Archive for category: #Fascism #Elections #Bonapartism

Three years ago, describing an Australian white supremacist charged with massacring 49 people in New Zealand, the New York Times (3/15/19) wrote: “On his flak jacket was a symbol commonly used by the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi paramilitary organization.”

The New York Times (10/4/22) shares a “handout photo” from a paramilitary organization that was founded to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen.”

What a difference a war makes! A Times story (10/4/22) in the paper’s Ukraine War news roundup began:

Commanders of Ukraine’s celebrated Azov Battalion have held an emotional reunion with their families in Turkey, Ukrainian officials said, honoring the fighters released from Russian confinement last month as part of the largest prisoner swap since the start of the war.

“Celebrated” is an odd word to describe a group whose founder urged Ukraine to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen (subhumans)” (Guardian, 3/13/18). Its official logo features the Wolfsangel, a runic icon adopted by the SS that’s become “a symbol of choice for neo-Nazis in Europe and the United States,” according to the ADL. (To dispel any doubt about what the symbol means, Azov used to superimpose it on a Black Sun, a Nordic design beloved by Heinrich Himmler.)

The Azov movement has linked up with other far-right groups across Europe and in the United States, including the Rise Above Movement, a violently racist group based in Southern California (New Republic, 7/9/19). Azov is “believed to have participated in training and radicalizing United States–based white supremacy organizations,” according to an FBI report (RFE/RL, 11/14/18).

But Times reporter Enjoli Liston indeed went on to celebrate the group:

The group’s defense of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol—the southern port city decimated by Russian forces in the first months of the war—has become a powerful symbol of the suffering inflicted by Russia and the resistance mounted by Ukraine.

The story’s headline: “Released Azov Commanders Have an Emotional Reunion With Family Members in Turkey.” The accompanying photo shows the fascistic unit’s commander sharing a joyful hug with his wife.

Not a word in the eight-paragraph story gives any hint about the ugly far-right politics of the unit, incorporated since 2014 into Ukraine’s military structure (when it was rebranded as the Azov Regiment). The Times did, however, find space to convey to the Azov fighters, from Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska, “Thanks from Ukraine, from the president and all the people for whom they are fighting.”

ACTION:

Please tell the New York Times not to treat neo-Nazis as heroes.

CONTACT:

Letters: letters@nytimes.com

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Twitter: @NYTimes

Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your communication in the comments thread.

Featured image: Emblem of the 2nd SS Panzer Division (left) compared with those of the Azov Battalion (center) and Azov Regiment (right).

The post ACTION ALERT: NYT Celebrates Neo-Nazi Azov Unit appeared first on FAIR.

Recent data
analysis by Pew Research looked at the future of Christianity
in the United States, and what it found was startling. By sometime around
2045, only about half of Americans could identify as Christian. If trends
continue, it could fall to as little as 35 percent by 2070, and certainly no
more than 54 percent. Simultaneously, the rise of the “nones” means there will
likely be as many Americans with no religion by then.

There have
been plenty of articles by very serious people who wring their hands and bemoan the
loss of a common U.S. religion (and who ignore that there have always been
Muslims, Jews, deists, atheists, agnostics, and other non-Christians here). Where will communities meet and bond? Where
will morality come from? What will tie people together? However, such questions
entirely miss the point that religion in this country has been a singularly divisive factor for well over a decade and is only becoming
more so.

The numbers
paint a clear picture of what is happening. As American youths leave home, they
leave the faiths of their parents and never return. This is in great part
because the teachings of most churches in the U.S. are fundamentally
at odds with what young people believe: particularly on topics like abortion,
marriage equality, birth control, and premarital sex. They simply fail to see
how such out-of-touch institutions are relevant.

Consider
these numbers. Among members of the 20 largest denominations in the U.S.,
approximately 88 percent (weighted by membership) oppose same-sex marriage.
Liberal mainline denominations (such as Episcopalians and Unitarians) have been
in steep decline for decades, and account for only a tiny fraction of the U.S.
religious landscape. Other mainline denominations (like Methodists) still
oppose same-sex marriage and abortion. These denominations, whatever their
political bent, are so tiny after years of decline that they really only
account for a couple points of the American population. Conversely, 88 percent
of 18- to 29-year-olds believe that abortion should remain legal in some or all
circumstances, per a recent Gallup poll. Even five years ago, support for same-sex marriage was 79
percent among this cohort, and it’s certainly higher now. 

