I think you offer a very tame picture of what a fascist AMERICA would look like. I’m pretty sure things would be emphatically, noticeably different for many, like the LGBTQ+ population for one. Under a MAGA fascist regime they would suffer terrible losses of basic rights and be forced back into hiding if they don’t want to be disappeared. The state-sanctioned demonization of all queer people would lead to an explosion in violent hate crimes. And same-sex couples who’ve been married legally for years would suddenly lose their marital status, along with the rights and benefits that come with it.
In another example, you would see public education gutted, and children taught only a sanitized, state-approved, anti-history, anti-science curriculum that officially censors discussions of race, sexuality, equality, the civil rights movement, women’s rights, unions and so much more. Add to that mandatory prayers and Bible study. School would look nothing like what we have now.
Women’s lives, too, would be utterly transformed under American-style fascist rule. Reversals in federal law would take away their rights to equal education and employment; girls in school would be shunted away from any kind of career path and incentivized to be stay at home mothers. With abortion outlawed in all cases and contraceptives made inaccessible, horrific suffering targeting only females, including maternal deaths and suicides, would be commonplace.
No, I don’t think the extremists waiting in the wings would be content with an America that looks basically the same, just with some strongman worship added in. These are people who take great joy in literally harming, harassing, attacking, and “sticking it” to anyone outside their cultish tribe. It would be a very visible, enraging, hellish transformation.
Completely agree here with your assessment, with one caveat: I think Thom did qualify that straight, White men who would be the ones least able to discern a difference. Everything else you describe, and more, is likely under an Ameri-fascist government. Most terrifying is that our high-GDP, nuclear-armed country would be in a position to pressure other countries we deal with to operate similarly, with a bellicose posture emboldened by radioactive warheads.
Even the Saudis are promoting a kinder softer gentler brand of fascism nowadays. Plenty of sports to watch for the unthinking masses. But the fascist always seem to want more and more and end up going to other nations to conquer them, using the brown nosing idiots that support them and all the people they don't like and want to get rid of. As humans, our past has been paved in blood. Wanting to go back till before the dark ages, is totally insane. With America's anemic economy thanks to GOP free trade and a huge national debt, I don't believe America will stay the same. I could see the rich, especially with Trump in charge, stealing all of the public money and letting the poor starve to death. He doesn't act benevolant, and neither do his supporters. The rich have learned to let the poor mess around with democracy and how to destroy democracy then how to install a dictatorship. Our founding fathers in their infinite wisdom, needed to put some kind of limit on the amount of wealth a person could accumulate so we wouldn't have these tyrants. With the computer age, it is even easier to manipulate the minds of people raised in dysfunctional families.
This is a little mixed up ... Saudi Arabia is a monarchy, not fascist.
What is "GOP free trade,"? Is it Obama's ppp, Clinton's nafta, or the military complex built up under fdr and truman?
The most basic distinction driving American history since ww2 is the distinction between trade and foreign investment. The word trade is used so that people don't recognize this distinction. The word trade is something that was used by Henry Wallace, and supported heavily by Henry Wallace with statements about how we could easily trade with the Soviet union - and we still can! Foreign investment of surplus capital is something else - its what actually drives us foreign policy.
so here we go. Marc's defense of the GOP, by paltering and changing the subject, using democratic president examples. By the way fascism is a form, that fits within so called Democracies (like Hungary, Turkey), authoritarian countries like China, and monarchies like Saudi Arabia https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html, 24 Characteristics of Fascism.
Mussolini had a "democratic" form of government, the Chamber of Deputies, which however was filled by corporate representatives and CEO's.
Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship! Trading with dictators is what the GOP gave us when normalizing relations with China. A free Nation should never have to support the non-free Nations or the Southern States. The right wingers are a bunch of moochers. After the mid 1980s, the Democrat party changed, the Reagan democrats gained control, in other words the FDR liberals lost control. The right with all their money bought the Democratic party, and made Clinton and Obama Republicans. While the Republican party became Nazis, and have intentionally bankrupted America the last 40 years. Fair trade is when two free nations export and import about the same amount of stuff. Free trade is when a nation imports about $400 billion dollars a year worth of goods and only exports about 50 billion dollars a year worth of goods to the same Nation. Last I checked that was China. Obscene trade deficits are the result of free trade. And supporting a dictatorship even makes it worse.
