USA under presidency of a know-nothing, neo-fascist, racist, sexist, mobbed-up narcissist!!

[James Lateer]

Definition of Hun

: a member of a nomadic central Asian people gaining control of a large part of central and eastern Europe under Attila about a.d. 450
2a often not capitalized : a person who is wantonly destructive : vandal
b disparaging : german; especially : a German soldier

[/FONT]
James Lateer

[James Lateer]

If we could nail down the concept we have been discussing, then IMHO we could solve the whole Trump problem including Trump Derangement Syndrome. Who better to help solve it than someone whose uncle coined the term "genocide"?!?

The Trump Derangement Syndrome has driven a large number of people to attempt to write their own dictionaries. They have re-defined "truth", they have re-defined "propaganda" and apparently they have also modified the definition of "fascism".

Not that terms don't need modification from time to time. A little over 100 years ago, the Mormon Church was started. I have had a discussion with a Doctor of Divinity as to whether the Mormon Church is Christian. He said definitely not. But maybe they are!

So the definition of Christianity had to be modified to either include or exclude Mormons. This exercise may have modified the concept of Christianity one way or the other. I'm not sure about that.

So maybe along comes Donald Trump and now we have to expand or modify the 100 year old concept of fascism. Or maybe not.

The thing that concerns me, though, is that you have people openly advocating the use of "shorthand" words to describe groups of people. Historically, people using "shorthand" words to describe people or individuals just doesn't have a good record.

Hitler used the word "Aryan" to describe people although they were not really Aryans. Hitler also invented his own definition of who was a "German" and who was a "Jew." Hitler redifined Jehovah's Witnesses as "Bible students". Etc. Etc.

We don't need to say much about Joseph McCarthy who used "shorthand" to describe people he didn't like.

I'm trying to think of an example where using "shorthand" labels to describe people was actually beneficial or helpful. I can't think of any off the top of my head. There may be some such examples. I don't know.

Superficially, it would seem that people are looking through the dictionary trying to find a negative expletive or category to put on Trump. I'm not sure they are finding it. So if they can't find a negative shorthand expletive that accurately describes Trump, then one could possibly conclude that he doesn't deserve to be so labeled.

I guess you could have something very bad invented in the world that didn't yet have a name. It would still be bad, but you'd have to come up with a name. I'm just not sure that mis-applying an older, historical word is the answer, though. The danger with that is that if the shoe does not fit, then those using the shorthand word will lose authority and lose credibility.

When Trump claims that he is the victim of a Witch Hunt, then changing the definition of Witch may not help things with respect to Trump.

I have to ask, if Trump is evil (and many people think he is), then why isn't there an accurate word out of history to describe him (and/or his movement)?

Personally, I am dead serious when I suggest that Trump is virtually a clone of the Roman Emperor Nero. But then, I can defend that statement. It doesn't require any "shorthand" or re-writing of the dictionary. It is simply a fact that Nero came up with a new way to govern Rome, breaking with his predecessors and appealing directly to the crowd, the mob, the "little people" and gave them goodies that they previously never had been promised. Nero had a very powerful, personal brand that he carefully maintained.

IMHO, Trump fits the mold of Nero but he doesn't fit the mold of Hitler, Franco or Mussolini. I'm not sure about Caligula or Tiberius, etc. etc.

To summarize, it would seem like the opponents of Trump should make accurate criticisms and accurately portray his faults and weaknesses. If he is called "Hitler", then when he doesn't start concentration camps, etc. his opponents will lose their credibility. It's possibly a case of crying "wolf, wolf".

If Trump is so bad, then there should already be words in the English language which can do the job of describing the "evil" which he represents. Re-writing the dictionary just opens up too many problems in my opinion.

But then, fascism was always a general and imprecise label to start with. Many people hid behind it. Maybe it's the best label available. This whole controversy is sort of mind boggling IMHO.

James Lateer

[Peter Lemkin]

1.] I rarely - and think most others who post here rarely - take the same kind of care as one would if writing a formal talk or book in the exacting wording used. That said, I'm still happy calling Trump and a lot on the far Right in the USA and elsewhere fascists even if they hated Hitler or don't seem to resemble him in all ways....there are too many parallels in ideas and methods.