It also
doesn’t help that major denominations have tarnished themselves with their
handling of sexual harassment and assault. The Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), and the Southern Baptist Convention have all been repeatedly rocked with
revelations of how they tolerate, mishandle, and cover up sexual misconduct and
crimes.

The most
crucial factor, though, is how Christianity has slowly become primarily a
political identity for many (overwhelmingly conservative) people. Over the past
40 years, membership in nice, bland, mainline Protestantism has plummeted, from 30 percent of the public down
to 10 percent. Conversely, evangelical membership (and the number of white
evangelicals) boomed in the 1970s and ’80s and then slowly declined. But
evangelical groups are still much larger than the mainline Protestant denominations,
constituting about 23 percent of adults and up to 37 percent of
Americans claiming to be “born again.” Because white
evangelicals are one of the most consistently conservative groups in the country,
the result is that people who identify as Christian or attend church frequently
are far more likely also to identify as Republican.

Black churches
have held steady for decades at about 8 percent of the population.
They are still associated with social justice goals, but they can also tend
toward social conservatism, which can produce tension. For example, the Black Lives Matter movement’s leadership featured many LGBTQ people, who had a somewhat limited or
uneasy working relationship with churches. Latinos were
traditionally part of the Catholic Church. However, traditionally white
evangelical denominations have had some luck luring Latinos away with social conservatism and the false
machismo projected by Republicans, which explains some of the electoral shift seen in 2020.

Just as
those who attend church frequently tend to be Republican, the converse is also
true: Those with no religion are far more likely to be Democrats. Data analysis
by Ryan Burge shows that white evangelicals have
had a stranglehold on the GOP for over two decades and form a clear majority of
the GOP, alongside conservative Catholics. However, by 2018, the “nones” represented a plurality (28 percent) of Democrats, whose gains have come at the
expense of evangelicals, mainlines, and Catholics within the party. Today,
almost half of Gen Z has no religion, along with 51 percent
of white women.

Polling data
collected by Life Way Research (a subsidiary business of the
Southern Baptist Convention) supports these suppositions. A 2017 survey of 2,002 U.S. adults age 23 to
30 who attended a Protestant church two times or more a month for at least a
year in high school found that 66 percent had stopped attending church. Seventy
percent of those cited religious, ethical, or political beliefs for dropping
out. Other major reasons cited included
hypocrisy, churches being judgmental, and a lack of anything in common with
other people at the church.

The real
danger of this widening schism is not a lack of shared sense of community, or
people not doing enough charitable work. The danger lies in this creating the
conditions for a future that looks more like present-day Russia or Iran. 

Conservative
Christians have a deep sense of victimhood and fear about a secular America and are
willing to end democracy to prevent it. As David Frum noted, “If conservatives
become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon
conservatism, they will abandon democracy.”

It has not
gone unnoticed that Republicans are increasingly claiming the mantle of being Christian Nationalists. A recent poll found that although
57 percent of Republicans recognize that declaring the U.S. a
“Christian nation” is unconstitutional, over 60 percent would support it. To achieve enforcement of an
unpopular set of religious beliefs amid a population that is increasingly
ambivalent or hostile to the dominant (conservative) strain of religion in the
U.S., the GOP is already instituting increasingly undemocratic processes, insurrections, and efforts to overturn
legitimate elections and is installing religious zealots in positions of power.

I feel like
I should not have to write this, but having conservative religions joined at
the hip with an authoritarian single-party state can only end badly. There are
two awful examples literally in the headlines today.

First there
is the Russian Orthodox Church, headed by Patriarch Kirill. He’s been one of Vladimir
Putin’s most loyal allies and has been willing to put the church’s blessing on
virtually anything Putin does. This includes supporting Russian actions in
Ukraine in the name of stamping out the corrupting Western influence of
homosexuality and protecting the Russky mir (Russian world). More
recently, he has declared that dying in battle washes away all of one’s sins.
Having a church that is simply another media arm for an authoritarian
government is far from ideal. But at least the Russian population’s belief
systems are still generally aligned with the dominant church. On top of the fascism,
Russian Orthodox church leaders have made themselves obscenely wealthy by supporting Putin’s kleptocracy.

What we’re
seeing in Iran is what happens when a sclerotic, gerontocratic, authoritarian
theocracy tries to impose its will on a younger population that no longer
accepts the legitimacy of the government and also rejects some of its core
religious teachings. Protests erupted over 22-year-old Mahsa Amini being tortured and killed by
“morality police” for wearing her hijab the “wrong” way. Women have responded
by tearing off their head scarves and burning them. Men have attacked police,
and riots have racked the country for weeks. The internet has been shut down,
and at least 75 people have been killed so far. The Iranian regime has reportedly
lost control of a predominantly Kurdish town on
the border as well.

