Regardless of what polls show movement up and down, it's going to be close in November.

Brian Karem in Salon.com

 Republicans are openly proud of their lies — but our disdain for the truth is bipartisan

Nobody’s making it easy for anyone these days.

Let’s start with Donald Trump. The former president still won’t accept he lost the 2020 election, he lies about immigrants eating pets and continues his baseless claims that women are carrying fetuses full term – only to kill them after they are born. He's also an adjudicated rapist and convicted felon, but that’s another story.

The rampant stupidity and numb ignorance from him is frightening. But Trump is just the vanguard for political hatred and violence

David French in the NYT

 I knew that MAGA was going to take this torch and carry it as far as it possibly could. And they did it in that particular way that MAGA interacts with the larger world, with this sense of gleeful transgression. They have fun being outrageous. They have fun being provocative. They like to “trigger the libs.” What MAGA is very good at doing is turning around back to its own people and saying, “See, we struck a nerve.” They’ll use words like, “If you’re taking flack, it means you’re over the target.” And so they use the backlash almost as proof that they’ve hit a nerve and all of this just creates an endless process of doubling down.

And one thing that I think that liberals tend to miss about the MAGA movement is they miss its underlying sense of community and its joy. So there is a strong sense of belonging within MAGA and they have a great time being MAGA. If you’re on the outside, you see MAGA as almost entirely an angry movement. And so this idea that it’s also a lot of fun and fellowship, that is something you don’t see at all. But if you’re on the inside of it, is one of its most dominant characteristics.

The people who are in on the joke, the core MAGA people who are pushing the memes out, look, if it’s true, great. If it’s not true, who cares? They’re having a good time.

The Big Lie II is coming.

 I get phone calls everyday that come with a scam alert. Too bad there isn't a comparable scam alert with people. As soon as the person says a word you somehow get a scam alert. It would certainly save time.

Salon.com

 "Gutfeld!" Wednesday, complaining once again that the ABC News debate moderators bothered to fact-check him while falsely claiming that the debate audience "went crazy" for his performance. Host Greg Gutfeld chose not to fact-check Trump over the fact that there was no debate audience whatsoever, per the rules set by ABC News and agreed to by both campaigns.

"They didn’t correct her once,” Trump complained, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris. “And they corrected me, everything I said, practically. I think nine times or 11 times. And the audience was absolutely — they went crazy.”

MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes argued that the Republican candidate's remark validated concerns about his age and mental capacity.

"Trump talking about 'the audience' at the debate (where there famously was no audience) is more delusional and unsettling than any moment of Joe Biden misspeaking all year and it’s not close," Hayes wrote on social media.

Heather Digby Parton in Salon.com

 Trump's been getting away with scams, cons and crimes his entire life and always wriggles out of them. A new book by New York Times reporters Ross Beutner and Suzanne Craig called "Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered his Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success" says it all about Trump's long history of fraudulent business failures and his unique ability to convince people to keep giving him money anyway. They point out that Trump has had two big financial windfalls in his life, neither of them based on even the slightest talent for business. The first came via his daddy, who bankrolled him for decades with hundreds of millions of dollars and bailed him out repeatedly. He did manage some early success with Trump Tower and a couple of other buildings on which he'd been partnered with some people who knew what they were doing. But apparently, that was when the narcissism really kicked in so he bought into his own hype. He never listened to anyone ever again and virtually everything he touched — casinos, an airline, a football league, buildings in Chicago, a development for the world's tallest building in Manhattan, money-losing golf resorts, all of it — failed.

The second windfall came from "The Apprentice" which was picked up by NBC at a moment when Trump badly needed money. The illusion of wealth the show sold to America helped Trump cash in with an exclusive product placement deal that brought in a ton of money. (He even cheated his collaborator Mark Burnett, the producer who created the show, but they were all making money so they just let him do it.) Trump's personal licensing deals — the steaks, the vodka, the ties etc. — apparently never made much money, however.

 A sense of humor is indispensable in today's crazy world to pull you thru the confusion. It won't pay the bills and help you with the IRS and difficult coworkers, but a sense of humor can keep you from taking some things too seriously deservedly so.