2.] I find no problem in comparing Trump with Nero, but Caligula was little different. The fall of Imperial Rome is now happening in its modern form in the USA, IMO, and Trump is only one of its manifestations - not its only one by far. Fascism has been creeping into USA life from before WW2 and picked up pace rapidly since the end of that War...one of many signs of this was the National Security State's 'romance' with ex-Nazis and use of them for many purposes.

3] Language at best is shorthand for ideas, and definitions of words both change and are often contested as to their meaning.

4] Trump has uniquely divided the Nation as it has never been since the Civil War. His base includes the Wallace racist voters and their 'kin'; the downtrodden and confused by the propaganda that the other - not the US political/financial elites are to blame for most woes; he knows how to confuse many and create division and hate; he is totally corrupt and only interested in enriching himself and his mafia family and friends. He is destroying what little was left of democracy and polity in the USA. He must be removed and fast - then we need to destroy both of the two American business and National Security State parties and replace them....or the US is going the way of Imperial Rome - but much quicker!

[James Lateer]

I hope lots of people are reading this discussion about Trump and Fascism. I am learning by the day, almost by the hour.

Tonight on a 24-hour cable channel, I listened to an interview with a spokesman for ANTIFA--which apparently stands for anti-Fascist. Again, apparently, their modus operandi is to do violence to fascists. Their brand of violence is, again, apparently pretty much the same as Krystallnacht. And they, themselves, reserve the right to themselves define and label who is a fascist; and they maintain it could be anybody. They probably would label someone they didn't like as a fascist without reference to any dictionary, history book or encyclopedia. I don't see the difference between this and, say, Dr. Goebbels.

After about four rounds of discussion on this topic on this site, it looks more and more like those who are labeling others as fascists are really the closest thing to Hitler wannabees among the various factions on the current scene. It also smacks of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Un-American Activity meant something you don't like. Plain and simple.

As I have mentioned, this hits close to home since I have very close relatives (who I will not name) who have adopted certain features of this thinking. I would go further and say that almost all of my extended family is drunk at this point on the anti-Trump Kool-Aid.

What kind of freaks me out is when I read that Trump "must be gotten rid of fast". That sounds a little like how the JFK assassins probably thought about JFK. After spending four years of my life PROVING BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT that card-carrying Nazis murdered JFK, I really can't accept as proper any advocacy of using their methods "to get rid of" an elected President.

They presumably didn't think our system of elections was up to the task of judging the danger presented by JFK. The judgment of 60 million voters wasn't as good as theirs and wasn't sufficient. They thought JFK had to "be gotten rid of". Personally, I believe their thinking just had to be literally insane. I mean literally insane. JFK was not a threat to anyone and didn't deserve anything worse than to lose the next election (if he was so bad).

If I had to, I would label Trump a semi-racist or half-racist. That's because he has labeled illegal immigrants as rapists and has implicitly called immigrants from Middle Eastern countries more likely than others to be terrorists. But Jimmy Carter has aggressively criticized Israel for lumping all Palestinians as terrorist accomplices and punishing them all for the sins of Hamas. Trump has banned travel, but he hasn't actually physically harmed terrorist related innocents as Israel has done.

And you can say the same exact thing about Congress voting sanctions against Iran. That hurts all Iranians, not just affiliates of Iranian terrorism. Because of the sanctions, some Iranian kids will go hungry. They wouldn't do that to Sweden, Switzerland or Canada. You could easily call the Iranian sanctions racist.

I've gotta believe that ten years from now, those who called for Trump "to be gotten rid of" will look back at their claims and feel embarrassed.

Since Nuremberg has been mentioned, I have to say that Nuremberg had legitimacy (to me) because we had two democratically elected governments (the US and the UK) putting on trial criminal thugs whose main sin was, first of all, destroying German democracy and using unlimited violence against people because of racialism. Those folks like Goring labelled people willy-nilly as Aryans, Jews, "Bible Students", and put them in "protective custody" (ie murdered them).