This is what
the U.S. has in store if we continue along the path we’re going down:
Christianity is becoming primarily a political identity in service of an
ideology dedicated to creating a single-party theocratic state. If recent
events are any guide, Christianity in the U.S. is on a path either to being little more than a corrupted tool of fascism (as in Russia) or becoming a
violent, oppressive, and omnipresent force (as in Iran) against which the
population can achieve change only through revolution.

Experts on violence are projecting that the coming weeks will see an increase in heated political arguments online — including violent right-wing rhetoric about an impending “civil war” — due to the fast-approaching midterms and continued investigations into former President Donald Trump.

Analyses have shown a significant rise in far right violence over the past few years. Much of the right wing’s violent rhetoric has centered around Trump, with some of his loyalists suggesting that violence to protect him from an investigation into his removal of government documents from the White House would be justified.

According to a New York Times report, Twitter posts mentioning “civil war” increased by around 3,000 percent in the days after it was reported that the FBI conducted a search on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to retrieve thousands of White House documents, including some that were classified. Talk of civil war also increased on the social media platform after President Joe Biden made a speech in September publicly condemning “MAGA Republicans” who have been threatening democratic norms and institutions.

Far right leaders have likely only added fuel to the fire. Last month, for example, Trump falsely claimed that Biden had threatened his loyalists with military action.

“If you look at the words and meaning of the awkward and angry Biden speech tonight, he threatened America, including with the possible use of military force,” Trump said. (Biden made no such threats during his speech.)

Other Trump loyalists, including Republicans in Congress and former members of his administration, have also stepped up their use of violent rhetoric in recent weeks.

“Did you know that a governor can declare war? A governor can declare war,” Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn said at a recent campaign rally in Arizona. “And we’re going to probably see that.”

At a campaign event this month that was headlined by Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) alleged that Republicans were the victims of a violent, coordinated campaign being orchestrated by Democrats — a claim that has no basis in fact whatsoever, as none of the violence she described ever occurred.

“I am not going to mince words with you all. Democrats want Republicans dead and they have already started the killings,” Greene claimed.

Some have suggested that right-wing talk of civil war is allegorical, or that it alludes to a “cold” civil war, in which physical violence doesn’t actually take place.

“The question is what does ‘civil war’ look like and what does it mean,” Elizabeth Neumann, a security expert who served as assistant secretary for counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security under Trump, said to The New York Times.

But there’s reason to believe that this rhetoric will result in an uptick in violent, physical attacks. Beyond the statistics that show far right violence is increasing, research from the Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST) at the University of Chicago shows that millions of Americans believe violence to achieve their political ends is sometimes justified, especially when it comes to defending Trump.

One in 20 U.S. adults, for example, believes that using violence to reinstate the ex-president into the White House midway through Biden’s first term would be justified, according to a survey CPOST conducted last month. That amounts to around 13 million Americans. Even more Americans — around 15 million — would support the use of violence to keep Trump from being prosecuted by the Department of Justice, according to the poll.

“We have not just a political threat to our democracy, we have a violent threat to our democracy,” said Robert Pape, the director of CPOST, in a recent interview.

Bolsonaro is still in the game. Heading into the first round of voting in Brazil’s presidential election last Sunday, the most optimistic supporters of leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva believed that the former president would defeat the far-right incumbent outright, avoiding a runoff. Lula needed to clear 50 percent support to end Bolsonaro’s presidency. But it was not to be. Lula finished with about 48 percent of the vote, which was within the margin of error of most polls released near the end of the campaign. Bolsonaro’s 43 percent, however, far exceeded what his presumed ceiling was. Now Brazilians will return to the polls on October 30 to decide the next president—and determine what kind of country Brazil will be going forward. The world’s fourth-largest democracy would be unrecognizable after another four years of Bolsonaro, whose administration has been characterized by a reckless, shallow, and venal style of anti-politics. Even if Lula prevails, which is still more likely than not, this result in the first round is a very bad sign.

Placing Lula and Bolsonaro head to head is a study in contrasts. One is a lifelong democrat committed to union organizing, party-building, and mass politics, while the other is a former army captain who left the military in disgrace before serving as a reactionary gadfly in Congress for decades until meeting his moment unexpectedly in 2018.