 Trumpean rhetoric and his kind of lies have broken the political life in this country so profoundly that it is unrecognizable to anyone who was alive to see the campaigns of John F. Kennedy, both the Bushes, Bill Clinton, Mitt Romney, and Barack Obama. Beginning in 2015, violent rhetoric and actual violence entered our politics in the words and actions of one man, Donald Trump.

Down became up and up became down and unbalanced became the new normal.

 Trump—who has been accused of interfering with the 2020 presidential election, called his political enemies “vermin,” promised to imprison his opponents, vowed to begin the largest deportations in the history of the United States, and spread racist lies about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs—is now accusing the other side of going too far by … pointing out that he did any of these things. 

Statements from Harris appeared on the list three times, and President Joe Biden six times. The campaign wrote that Harris had repeatedly called Trump “a threat to our democracy and fundamental freedoms.”

The list also included statements from politicians such as Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, with a link to him speaking about “weird” MAGA Republicans. “Are they a threat to democracy? Yes,” said Walz. “Are they going to take our rights away? Yes. Are they going to put people’s lives in danger? Yes.”

From The New Republic

 Recent attempts in the mainstream media to understand and explain wonky matters have been embarrassing failures—a dereliction that shares strands of DNA with its tendency to tidy up Trump’s constant barrage of nonsense. A prime example can be found in one of the stories that provoked the sanewashing conversation: the Associated Press’s recapof Trump’s appearance at the Economic Club of New York last week, in which he offered up several paragraphs of word salad in lieu of a discussion of child poverty. The straight story of what happened was a naggingly simple one: Trump dodged a question about child poverty in order to pivot to what he wanted to talk about—tariffs—and shoehorn in his preferred talking points. He did this less artfully than many politicians, but it would have been sufficient to simply say he did not bother to answer the question he was asked.

But the AP didn’t opt for the straight story, and instead constructed a world rivaling George R.R. Martin. In the AP’s version of cloud-cuckoo-land, Trump explicated an innovative idea, in which the proceeds from our trade wars would facilitate bountiful childcare benefits … somehow.It’s bad enough that the AP did all this heavy lifting just to make it appear that Trump used complete English-language sentences in a speech. But considerably more effort was expended here to convert several minutes of sundowner gobbledygook into an allegedly earnest policy proposal. To get there, these reporters had to ignore a vast amount of information and experience, including knowledge of the policies that Republicans have actually supported and the informed opinions of actual experts.

The reality is that what will happen in Trump’s second term looks more like this: These tariffs get applied. American consumers pay more money for goods. The money goes into federal coffers. And the GOP passes (and Trump signs) budget packages that include massive tax cuts for billionaires and corporations, alongside massive cuts to funding for social services.

Heather Digby Parton in Salon.com

 If you feel as if American politics have taken yet another deep dive into the Trump show maelstrom, you aren't alone. This past week has been a chaotic whirlwind of lies, false accusations, lurid scandals and even a foiled assassination plot. Even the sleaziest reality show wouldn't have the nerve to script something like this.

The assassination plot that capped off the week took place on Sunday at Trump's Palm Beach golf club where the Secret Service reportedly spotted a man with a rifle in the bushes at one of the holes and shot at him, setting off a chase which concluded in his arrest. It's still early, but a cursory look at his background appears to show the man's politics were all over the place, from voting for Trump to giving donations to Democrats, and then begging Nikki Haley to team up with Vivek Ramaswamy to compete for the presidential nomination. At one time, he tried to be involved with recruiting foreign volunteers to fight in Ukraine, but nobody took him seriously.

They aren't going to let this go, at least until they find a new outrage with which to entertain their supporters and distract from the fact that Trump is deteriorating more everyday and JD Vance isn't ready for prime time.

Chauncey Devega in Salon.com

 The Age of Trump is accidental. Project 2025, Trump’s own Agenda 47, and the other plans to make him a dictator on “day one” of his presidency to end multiracial pluralistic democracy are part of a much older and larger project. For decades, the American right has been developing a revolutionary campaign to radically transform American society to make it less democratic and to further concentrate power in the hands of a relatively small number of rich white “Christian” men. 

