Trump's vision of fascism, supported by the neofascist ideologues behind Project 2025 and Project 47, is claiming the Democratic Party is so extreme it’s a threat and needs to done away with...
I don’t want to be too callous but I’m curious as to whether there will be any protections for Democrats voting in the fall elections.
We know the Magas will be out there ready to harass and attempt to remove Democrats from the polling places.
I think there is fear about casting a ballot and also a desire to do it in person because the USPS under DeJoy is no longer dependable for mail in ballots .
Why is he still heading this agency ? . He should be gone.
We know this election is of paramount importance .
We also know that Republicans have mercilessly removed Democrats from voter rolls , and suppressed the Democratic Party vote at every opportunity .
In a nutshell, what can we do ?
And if there is no plan to push back we’d better make one.
As a poll worker and Army veteran, I am not scared of these people who want to intimidate others. I worked the last local republican primary here in march and there were a couple people who were a little over enthusiastic about voting for Trump but that was nothing compared to what's coming in November. I am wondering if I should bring a baseball bat for self defense when I report for work, seeing as how, as a poll worker, it is against the law to arm myself against these threats to democracy. I am too old to be getting into any physical entanglements with these people. I am not looking forward to this next election. It's going to be a long day.
The common denominator is racism. Jung identified a collective racial subconscious. Fascists like Trump are demagogues. Common themes among fascist movements include: authoritarianism, nationalism (including racial nationalism and religious nationalism), hierarchy and elitism, and militarism. Other aspects of fascism such as perception of decadence, anti-egalitarianism and totalitarianism can be seen to originate from these ideas.
Ironically the only Fascist I can identify who was not overtly racist was Batista. Mostly Black, Batista was blackballed for membership in some of the country clubs in Havana due to his race. He cultivated Santeria leaders as a terror mechanism. In essence he brought in the Mafia. led by Meyer Lansky to run gambling.
Here in Baghdad By the Sea about 20% of our population support Batista's ideas. Government is seen as the piggybank. Kickbacks. Sinecures. Fascism is the means to Trump's dreams of wealth. As President, he and his family were "in business" for power and profit.
1.Merrick Garland once promised that he would vigorously protect election workers and the entire election process. Here again, Trump is announcing that he is organizing an illegal conspiracy to overturn an election. Do we have to wait until he does it?
2. In a related action, please pay attention to what the Supreme Court has done today. The six “conservative” justices seem to feel that the law allows hospitals in the states that have strong anti-abortion laws that do not take federal money to refuse to help a woman in health crisis due to a pregnancy if if would possibly endanger the fetus. In other words, it’s ok to let the mother and fetus die rather than test the state’s law. I guess it’s an over-reach of the federal government to find a way to save a woman life if it means going against one of the worst Supreme Court rulings since the 1857 Dred Scott decision.
3. Also, play attention to what they do tomorrow, when they finally hear Trump’s plea for immunity.
What we are already seeing is that fascism has taken over the Supreme Court. Former Justice Breyer has tried to fame it as they are using “textualism” to justify their decisions. The fact is that they are doing whatever they want and are really just partisans and fascists. We cannot trust them to oversee the cases that will come before them in the election. It seems obvious that the six of them have already chosen the person they want to win.
Ever since his descent on the elevator announcing his candidacy, trump has given us all the signals. But liberal and progressive friends patted me on the head and said not to worry because trump is nothing more than a buffoon. I’ve taught this history from original documents. And I’m still screaming my head off into what feels like the void. (Hence, my screen name) Thom, your substack and the comments here give me a measure of peace. I’m 75 years old, have a long and good memory, have resisted locally and nationally, will be at the polls. I’m in Reno, NV, and know just how serious the neofascist movement is here. Hugh Jackman is right.
Very good, Thom. I've been following you for some time now. You may remember me from your SDS days. Today, we are on the same page, and more. I have a theory piece on media, longish, but citing you at the end. Let me know if you want to see it.
