Against liberal 'totalitarianism'

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Right-wing intellectuals argue that liberalism is a totalitarian belief system that has permeated most institutions like the universities, the media, the mainstream political parties, and culture. Hence they feel they have to conquer state power to combat this and fight liberal totalitarianism on all other fronts as well. Here we start a thread covering stories about what this might mean on the ground. 

Liberalism does extend basic rights to all citizens, no matter their beliefs, sexual orientation, race, gender, stressing inclusiveness and diversity. Arguably, this can be overdone, but the examples of right-wingers combatting this supposed 'totalitarian' belief system show that defending these basic rights is not a woke luxury.

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But when the pandemic put pressure on the community, cracks began to appear. Stressed by school closures and debate over wearing masks, some neighbors started taking aim at the school board. Kelsey Waits was the face and voice of that school board as its chair. The ugliness that followed in Kelsey's unsuccessful race to be re-elected to the board now has the Waits packing up their dream home to move -- and their love for Hastings likely tainted forever. "I do feel really betrayed by this community," Kelsey told CNN. "Not because I lost but because not only did people attack a child, but so many of them sat by and allowed it to happen." [trandgender kid outed by the anti-mask mob]

Hastings, Minnesota: Candidate's child became target in school board election - CNN

• An absolute horrific story about a small town first turning upon a mom because she was in favor of mask mandates on a school board, then they turned on her 6 year old kid which is actually trandgender and outed her. Even writing an editorial in the local newspaper pleading for understanding didn't help and was only met by glee. The family packed up their things and moved from the town as they could not guarantee the safety of their kid. 
  
• If liberation from totalitarian liberal defense of basic human rights looks like this, it shows that defending these rights is still a pretty urgent need.
  
• And of course state power could be used to make life difficult for transgender people (throwing them out of the army like Trump did, prohibiting Medicaire/Medicaid coverage for sex change operations, bathroom politics, etc.) which will only increase the troubles and (already high) suicide rates among trandgender people and foment violence against them
  

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A Fox News commentator has stoked outrage by comparing Dr Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, to Josef Mengele, the Nazi “Angel of Death”. Testing, vaccines, sequencing: experts call for multi-pronged approach to Omicron Read more Lara Logan, a host on the Fox Nation streaming service, was discussing Omicron on Fox News Prime Time on Monday night. Fox News has consistently given a platform to misinformation about Covid and measures meant to contain it. The news also comes amid fears that the new Omicron variant will trigger a new wave of coronavirus cases and further deepen political divisions in the US over how to respond to the pandemic. Bill Grueskin, a professor at Columbia Journalism School, responded: “The real issue isn’t [Lara] Logan’s insanity. It’s the complicity of Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host. He never interrupts or pushes back. It’s just another day at the office.”

Outrage as Fox News commentator likens Anthony Fauci to Nazi doctor | Anthony Fauci | The Guardian

• If you think this is an exception..
  

Roughly 24 hours after most people in America first heard about the Omicron variant of Covid-19, Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson ® offered a conspiracy theory to explain what was happening. "Here comes the MEV - the Midterm Election Variant," tweeted Jackson, who, not for nothing, is also a physician. "They NEED a reason to push unsolicited nationwide mail-in ballots. Democrats will do anything to CHEAT during an election - but we're not going to let them!" And then there was this from Fox News personality Pete Hegseth: "Count on a variant about every October, every two years." The idea here is clear: The emergence of Omicron is a political gambit by Democrats designed to aid them at the ballot box.

Have you heard the new Republican conspiracy theory about the Omicron variant? - CNNPolitics

• And anything is allowed against the liberal "totalitarianism" that tries to keep vulnerable people safe..
  
• And stuff like this produce the need for Fauci to have a security detail..
  
• And all that specialist bashing and vaccine skepticism leads to...
  

He did triathlons, bodybuilding and mountain climbing and became sceptical of the Covid jab. Then, at 42, he contracted the virus

The life and tragic death of John Eyers – a fitness fanatic who refused the vaccine | Vaccines and immunisation | The Guardian

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Johansen became the face of coronavirus denial in the Maine House of Representatives, organizing a protest against Mills’ social distancing measures. In August, his wife, Cindy Johansen — an anti-vaxxer — died from COVID-19...

Mistler reports that Johansen “said his wife's dedication to the family farm allowed him to serve in the (Maine State) Legislature and that he no longer has the time to manage both duties. He said the decision was difficult because of the ongoing fight against what he described as the expansion of state power during the pandemic.”

A Maine Republican who fought COVID-19 restrictions and lost his wife to the disease has resigned - Alternet.org

• There are so many of these who have fallen on their own ideological sword, but incredibly, this isn't stopping them..
  