At its core, democracy means the ability of citizens to exercise effective political agency and power in their society. Today’s Republicans and so-called conservatives fundamentally reject that principle. They want to return the United States to the Gilded Age — if not before — as they transform the country into a new apartheid Christofascist plutocracy. 

The American (and global) right’s revolutionary project to end multiracial pluralistic democracy involves taking over not just the political realm but every aspect of society from culture to technology to the economy and education. The right-wing and its neofascists and other authoritarians know that by controlling the country’s educational system they can create compliant citizens who will be drones, trained to obey and not to practice critical thinking or otherwise resist the powerful. The struggle for America’s future and its democracy is taking place in America’s classrooms today.

"This is an existential election. It is even more so than in 2020 because Trump has surrounded himself with a group of advisors and policymakers who are very serious about ending democracy."

Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University and the author of Erasing History: How Fascists Change the Past to Control the Future. In this conversation, he explains the role that education plays in a democratic community and how colleges and universities can better defend themselves against attacks by the Trumpists, neofascists, "conservatives," and other enemies of democracy and freedom. The myth of “liberal higher education,” Stanley notes, is belied by the fact that neofascists such as Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis attended some of the country’s most elite universities yet are now working to undermine and delegitimate such institutions. Stanley also reflects on how the right-wing has weaponized such concepts as DEI and free speech in their campaign against education and democracy.

Stanley has a warning for liberals and progressives: Do not fall into the trap of being useful idiots by engaging in political debate with intellectually dishonest people during this time of ascendant fascism.

How are you feeling? How are you making sense of where we are in the story that is the Age of Trump now that Kamala Harris is the Democratic Party nominee? 

This is an existential election. It is even more so than in 2020 because Trump has surrounded himself with a group of advisors and policymakers who are very serious about ending democracy. With Project 2025, Trump's own Agenda 47, and other plans, they are ready from day one of his regime to move to authoritarianism. It's “all hands on deck” right now. There is really no excuse for not being involved in this election. The choice between Harris and Trump is the most important election in the world right now. 

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Joy is not a strategy. That having been said, joy and hope can help to power the Democrats and the larger pro-democracy movement to victory over Trump and the other neofascists. I am worried that too many people are too happy much too soon because Harris is the nominee which means they may not be willing to do the hard work now to defeat Trumpism. Given their premature exuberance, they may be brought crashing down to earth once the reality of how close the election is going to be finally sets in. If Trump wins it may break them psychologically and emotionally. This is a war, not a battle; it will likely last decades. That is the approach that is necessary for the pro-democracy movement. Help me balance my pessimism and optimism. 

It’s nice to feel a little joy and to not run an election solely on the fear that the opposition will win, in this case, Trump and the MAGA Republicans and the other anti-democratic forces. I think it's motivating. We need to do two things simultaneously. We need to give people hope, and we need to warn them of the dangers. I like the focus on freedom from the Democrats. Authoritarianism requires a culture of fear, and that's why the fascists erase history and are targeting our schools and educational programs and harassing teachers. We need to counter that atmosphere of fear and intimidation with one of joy and hope — and we must do it very quickly because we are running out of time. 

The Democratic National Convention was a type of pedagogical event. The Obamas for example, really did some powerful public teaching about democracy and competing visions of freedom. This is going to be the theme from Kamala Harris and the Democrats going forward. The American people are experiencing a national “teachable moment” about democratic theory. I worry that many of them are not able to appreciate or apply properly. 

The Democrats are running the election on a classic philosophical topic, which is the difference between negative and positive freedom. Freedom "from" versus freedom "to". So, as Obama said in his speech, the billionaire class thinks of freedom as freedom from taxes and freedom from regulation. Freedom to or positive liberty is the freedom a person will have if they are free to pursue their life goals without obstacles. It is not possible for people to pursue their life goals if they are burdened with debt, or don’t have health insurance unless they take the first job that comes to them. In this framework, the Republican and larger right-wing conception of freedom is not really freedom, it is something else that when taken to its logical conclusion is antidemocratic because true freedom is only available to those who have the wealth, money, and power to exercise it. 

