Tag: fascism

"Nixon and Reagan shaking hands:

How Republicans have criminalized political opponents for decades

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“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

– Jezebel: Nixon Policy Advisor Admits He Invented War On Drugs to Suppress ‘Anti-War Left and Black People’, 3/22/17

Also, if you haven’t yet, just watch 13TH already! This story goes way back before Nixon.

1984

We have always been at war with Eurasia

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‘Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, has said Trump will lead a “deconstruction of the administrative state.”’
–  Washington Post: Trump budget expected to seek historic contraction of federal workforce, 3/12/17

Tearing down civil society, safety nets, schools, environmental protection, while adding to the world’s largest military force.

They want us tired, hungry, lonely, and sick. They want us at each other’s throats so we won’t be at theirs. Killing the government isn’t just just an ideological goal, it’s strategic at multiple levels.

Republicans hate democracy, part eleventy million and one

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They have tried criminalizing dissent in several other states, and now this “economic terrorism” bill filed today in North Carolina shows once again that Republicans value money and power more than civil rights, the Constitution, or democracy itself.

What would the founders say? What would Martin Luther King say?

AN ACT TO CREATE THE CRIMINAL OFFENSE OF ECONOMIC TERRORISM, TO ESTABLISH CIVIL LIABILITY FOR ECONOMIC TERRORISM, TO CREATE A DUTY FOR A RESPONSIBLE PUBLIC OFFICIAL TO TAKE ACTION TO CLEAR TRAFFIC OBSTRUCTIONS RESULTING FROM UNLAWFUL ACTIVITIES, TO INCREASE CRIMINAL PENALTIES FOR OBSTRUCTING TRAFFIC WHILE PARTICIPATING IN UNLAWFUL ACTIVITIES, AND TO PROVIDE CIVIL LIABILITY FOR THE COSTS OF RESPONDING TO TRAFFIC OBSTRUCTIONS AND CERTAIN OTHER UNLAWFUL ACTIVITIES.

Read it at http://www.ncleg.net/Sessions/2017/Bills/House/PDF/H249v0.pdf

Remember the future

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Autocracy: Rules for Survival by Masha Gessen is an absolute must-read. I’ve been coming back to it every few weeks to regain my bearing.

In the face of the impulse to normalize, it is essential to maintain one’s capacity for shock. This will lead people to call you unreasonable and hysterical, and to accuse you of overreacting. It is no fun to be the only hysterical person in the room. Prepare yourself.

No more innocent liberal surprise.

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Friends, please don’t make the mistake of thinking that Trump’s seemingly random and ill-informed actions are not part of President Bannon’s strategy.

They’ll bleed the public of money, culture, education, health, and community. They’ll sow chaos and violence. And they’ll beef up institutions that can enforce their coup: police & military.

This is truly disturbing to contemplate but do not look away! Turn toward the fear (as Pema Chodron would say), open your eyes and your heart. Batten down your hatches however you can and prepare for the worst. Then mobilize, speak out, tuck your body into places so the wheels of fascism don’t turn.

Stop being surprised that Trump is doing everything he said he would. He may well be the greediest man alive. History will remember how we responded.

Pema Chodron quotation

Welcome to 1984. Trump is more dystopian than Orwell.

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Three different Orwell experts find massive and unmistakable parallels between the Trump administration and the dystopian nightmare of 1984.

This part quoted below struck me the most because so many of us cried out about lies, fake morality, and deception during the Bush administration, but there were never any social or political consequences. So of course the post-truth war on the reality-based community has continued and intensified.

But this new world has been a while coming. Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts” were foreshadowed by the George W Bush adviser who said in 2002 that the new American empire was “creating [its] own reality”. As in the 1930s, war has been at the heart of the corrosion of trust in politicians. The lies over Iraq and the quagmire of Afghanistan were followed by the financial crash of 2008, and bankers’ bonuses – making people far more willing to disbelieve the remote metropolitan media and be drawn to the false dawn promised by Trump.

Read more in The Guardian today:  Welcome to dystopia – George Orwell experts on Donald Trump.

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Take Action: There’s nothing OK about the idea of a Muslim registry

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My colleague Khadija at MomsRising asks how we will explain this to our kids. How can I tell my son, who only has a dawning understanding of how our nation was founded on the principle of religious freedom, that our own government is preparing to single out people based on their faith or ethnicity and take away their rights?

As a Jewish family we are even more profoundly aware of how dangerous this kind of thinking is. The racist, anti-immigrant, and anti-Muslim fervor that has been inspired and embraced by Donald Trump is more than reminiscent of Weimar Germany when Hitler was able to step in to a leadership vacuum and wasn’t taken seriously by the people who thought he was crazy until it was much too late.

Please join me in signing this open letter to President Obama now to protect Muslim families from having to register.

 

(Photo: Dorothea Lange – American internees in mess hall line at Tanforan Assembly Center San Bruno CA April 29, 1942.)

Proposed ‘Economic Terrorism’ law is straight up fascism

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I really hate to use the word UnAmerican, so let’s just say I can hardly imagine anything more unconstitutional and unpatriotic. Public dissent is essential to the functioning of democracy. For example, no-one would have noticed Dr. King and the civil rights movement if they hadn’t disrupted businesses.

A Republican Washington state senator who supported Donald Trump is proposing a bill that would slap an “economic terrorism” label on protest activities already prohibited by law and dramatically intensify their penalties.
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The proposed bill would allow police to charge protesters who “block transportation and commerce, cause property damage, threaten jobs and put public safety at risk” with a class C felony. Ericksen said strikes and picketing would still be permitted.

Source: Washington GOPer Proposes Charging Protesters With ‘Economic Terrorism’