Fascism

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President Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr, is facing backlash after urging his father to “go to total war” over the incoming results of the 2020 election. With Mr Trump facing the possibility of being a one-term president in his knife-edge race against Democratic challenger Joe Biden, his son pressed his father to take action in a tweet, while also repeating the president’s baseless claims of election fraud. “The best thing for America’s future is for Donald Trump to go to total war over this election to expose all of the fraud, cheating, dead/no longer in state voters, that has been going on for far too long,” Mr Trump Jr said in a tweet. 

The post was quickly hidden by Twitter, which warned that “some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process”. Mr Trump Jr quickly lashed out at the social media company for hiding his tweet, writing: “Twitter is censoring and flagging this of course.""

‘Reckless’ and ‘stupid’: Trump Jr calls for ‘total war’ over election results | The Independent

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Here are some of the things that happened yesterday evening on the most-watched news network in America: The minority leader of the House of Representatives announced, absolutely falsely and with no pushback, that “President Trump won this election.” A former speaker of the House argued that, in the name of democracy, the U.S. federal government should “lock up” state election workers. One of the most-watched TV hosts in the country implied to the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee that the GOP-controlled Pennsylvania legislature should override the will of the state’s voters to appoint its own electors. Lindsey Graham responded, gravely, “Everything should be on the table.”

Fox News, which spent years flattering Donald Trump and his fictions, is finishing what it started. The network that first helped bring Trump to political power is now working—despite a fair election that seems poised, as of this writing, to be won by his opponent—to keep him there. Fox’s popular prime-time opinion programs, throughout this week, have functioned as a Trump-campaign ad by another means. But last night’s shows reached a dangerous new low. The Fox News Channel, this week, had the opportunity to reckon with reality; instead, the network chose to mislead its viewers about the state of the election, and to foment mistrust in the workings of the American electoral system more broadly. It chose the fate of Donald Trump—and the ratings that come from the viewers who love him—over the fate of American democracy.

“As poll workers continue to slowly tabulate results,” Sean Hannity said last night, “we have serious reports of irregularities and fraud and not allowing vote counters to observe counting. Which is a matter of law. And they continue to come in, these reports, from all over the country.”

The reports have been coming from the Trump campaign itself. They have not been validated. They have been, in some cases, thoroughly debunked. “Trump,” The Washington Post noted yesterday, in an extensive summary of his campaign’s long-running attempts to claim voter fraud where there is none, “has offered no evidence that the election’s integrity has been compromised, and none has been found. In fact, cybersecurity experts in the Trump administration and local officials say the process has been smooth despite the unusual historic circumstance of a deadly pandemic.”

That did not stop the misinformation on the news network. On Wednesday evening, Laura Ingraham—who had spent part of the day in the White House with the Trump campaign—claimed that Democrats were trying to “destroy the integrity of our election process with this mail-in, day-of registration efforts, counting after the election is over, dumping batches of votes a day, two days, maybe even three days after an election.”

Fox News Hits a Dangerous New Low - The Atlantic

• Fascism isn't complete without state TV..
  

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A failed coup d'etat, setting up the stage of big margin election day victory which would be eroded in a supposedly suspect (but entirely deliberately manufactured) way in order to give the claim of fraud a veneer of credibility:

• Claiming for months that the pandemic is over and mail-in ballots are rife with corruption skewed mail-in ballots even more to the Democrats
  
• Slowing down US post service
  
• Forbidding mail-in ballots are counted before election day
  
• Claiming premature victory
  
• Remember 2016, when Trump claimed he won the popular vote and there was widespread fraud with illegal aliens voting for Clinton? The commission he set up to investigate that came up with nothing.
  

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The White House has reportedly demanded a list of names of people who clapped as a departing Pentagon official left the building, having resigned after his boss was fired by Donald Trump. James Anderson, the acting under secretary of defense for policy, was a key advisor to Mark Esper, the defense secretary who Mr Trump announced via tweet on Monday had been “terminated”. Mr Anderson, a former marine who taught at the Marine Corps War College before joining the Department of Defense, resigned on Tuesday. Bill Kristol, a “Never Trump” Republican and former newspaper editor, who now runs advocacy organisation Defending Democracy Together, said there was an atmosphere of “loyalty-oath” inside the Pentagon. "A sign of the loyalty-oath atmosphere now at DOD: When Jim Anderson was fired yesterday as Acting Under Secretary for Policy, he was given a "clap-out" as he left the building," Mr Kristol tweeted.  “The WH called to request names of any political appointees who joined in so they could be fired.”

White House ‘requesting names of those who clapped out departing Pentagon official’ | The Independent

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With a fresh presidential pardon still warm, former national security advisor Michael Flynn has called on Donald Trump to suspend the constitution and declare martial law for the military to run a new election. The retired general tweeted out a full-page ad that ran in The Washington Times that claimed the extraordinary executive actions were necessary to avoid the alternative of an imminent "shooting civil war". Captioning the tweet "Freedom never kneels except for God [pray emoji, US flag emoji]", Mr Flynn linked to ad from a TEA Party-affiliated group called We The People Convention.