Once you get off the highway of reason and start writing up your own dictionary, then you are personal trouble with yourself. YOU CAN'T DECLARE WAR ON THE DICTIONARY!!!!! Folks have re-defined "truth", they have re-defined "propaganda" and now any thug on the street is given the license to redefine "fascist" to his own taste.
And the most sorry fact of all is that the ant-Trump Kool-Aid is being brewed up exclusively by the Globalists.

Globalists are not morally justified. Globalists are motivated by greed, desperately addicted to cheap labor and because of their addiction to cheap labor, they are the moral counterparts of the slave-owners of old.

To put it most simply, Trump "has to be gotten rid of" so the Globalists can maintain their bottomless supply of CHEAP LABOR. It's Trump's policy on trade and the illegal immigrant supply of cheap labor that is fueling the Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Trump is not a candidate for sainthood, but why would so many ultra-intelligent people (and so many of my well-educated close relatives) be so easily fooled by the Globalists into renouncing American democracy, to advocate Kristallnacht-type criminality, and to declare was on Webster's Dictionary?

I guess you don't dare say "no" to a Globalist. They will "get rid of you" by any means.

I hope lots of people are reading this or considering these disturbing issues.

James Lateer

[Peter Lemkin]

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We end today's show with the shocking case of a Texas woman sentenced to five years in prison for illegally voting, who could now have even more time added to her sentence. Crystal Mason cast a provisional ballot in the 2016 presidential election despite having a past felony conviction for tax fraud that prevented her from voting. In March, she was convicted of illegal voting, but says she did not know that she was barred from casting a ballot in Texas because of her criminal record. Her supporters argue her conviction was racially biased, and point to the case of Terri Lynn Rote, a white woman in Iowa who was convicted of the same crime after she tried to vote for President Trumptwice. Rote was sentenced to two years' probation and was fined $750.
AMY GOODMAN: For more, we go to Fort Worth, Texas, where Crystal Mason joins us along with her attorney Kim Cole. Crystal has a federal court hearing in Fort Worth, Texas, on Thursdaythat's tomorrow. If she loses the hearing, she'll be heading to prison. Also with us in Washington, Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, author of Race to Incarcerate and co-editor of Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment. According to a 2016 report by The Sentencing Project, policies restricting the voting rights of convicted felons disenfranchise more than 6 million people.
We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Crystal, let's begin with you. You go to court tomorrow. Explain what happened on Election Daywhat you understood, what you didand now what you're facing.
CRYSTAL MASON: OK. I went to go vote, November 2016. And what I understood was that I could vote. So I went to the local church, where I went before I went to prison, and I went to vote. When they looked on the roster, they realized my name wasn't there. And I was like, "Well, I've been living here for over 10 years." So, when I got ready to walk away, that's when they stopped me and they told me that, "Hey, you can fill out a provisional ballot." And I said, "What was that?" They said, "If you're at the right location, it will count. And if you're not, it won't." So I didn't see any harm with that. So the lady sat me down and helped me out with it. And that's exactly what I did.
AMY GOODMAN: And then what happened?
CRYSTAL MASON: Then I was arrested for illegally voting.
KIM COLE: Several months later.
CRYSTAL MASON: Yeah, it was several months later. It was March 2017. That's when they arrested me for illegally voting. And I explained that Iexactly what the lady kept telling me. She told me, "Make sure everything matches" on my driver's license. So that's what I kept saying, was I put everything correctly, so I didn't illegally vote. I put everything on the form correctly.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Kim Cole, you're Crystal's attorney. Could you talk about, first of all, howhow frequently does this happen in Fort Worth, of people being prosecuted for illegal voting? And I'm surprised that in this particular case there wasn't even any attempt to plea bargain down, even if there was a violation, to something of a much lesser sentence.
KIM COLE: This isn't prosecuted very frequently in Tarrant County, I can tell you that. There isI guess there's a record of discriminatory prosecution, to be politically correct, I guess I will say, but there's a record of discriminatory prosecution in Tarrant County. But certainly, for this particular type of offense, there's not a lot of prosecution that goes on for illegal voting.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, I mean, I want tocan we compare this to that story of Terri Lynn Rote? A white woman was convicted of the same crime as Crystal after she tried to vote for President Trumptwice.
KIM COLE: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: She was sentenced to two years' probation and fined $750 in Iowa. Now, Crystal
KIM COLE: And that'sgo ahead.
AMY GOODMAN: is going to prison for five years for mistakenly voting, when laws change from state to state?
KIM COLE: I think it is absolutely ridiculous. There is aI'm not certain where you're from, but Tarrant County is very proud to be the largest urban red county, you know, in the country. And they want to keep it that way. And this isthis prosecution, in my opinion, is to send a message to minority voters to stay away from the polls.