This is actually largely incorrect. Henry Stimson was a Republican and all democratic secs of war and state under truman and Kennedy came from stimson's original influence.
Take a look at what the cia did around the world before Ronny Reagan. Get familiar with the concept of foreign debt and the US dollar as a reserve currency - the role of imf and world bank, institutions headed by people like Robert McNamara and now Schmidt of Google.
Carroll Quigley has taught legions of members of our state department, engaged in the foreign service, of how important currency exchanges are. In fact he'll jump up and down to tell you that you cannot understand the 20th century without understanding how important currency is. And the story you're telling is a popular one, which discounts or ignores the role of debt and currency in world affairs, let alone everything the cia did before 1980.
"Don't come here!"
"The US dollar will ALWAYS be the worlds reserve currency!"
(Recent pronouncements by ostensibly liberal democrats.)
The way your Congress is being run is an example of what you're saying here Thom. We've just seen how something McCarthy said might have been taken to upset Trump, and then we hear that McCarthy is on his knees (metaphorically), sucking up to the Leader. What has your Congress achieved legislatively since the midterms? - nothing that I can recall, just a lot of infighting and accusations. If the American people are misguided enough to elect such a government, we'll see more of the "George Santos" type of frauds. Your Congress right now is a joke - the world sees it, and that's what'll happen if your nation follows suit. As good as an in-depth article like this one today is, young people aren't much capable of taking it in, so in this sense the brief messages the Lincoln Project are producing are getting the message across - Trump is the dangerous mentally ill person Dr. Bandy Lee warned us of.
This article should be required reading in all our schools. I have spent many years searching for plausible contributing factors to the Holocaust and you have described one of the most important.
Very prescient article! Maybe things won’t look much different for awhile. But, long term changes could greatly disadvantage many. And, no free speech? Freedom to love & live the way most suitable for us?
Except that Trump was not the leader, and Trump is not going to be the leader.
The leader has been and will continue to be people like Paul singer who: speak out against Trump; fund opposition research against Trump;, call him names and then.....
....politely get invited to dine with president trump at the White House.
No not everybody has to pay fealty to this man. Singer, Mercer, and the Murdochs don't run in any elections. Remember that in 2015 trumps strategy was to run to the left of Hillary on several positions like the outsourcing of jobs and powerful magnates said we don't like this guy.
So for the financial rulers it's not a question of Trump or not Trump - it's a question of whether Trump is going to do their bidding and stick to their imperialist, financialized approach to economics and taxation .... if he does, then he's fine with them. But if Trump got the idea that he could raise taxes on rich, watch how fast that support would evaporate.
If we judge anything by the last half century, then it becomes very obvious that nobody in power really cares what voters think, or whether they like trump or not.
For example, powerful people like Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh don't really seem to care what Trump thinks and maybe even care more about what the public thinks even though their positions are not popular.
We have to understand that media loves Trump; trump sells copy; media has a story that people will look at if it has the word "Trump" on it - like this one.
A case can be made for another "leader" - the US dollar as reserve currency. If you dig a little bit into recent congressional hearings and other statements by democrats - even liberal Democrats - you'll see that the Democrats support this leader as much as the GOP does. It was people like truman, Acheson, rusk, McCloy, McNamara who originally created this "leader" after ww2. A leader that is a close relative of the us foreign policy position - the entire world shall be open to direct foreign investment by us companies. We will destroy, undermine, go to war with any country that objects. This is NOT partisan and it never was, ever since truman jumped on the (vehement) anti-communism wagon. So today you will see the threat of war and the predictions of war with China increase in enormous, direct relationship to China's limitation of foreign direct investment and you'll see people like the Secretary of State Blinkenntalk about how things with China will be fine as long as they allow more foreign direct investment.
Actually, the well from which money was dumped into the election, then and now, was from wealthy plutocrats. Trump is famous for saying anything that will get him votes.
And the plutocrats know this, they have their own oppo research, and the money to hire investigators, and lobbyists.