From this right-wing and neoliberal point of view, the only agency that a citizen has is through the so-called free market. We are seeing this play out with how the Republicans and “conservatives” are so adamantly opposed to eliminating student debt. They want to force people to look at work and survival as their main roles in society as opposed to thinking about being active democratic citizens. Americans are so laden with debt that they cannot truly be free. Moreover, the free market, especially in this late capitalist regime, is far from “free.” It is actually a system of monopoly capitalism that is anti-free markets because the very richest individuals and corporations can rig the system to their advantage. Autocrats and authoritarians can take control of such a system because its players truly believe they can make a bargain with them. Look at Russia. Vladimir Putin showed the plutocrats how he is in control and if they don’t support him then they will have their money and perhaps even lives taken away. If Trump takes power the billionaires and other plutocrats will have to bend their knee to him as well –- and he knows it and is planning on it.

The American right has always been leery of universities. This is true of the United States and other countries as well. Universities are supposed to be political. They're supposed to be places where hegemonic power and ideologies are challenged and criticized. At its best, the university is supposed to be an engine of democracy that prepares people with the tools to participate as citizens who have an input on the laws and policies that govern them. By comparison, the right wing just wants universities to be glorified job training programs.

How do you make sense of the myth of liberal higher education and how it is supposedly overrun by Marxists and Communists? 

It is right out of the Nazi political playbook. Hitler argues that all democratic institutions, such as the news media, the entertainment sector, the schools and universities are run by Marxists. In essence, anything democratic is labeled Marxist. I teach at Yale University. There are not many orthodox Marxists here. That is certain. Elite universities are stocked with centrist liberals who voted for Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders had almost no support at elite institutions. Today’s Republicans are largely anti-intellectual fascists, which explains why you do not see many of them as faculty or in leadership roles at good colleges or universities. Thus, the irony if you want to describe it as such: many of the leaders of the American fascist movement went to elite universities. Ron DeSantis went to Yale and Harvard. JD Vance graduated from Yale Law. Ted Cruz went to Princeton and Harvard. Their kids are going to go to Yale and Harvard and Princeton and other Ivies, but they want your kids to be trained by Prager University.

DeSantis and Vance and that ilk want to maintain these elite institutions and the social capital they confer. But the bigger plan is to shape elite institutions of higher education to fit their right-wing extreme ideology and agenda. Many of our universities are being intimidated by the right-wing in what is an example of “anticipatory obedience.” We saw this with their surrender to the right-wing reaction to the Gaza student protests. Elite institutions are ultimately about power; the elite of our society comes from institutions such as Yale and Harvard. The elite authoritarians are going to send their children to these institutions for that very reason.

When you saw the huge pile of banned books on such topics as race, gender, and sexuality that were thrown out like garbage when DeSantis’s people took over the New College of Florida, what were you thinking?

I saw the mass book burnings by the Nazis in 1933. 

What specific suggestions do you have for America’s colleges and universities in this time of democracy crisis? And for liberals and progressives more broadly?

First, this must be viewed as a war against democracy by the right-wing and the other fascists, illiberals, and authoritarians. In a war, you do not enable or help the other side. For example, you do not engage in conversations based on “mutual respect” and “the free exchange of ideas” and such niceties and quaint idealized assumptions with enemies of democracy. They only say they want a conversation because they want to get a foot in the door to take over. If you don’t realize that – and here I am speaking to so many liberals and progressives – then you are being used as dupes by these right-wingers. You're complicit. There once were intellectually honest conservatives. I hope they return. Today’s conservatives and Republicans do not care about “tradition” or “norms.” They want to up-end everything. It is a radical movement. Today’s “conservatives” are neofascists and authoritarians. They are not Edmund Burke.

Two, recognize that you can change the narrative. University administrators should not accept things, such as current public opinion, and adjust to the accepted narrative. The job of a university president is to change the narrative. Do not accept that people are hostile to the humanities and so you have to cloak your institution in the veil of STEM. Change the way people think about the humanities.

Three, stand up for your values. Institutional neutrality is a myth and a cover to get you to hide your democratic values. You should be actively defending the democratic values of freedom and equality. A democratic institution IS a political institution because it's defending democracy against other political systems such as authoritarianism in its various forms. By its nature as a democratic institution, the university is a political institution. 

