“Violence was part of the plan. It has to be in a coup,” fascism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat tells CNN
Archive for category: #Fascism #Elections #Caesarism
When the conservative-leaning Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion, most of us wondered how far they would take it. Like, for example, are they going after LGBTQ+ rights next? Well, Justice Clarence Thomas answered that question pretty quickly. Yes, nothing is off the table. And what about a woman’s right to vote?
Behold: James Vincent in the video answered that question for us.
“Christian nationalism is on the rise, and people are thirsty for it,” he said. “We are the Christian Taliban, and we will not stop until The Handmaid’s Tale is a reality, and even worse than that to be honest.”
The little feller went on to say that they are trying to roll back rights for women for 100 years. “It’s only going to get worse for you,” he added.
Conservative men like to make women suffer. It’s what they do. It’s as if they feel like less of a man if women have their rights. I’m not a psychiatrist, but I think a lot of them must have mommy issues. James should just go overseas and join the Taliban. Meanwhile, women, and friends of women, need to ensure that Republicans don’t take the House or the Senate.
Vincent gins up racial fear by bringing up black-on-white crime, and he thinks it ought to be a crime to be gay. And ladies, I could be wrong, but I think he’s single. Now’s your chance!
Lawmakers and rights advocates mourned the loss of life and decried the United States’ inhumane immigration system late Monday after an abandoned tractor-trailer rig containing at least 50 dead people and 16 survivors — including four children — was discovered in San Antonio, Texas.
Local authorities said it appears that the rig, which was found after a worker in the area heard a yell for help, was being used for a smuggling operation. Citing one law enforcement official, The Texas Tribune reported that evidence suggests “people were trying to jump out of the tractor-trailer because some of the deceased were found along several blocks.”
“The tractor-trailer had a refrigeration system, the official said, but it did not appear to be working,” the Tribune added. “Many of the people found inside the vehicle appeared to have been sprinkled with steak seasoning, the official said, in perhaps an attempt to cover up the smell of people as the smugglers were transporting them.”
On Monday, the temperature in San Antonio reached a high of 101°F.
The 16 survivors were transported to a nearby hospital. According to Mexico’s foreign minister, 22 Mexicans, seven Guatemalans, and two Hondurans were among the deceased.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, wrote on Twitter that the smuggling incident appears to be the deadliest along the U.S.-Mexico border in the last five years. In 2017, 10 people died in a truck carrying nearly 40 migrants in the sweltering San Antonio heat.
In 2003, 19 migrants died in a similarly devastating case in Victoria, Texas that was at the time considered the “deadliest smuggling incident in U.S. history.”
“Been dreading another tragedy like this for months now,” wrote Reichlin-Melnick. “With the border shut as tightly as it is today for migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, people have been pushed into more and more dangerous routes. Truck smuggling is way up.”
“Truck smuggling is VERY dangerous,” he continued. “It has the possibility to go horribly wrong. And when its use goes up, the possibility of mass-death incidents go up as well.”
As federal, state, and local authorities investigated the incident and details continued to emerge, Texas’ Republican Gov. Greg Abbott wasted no time blaming the deaths on President Joe Biden, claiming that “they are a result of his deadly open border policies.”
Experts and rights organizations were quick to respond — scathingly, in most cases.
Shouan Zhoobin Riahi, an immigration attorney, tweeted that “if the border was ‘open,’ people wouldn’t feel the need to pack themselves like fucking sardines in the back of an unventilated trailer in the middle of the god damn summer in order to enter the country.”
Frank Sharry, executive director of immigrant rights group America’s Voice, added: “How low can this man go? People seeking opportunities lose their lives. A tragedy of immense proportions. A time to rethink the myopic and stupid border debate. And this lowlife turns it into a despicable tweet to score cheap points. He’s the governor of Texas? Good God.”