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A university professor in Idaho is under fire after he said in late October that “independent women” are “medicated, meddlesome, and quarrelsome” and should be kept out of professions like engineering, comments that went viral last week. Scott Yenor, a political science professor at Boise State University, said women should be encouraged to pursue “feminine goals” like “homemaking and having children” while speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Fla. on Oct. 31. “Every effort must be made not to recruit women into engineering, but rather to recruit and demand more of men who become engineers. Ditto for med school, and the law, and every trade,” he said..

“Our culture is steeped with feminism,” Yenor, who previously served on an Idaho task force investigating right-wing claims of “indoctrination” in schools, said in his speech. “It teaches young boys and girls that they are motivated by much the same things and want much the same things.” Yenor is no stranger to controversy, and made headlines in 2017 for penning an article in the conservative news site The Daily Signal arguing that transgender activists were “seeking to undermine parental rights.”

Professor sparks outrage by saying women should be kept out of law, medicine and engineering careers | TheHill

• This is what liberation from liberal 'totalitarianism' will produce..
  

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Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter, who became a U.S. citizen on Monday and legally changed his name to add "Freedom," says Americans who criticize the U.S. should "keep their mouth shut." During an appearance on Fox News “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Kanter told host Tucker Carlson that people should be blessed to live in America, adding those who live in Turkey and China would appreciate the freedoms Americans have.  “People should feel really blessed to be in America. They love to criticize it but when you live in a country like Turkey or China, you appreciate the freedoms you have here,” he told Carlson.  “I feel like they should just keep their mouth shut and stop criticizing the greatest nation in the world and they should focus on their freedoms and their human rights and democracy,” he added.

NBA's Enes Kanter: Americans criticizing their country should 'keep their mouth shut' | TheHill

• Liberation from "liberal totalitarianism" also involves shutting up criticism off the US, the supposedly greatest nation on earth by definition, no matter what the statistics say (on life expectancy, healthcare cost and coverage, gun violence, inequality, social mobility, prisoners, poverty, etc. etc.)
  

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Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas), another 2016 GOP presidential candidate who many think will run again, has led the GOP charge. As of Tuesday afternoon, he had tweeted or retweeted something critical about Fauci at least 20 times since Monday. One such retweet circulated a DailyMail.com article in which Cruz calls Fauci “the most dangerous bureaucrat in the history of America” and says he could face prison time for denying that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had funded gain-of-function virus research at a lab in Wuhan, China.

Attacks on Fauci over the past 18 months have often been ugly and have led to concerns for his safety. Lara Logan, a host on Fox News Media’s streaming service, on Monday compared him to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who worked at Auschwitz during the Holocaust. The Auschwitz Memorial and Museum were among those condemning the remarks, which it said were “exploiting the tragedy of people who became victims of criminal pseudo-medical experiments in Auschwitz in a debate about vaccines, pandemic and people who fight for saving human lives is shameful.” Some Republicans have long worried the attacks by their colleagues could undermine trust in public health officials and their own efforts to boost vaccination rates across the country.

GOP anger with Fauci rises | TheHill

• Riling against scientists, vaccine and mask mandates and sowing doubt about the vaccines and boosting unproven alternative treatments is undermining the battle against Covid and hence the economy, but that could very well be the objective.
  
• On the latter, see also here.
  
• How many of these have we've seen:
  

Marcus Lamb, founder and CEO of conservative Christian broadcaster Daystar Television Network and a vocal anti-vaxxer, died at the age of 64, weeks after he tested positive for Covid-19.

Anti-vaxx Christian broadcaster Marcus Lamb dies of Covid aged 64 | The Independent

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“It’s one of the worst identities you could be,” says Aysha Yaqub* on being a Muslim woman in the UK. At 27-years-old, Yaqub has been on the receiving end of countless death threats and verbal abuse because of her religion. According to statistics from the Home Office, Muslims were the target of 2,703 religious hate crimes in the year ending March 2021 – 45 per cent of all those recorded.

‘There is no safe space for me to be myself’: The British Muslim women targeted for their beliefs | The Independent

Representative Ilhan Omar played a recording of an Islamophobic death threat she received, during a press conference on Tuesday. The Democratic representative for Minnesota was addressing media after recent attacks from Republican congressional colleagues Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. GOP leadership has so far failed to reprimand the pair who have repeatedly referred to Ms Omar as the "jihad squad". As Ms Omar held her phone to the microphone, a male voice is heard saying "You f***ing Muslim piece of s***... you f***ing traitor, you will not live any longer".

