anti-immigration parties, such as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, in which reports suggest he has contributed as much as $100 million. Musk met with Farage earlier this week at Mar-a-Lago to discuss the donation.