There is absolutely no reason Crystal should have been prosecuted. She was not aware that she was not eligible to vote. Texas is one of the states where convicted felons do actually have the right to vote. And so, Crystal, unaware that her being on supervised release would prohibit her from voting, that she wasn't eligible untileven though she had served her prison sentence, she wasn't eligible until after her supervised release ended. And she was not aware of that. No one told her that. Her supervised release officer testified on the stand that he did not tell Crystal that she was not eligible to vote. And Crystal herself emphatically has proclaimed, from day one, she was not aware that she could not vote in the state of Texas. And here, for the crime of illegal voting, it requires that you vote knowing that you're not eligible. And that was not the case here. And Crystal was convicted by a judge and found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison.
Like I said, this, in my belief, is a concerted effort to keep Tarrant County red. This judge is a Republican judge. The state's star witness was a Republican election judge. He didn't report Crystal to the police for a crime. He called up his friend, the district attorney, a Republican district attorney, called her up specifically, directly, to prosecute this case. This is a clear message to disenfranchised voters in Tarrant County and to keep minorities from the polls.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I'd like to bring in Marc Mauer of The Sentencing Project, as well. Marc, this whole issue of felon disenfranchisement across the country, are you seeing at the national level any move to reform these policies? And also this selective prosecution, are you seeing any of that, as may be happening here in Fort Worth?
MARC MAUER: Right. Well, we have record numbers of people who can't vote as a result of a felony conviction: 6 million. But the encouraging news is that over the past two decades a good number of states have begun to reconsider these laws. In many cases, they've been on the books for a hundred, even 200, years, with very little scrutiny. So, several states in recent years have cut back the ban on voting after you complete your sentence. Other statesMaryland, Connecticut, Rhode Islandnow permit people on probation and/or parole to vote, too. So there's a growing movement to reconsider these policies, to scale back. Nonetheless, because of the rise of mass incarceration, the number of people with felony convictions, we still have this record 6 million people who can't vote.
In terms of prosecutions, we hear stories from around the country. I don't think they'rethe numbers are that dramatic, but it's not unusual to hear this. Just recently, a prosecutor in a county in North Carolina charged 12 people with voting illegally, very similar to the situation in Crystal Mason's case. On that particular case, of the 12 who were charged, nine of them were African-American.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, can't people votein Vermont and Maine, I think it is, can't you even vote from prison?
MARC MAUER: You can. Vermont and Maine, for many, many decades, have allowed everyone to vote, including people in prison. And internationally, that's often the norm. If you look at Western Europe, Canada, many other industrialized nations, many of them have no disenfranchisement, essentially saying that there are legitimate punishments for committing a crime, which may involve a period of incarceration, but that doesn't mean that you forfeit your fundamental rights as a citizen. We still welcome everyone into our democracy. It's a mixed-up set of opinions that come in democracy
AMY GOODMAN: So, if you move from one state to another and not realizeI mean, in one place you can vote from prison, in another way you'rein another place you're imprisoned if you vote, if you're under supervised probation in a place like Texas. Is it true, Crystal, that they have told you, when you go to court tomorrow, you should have your bags packed, ready to go to prison? You have three children?
CRYSTAL MASON: I do.
AMY GOODMAN: And they told you you could go to prison tomorrow?
CRYSTAL MASON: Yes, ma'am. Yes, yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Your oldest son is just about to go to college?
CRYSTAL MASON: He's in college.
AMY GOODMAN: Would you
CRYSTAL MASON: He's in college. And I go to court on the 30th. And his first game is September the 1st. It's on Friday. So he's been talking about coming home. He's down there on a football scholarship. He's been talking about coming home. I told him no. And I don't know if I'm going to make his first game.
AMY GOODMAN: And you could have this 5-year sentence extended to even more time tomorrow? Kim Cole, is that true?
KIM COLE: That's true. The state sentence is currently under appeal, so she hasn't begun serving that time. However, in federal court, the judge could sentence her to up to two additional years in federal prison.
AMY GOODMAN: For having violated what she was doing under supervision, though she did not know it was wrong, thought it was a citizen's duty?
KIM COLE: Right, right. That's correct, for having a new conviction for voting.
AMY GOODMAN: Crystal, do you ever plan to vote again?
CRYSTAL MASON: I do. I do. And that's what I'm encouraging my kids, to get out there so we can make a difference right now. I do. I just feel right now that the system failed me. You get out, you rehabilitate yourself, you get a good job, you go to school, you graduate from school, you're doing everything rightso, why would I go and vote, to go back to prison? Why would I do something like that to lose my kids again, to start all over again, you know? Through all of this, I lost a good job. Through all of thisso, it's like I'm going backwards instead of forward. Where's the reform, you know?