Ilhan Omar plays horrific death threat voicemail during press conference | News | Independent TV

• Yes, wokeness at times gets ahead of itself and can be counterproductive, but protection of minority rights is no luxury, as the above articles testify, and it's hardly liberal 'totalitarianism'. 
  
• And compared with the right-wing release of attacks on minorities, it's pretty innocent. 
  

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Conservatives in America have, in recent months, used the idea of freedom to argue against wearing masks, oppose vaccine mandates, and justify storming the Capitol. They routinely refer to themselves as “freedom-loving Americans.” Freedom, as a cause, today belongs almost entirely to the right. This was not always the case. In the early 1960s, civil-rights activists invoked freedom as the purpose of their struggle. Martin Luther King Jr. used the word equality once at the March on Washington, but he used the word freedom 20 times.

The conservative use of the idea of absolute freedom, of freedom as your personal property, to shift American politics to the right came shortly after King’s speech, and indeed was a direct reaction to his argument that one’s own freedom depended on everyone else’s. This wasn’t an organic response. Rather, conservative activists and business leaders designed an opposite idea of American freedom to protect their own interests. That effort can be seen in the role played by one of the most overlooked yet powerful forces in 20th-century America: the nation’s Realtors.

In 1963, California, with half of the country’s Realtors, passed a fair-housing law to limit housing discrimination. Realtors decided to fight back. They asked voters to approve a state constitutional amendment, Proposition 14, prohibiting the state and any municipality from ever limiting residential discrimination in any way.

Realtors had big incentives for maintaining segregation. Having invented it in the early 1900s as a marketing tool for selling homes, they had made segregation central to their business practices. They created racial covenants to exclude members of minority groups from new developments, existing neighborhoods, and entire cities and shaped federal redlining maps, all premised on the idea that anyone selling to minority families was destroying the future of all the neighbors.

Any broker who did so was therefore destroying his future business. Despite the Supreme Court outlawing court enforcement of racial covenants in 1948, Realtors used racial steering—such as lying to minority prospective buyers that a home had just been sold and controlling newspaper real-estate listings—so effectively that by the early ’60s, Black Americans were excluded from 98 percent of new homes and 95 percent of neighborhoods.

But in asking voters to constitutionally authorize residential discrimination in Proposition 14, Realtors had a fundamental problem. How, at the height of the civil-rights movement, could they publicly campaign for sanctioning discrimination in California? No state’s constitution, even in the Deep South, had such a provision. No prominent politician—not Barry Goldwater, not Ronald Reagan—would support the Realtors for fear of seeming racist.

Victory would depend, realized Spike Wilson, the president of the California Real Estate Association, on convincing the large majority of white voters—who did not want to see themselves as racially prejudiced in any way—that the Realtors were campaigning not for discrimination but for American freedom. Realtors would need to secretly and systematically redefine American freedom as the freedom to discriminate—to challenge the idea at the heart of the civil-rights movement itself.

How America’s Realtors Repurposed Freedom to Defend Segregation - The Atlantic

• The origin of the right-wing freedom idea as liberation from liberal 'totalitarianism' could very well lie in race relations, the reaction to the Civil Rights movement's proposition to extend freedom to include minorities.
  
• It had immediate consequences: de-facto continuation of housing segregation in the name of 'freedom'
  
• Which sums up the essence of this supposed liberation from liberal 'totalitarianism', freedom as the right to discriminate.
  

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In Michigan, a 15-year-old suspect has been charged with murder following a Tuesday, November 30 shooting at a high school in the midwestern state. The suspect’s mother, according to The Independent, was a Donald Trump supporter who praised the former president as being supportive of gun owners. The mother, 43-year-old Jennifer Crumbley, wrote an open letter to Trump on her blog on November 11, 2016 — after Trump had defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election — and said, “As a female and a Realtor, thank you for allowing my right to bear arms. Allowing me to be protected if I show a home to someone with bad intentions. Thank you for respecting that Amendment.” The November 30 attack left four people dead and others seriously wounded others at the high school. The 15-year-old suspect, the Independent reports, allegedly used a semi-automatic handgun that was legally purchased by his father, James Crumbley, according to Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard in Michigan. Bouchard, on December 1, said that administrators at the high school flagged the teenager for “behavior in the classroom they felt was concerning.”

'We are good Americans': Mother of alleged Michigan shooter wrote a letter praising Trump as a 2nd Amendment hero - Alternet.org

• Having even a modicum of gun control is of course also part of liberal 'totalitarianism' and must be fought at all cost, damn the consequences like this school shooter or 17 year old vigilantes on an out of state rampage.