Devastating. Devastated. People will always seek the freedom to thrive. We need an immigration system that recognizes the humanity of individuals doing so and prevents these types of tragedies. My heart breaks for these people and their families.
https://t.co/hAKWHlNkOP
— Victoria Ballesteros (@VictoriaB_NILC) June 28, 2022
The appalling discovery in southwest San Antonio also drew the attention of members of Congress, who demanded an end to the Trump-era border expulsion policy known as Title 42.
“This is horrific,” said Rep. Chuy García (D-Ill.). “We need to end Title 42 and fix our broken immigration system so these unimaginable tragedies stop happening. People fleeing violence and poverty deserve a chance at a better life. Que descansen en paz.”
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), who represents San Antonio, echoed García.
“The tragedy in San Antonio tonight, the loss of life, is horrific,” Castro wrote on Twitter. “My prayers are with the victims, their families, and the survivors being treated in our community. May God bless them. We must end Title 42, which has put desperate, oppressed people in grave danger of death.”
Use of teargas and arrests by police and targeting by anti-abortion activists disrupts demonstrations in multiple states
Fears over police violence and attacks by anti-abortion activists have been growing following a wave of incidents at demonstrations against the US supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade, which upheld the constitutional right to an abortion.
Across the country, hundreds of thousands of people have gathered at protests objecting to the ruling. The protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful but some have seen incidents of police violence – including attacks on protesters – and an incident of a car driving dangerously through marchers.
Former Harvard professor says Trump has the morality of a serial killer — but that doesn’t render him insane
The spread of the “constitutional sheriffs” movement—which claims that local county sheriffs are the supreme law of the land, capable of overruling federal and state laws, as well as prohibiting federal and state agencies from enforcing them—throughout rural American sheriff’s offices has often seemed like a quaint but localized problem: Sure, having set themselves up as laws unto themselves, they seem to always run their jurisdictions like private fiefdoms, but it doesn’t affect people outside those counties.
But we have in fact seen—notably in the case of Klickitat County, Washington’s “constitutional” sheriff, who undermined the entire state’s ability to regulate the hunting of endangered mountain lions—that in fact their actions can have broad consequences. That’s especially the case with Michigan “constitutional sheriff” Dar Leaf, who was exposed recently spearheading a broader effort to enlist other sheriffs in seizing voting machines from local election officials to ostensibly prove Donald Trump’s Big Lie about fraud in the 2020 vote.
By Thierry Meyssan – Jun 21, 2022
While Stepan Bandera was an agent of the Gestapo and left only the memory (positive for some) of the massacres and tortures he organized, Dmytro Dontsov was—and still is—the reference thinker of Ukranian nationalists. It is he who invented Ukrainian racialism and imagined the fanaticism of Ukrainian nationalists as a weapon.
If in previous articles I have presented the history of the Banderist movement from the interwar period to the present day, I would like to talk here about their ideology.
Their reference intellectual, then and now, is Dmytro Dontsov (1883-1973). Although he died in Canada and was buried in the United States, his works have not been translated, but his followers have made them known to us. This absence in the bookstores of other countries explains why he is unknown abroad. However, after a long period of absence, he has become one of the best-selling authors in Ukraine these recent years.
Feeding like the Nazis on his interpretation of Nietzsche, Dmytro Dontsov called for the birth of a “new man” with “a burning faith and a heart of stone” who would not be afraid to destroy the enemies of Ukraine without mercy. Thinker of the “integral Ukrainian nationalism,” he created a philosophy where everything nationalistic is against Russia and against Jews.
He wanted to create an elite people, far from the “egalitarianism of slaves” of the Russian October Revolution and the “universal ideals” of the French Revolution.
He said that the imagination of real Ukrainians must be “fed by the legend of the last battle,” the “denial of what is,” and the “fascinating image of the catastrophe that will bring something new.” They must serve “a categorical order” with “reckless obedience.”
According to him, “Ukrainian nationalism” is characterized by:
- the assertion of the will to live, of power, of expansion (he promotes “the right of strong races to organize peoples and nations to strengthen the existing culture and civilization”)
- the desire to fight and the awareness of its extremity” (he praises the “creative violence of the initiative minority”)
Its qualities are: fanaticism, and immorality.