I receive all these emails from programs that are trying to bring Democrats and Republicans, Trump supporters and MAGA people, and those who oppose them, together for conversations to "understand one another" so we can have “civility” and “maintain community” and “get to understand each other better” to find “common ground” because "we are more alike than different." I have no interest in any of this. There is nothing to discuss. Am I being unreasonable? There are good and decent people who actually believe that engaging with neofascists and other enemies of democracy is somehow productive. This is the classic philosophical problem of tolerating the intolerant. You don't tolerate the intolerant by treating them as if they're tolerant. That's just foolish. Recognize that the people you are dealing with on today’s right-wing don't want to have a discussion. They want to take over your institutions, and they want to transform American society from a democracy into something else. Again, don’t be a liberal dupe or some type of useful idiot.

You are an expert in language and propaganda. How was the American right-wing able to weaponize DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs in higher education and elsewhere in service to their goal of ending multiracial pluralistic democracy?

The way the right-wing weaponized and distorted DEI programs is as American as apple pie. What they are basically saying is that any Black person in a position of power, particularly any Black woman, is not legitimate. Why? because positions of power should be held by white people – and preferably white men. Any other outcome is “anti-white” or the result of quotas or reverse racism or some other nonsense and racist white fantasies

Donald Trump has made explicit xenophobia acceptable, and explicit racism moreacceptable. But it is still the case that in America you need some code words for racism. DEI is such a code word and racist dog whistle. 

Part of this war on education in this time of democracy crisis involves the monitoring and harassment of teachers by the right-wing for thought crimes. This is happening across the country in public schools as well as at colleges and universities. An important and foundational question: why shouldn’t parents have the “right” to monitor a teacher in the classroom? Or the public or the larger community to monitor a college course and what is being taught there, especially at a publicly funded institution?

Educators are afraid of the fascists and other bullies. There's a group of people in this country, and any society really, who don't want minority perspectives taught. So, if the people observing you are members of dominant groups who want to exclude minority perspectives, then you know it’s not just your job, but your life that could potentially be at risk..

Even in a less high-stakes situation, a teacher cannot do their job when they are under surveillance because that makes free discussion of ideas impossible. When you're constantly observed then you're worried about saying something that will offend someone. That is antithetical to free thinking and the democratic project in the classroom — a democratic culture. In such a classroom we are creating drones and not critical thinkers because the teachers are afraid of controversy. 

If Donald Trump and the Republicans win the upcoming election, are you staying in the country or are you leaving? You are most certainly on the enemies lists that Trump and his forces have already drawn up of people who are to be “punished” for disobedience to MAGA as enemies of the state. You could face prison or worse. I asked you this question the last time we spoke here at Salon. Where are you now?

I have had offers to teach in other countries. But I have turned down those offers even though it would be safer for me and my children. America is my damn country. It doesn’t belong to the fascists and authoritarians. I am not leaving.

 

Donald Trump is openly running a Great Replacement Theory campaign

What happens when Great Replacement Theory wins an election 

By JASON STANLEY

Donald Trump made clear on the Philadelphia debate stage this week, as he has throughout his three presidential campaigns, the basis of his run for office. Trump is running on the platform that non-white immigration is an existential threat to the nation. This time around, Trump has made his primary message, the so-called Great Replacement Theory (GRT), more vivid than ever. It is therefore of existential importance in understanding the stakes of this election to have clearly in mind what has happened in the past when GRT has been the central driving narrative both of individuals and of states.

According to the Great Replacement Theory, the nation’s greatness, its traditions and its practitioners, are existentially imperiled by an influx of foreign races, ethnicities or religions. The foreign elements are sometimes described in the narrative of GRT, as vermin or diseases. 

GRT was central to the official Nazi motivation for the genocide of the Jews of Europe. Hitler blamed the loss of World War I on Jewish betrayal of Germany. But this betrayal, for Hitler, was intimately connected to the Great Replacement Theory, via the introduction of Black soldiers in the French army subsequently occupying the Rhineland, the so-called “Black Horror on the Rhine.” In Mein Kampf, Hitler writes:

It was and is the Jews who bring the Negroes into the Rhineland, always with the same secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily resulting bastardization, throwing it down from its cultural and political height, and himself rising to be its master.