AS regards Paul Singer, he has only one agenda, no taxes on the wealthy, let the middle class support him and his business. He is a vulture capitalist and here is what he has to say:
Singer is a member of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, a non-governmental, nonpartisan research organization.[104] He is chairman of the board of trustees for the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a conservative think tank in New York City,[105] and on the board of directors of the Republican Jewish Coalition, a political lobbying group in the United States that promotes Jewish Republicans.[68] He also served on the board of directors for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.[106]
In 2016 Singer invested $500,000 in a PAC supporting John Faso, a Congressional candidate in New York's 19th congressional district opposing progressive candidate and Wall Street critic Zephyr Teachout. Teachout responded to the donation by challenging Singer to come to the district and debate her.[107] The same year, Singer supported Senator Marco Rubio in the presidential primary.[108]
As of September 2019, Singer had not donated to Trump's reelection campaign.[109]
According to ProPublica, Singer was linked to an Alaskan fishing trip with Justice Samuel Alito in 2008. Singer gave Alito free private jet travel from all across the country to Alaska, where a group including Alito and Singer went fishing. A few years later Alito voted with six other colleagues in Republic of Argentina v. NML Capital, Ltd. brought by Singer's companies after Argentinian debt was bought up. Alito never recused himself. The Federal Record of that case should have had Paul Singer as a Related Party, triggering a recusal analysis and decision.[110]
Like the Doctor you seem to have an affection for Putin and Communists.
I am 84 and not one who equates socialism with communism, America has been striving to be great as it has been a mixed economy, with socialism regulating and restraining the excesses of socialism. Socialism is NOT the ownership of the means of production.
Lenin referred to the USSR as State Capitalism, in reality it was corporate state (councils) that were organized along resource lines, like people (KGB), forestry, mining, industry, agriculture, construction each had their own bank, and a central bank, to coordinate and handle payments via the other banks.
The preferred method of handling debts, between trusts, was by barter, failing that then gold. the GOSBank was the "central" bank, it controlled the movement of gold.
The USSR was on a 100% gold standard with one ruble valued at .981 grans fine gold, and only enough rubles were printed to equal the amount of gold held by the banks.
Smuggling rubles out of the USSR was a crime, even a felony offense, because the holder of a ruble outside of the USSR, could present a ruble to the NordBank in Paris (the USSR's banking window to the world) and demand gold.
The USSR was very libertarian in that regard (only gold is money, paper just represents gold, which is redeemable on demand.
It was also libertarian when it comes to working and living, Art 12, of the 1936 Soviet Constitution states in essence, If you don't work, you don't eat. The unofficial motto of the GOP and Libertarians. Stalin also criminalized abortions.
Marx was a proto libertarian, he opposed slavery in the south, because it cost too much to produce, forcing his partner, Frederick Engels who inherited a textile mill, to buy the less expensive and cheaper quality, Egyptian cotton.
He wrote letters to southern newspapers, imploring them to free the slaves and hire them back at market wages, as that would enable them to produce cheaper cotton. Planters had to feed, clothe, house, entertain and pay preachers to brain wash their slaves.
Surprise, the old line Marxists and C ommunists are little more than Libertarians.
Oh Marx was also against import tariffs. He was a vociferous advocate for abolishing the "Corn Laws" corn in England and the continent is what Americans call grain. However maize is a form of grain, and thus it wound up in the vernacular as corn.
As you say there is nothing new with the concept of a dictator who is hidden in plain sight. For the first two centuries of its existence the Roman Empire was in theory still a republic run by its Senate. It just happened that one man was "first" ("Princeps") in that institution and also commanded the army. Everyone knew the reality but very few dared to seriously object. Perhaps the constant in history has been the phrase, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
A more modern example is Vichy France, the puppet state set up after the German victory in 1940. It was in fact internationally recognized as the legitimate French government, and many in the country went along with things just as they were. The bureaucracy kept functioning, and if your neighbors disappeared and the motto on the money changed from "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" to "Job and Family", so what?
I think that last case is something like what Trump imagined could have happened after January 6th, with a takeover at the top but everything else more or less continuing as before. There might have been a real internal civil war, with some states not recognizing the government in Washington, and the military split, but maybe not. After all when the Americans invaded Morocco in 1942 the Vichy French army didn’t see the Allies as liberators. Instead they battled them for days.