The fanaticism refers to the religious character of his doctrine. Dontsov notes that this is what makes the warriors invincible. It is therefore perfectly logical that after the World War Stepan Bandera and Yaroslav Stetsko agreed to work in Munich with the secret society of the Muslim Brotherhood, or that in 2007 their followers were able to form an Anti-Russian Front with Chechen jihadists.
At the beginning of his work, Dontsov was not inspired by Italian fascism or German national socialism; rather he appears to be impacted by the same reasoning as the Croatian Ustasha, the Romanian Iron Guard, the Slovak Glinka, the Polish Oboz Narodowo-Radykalny.
In contact with the Nazis, Dontsov began to claim a mythical geography and history. The “true Ukrainians” were said to be of Scandinavian or proto-Germanic origin and to have descended from the Varegues, a Viking tribe from Sweden. Their ancestors founded the city of Novgorod in Russia and subdued the Russian Slavs.
In this mythology, the “Ukrainian nationalists” are the Good, while the “Muscovites” are the Evil. It is therefore quite normal that the muse of the Svoboda (Freedom) Party, the MP Irina Farion, declared well before the Russian military intervention: “We came into this world to destroy Moscow.”
In 2015, President Petro Poroshenko and his Prime Minister Arseni Yatsenyuk passed a set of laws that on the one hand banned Communist and Nazi symbols and on the other rehabilitated Banderist symbols. In practice, since no one claimed to be a Nazi, the monuments to the victory of the Red Army over the Nazis were destroyed and replaced by others in honor of Stepan Bandera, who was responsible for the murder of 1.6 million of his compatriots, and his master thinker, Dmytro Dontsov.
The Council of Europe criticized these “decommunization” laws, which cast aspersions on regimes in general without mentioning the acts they condemn.
It was as a result of these laws that the motto of the Banderists became part of the official discourse: “Glory to Ukraine.” Of course, I have nothing against this slogan, any more than I have against the cry of the Muslims “Allah Akbar”, but after hearing it sung by the jihadists who wanted to cut my throat I can no longer think that “God is great,” and I am still haunted by what the jihadists mean by it.
Similarly, it makes sense that Ukraine has a legal framework that legalizes a form of racial discrimination. On July 21, 2021, President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law, introduced at his initiative, on the “indigenous peoples of Ukraine. It states that Tatars and Karaite Jews have “the right to full enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms” (sic). This text, which seems very generous, is not at all so, because it is interpreted by default. It completes the texts recognizing the rights of Ukrainians of Scandinavian or proto-Germanic origin. In fact, it is used by the Courts to deny the rights of Ukrainians who do not recognize themselves in the general definition, nor in one of these minorities, in other words in those who say they are Slavic of Slavic origin. The latter people are not allowed to bring before a court their “right to full enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms”.
On March 20, 2022, President Volodymyr Zelensky declared in a video posted on his Telegram account, “Any activity on the part of politicians participating in dividing society or collaborating with the enemy will not succeed, and will receive a severe response.” With that, he banned 11 political parties (Opposition Platform – For Life, Sharij’s Party, Nachi, Opposition Bloc, Left Opposition, Union of Left Forces, Derjava, Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialist Party of Ukraine, Socialists, Bloc of Volodymyr Saldo). While most of them were not represented in the single chamber, the Verkhovna Rada, Opposition Platform-For Life was the second largest party in the country. It received 13 per cent of the vote and won 43 of 450 deputies.
Also on March 20, President Zelensky signed decrees banning for five years three opposition channels that had been “suspended” for several months. In addition, he merged all remaining channels under the control of the Security and Defense Council.
So there is no more freedom of expression, neither for politicians nor for journalists. Ukrainian democracy is dead, not from Russian military intervention, but from the will of its own government.