[Peter Lemkin]

TIMELY QUOTES ON FASCISM THEN AND NOW

Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally, August 12, 2017. Photo credit: Rodney Dunning / Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Do you live near a hate group? Would you know it if you did?
To find out more, click on this amazing Hate Map, and you will discover a wide variety of fascist hate groups all over the country whom they hate, what they've been up to, and where they are. There's one for nearly every taste.
It is as horrifying as those maps you see on the news showing fires raging throughout the American west. The flames seem to be leaping off the map.
White supremacy groups have been quietly simmering for years, but, under the Trump administration, they seem to be flaring up.
The number of neo-Nazi organizations in America increased by 22 percent between 2016 and 2017, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). (But the Ku Klux Klan has been shrinking, possibly due to fashion issues. I'm not being flip; physical image hair style, clothing, tattoos are apparently very important to these people.)
Some have names that make it pretty clear what they are the American Nazi Party, Aryan Nation Sadistic Souls MC, the Daily Stormer, Women for Aryan Unity, Aggressive Christianity, National Socialist Movement, White Lives Matter, to name only a few. Others have ambiguous, or even innocent sounding names, such as National Alliance, Creativity Movement, and Traditionalist Worker Party.
And some fascist groups are specifically focused on Muslims, for example, Bare Naked Islam, David Horowitz Freedom Center, Jihad Watch, and Refugee Resettlement Watch.
It is especially alarming to see the degree to which tech companies help spread the hate. As the SPLC puts it: "From payment processing to domain hosting to data mining, some of the biggest tech companies keep hate group sites up and running." For specifics, please see this chart.
Keep in mind these words from Albert Speer, Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production for Nazi Germany, and Adolf Hitler's chief architect:
Hitler's dictatorship was the first dictatorship of an industrial state in this age of modern technology, a dictatorship which employed to perfection the instruments of technology to dominate its own people. … By means of such instruments of technology as the radio and public-address systems, eighty million persons could be made subject to the will of one individual. Telephone, teletype, and radio made it possible to transmit the commands of the highest levels directly to the lowest organs where because of their high authority they were executed uncritically. Thus many offices and squads received their evil commands in this direct manner. The instruments of technology made it possible to maintain a close watch over all citizens and to keep criminal operations shrouded in a high degree of secrecy. To the outsider this state apparatus may look like the seemingly wild tangle of cables in a telephone exchange; but like such an exchange it could be directed by a single will.
Given the burgeoning of fascist hate groups in the US these days, we thought it would be a good time to present our readers with quotes on the subject. You will find that some of them are eerily prescient.
WhoWhatWhy Introduction by Milicent Cranor
Arthur Szyk's caricature of Wotan's palace, Valhalla, as a German beer hall, 1942. Photo credit: Artur Szyk / Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Dark Perspectives

.