But what makes this sort of slide into fascism quite possible is technology. A criticism of 1984 is that there simply were not enough loyal party members to monitor everyone who could have been a dissident. But you don't need that today. With cameras everywhere, facial recognition software, , license plates routinely read by computers, satellite monitoring, everyone carrying a tracking cell phone with every conversation recorded, and a de facto national ID system (de jure in many places, such as India) all the tools are in place. And most citizens have been conditioned to accept all of this and more! And you know once a government has more power it doesn't give it up. If anything, there is always an excuse to expand it, "for the good of the people", of course.
Your selective memory is disconcerting Thom. You speak of Obama as some champion of democracy, yet he actually broadened the NSA's powers, prosecuted more whisteblowers than any president in history, expanded a renewed patriot act and gave himself full authority to assassinate anyone he wanted using drones in the interest in the "war on terror" (including Americans). The "democracy" on the ballot is not democracy for me and millions of others who want no more of Joe Biden's unfettered militarism, sales of record numbers of weapons around the world to autocracies, oil drilling expansion and pipelines, means-tested programs implemented to be rife for legal challenges, inhumane treatment of immigrants and refugees, and anti-labor actions like breaking a railworkers' strike. And some of us are sufficiently non-partisan to recognize that Biden's rudderless and neoliberal brand of leadership is the opposite of what is required to counter fascism. It will take a Bernie Sanders type of humane populist leader to serve as a counterweight to an inhumane populist leader like Trump.
Everything you said about Obama is true and I share those opinions. I am no fan of Biden either, I consider him weak, even losing it. I am a few years older than him, and I would be lucky to even climb up the stairs to Air Force One.
However, yet again, you give yourself away, when you talk of Biden's unfettered militarism.
He has not deployed the Armed Forces into combat, save for some special operators trying to defend African allies. He was resistant to fgiving Ukrainians F-16's, and long range rockets, even HIMARS at first, but caved under pressure from Europe who is justifiable scared of Putin and his intentions to rebuild the old Soviet Empire.
Again and again, you use "militarism" as an excuse to argue for Putin. But no criticism of Putin, his militarism, his inhumanity, his war crimes, targeting children and women with his missiles and rockets, not to mention artillery barrages.
"Democracy is on the ballot". This would be a good title for a new book to be rushed to print by Thom before the 2024 election. Presumably, he has said that and much more in earlier books and in many daily rants. But a new hot off the presses book spelling this message out clearly by a respected scholar might strike a chord and attract wide attention in the nick of time, especially for middle-of-the-road, undecided, or swing voters. A book tour and media interviews would boost interest and controversy and could be the deciding factor in that election. I would hope there is a new chapter on how the indelible image of leaders, experts, and authority figures firmly planted early in hierarchical schools inchoately but potently lends credence to the impression and belief that obedience to a beloved and presumably benevolent leader/teacher is virtuous and essential for safety, security, and salvation.
So well thought out -- and ignored by the people who need to understand it. What else is new? No matter how brilliant exposes are and how much more informed readers of them become, Fox News devotees just aren't paying attention. And defeating the MAGA forces at the ballot box would be essential, but it's a stopgap, where today's Democrats won't deliver Nirvana. "Wake up everybody we know" is a real thing to do that would matter, but how? These things are what I'm addressing on my Substack, and thanks, Thom, for recommending it: https://suzannetaylor.substack.com
What makes this all so serious and dangerous is the white women who are supporting these men and brainwashing their own children. Without the children we’re F’ed.
We are approaching our 250th birthday, and it's hard not to wonder what America will be accepting in 2026. I think anything is possible just as in Thom's Report. It's a drip drip drip eroding of each democratic process by people who hate what the majority want. They are never going to stop, and we can't either.
We can't accept their fascism. We have to continue to work for what is right and what we want for the generations to come.
I think you offer a very tame picture of what a fascist AMERICA would look like. I’m pretty sure things would be emphatically, noticeably different for many, like the LGBTQ+ population for one. Under a MAGA fascist regime they would suffer terrible losses of basic rights and be forced back into hiding if they don’t want to be disappeared. The state-sanctioned demonization of all queer people would lead to an explosion in violent hate crimes. And same-sex couples who’ve been married legally for years would suddenly lose their marital status, along with the rights and benefits that come with it.