During this current campaign—and in years past—Lula’s harshest critics have asserted that his overriding objective has always been to remain in power indefinitely. But his political career indicates clearly that Lula is in fact the democrat he claims to be. He ran for president three times before prevailing in 2002, accepting defeat each time and campaigning all the more vigorously across the country to build popular support. He left office after two terms, as mandated by law, passing the torch to his former chief of staff, Dilma Rousseff, who prevailed in the 2010 election.

When Lula was pressured from within the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party), or P.T., to run for president again in 2014, he insisted he could not elbow Dilma out of the way. He consistently defended her right to seek reelection, which every chief executive has been able to do since a constitutional amendment in 1997. Rousseff won reelection that year in a tight race against then-Senator Aécio Neves. Again, Lula demonstrated a willingness to set aside his personal political power for the sake of shoring up his party and the political system.

At his lowest point, when he was being hounded by a rabid press and government investigations driven by political animus, Lula refused to skirt the Brazilian justice system. He didn’t seek asylum in a friendly foreign embassy, for example, as many of his close allies urged him to do. He didn’t flee the country. Instead, he complied with the police when it was time to turn himself in and served his time as mandated by law, even as he insisted that the charges against him were baseless.

Bolsonaro, by contrast, spent the last three decades railing against Brazil’s democratic institutions, called for the death of his adversaries on the left, faulted the murderous dictatorship that governed the country for 21 years for insufficient brutality, and threatened journalists (with particular animosity toward women). And he has not improved with time. Since taking office, he has stocked law enforcement agencies with cronies and refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power should he lose this year’s election, suggesting repeatedly that his country is incapable of carrying out a free and fair election, even though Brazil is a global leader in efficient vote tallying.

While in England for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, Bolsonaro insisted, “There is no way I won’t win in the first round [of voting].” No poll had shown him anywhere close to such a feat, heading into the first round of voting on Sunday. But with this rhetoric, Bolsonaro is priming his most ardent followers to see the results of the election as illegitimate unless he pulls off what would be a spectacular upset. After all, a Lula victory remains more likely than not. Bolsonaro outperformed expectations, but he is still desperate to hold onto power—and desperation is dangerous.

In the weeks ahead, Lula has already said he will double down on campaigning, traveling to more places and talking to more people. He urged his supporters to discuss the stakes of the election with their friends and relatives. There will also be debates between the two candidates, which will expose even more clearly the differences between them. In the last debate before Brazilians went to the polls, Bolsonaro went on a tear, calling Lula names and denying any shortcomings during his own time in office. Bolsonaro benefited from having several candidates on stage. It isn’t clear how he’ll hold up face to face with Lula, who has effectively deployed both humor and indignant rage in past debates, for an extended period of time.

Given Bolsonaro’s anti-democratic tendencies, the broad front Lula has assembled this year argued that it would be in the country’s best interest for the campaign to have ended on Sunday. Extending the race would empower Bolsonaro rather than affording time and space for the compromise and negotiation between adversaries that usually happens between the first and second round of voting. Traditionally, as political choices funnel down to the top two finishers, the leaders spend the days after the first round of voting courting former opponents. This is already taking place, with Lula and Bolsonaro both garnering the support of felled politicians looking to remain relevant and influence the front-runners. This time, however, this process is occurring in a context unsettled by the president’s stated disinclination to accept the final results. What is the point of all these transactions if Bolsonaro will upend the political system if he loses in four weeks?

This is the scenario Brazilians now face: a harrowing, high-stakes battle in a nation already on the brink. Something will have to give in the next four weeks before Brazilians make their way back to the polls. There will be an election on October 30, and one of the candidates represents a clear threat to the constitutional order. This is a test of democracy. It’s a test that Brazilians must pass.

Below is the second of a two-part report on the third National Conservatism Conference that…

“Most people can’t even articulate a political thought. Like, why do they get to vote?…

We’ve written extensively about the political shenanigans of Ginni Thomas and hubby Clarence Thomas’ refusal to recuse himself from cases she involves herself in and financially benefits from. But the financial secrecy is at least as concerning as her politicking. Politico noted that Justice Clarence Thomas “has chosen not to reveal any of his wife’s clients, let alone how much they contributed to the Thomas family coffers, dating back to when her consulting business was founded.”

Less obvious but just as important are the careers of Chief Justice John Roberts’ wife, Jane Roberts, and Jesse Barrett, husband of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

Politico reported that Jane Roberts is a legal head-hunter at a firm representing “high-powered attorneys in their efforts to secure positions in wealthy firms,” meaning that her placements earn fat fees for her firm and, presumably herself.

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