You’re not being callous, Patricia. How far can we go to protect democratic voters in hostile environments without becoming violent thugs like the fascists? peacefulness does not mean passivity.
Trump has nearly killed one party, just not the one he had in mind. Many in their ranks, including him, are on their way out of this world anyway. It seems they are hellbent on dragging us back to the last century. Thanks Thom for the side-trip there today.
They will have to go alone. The younger generations have moved on. AND, they are not afraid to use the word fascist or some other choice words too. I can't wait till they take over. I wish that were the choice for the presidency this fall, but I am pretty confident that President Biden is listening to the younger members in his family and around him. He gets the past, the present, and wants a better future.
Trump, the fascist bastard, doesn't get any of it---he is a true psychopath. He and Mussolini fall into the malignant psychopathic megalomania category. Mussolini got 500,000 Italians killed in WWII. Trump did about the same during the pandemic. Karma's a bitch and sometimes we get to see it in action. Sometimes we can even help it along the way. I always vote and try to help others to vote too. I often thought that was a small thing---not anymore!
The old saying was government needs to be more like business. Business is run by a king or tyrant. When government is like business there is little need for democracy. Democracy is messy and hard to do which make it easy to suggest it cannot work. However, when you desire to change in a way that makes peoples lives better, kind of hard to do it when you have to come to the king with your hat in your hand.
Trump is, therefore, not unlike a man with full-blown AIDS.
A man (well, a male, not a real man's persona) who is utterly hell bent to have "Raw-Dog Sex" (read: Un-Protected Sex) with as many men and women as he possibly can. And thus, before he dies, seeding Mussolini's fascist-virus from coast to coast; birthing AIDS riddled Pod-People ("Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956)*).
And in one political party [GOP], he has found a bottomless pit filled to the brim with willing hosts, female and male. Many ingesting Trump's virus whilst on their knees. The remainder, on all fours, doggy.
In "Myth America", edited by Kruse and Zelizer, Ch. 20 on Voter Fraud talks about a 1964 GOP plan called Operation Eagle Eye which involved launching a 100,000 member "voter intimidation program". Sound familiar?
Donald supporters are not intelligent enough to know what fascism is, and will be shocked when many of them are herded
into the concentration camps also, for being disabled mentally or physically, for being old or without a family to support them, for being a repeat criminal. If the fascists cannot make money off of you, you will be the enemy regardless of race. The fascist would much rather keep undocumented immigrant laborers who are healthy and young than imperfect American citizens. The imperfect of all races will be exterminated. It is too late for America to be all white.
Fascism will last longer without a lot of imperfect people costing the state money. So they will be exterminated. Prepare to live off the grid, it is possible today with solar, and prepare to defend your stuff. I have no faith in the attorney general Garland or any of our branches of government. The GOP caused this mess when Nixon normalized relations with China and they have been obstructing and borrowing and cutting taxes ever since to destroy America! Now they have their own BS news stations, with AI coming soon! Vote blue and try to get everyone else you know to vote for Biden. The gOP is no longer a political party, it is a terrorist organization ran by foreign and domestic, deep State globalists! billionaires!
Again, Thom, you outdo yourself. Brilliantly researched and reported take down of Mussolini and Our Mad King (wannabe) Donald, both of eventually took total power by surviving early defeats by continuing to run shadow governments parallel to democratically elected but weak central federal governments, as did their hero Adolph Hitler. Not a good time to have a weak appearing titular head of state like our dear Ole Joe. I always think of the Facies displayed everywhere in the Federal government, including under each resting hand on the Lincoln Memorial, and their import in the Roman Empire. By definition, the US is already a quasi-Fascist state, with an ever tighter bundle of billionaires and wannabes holding real power.