In another example, you would see public education gutted, and children taught only a sanitized, state-approved, anti-history, anti-science curriculum that officially censors discussions of race, sexuality, equality, the civil rights movement, women’s rights, unions and so much more. Add to that mandatory prayers and Bible study. School would look nothing like what we have now.
Women’s lives, too, would be utterly transformed under American-style fascist rule. Reversals in federal law would take away their rights to equal education and employment; girls in school would be shunted away from any kind of career path and incentivized to be stay at home mothers. With abortion outlawed in all cases and contraceptives made inaccessible, horrific suffering targeting only females, including maternal deaths and suicides, would be commonplace.
No, I don’t think the extremists waiting in the wings would be content with an America that looks basically the same, just with some strongman worship added in. These are people who take great joy in literally harming, harassing, attacking, and “sticking it” to anyone outside their cultish tribe. It would be a very visible, enraging, hellish transformation.
Completely agree here with your assessment, with one caveat: I think Thom did qualify that straight, White men who would be the ones least able to discern a difference. Everything else you describe, and more, is likely under an Ameri-fascist government. Most terrifying is that our high-GDP, nuclear-armed country would be in a position to pressure other countries we deal with to operate similarly, with a bellicose posture emboldened by radioactive warheads.
Even the Saudis are promoting a kinder softer gentler brand of fascism nowadays. Plenty of sports to watch for the unthinking masses. But the fascist always seem to want more and more and end up going to other nations to conquer them, using the brown nosing idiots that support them and all the people they don't like and want to get rid of. As humans, our past has been paved in blood. Wanting to go back till before the dark ages, is totally insane. With America's anemic economy thanks to GOP free trade and a huge national debt, I don't believe America will stay the same. I could see the rich, especially with Trump in charge, stealing all of the public money and letting the poor starve to death. He doesn't act benevolant, and neither do his supporters. The rich have learned to let the poor mess around with democracy and how to destroy democracy then how to install a dictatorship. Our founding fathers in their infinite wisdom, needed to put some kind of limit on the amount of wealth a person could accumulate so we wouldn't have these tyrants. With the computer age, it is even easier to manipulate the minds of people raised in dysfunctional families.
This is a little mixed up ... Saudi Arabia is a monarchy, not fascist.
What is "GOP free trade,"? Is it Obama's ppp, Clinton's nafta, or the military complex built up under fdr and truman?
The most basic distinction driving American history since ww2 is the distinction between trade and foreign investment. The word trade is used so that people don't recognize this distinction. The word trade is something that was used by Henry Wallace, and supported heavily by Henry Wallace with statements about how we could easily trade with the Soviet union - and we still can! Foreign investment of surplus capital is something else - its what actually drives us foreign policy.
so here we go. Marc's defense of the GOP, by paltering and changing the subject, using democratic president examples. By the way fascism is a form, that fits within so called Democracies (like Hungary, Turkey), authoritarian countries like China, and monarchies like Saudi Arabia https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/fasci14chars.html, 24 Characteristics of Fascism.
Mussolini had a "democratic" form of government, the Chamber of Deputies, which however was filled by corporate representatives and CEO's.
Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship! Trading with dictators is what the GOP gave us when normalizing relations with China. A free Nation should never have to support the non-free Nations or the Southern States. The right wingers are a bunch of moochers. After the mid 1980s, the Democrat party changed, the Reagan democrats gained control, in other words the FDR liberals lost control. The right with all their money bought the Democratic party, and made Clinton and Obama Republicans. While the Republican party became Nazis, and have intentionally bankrupted America the last 40 years. Fair trade is when two free nations export and import about the same amount of stuff. Free trade is when a nation imports about $400 billion dollars a year worth of goods and only exports about 50 billion dollars a year worth of goods to the same Nation. Last I checked that was China. Obscene trade deficits are the result of free trade. And supporting a dictatorship even makes it worse.
This is actually largely incorrect. Henry Stimson was a Republican and all democratic secs of war and state under truman and Kennedy came from stimson's original influence.
Take a look at what the cia did around the world before Ronny Reagan. Get familiar with the concept of foreign debt and the US dollar as a reserve currency - the role of imf and world bank, institutions headed by people like Robert McNamara and now Schmidt of Google.