Michael Flynn calls for Trump to suspend the constitution and declare martial law to re-run election | The Independent

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Trump election attorney Lin Wood tweeted that Vice President Mike Pence will “face execution by firing squad,” in a string of tweets that prompted questions about his sanity. He called Mr Pence a “coward” who will “sing like a bird and confess ALL”.

Trump election lawyer Lin Wood calls for Pence to be ‘executed by firing squad’ | The Independent

• Fascism is about intimidation of those that are not for you, they are assumed to be against you and need to be kept in line. It seems to have worked in this case:
  

Mike Pence has said he welcomes an attempt by Republican senators’ to overturn the US election.

Mike Pence welcomes Republican senators’ attempt to overturn US election | The Independent

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There is a disturbing reason Republicans in Congress are giving for refusing to break with President Donald Trump: They fear for their lives. According to Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), this is a major reason why more House Republicans aren’t voting to impeach Donald Trump in the wake of the attack on the Capitol. “The majority of them are paralyzed with fear,” Crow said in a Wednesday MSNBC appearance. “I had a lot of conversations with my Republican colleagues last night, and a couple of them broke down in tears — saying that they are afraid for their lives if they vote for this impeachment.” Tim Alberta, Politico’s chief political correspondent, found in his own reporting that “Crow was right.””

House Republicans say they won’t impeach Trump because of death threats - Vox

• Does anyone still think this isn't fascism?
  

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The seven Republican senators who broke rank by voting to convict former president Donald Trump at his impeachment trial faced immediate hostility and criticism from fellow conservatives revealing the potentially high cost of opposing Trumpism within the party. These senators – North Carolina’s Richard Burr, Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy, Maine’s Susan Collins, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Utah’s Mitt Romney, Nebraska’s Ben Sasse, and Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey – brought the total number of guilty votes to 57. That was not nearly enough to secure a conviction, but easily enough to ensure instant attack from fellow Republicans and others on the right. Thereaction was a powerful illustration of the strength of Trump’s grip on the Republican party even though he is out of office. “Let’s impeach RINOs from the Republican Party!!!” Trump’s son and conservative favorite Donald Trump Jr said on Twitter, using the insulting acronym for Republicans In Name Only. The instant backlash came from powerful rightwing media figures also. Conservative Fox News host Laura Ingraham commented: “Prediction: none of the Republicans who voted in the affirmative today will speak at the 2024 GOP convention.” For Cassidy, there was almost instant retribution in his own state. Jeff Landry, the Republican attorney general of Louisiana, tweeted: “Senator Bill Cassidy’s vote is extremely disappointing.”

Republican rebels who voted to convict feel Trumpists' fury | Republicans | The Guardian

• They might have to beef up their personal security
  

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The Alabama Republican Party will honor former President Trump for being "one of the greatest and most effective presidents in the 245-year history of this Republic," Fox News reported. At a Saturday evening reception held at Mar-a-Lago, the party will present Trump with a framed resolution that grants him the honor.

Alabama Republican Party to gift Trump with resolution acknowledging him as one of the 'greatest' presidents | TheHill

• Amazing, this kind of ridiculous flattery which is something you only see in deeply authoritarian countries with leaders thriving in personality cults.
  

[Admin]

This excuse was most clearly articulated for a large audience on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show last week. His guest, Jesse Kelly, ranted that he is "worried" — and by "worried", he means he's threatening — that the "right is going to pick a fascist" because "if we're going to be all treated like criminals and all subject to every single law, while antifa/Black Lives Matter guys go free and Hunter Biden goes free, then the right's going to take drastic measures."

Carlson, far from pushing back on this "don't make us hit you" threat, performed his idiotic mouth-open fake serious face, as if this was an intellectual discussion about something happening beyond his control. In reality, his show is a nightly blast of encouragement at his fans to embrace their more fascistic yearnings.

The more "intellectual" version of this argument was rolled out by Glenn Ellmers at the American Mind blog of the Claremont Institute, a fairly prestigious conservative think tank that is oriented around the task of putting an intellectualized gloss on the reactionary impulses of the right. In the piece, Ellmers argues openly that "most people living in the United States today" — by which he clearly and explicitly means Democratic voters — "are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term."

Defining most Americans as non-American, of course, is about justifying an all-out assault on their rights and freedoms. As progressive writer John Ganz wrote in his lengthy rebuttal to Ellmers, this is a "radically anti-democratic conceit of delegitimizing the citizenship of the majority of the country." But Ellmers, like Kelly, pretends to say this more in sorrow than anger, claiming that the left has forced this turn towards fascism (though he pretends it isn't fascism) because the liberal majority does "not believe in, live by, or even like the principles, traditions, and ideals that until recently defined America as a nation and as a people."

Here's the twisted logic Trump supporters are using to defend their open embrace of fascism - Alternet.org