I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security. (Jim Garrison)
Fascism will come at the hands of perfectly authentic Americans. (John T. Flynn)
The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. Both lessons hit home. Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing. (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
As I see it today, Hitler and Goebbels were in fact molded by the mob itself, guided by its yearnings and its daydreams. Of course, Goebbels and Hitler knew how to penetrate through to the instincts of their audiences; but in the deeper sense they derived their whole existence from these audiences. Certainly the masses roared to the beat set by Hitler's and Goebbels' baton; yet they were not the true conductors. The mob determined the theme. To compensate for misery, insecurity, unemployment, and hopelessness, this anonymous assemblage wallowed for hours at a time in obsessions, savagery and license. The personal unhappiness caused by the breakdown of the economy was replaced by a frenzy that demanded victims. By lashing out at their opponents and vilifying the Jews, they gave expression and direction to fierce primal passions. (Albert Speer)
Fascism is capitalism plus murder. (Upton Sinclair)
Fascism is capitalism in decay. (Rajani Palme Dutt)
Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany. (Peter Drucker)
Nationalism is an infantile thing. It is the measles of mankind. (Albert Einstein)
We are the United States of Amnesia, which is encouraged by a media that has no desire to tell us the truth about anything, serving their corporate masters who have other plans to dominate us. (Gore Vidal)
Auschwitz is outside of us, but it is all around us, in the air. The plague has died away, but the infection still lingers and it would be foolish to deny it. Rejection of human solidarity, obtuse and cynical indifference to the suffering of others, abdication of the intellect and of moral sense to the principle of authority, and above all, at the root of everything, a sweeping tide of cowardice, a colossal cowardice which masks itself as warring virtue, love of country and faith in an idea. (Primo Levi)
Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally, August 12, 2017. Photo credit: Rodney Dunning / Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends. (Henry A. Wallace)
The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. (Henry A. Wallace)
Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it. (Hannah Arendt)
Everybody must know, or remember, that Hitler and Mussolini, when they spoke in public, were believed, applauded, admired, adored like gods. They were "charismatic leaders"; they possessed a secret power of seduction that did not proceed from the credibility or the soundness of the things they said, but from the suggestive way in which they said them. And we must remember that their faithful followers, among them the diligent executors of inhuman orders, were not born torturers, were not (with a few exceptions) monsters: they were ordinary men. Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous; more dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions. (Primo Levi)
The advertising men made it clear that there were two ways of looking at ideas in a war against fascism. Those of us who were working on the project believed ideas were to be fought for; the advertising men believed they were to be sold. The audience, those at home in wartime, were not citizens' or people.' They were customers.' (Muriel Rukeyser)
Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism. (Barbara Tuchman)
Fascism is like a hydra you can cut off its head in the Germany of the '30s and '40s, but it'll still turn up on your back doorstep in a slightly altered guise. (Alan Moore)
You begin to realize that hypocrisy is not a terrible thing when you see what overt fascism is compared to sort of covert, you know, communal politics which the Congress has never been shy of indulging in. (Arundhati Roy)
Those of us who went through the war and tried to write about it became the messenger. We have given the message, and nothing has changed. (Elie Wiesel)
Then for the first time we became aware that our language lacks words to express this offence, the demolition of a man. In a moment, with almost prophetic intuition, the reality was revealed to us: we had reached the bottom. It is not possible to sink lower than this; no human condition is more miserable than this, nor could it conceivably be so. Nothing belongs to us any more; they have taken away our clothes, our shoes, even our hair; if we speak, they will not listen to us, and if they listen, they will not understand. They will even take away our name: and if we want to keep it, we will have to find ourselves the strength to do so, to manage somehow so that behind the name something of us, of us as we were, still remains. (Primo Levi)
Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally, August 12, 2017. Photo credit: Rodney Dunning / Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

As painful and embarrassing as it may be, the fact remains that we are confronted with a human structure that has been shaped by thousands of years of mechanistic civilization and is expressed in social helplessness and an intense desire for a führer. (Wilhelm Reich)
Fascism goes back to our infancy and childhood, where we were always told how to live. We were told, Yes, you may do this; no, you may not do that. So the secret of fascism is that it has this appeal to people whose later lives are not satisfactory. (Norman Mailer)
Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally, August 12, 2017. Photo credit: Rodney Dunning / Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

