Fascism

[Admin]

A cohort of rightwing activists hatched a plan during Donald Trump’s administration to discredit his perceived foes – including a honey trap plot that used “female undercover operatives” – in an attempt to catch and discredit government employees criticizing the former president, the New York Times reported.
Their efforts included a “planned sting operation” targeting Trump’s then national security adviser, HR McMaster, and clandestine surveillance against FBI staffers, with the goal of exposing anti-Trump opinions in the law enforcement agency, according to the newspaper..

Rightwingers tried to discredit Trump ‘foes’ with honey trap plot – report | Donald Trump | The Guardian

[Admin]

The Republican who leads the Maricopa County, Ariz., elections department slammed former President Trump on Saturday, calling his comments on its 2020 election audit “unhinged.” “Wow. This is unhinged. I’m literally looking at our voter registration database on my other screen. Right now. We can’t indulge these insane lies any longer. As a party. As a state. As a country. This is as readily falsifiable as 2+2=5. If we don’t call this out…” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer wrote on Twitter. Wow. This is unhinged. I’m literally looking at our voter registration database on my other screen. Right now. We can’t indulge these insane lies any longer. As a party. As a state. As a country. This is as readily falsifiable as 2+2=5. If we don’t call this out... pic.twitter.com/5tDy1wsZg6 — Stephen Richer—Maricopa Cnty Recorder (prsnl acct) (@stephen_richer) May 15, 2021 Richer’s remarks came in response to a statement from Trump in which the former president claimed that the Maricopa County database had been deleted and that ballots were missing.

Maricopa County Republican official calls Trump 'unhinged' | TheHill

[Admin]

And if the Republican Party doesn’t counteract these lies rather than indulge them, political violence will become more acceptable and more prevalent on the American right. This assessment isn’t based on mere speculation; we know that many of the people who participated in the violent assault on the Capitol believed that they were acting patriotically, foot soldiers in the 21-century version of the American Revolution, doing what they understood their leader was asking of them.

As a Washington Post story put it, “The accounts of people who said they were inspired by the president to take part in the melee inside the Capitol vividly show the impact of Trump’s months-long attack on the integrity of the 2020 election and his exhortations to supporters to ‘fight’ the results.” The Post story points out that a video clip of rioters mobbing the Capitol steps caught one man screaming at a police officer: “We were invited here! We were invited by the president of the United States!”

Jill Sanborn, the head of counterterrorism at the FBI, recently told Congress that “the FBI assesses there is an elevated threat of violence from domestic violent extremists, and some of these actors have been emboldened in the aftermath of the breach of the U.S. Capitol.. 

Cheney told CNN that several Republican members of Congress had voted against impeaching Trump out of fear. “If you look at the vote to impeach, for example, there were members who told me that they were afraid for their own security—afraid, in some instances, for their lives,” she said. “And that tells you something about where we are as a country, that members of Congress aren’t able to cast votes, or feel that they can’t, because of their own security.”

Georgia Republicans who in the aftermath of the 2020 election would not go along with Trump’s false claims about election fraud in that state faced death threats, intimidation, and harassment, according to Gabriel Sterling, a Republican official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office. The home of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, also a Republican, was targeted too. 

The Road to Political Violence - The Atlantic

• Lest we forget, Hang Mike Pence, they shouted when they entered the Capitol on January 6..
  
• Not to speak of Fauci, who needs permanent security detail..
  

[Admin]

William A. Galston's recent essay "The Bitter Heartland" begins, "We are living in an age of resentment . . . [that] shapes today's politics." The more I read of it (and more about it later), the more the great resentments of Hitler's followers came to mind. They resented rich Jews, the victorious Allies who in 1919 had imposed the "unfair" postwar Versailles Treaty upon them, civilian German politicians who had signed the treaty, communists, who had taken over in Russia and were a rising force in Germany, and the "decadent" godless ways of Berlin, as hinted at in the play and film Cabaret...

Like some before him, he indicates or hints at where the Trump resentful are mostly found: in small towns and rural areas, and among older people, non-college graduates, groups once dependent on manufacturing and mining jobs, and "social conservatives and white Christians." The resentful are more provincial and traditional and many of them "lack access to high-speed broadband."

"They have a sense of displacement in a country they once dominated. Immigrants, minorities, non-Christians, even atheists have taken center stage, forcing them to the margins of American life." They believe that the big-city elites, the professionals, and the government—before Trump came along—all failed to help them achieve their share of the American Dream. They resent professionals and liberals telling them how to live, calling them racists, or limiting their freedoms—e.g. to buy multiple guns or go about maskless during our present pandemic. "President Trump was at his best, they say, when he ignored the experts and went his own way."