Carroll Quigley has taught legions of members of our state department, engaged in the foreign service, of how important currency exchanges are. In fact he'll jump up and down to tell you that you cannot understand the 20th century without understanding how important currency is. And the story you're telling is a popular one, which discounts or ignores the role of debt and currency in world affairs, let alone everything the cia did before 1980.
"Don't come here!"
"The US dollar will ALWAYS be the worlds reserve currency!"
(Recent pronouncements by ostensibly liberal democrats.)
The way your Congress is being run is an example of what you're saying here Thom. We've just seen how something McCarthy said might have been taken to upset Trump, and then we hear that McCarthy is on his knees (metaphorically), sucking up to the Leader. What has your Congress achieved legislatively since the midterms? - nothing that I can recall, just a lot of infighting and accusations. If the American people are misguided enough to elect such a government, we'll see more of the "George Santos" type of frauds. Your Congress right now is a joke - the world sees it, and that's what'll happen if your nation follows suit. As good as an in-depth article like this one today is, young people aren't much capable of taking it in, so in this sense the brief messages the Lincoln Project are producing are getting the message across - Trump is the dangerous mentally ill person Dr. Bandy Lee warned us of.
This article should be required reading in all our schools. I have spent many years searching for plausible contributing factors to the Holocaust and you have described one of the most important.
Very prescient article! Maybe things won’t look much different for awhile. But, long term changes could greatly disadvantage many. And, no free speech? Freedom to love & live the way most suitable for us?
Except that Trump was not the leader, and Trump is not going to be the leader.
The leader has been and will continue to be people like Paul singer who: speak out against Trump; fund opposition research against Trump;, call him names and then.....
....politely get invited to dine with president trump at the White House.
No not everybody has to pay fealty to this man. Singer, Mercer, and the Murdochs don't run in any elections. Remember that in 2015 trumps strategy was to run to the left of Hillary on several positions like the outsourcing of jobs and powerful magnates said we don't like this guy.
So for the financial rulers it's not a question of Trump or not Trump - it's a question of whether Trump is going to do their bidding and stick to their imperialist, financialized approach to economics and taxation .... if he does, then he's fine with them. But if Trump got the idea that he could raise taxes on rich, watch how fast that support would evaporate.
If we judge anything by the last half century, then it becomes very obvious that nobody in power really cares what voters think, or whether they like trump or not.
For example, powerful people like Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh don't really seem to care what Trump thinks and maybe even care more about what the public thinks even though their positions are not popular.
We have to understand that media loves Trump; trump sells copy; media has a story that people will look at if it has the word "Trump" on it - like this one.
The point is driven home is some excellent historical works (Marty jezer's for example) and by much discussion by Chomsky over the years.
https://www.state.gov/reports/2021-investment-climate-statements/china/
A case can be made for another "leader" - the US dollar as reserve currency. If you dig a little bit into recent congressional hearings and other statements by democrats - even liberal Democrats - you'll see that the Democrats support this leader as much as the GOP does. It was people like truman, Acheson, rusk, McCloy, McNamara who originally created this "leader" after ww2. A leader that is a close relative of the us foreign policy position - the entire world shall be open to direct foreign investment by us companies. We will destroy, undermine, go to war with any country that objects. This is NOT partisan and it never was, ever since truman jumped on the (vehement) anti-communism wagon. So today you will see the threat of war and the predictions of war with China increase in enormous, direct relationship to China's limitation of foreign direct investment and you'll see people like the Secretary of State Blinkenntalk about how things with China will be fine as long as they allow more foreign direct investment.
https://cyber.harvard.edu/cyberlaw_winter10/What_Happens_If_The_U.S._Dollar_Is_No_Longer_The_World%27s_Reserve_Currency
Actually, the well from which money was dumped into the election, then and now, was from wealthy plutocrats. Trump is famous for saying anything that will get him votes.
And the plutocrats know this, they have their own oppo research, and the money to hire investigators, and lobbyists.