I believe the true nature of our massive nation-states is the built-in hierarchical nature of humans/primates when present in large numbers and competing for limited resources. Our far less numerous ecologically balanced and self-sustaining Hunter-Gatherer ancestors were egalitarian and matriarchal by most accounts. Grain farming exploded our numbers and has given rise to our gigantic status (money) hierarchies. We are now 3,000 times more numerous than were our H-G ancestors and have vastly over-reached the planet's capacity to sustain our numbers. What could go wrong? Everything? Thanks, again, Thom, for all your efforts and the comments by thinking followers!
While I agree with you regarding the nefarious actions of Trump and the Republicans, I completely disagree with the cause. The main cause was the financial crisis and Obama's bailing out of the banks while austerity was the rule for everyone else. Obama protected the banksters and as Democrats do devised programs to pretend he was doing something for the "little people," but those programs did virtually nothing and we are right back in the same place some 16 years later. Obama implemented a program to reimburse mortgage holders and get them back into housing and put Larry Summers in charge. When all the program's funds were drained it turned out that 9% were used for homeowners and the rest went to Summers and his cronies. His Dodd-Frank legislation to rein in the big banks was written by lobbyists and had so many loopholes that we are seeing the same type of recklesness that was occurring prior to the crisis in 2008. He lied about the Affordable Care Act regarding "you can see your own doctor" and regarding premiums, and that legislation has helped to put the health care system on the brink of disaster, so that people who voted for him ended up voting for Trump. Your strategy of protecting corrupt and lying Democrats by calling criticism "circling the wagons" has backfired miserably, as now liberals have to prop up a judgment-addled warmongering racist as some sort of hero while making Trump and Putin the boogeymen so that American empire can continue its march to self-destruction. You know that fascism does not rise out of thin air, although admittedly our nation was founded upon racism and dehumanization and Trump and Biden both prove that not much has changed when it comes to who wields the power.
“And if Trump fails, are there other wannabe Republican Mussolinis waiting in the wings?”
You have penned another excellent essay, Thom Hartmann, but it is the preceding line in particular that brought on the feeling of unease that I have been experiencing since I first read Joe Conason’s book IT CAN HAPPEN HERE several years ago, followed by Timothy Snyder’s ON TYRANNY, & most recently Christopher Browning’s THE SUFFOCATION OF DEMOCRACY. My voice is a small one, some like, few listen, but since I started writing on social platforms like Substack, I have grown increasingly bothered by the apparent resistance of the American public at large to seeing & appreciating what you have so clearly laid out in this piece. You have now added to my list of readings meant to educate about what fascism looks & feels like & how much today’s America resembles & shows evidence of previous fascist regimes like Italy’s Mussolini & Germany’s Hitler. The biggest question raised in my mind by your well-written piece is this: Why now? Are you thinking that we are not taking this fascist threat seriously? Because I am.
MSM rarely uses the word “fascism” or “fascist” in their reporting, preferring familiar & safe words like “authoritarianism” or all the other “-isms” that point to elements found in a fascist state. They describe in detail what you have described in this essay, but resist calling it what it is. Even our POTUS was scolded for using the phrase “fascist-like.” Very few anchors say “fascism” & then only infrequently. In fact, you can hear the word most often in TFG’s rally rants & on the extreme fascist right’s propaganda TV channels. Even there, it’s used to label us, the pro-democracy forces trying to fight it - a definite Goebbel’s tactic.
Thank you, Sir, for trying again. Perhaps more people will take seriously what you’re saying. As for your question about whether there are other “wannabe Republican Mussolinis” out there waiting to take over if TFG fails, I think the answer is a resounding “you betcha!” We see them in the news everyday, but we rarely call them out. In fact, many journalists (e.g., Dan Rather) spend their public time reassuring everyone that everything will be fine. Nothing to worry about, even as our precious institutions falter. Hope they’re right, but I tend to think you’ve got the more accurate view.
I don’t want to be too callous but I’m curious as to whether there will be any protections for Democrats voting in the fall elections.
We know the Magas will be out there ready to harass and attempt to remove Democrats from the polling places.
