"It is not clear to me how anyone can any longer deny that Trump is promising to destroy our democracy and usher in authoritarianism.
But it is also not clear that he is still a figure that any but the extremes of his base will follow to that end. Hence his emphasis on turning them to violence."
She notes that on Friday in Minnesota, he used fascist rhetoric when he
In Minnesota Friday, Trump echoed fascists when he told supporters that their opponents are corrupt communists to whom the US does not belong: it belongs to MAGA.
Saturday at the NRA meeting in Dallas, he threw out the idea of nullifying the constitutional amendment limiting a president to two terms. He also urged his followers there to "be rebellious."
A concise and well-written article, 'The End of Civic Compassion: On education in a fascist America' by Jason Stanley, the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University as published by The New Republic. As one who worked in higher education for 32 years before retiring almost four years ago, I noticed that faculty members seemed more circumspect in their words and actions in the latter part of my career. I think that came in response to gradually more oversight or what some might call meddling in higher education by state lawmakers. I am about halfway through a dystopian novel, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. It is an unpleasant read that some have compared to Orwell's 1984. It feels more prescient to me than 1984 did when I read it in high school 50 years ago. Is that because I am more politically aware or "woke" today, or are we much closer to the edge of a precipice than we were back then?
Controversial #Trump movie ‘The Apprentice’ depicts him as #rapist
[probably because he is one]
A movie called “The Apprentice” about a young Donald Trump’s rise to power premiered Mon evening at the #Cannes Film Festival, the #film stars Sebastian Stan as Trump & Jeremy Strong, who plays the ruthless lawyer & political fixer Roy Cohn.
“By & large, it is a very dark & chilling origin story.”
As they were making the #film, director #AliAbbasi said he had many people question why he would choose #Trump as his subject matter….
“…there is no nice metaphorical way to deal w/the rising wave of #fascism,” he said. “There’s only the messy way … the way of dealing w/this … on its own terms, on its own level … good people have been quiet for too long … it’s time to make #movies relevant. It’s time to make movies #political again.”
#MackenzieKing’s “cheerleading” for #Hitler’s regime got a tremendous boost during his tour of landmarks of the #Nazi “miracle,” as Teigrob recounts in riveting detail. The photographs tell a very chilling story as well, especially one that shows King sitting proudly in Hitler’s seat at the All-German Sports Competitions while surrounded by Nazi bigwigs in full swastika-studded regalia.
Both works, Mackenzie King in the Age of the Dictators, by Roy MacLaren, and Four Days in Hitler’s Germany: Mackenzie King’s Mission to Avert a Second World War, by Robert Teigrob, rely heavily on the King diary. Indeed, without access to the prime minister’s private thoughts, neither book would be as insightful, as cringe-inducing, or, likely, even possible.
"International far-right leaders, including France’s Marine Le Pen, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Argentina’s Javier Milei, came together in Madrid to rail against socialism and “massive illegal migration”
Other visitors included Israeli minister Amichai Chikli, André Ventura, the leader of Portugal’s far-right Chega party, and the Chilean far-right leader José Antonio Kast.
"Alito and his robed gang are modern American fascism's real bulwark—the final reason that this cult of creepy religious bigots really could get their way in the end. There's no law these justices can't abrogate, no protection of citizens they can't demolish with a wave of a manicured hand, for whatever reason they want to make up," (continued in /2)
(continued from /1)… "This makes American fascists bold. They are very clearly intending to make IVF and birth control illegal, and they're talking openly about punishing women for having abortions, and tracking the movement of pregnant people, and criminalizing gay and trans people, and outlawing even talk of diversity and inclusion,"
This election should not be close. The Right has spent 50 yrs pushing a myth of a “liberal media,” when they’ve owned or controlled most presses for decades. We’re paying the price for our negligence in allowing that to happen. How do we fix systemic disorders of this scale?
Four young Germans beat The Ecke, the SPD's top candidate in elections for the European Parliament in Saxony, so badly in Dresden on May 3, that he had to be treated in the hospital for a broken cheekbone and eye socket. He had been out posting campaign posters. The shockwaves are still being felt, even as far away as Berlin.In an unusual step, Faeser called for a special meeting of state interior ministers last Tuesday evening at 6 p.m., where they discussed improving security measures for politicians.
The interior ministers didn't even have the chance to log in to their video conference when, at around 4:15 p.m., a man hit Berlin Senator for Economic Affairs Franziska Giffey (SPD) over the head with a blunt object that had been wrapped in a bag. She had been visiting a public library in Berlin's Neukölln district.
At 6:50 p.m., the ministers still hadn't logged out of their conversation when the Green Party politician Yvonne Mosler got attacked and spat upon while putting up posters in Dresden.
Is there any way of stopping all this?
There have been numerous attacks on politicians and volunteer election workers in recent days. Even the running camera of a Deutsche Welle film team that accompanied Mosler failed to deter the perpetrators. Society, it appears, has reached a new level of brutalization. Berlin politician Giffey has called it a "fair-game culture."
These are acts that are usually only in the headlines or public consciousness for a short amount of time. Taken together, though, they act like a corrosive solution: Drop by drop, act by act, they erode democratic structures. Will they corrode to the point that they threaten to collapse?
DIDN'T THE COURTS OR DoL RECENTLY SAY NDAs ARE ILLEGAL?
«I have seen the extremely restrictive off-boarding agreement that contains nondisclosure and non-disparagement provisions former OpenAI employees are subject to. It forbids them, for the rest of their lives, from criticizing their former employer. Even acknowledging that the NDA exists is a violation of it.»
"Matt #Gaetz reiterated #Trump’s call upon the Proud Boys, a right-wing hate group that played a central role on the attack on the Capitol and effort to overturn the last election, to “stand back and stand by.” Anyone else see a brownshirt peeking underneath?
“This attitude that our Bible and our interpretation of the Bible is the truth, it is the correct one, it is the only one we should be listening to, and our laws should be drawn from that, and we're going to force you, whatever you believe, to live by those laws is the very essence of fascism.”
Dassen: "If we are not allowed to name this in parliament [that PVV indeed is an extreme right party], it becomes very oppressive."
He thought the term was justified: "If you as a party have been casting suspicion on judges for years, calling journalists scum and saying of groups of Dutch people that they don't belong," that term is possible, Dassen said."
@vruz Actually, it’s falsely accusing Biden & throwing around words you clearly don’t understand (or pretend not to) that’s helping to implement #fascism, white nationalism, #apartheid, and #genocide and handing over the election to fascism.
Known liar Mike Johnson, Byron Donalds, Cory Mills, Doug Burgum & Vivek Ramaswamy hang around lower Manhattan to be trumps gag order gangsters.
Gag order prohibits trump from making comments about jurors / witnesses and also from causing others to make comments about the case, jury or court staff.
Republican politicians who’ve appeared at the felony Trump criminal trial: “I see politicians running toward the sound of the sleaze because that's what their master is demanding them."
"You have to embrace the election denial, the lies, you have Mike Johnson using his position (House Speaker) to violate the gag order, to say things the Judge says, 'do not say.' You have to embrace the lies, you have to embrace the insurrection, you have to embrace the hush money to a porn star, the multiple affairs. You have to embrace the obstruction of Justice. You have to make yourself part of the obstruction of justice." "We need to remind everybody that this is not normal. This was unthinkable."