A Council for the Development of Libraries was created on May 5, 2022. Among other things, it must decide on the Russian books that are overloading the shelves. The Minister of Culture and Information Policy, journalist Oleksandr Tkachenko, said that they could become a raw material for printing Ukrainian books on recycled paper.
Book burnings are a classic of dictatorships. This time, we won’t burn anything in public, but we will recycle the paper. It is less conspicuous and more ecological.
Now let’s come to the way of making war. One peculiarity of the Ukrainian army is noteworthy: it does not pick up the bodies of its dead soldiers. All other armies in the world do not hesitate to put themselves in danger for that. To give a dignified burial to their dead is indispensable in their eyes. Not to do so would have disastrous consequences on the morale of their companions. So why does the Ukrainian army act differently?
In Scandinavian mythology, the Valkyries are servants of the god Odin. They ride on wolves. But the Germans represent them on horses. The “Ride of the Valkyries,” set to music by Richard Wagner, announces both the death of the heroes and their glorious destiny in the coming battle at the end of time.
If I understand Dmytro Dontsov’s thinking, this is a preparation for the eschatological battle between good and evil. According to Scandinavian mythology, when a battle was fought by the Varegues, the Valkyries came down to the battlefield riding wolves. They decided who of the brave Vikings would die. Then they took their souls to Valhalla to form with them the future army of the “last battle.” Thus, the men fallen on the field of honor were not victims of the fate, but were chosen for a glorious destiny.
This sacred ideology refers to the “Prayer of the Ukrainian Nationalists,” written by Josef Mashchak in 1922. It is taught and recited in the Banderist youth camps. It is at the center of the ceremonies of the secret Centuria order, which the Banderists introduced into the NATO armies.
The war of the “Ukrainian nationalists” against the Slavs has therefore just begun.
The Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade on Friday, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion. The decision, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, reversed 50 years of precedent to return the question of abortion rights back to the states.
The ruling has immediate impacts: 26 states are likely to move quickly or immediately to ban abortion; half of those states already have “trigger” laws set in place to ban it as soon as today. Experts worry that without the option of safe, legal abortions, women will die as a result of unsafe terminations or pregnancy complications.
The ruling also throws other fundamental rights into question. In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly called on the court to reconsider rulings on contraception, marriage equality, and the criminalization of same-sex relationships.
Far-right activists were ecstatic with the ruling. They immediately began to look forward to enacting the rest of their agenda, eager to implement a nationwide abortion ban, further Christian nationalism, and roll back LGBTQ rights and women’s rights.
Andrew Torba, the far-right Christian nationalist founder of Gab, posted a meme that read, “SAY GOODBYE TO YOUR ABORTIONS WHORES.” An image of Justice Brett Kavanaugh with red lasers coming out of his eyes accompanied it. Torba followed that misogynist celebration with this message: “The Christian takeover of our Christian country has begun.”
Known for his antisemitism, he quickly went on to identify what else he wanted to ban. “Next we need to ban the barbaric act of circumcision, which is also a Jewish sacrament that was imposed on our men outside of their will as mere babies,” Torba declared.
Far-right congressional candidate Laura Loomer—who has said that her white nationalist views will help her get elected to Congress—managed to tie her white nationalism and anti-LGBTQ bigotry to the overruling of Roe. “Forget about the race baiting ‘holiday’ of Juneteenth. Today should be a national holiday instead,” she wrote on Telegram. “And I can’t think of a better way to end the degeneracy of PRIDE month than by overturning Roe vs Wade.”
Rep. Paul Gosar—who asked former President Donald Trump for a pardon after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol—was eager to give Trump, who nominated three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, credit for overturning Roe. Gosar claimed “there is still so much more work to be done to return this country to God.”
“Let’s keep our momentum and push ever forward. For Him,” he tweeted, adding an emoji of a cross. He followed that tweet with this declaration: “We’re just getting started. Welcome to the New Right. Welcome to America First.”
Gosar is friendly with the white nationalist America First movement.