I think there is fear about casting a ballot and also a desire to do it in person because the USPS under DeJoy is no longer dependable for mail in ballots .
Why is he still heading this agency ? . He should be gone.
We know this election is of paramount importance .
We also know that Republicans have mercilessly removed Democrats from voter rolls , and suppressed the Democratic Party vote at every opportunity .
In a nutshell, what can we do ?
And if there is no plan to push back we’d better make one.
As a poll worker and Army veteran, I am not scared of these people who want to intimidate others. I worked the last local republican primary here in march and there were a couple people who were a little over enthusiastic about voting for Trump but that was nothing compared to what's coming in November. I am wondering if I should bring a baseball bat for self defense when I report for work, seeing as how, as a poll worker, it is against the law to arm myself against these threats to democracy. I am too old to be getting into any physical entanglements with these people. I am not looking forward to this next election. It's going to be a long day.
The common denominator is racism. Jung identified a collective racial subconscious. Fascists like Trump are demagogues. Common themes among fascist movements include: authoritarianism, nationalism (including racial nationalism and religious nationalism), hierarchy and elitism, and militarism. Other aspects of fascism such as perception of decadence, anti-egalitarianism and totalitarianism can be seen to originate from these ideas.
Ironically the only Fascist I can identify who was not overtly racist was Batista. Mostly Black, Batista was blackballed for membership in some of the country clubs in Havana due to his race. He cultivated Santeria leaders as a terror mechanism. In essence he brought in the Mafia. led by Meyer Lansky to run gambling.
Here in Baghdad By the Sea about 20% of our population support Batista's ideas. Government is seen as the piggybank. Kickbacks. Sinecures. Fascism is the means to Trump's dreams of wealth. As President, he and his family were "in business" for power and profit.
I've been arguing that they have previously perverted justice, exemplified by the election of GWB in 2000. But for Florida, Gore would have won. The concept of a unitary executive fit their agenda....and now fits Trump's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory#:~:text=The%20unitary%20executive%20theory%20is,the%20entire%20federal%20executive%20branch.
1.Merrick Garland once promised that he would vigorously protect election workers and the entire election process. Here again, Trump is announcing that he is organizing an illegal conspiracy to overturn an election. Do we have to wait until he does it?
2. In a related action, please pay attention to what the Supreme Court has done today. The six “conservative” justices seem to feel that the law allows hospitals in the states that have strong anti-abortion laws that do not take federal money to refuse to help a woman in health crisis due to a pregnancy if if would possibly endanger the fetus. In other words, it’s ok to let the mother and fetus die rather than test the state’s law. I guess it’s an over-reach of the federal government to find a way to save a woman life if it means going against one of the worst Supreme Court rulings since the 1857 Dred Scott decision.
3. Also, play attention to what they do tomorrow, when they finally hear Trump’s plea for immunity.
What we are already seeing is that fascism has taken over the Supreme Court. Former Justice Breyer has tried to fame it as they are using “textualism” to justify their decisions. The fact is that they are doing whatever they want and are really just partisans and fascists. We cannot trust them to oversee the cases that will come before them in the election. It seems obvious that the six of them have already chosen the person they want to win.
Ever since his descent on the elevator announcing his candidacy, trump has given us all the signals. But liberal and progressive friends patted me on the head and said not to worry because trump is nothing more than a buffoon. I’ve taught this history from original documents. And I’m still screaming my head off into what feels like the void. (Hence, my screen name) Thom, your substack and the comments here give me a measure of peace. I’m 75 years old, have a long and good memory, have resisted locally and nationally, will be at the polls. I’m in Reno, NV, and know just how serious the neofascist movement is here. Hugh Jackman is right.
Very good, Thom. I've been following you for some time now. You may remember me from your SDS days. Today, we are on the same page, and more. I have a theory piece on media, longish, but citing you at the end. Let me know if you want to see it.