With the benefit of hindsight, the idea that Jews betrayed Germany in World War I in order to use the occupying French army to bring Black Senegalese soldiers in to ruin the white race by rape and race mixing seems utterly unhinged. It is hard to fathom that this crazed conspiracy theory justified for many Germans the mass murder of two out of every three of Europe’s Jews. But our descendants will also find it hard to understand why so many Americans find Trump’s claims that non-white immigrants to the United States are savages who eat pets, criminally insane murderers and drugs dealers who nevertheless somehow manage to get it together to vote fraudulently en masse in election to be plausible. In both cases, the bizarre nature of these claims stands in stark contrast to their obvious political power. 

Mussolini justified Italy’s colonial war against Ethiopia in 1935 with racial paranoias about the decline and replacement of the “white race.” In 1934, Mussolini wrote that defending the white race was a “matter of life or death” and posed this as a key political issue: “It is a question of knowing whether in the face of the progress in number and expansion of the yellow and black races, the civilization of the white man is destined to perish.” This text laid the ground for the racism and segregation imposed by Italians during the war against Ethiopia in 1935 and later the racist and antisemitic laws of 1938.

Donald Trump’s campaigns have always been based on the Great Replacement Theory.

In the Genocide Convention of 1948, the Soviet Union pressed hard to exclude mass killing of political opponents, demanding instead that the term genocide be restricted to the mass killing of ethnic groups. The Soviet Union’s reason for excluding the mass killing of political opponents, that is, politicide, from the charge of genocide was transparently to absolve the horrific crimes of Stalin’s communist regime, which executed hundreds of thousands of suspected political opponents among their own people. It should worry every American that Trump repeatedly targets as the agents of his version of GRT not an ethnic group, but his political opponents, Democrats. Politicide is no less murderous than genocide.

The potency of the Great Replacement Theory as a justification for mass murder is particularly apparent when it motivates individual actors. Great Replacement Theory was the justification for Norwegian Anders Breivik’s 2011 murder of 77 people, mostly teenagers in a Norwegian left-wing party’s summer youth camp (in this case, GRT-motivated politicide). GRT was the motivation for Dylan Roof’s mass murder of Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015, and the motivation for the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue killings of Jews in Pittsburgh, the killing of 23 people, mostly immigrants, at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas in 2019, the murder of 51 Muslims by a white supremacist in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019, and many other “lone wolf” mass killings. 

Donald Trump’s campaigns have always been based on the Great Replacement Theory. But unlike in his first term, which was characterized by disorganized chaos, his team is now prepared to carry out the actions that GRT has always justified. This time, we can be sure that a Trump victory will mean mass concentration camps that will be filled with millions of non-white immigrants, in conditions of supreme horror justified by the mass vilification of their prisoners. The Nazis filled their concentration camps initially with political opponents before filling them with Jews. It is certainly possible that in a Trump regime, political opponents will join immigrants as the targets of policies of mass imprisonment, as Trump has essentially already vowed. 

History rarely speaks with one voice. This time, it does.

Salon.com

 There is a profound darkness within America, a widely shared sensation that something has gone wrong, even if we can’t quite identify it and don’t remotely agree about what’s causing it. That feeling of rootlessness and discontent, of society coming unstuck — the academic term is anomie — definitely isn’t unique to this country, but it gets massively amplified by our national narcissism and our physical isolation. Nearly all of us feel it, regardless of where we live or who we vote for. (If we conclude it’s worth voting for anyone at all, that is; nearly one-third of adult citizens never even bother.) 

 Beware the prosecutor who smiles. Be wary of the cornered sewer rat who feels threatened.

That sums up the contentious presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president and convicted felon Donald Trump in Philadelphia Tuesday night. At every turn, she brilliantly laid out bait that he couldn’t resist. By the end of the night, he was the cornered sewer rat – and he knew it. His closing speech was just a volcano of rage spewing at an opponent who had just thoroughly destroyed him. 

Harris proved beyond all reasonable doubt she was presidential. Trump again proved he is not.

-Brian Karem in Salon.com

Harris the Winner

 The clear consensus is that Kamala "won" last night's debate and it wasn't close.