Like Saunders earlier, Galston thinks that many of the resentful feel they are "being treated unjustly, unfairly, or disrespectfully." The appearance of Trump and discovery of like-minded people—via the Internet and the person-to-person contacts of smaller towns—help overcome feelings of powerlessness. Feeling more powerful, some "people merely want a remedy for the injustice they have experienced. But others—typically those who experience disrespect—want more than redress; they want revenge."

Historian: How MAGA's 'culture of resentment' has a lot in common with Nazi Germany - Alternet.org

[Admin]

During Jane Timken’s tenure as Ohio’s GOP chair, Donald Trump won the one-time bellwether state by a whopping 8 percentage points. She put 150,000 miles on her car driving to the state’s 88 counties as a surrogate for the president. And she raised a total of $5 million for his two campaigns. But that sterling record of MAGA support might not be enough to guarantee the former president’s support in her bid for the GOP Senate nomination.

Timken’s sin? In her capacity as state party chair, she failed to immediately condemn home-state Republican congressman, Anthony Gonzalez, for voting to impeach Trump in response to the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6. At the time, Timken said the congressman had a “rational reason why he voted that way. I think he’s an effective legislator, and he’s a very good person.” That statement is proving costly. In a Republican Party where a candidate’s viability is measured in degrees of fealty to the former president, the crowded field of primary opponents is insisting Timken has failed a key test.

Top MAGA ally under fire for ‘squishiness’ on Trump - POLITICO

[Admin]

Prosecutors subpoenaed Apple for data from the accounts of at least two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, aides and family members. One was a minor.

All told, the records of at least a dozen people tied to the committee were seized in 2017 and early 2018, including those of Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, then the panel’s top Democrat and now its chairman, according to committee officials and two other people briefed on the inquiry. Representative Eric Swalwell of California said in an interview Thursday night that he had also been notified that his data had subpoenaed.

Prosecutors, under the beleaguered attorney general, Jeff Sessions, were hunting for the sources behind news media reports about contacts between Trump associates and Russia. Ultimately, the data and other evidence did not tie the committee to the leaks, and investigators debated whether they had hit a dead end and some even discussed closing the inquiry.

But William P. Barr revived languishing leak investigations after he became attorney general a year later. He moved a trusted prosecutor from New Jersey with little relevant experience to the main Justice Department to work on the Schiff-related case and about a half-dozen others, according to three people with knowledge of his work who did not want to be identified discussing federal investigations.

The zeal in the Trump administration’s efforts to hunt leakers led to the extraordinary step of subpoenaing communications metadata from members of Congress — a nearly unheard-of move outside of corruption investigations. While Justice Department leak investigations are routine, current and former congressional officials familiar with the inquiry said they could not recall an instance in which the records of lawmakers had been seized as part of one.

Moreover, just as it did in investigating news organizations, the Justice Department secured a gag order on Apple that expired this year, according to a person familiar with the inquiry, so lawmakers did not know they were being investigated until Apple informed them last month.

Hunting Leaks, Trump Officials Seized Records of Democrats - The New York Times

• Unprecedented use of the Justice Department to investigate the media and political opponents
  
• Gag order to keep it quiet for everybody, including the victims
  

[Admin]

Election officials and their families are living with threats of hanging, firing squads, torture and bomb blasts, interviews and documents reveal. The campaign of fear, sparked by Trump's voter-fraud falsehoods, threatens the U.S. electoral system.

Trump-inspired death threats are terrorizing election workers

[Admin]

U..S. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), who was one of the very first leaders of Donald Trump's January 6 insurrection, on Friday urged GOP voters at a conservative conference to fight and die for America, just like George Washington's soldiers did at Valley Forge, and telegraphing to them their very "survival" is at stake.

Pro-insurrection Congressman: ‘America needs you’ to ‘fight’ and ‘sacrifice’ lives like soldiers at Valley Forge - Alternet.org

[Admin]

According to Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender's bombshell book, "Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, a furious Donald Trump demanded that officials in his government find out who leaked the story that he fled to his bunker during the George Floyd protests in D.C. and wanted them tried for treason and then executed.

Furious Trump demanded leaker who revealed he fled to his bunker during protests be executed: report - Alternet.org

[Admin]

And in an infamous essayed published by the American Mind on March 24, Glenn Ellmers (a Claremont senior fellow) admitted that Trumpism falls outside of traditional conservatism. In Ellmers' essay, titled "Conservatism Is No Longer Enough," he argued that a post-conservative approach will be needed to save the U.S. from the left and infamously wrote, "Most people living in the United States today — certainly more than half — are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term…. It is not obvious what we should call these citizen-aliens, these non-American Americans; but they are something else." Field explains, "The people he has in mind are the ones who voted for Joe Biden…. The real and 'authentic' Americans are, 'by and large,' the 74 million people who voted for Trump….

The dark post-conservative ideas at a right-wing think tank give a foreboding glimpse of Trumpism's future - Alternet.org