It was strange to listen to slick young Nazis along Fifth Avenue haranguing small gatherings from little mahogany pulpits. One spiel went as follows: "The philosophy of Hitler is a profound and thoughtful study of this industrial age, in which there is little room for the middleman or Jew."
A woman interrupted. "What kind of talk is that!" she exclaimed. "This is America. Where do you think you are?"
The young man, an obsequious, good-looking type, smiled blandly. "I'm in the United States and I happen to be an American citizen," he said smoothly.
"Well," she said, "I'm an American citizen, and a Jew, and if I were a man I'd knock your block off!"
One or two endorsed the lady's threat, but most of them stood apathetically silent. A policeman standing by quieted the woman. I came away astonished, hardly believing my ears. (Charlie Chaplin)

Lighter Takes

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It simply doesn't get easier than disavowing Nazis. It's as much of a presidential gimme as pardoning a fucking turkey. It is almost impossible to screw it up, but that's exactly what happened. So there is clearly no point in waiting for leadership from our president at moments like this because it is just not coming … incredibly, in a country where previous presidents have actually had to defeat Nazis, we now have one who cannot even be bothered to condemn them. (John Oliver reacting to President Donald Trump's response to the August 12, 2017, white- nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VA)
I don't think everybody who likes [Donald Trump] is a Nazi, but everybody who is a Nazi sure does seem to like him. (Jon Stewart)
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[Peter Lemkin]

First, there is a GREAT new book out specifically on Trump and Fascism [not the first, I mentioned another just above], by Yale Professor Jason Stanley. It is called "How Fascism Works".

Also, just one of many little 'notes'.....

White Supremacist Peter Brimelow Invited to White House Advisor Kudlow's Birthday Party

By Adele M. Stan | August 21, 2018 7:03 pm



Just days after White House speechwriter Darren Beattie was pushed from his post after revelations that he appeared on a panel with the white identitarian author Peter Brimelow, the name of the alt-right's favorite uncle popped up again in Trump news, appearing at a birthday party for Larry Kudlow, director of the president's National Economic Council.
In an interview with The Washington Post's Robert Costa, Kudlow protested that he knew nothing of Brimelow's views on immigration and race when he invited the champion of the white cause to his home. Kudlow told Costa that he knows Brimelow "forever" as a financial journalist and nothing more.
Brimelow runs the white-identitarian website, Vdare.com, which promotes the views of outright white nationalists, and is favored by members of the so-called "alt right."
In November 2016, Brimelow appeared as a featured speaker at a conference convened in Washington, D.C., by the white nationalist Richard B. Spencer, which ended famously with Spencer's "Hail Trump" speech, and a few shouts of "sieg heil" from raucous attendees.
Richard Spencer, left, with Peter Brimelow at a conference convened by Spencer's National Policy Institute on Nov. 19, 2016, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: A.M. Stan)Opening his speech earlier that same day, Brimelow told the Spencer groupies, "If you can't understand me, or you think I should speak more directly at the microphone, or anything helpful like that, please raise a fiery cross or some other cultural symbol, and I will redouble my efforts to assimilate acoustically."
Right Wing Watch's Peter Montgomery noted Brimelow hanging out with Spencer earlier that year in Cleveland during the Republican National Convention, at a "Gays for Trump" party hosted by Milo Yiannapoulos, then of Breitbart News.
And at the 2015 American Renaissance conference in Tennessee, Right Wing Watch reported, "Brimelow argued that instead of promoting unity, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day has just turned into anti-white indoctrination.'" He went on to advocate that Texas secede from the United States. In the same speech, he complained of not receiving adequate credit for having coined the phrase "War on Christmas," which is the way more famous right-wing figures, such as Bill O'Reilly and President Donald Trump characterize the use of the more inclusive phrase, "Happy Holidays."
Another Trump-booster who credits Brimelow with helping to shape her views is Ann Coulter.
Speaking to the Post's Costa, Kudlow said if he had known about Brimelow's views on race and immigration, "we would have never invited him," Kudlow said. "I'm a civil rights Republican," Kudlow added.
Read more about Peter Brimelow at Right Wing Watch.

[James Lateer]

I feel I have proven that Nazis murdered JFK, so I am no pro-fascist. But I just have to constantly rebuff those who are throwing around the "fascist" label regarding Trump and probably even anti-Trumpers.

So now we have a Yale professor on this bandwagon. It may be that Madeleine Allbright started this off with her book about fascism back in the 1990's.