Jason Stanley - Erasing History - How Fascists Rewrite The Past To Control the Future

 Jason Stanley, philosophy professor at Yale, is my go-to person on understanding Fascism.

"The Soviet system never commemorated the Holocaust.  One reason for this is that once you define and identify one genocide, you can recognize other genocidal crimes.  The Soviet empire didn't want us to learn our history."

-Victoria Amelina, "Nothing Bad Has Ever Happened"

One lesson the past century has taught us is that authoritarian regimes often find history profoundly threatening.  They conceal history or cancel history to consolidate their power.  They deny multiple perspectives on history.  Democracy demands a share reality & multiple perspectives.  Fascists demand only one perspective.  There are equal perspectives to national narratives from the democratic point-of-view, but only one from the Fascist view.

The serious study of history is always open to new evidence, new perspectives, and theoretical framings.  History in a democracy is not static, not mythic, but dynamic and critical.  P. xi-ii

"Wars are won by teachers." P. 1

-Vladimir Putin

Fascism is usually organized a charismatic leader, but not always.  Example: The Jim Crow segregation in the South after the Civil War.  P. 2

Us and them views can lead to cruelty to the thems. P. 3

The author is known for his shorthand of Fascism as us and them views.

A Fascist culture must control education meaning controlling what students are exposed to meaning book banning and presenting only the one historical narrative they desire usually for racial reasons.  P. 3

Russia today is clearly the world's most clearly fascist nation.  P. 62

Fascist social and political movements thrive of a sense of grievance.  The German Nazi education emphasized German loss of lands in the Treaty of Versailles, blaming this loss on Jews, who were the source of a stab in the back that caused the German loss of WWI.  Germans did not lose but fell victim to Jewish betrayal.  So Aryan Germans should seek revenge for his betrayal; this becomes a central feature of Nazi propaganda.  P. 79

For sure the author emphasizes the importance of education in the creation of a fascist state.  P. 79

Fascism likes "great men" narratives.  P. 80-81

In the ideology of American White Christian Nationalist, the United States is a white Christian country.  P. 82

Great Replacement Theory is a name for a type of conspiracy where an internal enemy tries to destroy the nation from within by importing inferior peoples to  "replace" the nation's defining national group.  A population rises with myths of national greatness and national purity is susceptible to Great Replacement Theory, as they will believe their nation is in great and its greatness is due to the greatness of the defining national group.  P. 82

Madison Grant started it in 1916, mentioned by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby.  P. 83

Scientific racism.  Grant stepped into a powerful political current of his time.  President Coolidge agreed with Grant.  P. 83

The second KKK adopted the slogan "America First."  P. 83

Replacement was a century theme in Nazism with the belief that Jews were replacing Germans and destroying the purity of the German nation.  P. 84

Germany's replacement policy was based on the Jews to replace Germany's Aryan population with non-Aryans.  P. 86

Trump's replacement act is that secret Marxists seek to open the borders to non-white immigration, thereby displacing the white race numerically, culturally, and politically leading to perpetual power, precisely what claimed about the Jews.  P. 87

 I am not a Marxist but I did encounter several in the academic world that I inhabited for 40 yrs and a few things I did retain. We should not worship & consider the wealthy elite. "Predators" would be a better word. Religion, guns, and patriarchy are not necessarily the calling cards of the proletariat, but that'll work in a pinch.

 Growing up in a small town in Alabama in the 50's & 60''s I used to think adults were so smart. Going off to college in 1968 started to make me question my assumption. Now an adult myself I stand corrected. Plenty of smart people out there for sure, but they are vastly outnumbered.

He Means It

 If he wins all bets are off.

He may or may not follow through on his inane tariffs or impractical mass deportation, but he damn sure believes in vengeance and there is no doubt he will follow through with that if he happens to eke out another win, especially now that he's been granted immunity by his friends on the Supreme Court. Nothing matters more to him than getting even. He means it. 

-Heather Digby Parton in Salon.com

 

How the GOP Went From Reagan to Trump

The 40th president inadvertently prepared the ground for the 45th in multiple ways.

By Max Boot

Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Bettmann / Getty; Bing Guan / Bloomberg via Getty.