Other far-right actors began fearmongering about abortion rights groups’ reactions to the ruling. After an extreme group calling itself Jane’s Revenge vandalized anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers,” far-right actors painted the picture that riots and attacks on churches are inevitable. Other far-right activists fearmongered about “antifa”—conservatives’ shorthand for anti-fascist activists. (As the Intercept noted, it’s unclear who is behind Jane’s Revenge.)
While it’s “not a non-zero threat,” DFRLab Resident Fellow Jared Holt described far-right messaging around potential riots as “capitalizing on one group to encourage widespread panic.”
Among those painting this picture of chaos was Jack Posobiec, a far-right commentator and “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as “known primarily for creating and amplifying viral disinformation campaigns.”
“Protect the churches!” Jack Posobiec posted on Telegram at 10:16 a.m. He spent the morning prior to that message posting photos of protests at the Supreme Court, and describing one individual there as an “Antifa pedophile.”
Prior to the decision, Posobiec flooded his social media feed with posts about a “Night of Rage.” He returned to that message while hawking MyPillows shortly after the decision in a bizarre attempt at trolling. “Hi libs! Mad that you can’t kill babies anymore? Don’t have a Night of Rage, have a Night of Slumber with MyPillow.com promocode Poso!”
Right-wing commentator Matt Walsh took up that same vein of attack. “It’s a good thing the Supreme Court affirmed our right to conceal carry right before this ‘night of rage’ you guys are planning,” Walsh wrote.
White nationalist Nick Fuentes took to Telegram to spread this message as well. “DEFEND YOUR CHURCHES TONIGHT!” he wrote, echoing Posobiec. The previous day, he displayed both his male supremacism and his white nationalism in apparent reference to abortion, writing, “Women gave us original sin and White Genocide.”
Fuentes—who believes women in the United States should be treated like they are under the Taliban—shared a message from Tyler Russell that said today’s ruling was not enough. “Time to go further right, Then even further,” the message read. “We’re just getting started. Christian Nationalism is the future.”
“God Wins,” Fuentes wrote. “We are going to ban abortion and open up the flood gates for God’s grace and our inevitable plan will be completed.”
The post What Follows Roe’s Reversal? The Far Right Calls for Christian Nationalism appeared first on Right Wing Watch.
U.S. Capitol Police in riot gear are seen in Washington, D.C., following the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022.
Photo: Bill Clark/AP
Given the makeup of the far-right Supreme Court, it has for some years been clear that Roe v. Wade would fall. Following Friday’s 6-3 decision to destroy all constitutional abortion rights, 22 states will enact their readied trigger laws for total or near-total abortion bans, with more expected to follow. Fascistic anti-abortionists have won in the courts, but they are already making clear that a victory in law is nothing to them if the laws are not brutally enforced to forge a Christian-nationalist nation through and through.
With the end of Roe achieved, the fascist right is setting its sights on shutting down and criminalizing all crucial sites of abortion solidarity and assistance that reproductive rights networks are fighting to build.
To get a sense of their expansive, draconian agenda, we need only look at the model legislation drafted by the National Right to Life Coalition — the sort of laws that Republicans in state houses will be no doubt swiftly proposing.
“Traditionally, abortion laws relied on criminal enforcement to make pro-life laws effective,” the powerful anti-abortion organization wrote. “However, current realities require a much more robust enforcement regime than reliance on criminal penalties.”
That is, for these groups, criminalization of abortion providers is not fascistic enough.
For these groups, criminalization of abortion providers is not fascistic enough.
The model legislation would seek to use Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations — or RICO — laws against anyone with any involvement in someone accessing an abortion. People could come under criminal suspicion for offering telehealth appointments; mailing or transporting abortion pills across state lines; potentially giving advice online about how to self-administer an abortion; or even “hosting or maintaining a website, or providing internet service, that encourages or facilitates efforts to obtain an illegal abortion.” All these activities would fall under “aiding and abetting.”
Drawing attention to the model law on Twitter, historian Thomas Lecaque noted, “IT DOESN’T STOP THERE THIS IS A BLUEPRINT FOR A CHRISTIAN NATIONALIST SURVEILLANCE STATE.”