You’re not being callous, Patricia. How far can we go to protect democratic voters in hostile environments without becoming violent thugs like the fascists? peacefulness does not mean passivity.
Trump has nearly killed one party, just not the one he had in mind. Many in their ranks, including him, are on their way out of this world anyway. It seems they are hellbent on dragging us back to the last century. Thanks Thom for the side-trip there today.
They will have to go alone. The younger generations have moved on. AND, they are not afraid to use the word fascist or some other choice words too. I can't wait till they take over. I wish that were the choice for the presidency this fall, but I am pretty confident that President Biden is listening to the younger members in his family and around him. He gets the past, the present, and wants a better future.
Trump, the fascist bastard, doesn't get any of it---he is a true psychopath. He and Mussolini fall into the malignant psychopathic megalomania category. Mussolini got 500,000 Italians killed in WWII. Trump did about the same during the pandemic. Karma's a bitch and sometimes we get to see it in action. Sometimes we can even help it along the way. I always vote and try to help others to vote too. I often thought that was a small thing---not anymore!
The old saying was government needs to be more like business. Business is run by a king or tyrant. When government is like business there is little need for democracy. Democracy is messy and hard to do which make it easy to suggest it cannot work. However, when you desire to change in a way that makes peoples lives better, kind of hard to do it when you have to come to the king with your hat in your hand.
Imagine fascism is AIDS:
Trump is, therefore, not unlike a man with full-blown AIDS.
A man (well, a male, not a real man's persona) who is utterly hell bent to have "Raw-Dog Sex" (read: Un-Protected Sex) with as many men and women as he possibly can. And thus, before he dies, seeding Mussolini's fascist-virus from coast to coast; birthing AIDS riddled Pod-People ("Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956)*).
And in one political party [GOP], he has found a bottomless pit filled to the brim with willing hosts, female and male. Many ingesting Trump's virus whilst on their knees. The remainder, on all fours, doggy.
Jesus!!!
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuL2QwsNeM8
In "Myth America", edited by Kruse and Zelizer, Ch. 20 on Voter Fraud talks about a 1964 GOP plan called Operation Eagle Eye which involved launching a 100,000 member "voter intimidation program". Sound familiar?
Donald supporters are not intelligent enough to know what fascism is, and will be shocked when many of them are herded
into the concentration camps also, for being disabled mentally or physically, for being old or without a family to support them, for being a repeat criminal. If the fascists cannot make money off of you, you will be the enemy regardless of race. The fascist would much rather keep undocumented immigrant laborers who are healthy and young than imperfect American citizens. The imperfect of all races will be exterminated. It is too late for America to be all white.
Fascism will last longer without a lot of imperfect people costing the state money. So they will be exterminated. Prepare to live off the grid, it is possible today with solar, and prepare to defend your stuff. I have no faith in the attorney general Garland or any of our branches of government. The GOP caused this mess when Nixon normalized relations with China and they have been obstructing and borrowing and cutting taxes ever since to destroy America! Now they have their own BS news stations, with AI coming soon! Vote blue and try to get everyone else you know to vote for Biden. The gOP is no longer a political party, it is a terrorist organization ran by foreign and domestic, deep State globalists! billionaires!
Again, Thom, you outdo yourself. Brilliantly researched and reported take down of Mussolini and Our Mad King (wannabe) Donald, both of eventually took total power by surviving early defeats by continuing to run shadow governments parallel to democratically elected but weak central federal governments, as did their hero Adolph Hitler. Not a good time to have a weak appearing titular head of state like our dear Ole Joe. I always think of the Facies displayed everywhere in the Federal government, including under each resting hand on the Lincoln Memorial, and their import in the Roman Empire. By definition, the US is already a quasi-Fascist state, with an ever tighter bundle of billionaires and wannabes holding real power.