SEPTEMBER 8, 2024, 7 AM ET

Donald Trump’s far-right worldview has a lot of critics, many of them Republicans, who argue that Ronald Reagan would “roll over” or “turn over” in his grave if he could see what is happening to his old party. The Trump-dominated, populist-nationalist GOP is certainly very different from the conservative party that Reagan led in the 1980s, and Trump is a very different figure, in both outlook and personality, from Reagan. But it’s also true that, however much Trump has changed the Republican Party since 2016 (and the changes have been enormous), the roots of Trumpism can be traced back to Reagan—and, before him, to Barry Goldwater and even earlier figures on the American right. Uncomfortable as it is for many Reagan fans to admit, the 40th president inadvertently prepared the ground for the 45th in multiple ways. These similarities are a reminder that Trump did not emerge from nowhere, and that ridding the Republican Party of his influence won’t be easy.

Despite their many differences, however, the only two presidents who have hosted a nationally televised show before taking office (General Electric Theater for Reagan, The Apprentice for Trump) also share some significant similarities. Reagan was a populist who reviled the government he led, even if he did not call it the “deep state,” and belittled expertise. He often quipped, “I’ve always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” Reagan’s attacks on the federal government were wittier and tamer than Trump’s, but they intensified the anti-government mood that Trump has exploited in recent years. Reagan’s policies, tilted toward the wealthy, exacerbated income inequality, thus also contributing to the populist backlash that Trump now harnesses.

Although Reagan, like Trump, did not see combat, he, unlike Trump, venerated U.S. troops and staunchly supported U.S. alliances such as NATO.

Reagan would never have denounced veterans as “suckers” and “losers,”denigrated Medal of Honor recipients, or told the Russians that they can do “whatever the hell they want” to U.S. allies who don’t pay more for their defense.

We should not exaggerate the similarities between Reagan and Trump. If Reagan were alive today, he undoubtedly would be criticized by Trump supporters as a RINO (“Republican in name only”). But Reagan, like other Republican politicians of earlier eras, helped set the GOP—and the country—on the path that led it to embrace Trump. The question for the Republican Party now is: What comes next? Will the party continue moving ever further to the right, toward a Viktor Orbán–style authoritarian movement that would presumably have Reagan (an avid believer in democracy) doing more spinning in his grave? Or will it revert to being a more center-right party in the Reagan mold? In the 1980s, “Reaganism” represented a right turn for the GOP. Today it would represent a left turn—a restoration of a more moderate, if still conservative, outlook. That may still happen. But only if Trump loses decisively in November—and even then, it won’t be easy.

 

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For me, a book made of paper will always be a beautiful object that warms a room even as it expands (or entertains, or challenges, or informs, or comforts) a mind, and a bookcase will always represent time itself. I walk past one of our bookcases, and I can tell you exactly why a particular book is still there, never culled as space grew limited, even if there is no chance I’ll ever read it again.

When I reread a book from my own shelves, I meet my own younger self. Sometimes my younger self underlined a passage that I would have reached for my pencil to underline now. Other times she read right past a line that stuns me with its beauty today. I am what I have read far more surely than I am what I have eaten.

By looking at our bookshelves, I can tell you who my husband was, too — the hardly-more-than-a-boy who read “A Brief History of Time” on our honeymoon, the young teacher who learned he was about to be a father by reading the inscription I wrote inside a copy of “The Oxford Book of Children’s Verse in America,” the doting son who memorized Irish toasts to please his aging father, who still had cousins back in the old country. To walk past our bookcases is to make a different study of the history of time.

When I reread a book from my own shelves, I meet my own younger self. Sometimes my younger self underlined a passage that I would have reached for my pencil to underline now. Other times she read right past a line that stuns me with its beauty today. I am what I have read far more surely than I am what I have eaten.

By looking at our bookshelves, I can tell you who my husband was, too — the hardly-more-than-a-boy who read “A Brief History of Time” on our honeymoon, the young teacher who learned he was about to be a father by reading the inscription I wrote inside a copy of “The Oxford Book of Children’s Verse in America,” the doting son who memorized Irish toasts to please his aging father, who still had cousins back in the old country. To walk past our bookcases is to make a different study of the history of time.