The model legislation also makes clear that the route to enforcement should be vigilantism, following the lead of Texas’s vile Senate Bill 8. The law permits anyone to file a civil suit against any person who could be deemed to “abet” an abortion — potentially including an Uber driver who takes someone to an abortion appointment, or a therapist or pastor who has counseled a person on ending a pregnancy. The plaintiff need have no personal connection to the abortion seeker or fetus at all. The Texas law incentivizes anti-abortion crusaders to act as bounty hunters, promising $10,000 to those who bring successful suits against abortions performed in violation of the law.
We can expect a spate of such laws to pass in red states, and without Roe on the books, they can no longer be challenged on constitutional lines. The enemies of abortion access, in other words, won’t be letting up anytime soon — and reproductive rights will continue to be stripped from more and more people.
The Texas law was not built on a new concept. White supremacist, patriarchal rule in this country has always relied on the coalition of government forces, official police, and state-endorsed vigilantism.
There are many examples. The Jim Crow South, for instance, depended on the threat of lynching and mob violence to enforce white rule. From the fabled Texas Rangers to Klansmen to today’s right-wing militia groups armed with assault weapons, vigilantes have worked in tandem with immigration enforcement agents to hunt down and round up immigrants trying to cross the border. Before Kyle Rittenhouse shot dead two anti-racist protesters, he was thanked by police for his heavily armed presence in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Federal agents were advised by the Department of Homeland Security to publicly support the right-wing teen and claim that he “took his rifle to the scene of the rioting to help defend small business owners.”
As with the intersecting enforcement of racial hierarchy, we are seeing the shoring up of patriarchal power through a most American vigilantism, both outside of and inscribed into law.
We can be certain, too, that anti-abortionists will not wait to see whether all aspects of their bans and criminalization plans stand up in federal court before enacting them. The right makes laws realities through violence, and violent realities through law.
The right makes laws realities through violence, and violent realities through law.
S.B. 8 went into law while Roe was still on the books, despite being in clear violation of its now-dead protections. And a 26-year-old woman was arrested in Texas on murder charges in connection to a “self-induced abortion.” The charges were dropped, since no such murder statute currently exists in the state, but the incident highlighted the ways in which zealous law enforcement already polices and criminalizes abortion. This will only get worse, and poor women of color will suffer the most under the right’s forced-birth regime.
This is not to say that bold legislative efforts in abortion-protective states cannot work in effective opposition to block some of these Christo-fascist fantasies. The end of Roe, as a forthcoming and crucial paper in the Columbia Law Review notes, brings about an entirely new battleground of interstate juridical conflict. States that support access rights will move to pass laws that protect abortion providers who treat out-of-state patients, while anti-abortion states will seek to pass laws to prosecute out-of-state providers.
Legislators in Connecticut, for example, recently passed a bill designed to protect abortion providers who assist patients seeking refuge from abortion-ban states. Those of us in other blue states must push our legislators to do the same. The far right’s plans to criminalize interstate travel and online abortion solidarity must be forced to contend with robust protections for those activities where such protections can be made into law.
As is all too clear, however, when it comes to Congress and the federal government — and most any case that reaches the Supreme Court — the fascists have the upper hand against feckless Democrats. The ever-steeper uphill battle for universal abortion access will thus rely on the wisdom, experience, and cunning of those who have already been fighting on the front lines for reproductive justice, in the legal gray areas, in the streets and by the side of anyone seeking to end an unwanted pregnancy, in the collective struggle for lives worth living.
The post With the Corpse of Roe Still Warm, Far Right Plots Fascistic Anti-Abortion Enforcement appeared first on The Intercept.
Joan Walsh
Mitch McConnell teamed with Donald Trump to pack the Supreme Court and make sure gun owners’ rights are protected—and women’s are not.
The post This Fascist Gang Can Shoot Straight After All appeared first on The Nation.