AS regards Paul Singer, he has only one agenda, no taxes on the wealthy, let the middle class support him and his business. He is a vulture capitalist and here is what he has to say:
Singer is a member of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, a non-governmental, nonpartisan research organization.[104] He is chairman of the board of trustees for the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a conservative think tank in New York City,[105] and on the board of directors of the Republican Jewish Coalition, a political lobbying group in the United States that promotes Jewish Republicans.[68] He also served on the board of directors for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.[106]
In 2016 Singer invested $500,000 in a PAC supporting John Faso, a Congressional candidate in New York's 19th congressional district opposing progressive candidate and Wall Street critic Zephyr Teachout. Teachout responded to the donation by challenging Singer to come to the district and debate her.[107] The same year, Singer supported Senator Marco Rubio in the presidential primary.[108]
As of September 2019, Singer had not donated to Trump's reelection campaign.[109]
According to ProPublica, Singer was linked to an Alaskan fishing trip with Justice Samuel Alito in 2008. Singer gave Alito free private jet travel from all across the country to Alaska, where a group including Alito and Singer went fishing. A few years later Alito voted with six other colleagues in Republic of Argentina v. NML Capital, Ltd. brought by Singer's companies after Argentinian debt was bought up. Alito never recused himself. The Federal Record of that case should have had Paul Singer as a Related Party, triggering a recusal analysis and decision.[110]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Singer_(businessman)
Are you a Republican troll, a Putin troll, or just an unremediated Tankie, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
Like the Doctor you seem to have an affection for Putin and Communists.
I am 84 and not one who equates socialism with communism, America has been striving to be great as it has been a mixed economy, with socialism regulating and restraining the excesses of socialism. Socialism is NOT the ownership of the means of production.
Lenin referred to the USSR as State Capitalism, in reality it was corporate state (councils) that were organized along resource lines, like people (KGB), forestry, mining, industry, agriculture, construction each had their own bank, and a central bank, to coordinate and handle payments via the other banks.
The preferred method of handling debts, between trusts, was by barter, failing that then gold. the GOSBank was the "central" bank, it controlled the movement of gold.
The USSR was on a 100% gold standard with one ruble valued at .981 grans fine gold, and only enough rubles were printed to equal the amount of gold held by the banks.
Smuggling rubles out of the USSR was a crime, even a felony offense, because the holder of a ruble outside of the USSR, could present a ruble to the NordBank in Paris (the USSR's banking window to the world) and demand gold.
The USSR was very libertarian in that regard (only gold is money, paper just represents gold, which is redeemable on demand.
It was also libertarian when it comes to working and living, Art 12, of the 1936 Soviet Constitution states in essence, If you don't work, you don't eat. The unofficial motto of the GOP and Libertarians. Stalin also criminalized abortions.
Marx was a proto libertarian, he opposed slavery in the south, because it cost too much to produce, forcing his partner, Frederick Engels who inherited a textile mill, to buy the less expensive and cheaper quality, Egyptian cotton.
He wrote letters to southern newspapers, imploring them to free the slaves and hire them back at market wages, as that would enable them to produce cheaper cotton. Planters had to feed, clothe, house, entertain and pay preachers to brain wash their slaves.
Surprise, the old line Marxists and C ommunists are little more than Libertarians.
Oh Marx was also against import tariffs. He was a vociferous advocate for abolishing the "Corn Laws" corn in England and the continent is what Americans call grain. However maize is a form of grain, and thus it wound up in the vernacular as corn.
It should be Pop Maize not Popcorn.
As you say there is nothing new with the concept of a dictator who is hidden in plain sight. For the first two centuries of its existence the Roman Empire was in theory still a republic run by its Senate. It just happened that one man was "first" ("Princeps") in that institution and also commanded the army. Everyone knew the reality but very few dared to seriously object. Perhaps the constant in history has been the phrase, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
A more modern example is Vichy France, the puppet state set up after the German victory in 1940. It was in fact internationally recognized as the legitimate French government, and many in the country went along with things just as they were. The bureaucracy kept functioning, and if your neighbors disappeared and the motto on the money changed from "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" to "Job and Family", so what?
I think that last case is something like what Trump imagined could have happened after January 6th, with a takeover at the top but everything else more or less continuing as before. There might have been a real internal civil war, with some states not recognizing the government in Washington, and the military split, but maybe not. After all when the Americans invaded Morocco in 1942 the Vichy French army didn’t see the Allies as liberators. Instead they battled them for days.