I believe the true nature of our massive nation-states is the built-in hierarchical nature of humans/primates when present in large numbers and competing for limited resources. Our far less numerous ecologically balanced and self-sustaining Hunter-Gatherer ancestors were egalitarian and matriarchal by most accounts. Grain farming exploded our numbers and has given rise to our gigantic status (money) hierarchies. We are now 3,000 times more numerous than were our H-G ancestors and have vastly over-reached the planet's capacity to sustain our numbers. What could go wrong? Everything? Thanks, again, Thom, for all your efforts and the comments by thinking followers!
While I agree with you regarding the nefarious actions of Trump and the Republicans, I completely disagree with the cause. The main cause was the financial crisis and Obama's bailing out of the banks while austerity was the rule for everyone else. Obama protected the banksters and as Democrats do devised programs to pretend he was doing something for the "little people," but those programs did virtually nothing and we are right back in the same place some 16 years later. Obama implemented a program to reimburse mortgage holders and get them back into housing and put Larry Summers in charge. When all the program's funds were drained it turned out that 9% were used for homeowners and the rest went to Summers and his cronies. His Dodd-Frank legislation to rein in the big banks was written by lobbyists and had so many loopholes that we are seeing the same type of recklesness that was occurring prior to the crisis in 2008. He lied about the Affordable Care Act regarding "you can see your own doctor" and regarding premiums, and that legislation has helped to put the health care system on the brink of disaster, so that people who voted for him ended up voting for Trump. Your strategy of protecting corrupt and lying Democrats by calling criticism "circling the wagons" has backfired miserably, as now liberals have to prop up a judgment-addled warmongering racist as some sort of hero while making Trump and Putin the boogeymen so that American empire can continue its march to self-destruction. You know that fascism does not rise out of thin air, although admittedly our nation was founded upon racism and dehumanization and Trump and Biden both prove that not much has changed when it comes to who wields the power.
Thank you Thom. What an excellent, well reasoned summary, right from the heart and the intellect.
“And if Trump fails, are there other wannabe Republican Mussolinis waiting in the wings?”
You have penned another excellent essay, Thom Hartmann, but it is the preceding line in particular that brought on the feeling of unease that I have been experiencing since I first read Joe Conason’s book IT CAN HAPPEN HERE several years ago, followed by Timothy Snyder’s ON TYRANNY, & most recently Christopher Browning’s THE SUFFOCATION OF DEMOCRACY. My voice is a small one, some like, few listen, but since I started writing on social platforms like Substack, I have grown increasingly bothered by the apparent resistance of the American public at large to seeing & appreciating what you have so clearly laid out in this piece. You have now added to my list of readings meant to educate about what fascism looks & feels like & how much today’s America resembles & shows evidence of previous fascist regimes like Italy’s Mussolini & Germany’s Hitler. The biggest question raised in my mind by your well-written piece is this: Why now? Are you thinking that we are not taking this fascist threat seriously? Because I am.
MSM rarely uses the word “fascism” or “fascist” in their reporting, preferring familiar & safe words like “authoritarianism” or all the other “-isms” that point to elements found in a fascist state. They describe in detail what you have described in this essay, but resist calling it what it is. Even our POTUS was scolded for using the phrase “fascist-like.” Very few anchors say “fascism” & then only infrequently. In fact, you can hear the word most often in TFG’s rally rants & on the extreme fascist right’s propaganda TV channels. Even there, it’s used to label us, the pro-democracy forces trying to fight it - a definite Goebbel’s tactic.
Thank you, Sir, for trying again. Perhaps more people will take seriously what you’re saying. As for your question about whether there are other “wannabe Republican Mussolinis” out there waiting to take over if TFG fails, I think the answer is a resounding “you betcha!” We see them in the news everyday, but we rarely call them out. In fact, many journalists (e.g., Dan Rather) spend their public time reassuring everyone that everything will be fine. Nothing to worry about, even as our precious institutions falter. Hope they’re right, but I tend to think you’ve got the more accurate view.