All of this is a classic example of the Deep State intelligence establishment attacking their opponents for doing the thing that they themselves are doing. Now we know that the Deep State colluded with Russians to produce the dossier and they are accusing Trump of colluding with the Russians. The FBI and the Intel community were the only ones who colluded with the Russians. There is no evidence of Trump colluding with the Russians and there obviously never will be because they have had over two years and have found nothing--nada--zilch-zero.

The actual, real fascists (for whom the word was coined) were actually bitter opponents of democracy and elections. And they used the National Police, i.e. the Gestapo to investigate and arrest their opponents. Although Hitler was barely elected, we know that the first thing he did was to abolish further elections. This is not the program of anybody in the US (except maybe the Globalists).

Now it is the Yale University (Skull and Bones???) people who are calling other people fascists. The problem is that THEY ARE THE ONES who want to disregard election results. Trump is eager to stand for election. It is the real fascists like ANTIFA and now Yale University who want to disregard elections. They are the ones who want to use the FBI like the Gestapo back in the day and use political trials instead of elections.

If you are colluding with and advocating police state tactics, you are a fascist. If you are advocating political trials, you are a fascist just like the Gestapo, just like Joseph McCarthy.

Trump has shown no fear of elections. It is his opponents (along with the Deep State) who want to disregard elections and who are claiming that we can't abide by election results. Would you rather have 62 milliion Americans pick our leaders or have them picked by Robert Mueller, James Comey, Peter Strzok, and the FISA court?

Now the FBI is investigating the Democratic candidate for Governor in Florida, also the wife of Bernie Sanders in addition to Trump.

The Deep State hates both the Bernie people and the Trump people because they are popular with the people and they can win elections.

If you are colluding with and advocating for the Deep State, the Police State or the Fascist-Globalists, then you are a fascist.

Don't be fooled. Democracy is still the best alternative, despite what the Globalists and the US Police State advocates are claiming.

James Lateer

[James Lateer]

After a second thought, it seems even more obvious:

You had the false flag JFK assassination, the false-flag CIA involved Watergate Frame-up, then you had the bogus Iran Hostage Crisis, then you had Iran-Contra, then they investigated sperm spots on a dress in the Clinton administration and then the fake-911 and fake anthrax attacks and the fake Iraq war provocation...-----

and now you have the Russiagate fake "Watergate Style" operation.

How can anybody be posting on a site which ostensibly exists to criticize the Deep State, and then at the same time, support another JFK assassination-type operation or Watergate-clone political crimes frame-up?

It seems like even a junior high kid could figure out this pattern. What are people made of who, given the sordid history which I have recited above, continue to admire this type of B*** S***?

It would be sad if it were not so nauseating, but there really aren't any words which can really do justice to describing this despicable and deplorable legacy which (amazingly) still has fans and admirers (who are otherwise well-educated, sane and conscientious).

It is utterly beyond comprehension. Maybe this is like living in the Middle Ages. I really can't fathom it.

James Lateer

[Peter Lemkin]

Some are lost with a past and long abandoned definition of 'fascism' and what fascism really represents - at the basic political, sociological, psychological, societal, structural levels...

Fascism means dividing a population to achieve power. Jason Stanley understood this as a scholar of philosophy and propaganda and as the child of refugees of WWII Europe, but even he was surprised by its prevalence at home. First with the rise of the birther movement and later the ascent of Donald Trump, he observed that not only is the rise of fascist politics possible in the United States, but its roots have been here for more than a century. Drawing on history, philosophy, sociology, critical race theory, and examples from around the world from 19th-century America to 20th-century Germany (where Hitler was inspired by the Confederacy and Jim Crow South) to 21st-century India--Stanley identifies the ten pillars of fascist politics that leaders use to hold onto power by dividing populations into an us and a them: the mythic past, propaganda, anti-intellectualism, unreality, hierarchy, victimhood, law and order, sexual anxiety, appeals to the heartland, and a dismantling of public welfare and unity. He uncovers urgent patterns that are as prevalent today as ever and pins down a creeping sense that fascist tendencies are on the rise. By recognizing them, he argues, readers might begin to resist their most harmful effects (we now see infecting the Nation under Trump - and even before Trump).