But what makes this sort of slide into fascism quite possible is technology. A criticism of 1984 is that there simply were not enough loyal party members to monitor everyone who could have been a dissident. But you don't need that today. With cameras everywhere, facial recognition software, , license plates routinely read by computers, satellite monitoring, everyone carrying a tracking cell phone with every conversation recorded, and a de facto national ID system (de jure in many places, such as India) all the tools are in place. And most citizens have been conditioned to accept all of this and more! And you know once a government has more power it doesn't give it up. If anything, there is always an excuse to expand it, "for the good of the people", of course.
Thanks for this reminding , Thom, I’ll be taking whatever action I’m able to echo your prescient warning. …Long Live Democracy !
Your selective memory is disconcerting Thom. You speak of Obama as some champion of democracy, yet he actually broadened the NSA's powers, prosecuted more whisteblowers than any president in history, expanded a renewed patriot act and gave himself full authority to assassinate anyone he wanted using drones in the interest in the "war on terror" (including Americans). The "democracy" on the ballot is not democracy for me and millions of others who want no more of Joe Biden's unfettered militarism, sales of record numbers of weapons around the world to autocracies, oil drilling expansion and pipelines, means-tested programs implemented to be rife for legal challenges, inhumane treatment of immigrants and refugees, and anti-labor actions like breaking a railworkers' strike. And some of us are sufficiently non-partisan to recognize that Biden's rudderless and neoliberal brand of leadership is the opposite of what is required to counter fascism. It will take a Bernie Sanders type of humane populist leader to serve as a counterweight to an inhumane populist leader like Trump.
Everything you said about Obama is true and I share those opinions. I am no fan of Biden either, I consider him weak, even losing it. I am a few years older than him, and I would be lucky to even climb up the stairs to Air Force One.
However, yet again, you give yourself away, when you talk of Biden's unfettered militarism.
He has not deployed the Armed Forces into combat, save for some special operators trying to defend African allies. He was resistant to fgiving Ukrainians F-16's, and long range rockets, even HIMARS at first, but caved under pressure from Europe who is justifiable scared of Putin and his intentions to rebuild the old Soviet Empire.
Again and again, you use "militarism" as an excuse to argue for Putin. But no criticism of Putin, his militarism, his inhumanity, his war crimes, targeting children and women with his missiles and rockets, not to mention artillery barrages.
Like Al Sharpton says "We gotcha"
Barry, how could you forget Obama didn't support Medicare for all? It is actually cheaper.
Excellent analysis! The question is, will state governments protect citizens of Blue States from fascism?
"Democracy is on the ballot". This would be a good title for a new book to be rushed to print by Thom before the 2024 election. Presumably, he has said that and much more in earlier books and in many daily rants. But a new hot off the presses book spelling this message out clearly by a respected scholar might strike a chord and attract wide attention in the nick of time, especially for middle-of-the-road, undecided, or swing voters. A book tour and media interviews would boost interest and controversy and could be the deciding factor in that election. I would hope there is a new chapter on how the indelible image of leaders, experts, and authority figures firmly planted early in hierarchical schools inchoately but potently lends credence to the impression and belief that obedience to a beloved and presumably benevolent leader/teacher is virtuous and essential for safety, security, and salvation.
So well thought out -- and ignored by the people who need to understand it. What else is new? No matter how brilliant exposes are and how much more informed readers of them become, Fox News devotees just aren't paying attention. And defeating the MAGA forces at the ballot box would be essential, but it's a stopgap, where today's Democrats won't deliver Nirvana. "Wake up everybody we know" is a real thing to do that would matter, but how? These things are what I'm addressing on my Substack, and thanks, Thom, for recommending it: https://suzannetaylor.substack.com
What makes this all so serious and dangerous is the white women who are supporting these men and brainwashing their own children. Without the children we’re F’ed.
I am an Atheist. When are they coming for me?
I will read anything you write.
We are approaching our 250th birthday, and it's hard not to wonder what America will be accepting in 2026. I think anything is possible just as in Thom's Report. It's a drip drip drip eroding of each democratic process by people who hate what the majority want. They are never going to stop, and we can't either.
We can't accept their fascism. We have to continue to work for what is right and what we want for the generations to come.