Fascism watch thread/news and discussions

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caltrek
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Re: Fascism watch thread/news and discussions

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^^^Oh yes, the U.S. is very much out in front on social issues. So much so that the biggest challenge is dealing with the reactionary response of the far right. I hate to sound like such a Maoist, but in this case I think the rhetoric fits the situation.

In less Maoist terms, I think this is what all of this discussion about cultural wars are all about. "Critical Race Theory" also known as "teaching history" is now being brought front and center as a topic of debate.

Why do I equate "Critical Race Theory" with "teaching history"?

One simple reason. Because conservatives love to talk and write in code. If they rant and rave about teachers teaching history, they look like idiots. Change that to an objection to the teaching of "Critical Race Theory" in our schools, and suddenly they sound like they are on to something. Never mind that "Critical Race Theory" is simply not taught in the K through 12 levels anywhere in the United States. Only in the most elite of Eastern colleges is it in the curriculum, and then only for those who have already taken "Sociology 101" and even "Sociology 102."

Still, if a teacher opens his or her mouth about the past existence of slavery or the Jim Crow system in this country, why that teacher is guilty of trying to teach "Critical Race Theory" to their students. The Right then proceeds to terrify mommies and daddies that such teachings will affect the "self-image" of their children. All sides must be represented. Jim Crow must be defended. Slavery existed in many other societies, and besides we know how benevolent the slave owners of the United States were in comparison with everybody else, and so on and so forth.

Taught to accept lies indeed.

Edit: I just wanted to add some thoughts about the whole affect the "self-image" argument. The main impact is on the image of of conservative elites who benefited from racism. Yes, they were white, but not all whites were members of the conservative elite. Moreover, other ideological choices became possible. Slavery begat the abolitionists, many of whom were white. Jim Crow begat the National Association of Colored People, which I believe was first founded in no small part through the efforts of whites sympathetic to arguments about the negative effects of racism in the United States. The Civil Rights movement of the 1960s involved white students who participated in the protests and organization involved in that movement. Being white is no automatic cause for shame. Still, to elevate those whites as heroes is to celebrate the liberal cause in America, something no reactionary wants to do. Better to just avoid the subject and hide behind the "self-image" argument, as flawed as it might be.
Last edited by caltrek on Sun Nov 21, 2021 2:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Fascism watch thread/news and discussions

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Proud Boys call for 'stacking up' bodies 'like cord wood' after Rittenhouse verdict

November 19, 2021

On Friday, NPR reported that extreme right groups are rejoicing at the acquittal of Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse — and are fantasizing about instigating more violence in their private channels.

"In one Telegram channel for the far-right Proud Boys, some noted they had taken the day off work to await the verdict," reported Odette Yousef. "'There's still a chance for this country,' wrote one. In another channel, a member stated that political violence must continue. 'The left wont stop until their bodie(s) get stacked up like cord wood,' he wrote."

As the report noted, "Rittenhouse himself is not known to be a member of an extremist group. But the trial, which from its beginning became a cause and rallying cry among conservatives who champion gun rights, has been particularly alarming to extremism researchers."

Rittenhouse successfully claimed self-defense after he crossed state lines to safeguard businesses with an AR-15 style rifle during the protests against the Jacob Blake police shooting, which led to confrontations that ended with him fatally shooting two people and injuring a third.

In addition to far-right groups, some Republican politicians are congratulating Rittenhouse, with Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) even suggesting he come work for them as an intern.

https://www.rawstory.com/proud-boys-2655766952/


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Re: Fascism watch thread/news and discussions

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I am not surprised if Kyle Rittenhouse was in leagues of such extremist groups after that. After all, it was conservatives who cheered on him and even one of them offered an congressional internship to him. Its pretty hard to break that reputation that he’s built up on media, having been on a few places where I’m in where they literally celebrated him on the grounds that he defended himself against criminals. The other side appeared to maintain him as a white supremacist, given that he was close to such groups, wouldn’t be at all surprising if he becomes a guest on right wing television after a while to spread messages in their favour.

Imagine if Kyle was black instead. Would it still apply? Would conservatives that sided him even care about his case? Probably not; they would’ve dismissed him as a murderer instead of being the one who defended as well. Perhaps the outcome would also be the opposite as well, that the critics of Kyle Rittenhouse would end up as defendants for him had he been black. The racial bias in American (and by extension, the west) courts seem to favour white people. After all, the jury that the trial was set is almost entirely white.

Enough of venting, I think it might be too polarised to even discuss here. It also sort of argues my hatred for current political events where there are literally two sides and if you are in one camp with a differing opinion, you either get your head down or you get message bombed/cancelled for a politically incorrect position.

Yes, I’ve been in places where they celebrated him being freed. I’m not even joking, because I literally observe both political sides. I never seen anyone going the opposite though, I did however, know one person who called him a domestic terrorist and they’re heavily into the Biden camp and that Democrats can’t automatically falter, even though the big tent that it tries to perpetuate against the Republicans is failing with Manchin and the progressive Democrats disagreeing with each other on the infrastructure bill for a while now.
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caltrek
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Want to know how it might have been different if Rittenhouse were a person of color? Here is a clue:

Two Days Before Rittenhouse Verdict, a Native Woman Was Imprisoned for Killing Her Alleged Rapist
by Madison Pauly
November 19, 2021

https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justi ... yn-george/

Introduction:
(Mother Jones) Two days before a nearly all-white jury bought Kyle Rittenhouse’s claim he was acting in self-defense when he shot three men, killing two, at a Black Lives Matter protest, Maddesyn George, a 27-year-old Native mother, was sitting in a courtroom in Eastern Washington, waiting to learn how many years she would have to spend in federal prison for a shooting a white man she said had raped her.

George, a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes, admits she killed Kristopher Graber in July 2020. The two had been friends; in a police interview, she said was at Graber’s house doing scratch-off tickets when he got on top of her and raped her with a vibrator. When she protested, he pulled out a gun, George told the tribal detective. Graber eventually fell asleep, and George took the gun from him, along with cash and drugs, according to prosecutors. Then she left. The next day, Graber went out looking for her, found her sitting in a locked car, and confronted her. In the altercation, she shot him once through the window, killing him.

“I was like panicking cause I was like, ‘Oh, f*ck, the window’s open this much, like he’s going to fucking, he is going to get me,” George told the tribal detective shortly after the shooting. “So then I got the gun off the floor.”

Yet unlike Rittenhouse, George never got a chance to argue that the shooting was done in self-defense. Last summer, federal prosecutors filed a motion trying to block her from making that argument at trial, arguing that she was the “initial aggressor” in the shooting, and arguing the “purported assault” wouldn’t be enough to justify a self-defense claim.

A couple weeks later, staring down the possibility of a 35-year sentence, George decided to take a plea deal for voluntary manslaughter and drug possession, according to Steve Graham, her lawyer. On Wednesday, US District Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson sentenced George to six and a half years in federal prison, lower than the expected range, and far less than the 17 years prosecutors had asked for.
Last edited by caltrek on Fri Dec 10, 2021 4:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Fascism watch thread/news and discussions

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Proud Boys call for 'stacking up' bodies 'like cord wood' after Rittenhouse verdict
More on the reception of the verdict by the extreme right:

Kyle Rittenhouse and the Scary Future of the American Right
by Zack Beauchamp
November 22, 2021

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... lf-defense

Introduction:
(Vox) In the apocalyptic imagination of the American far-right, violence plays a central role. The right’s radical extremists believe that mainstream American institutions have been rotted from within, undermined by the nefarious influence of Blacks, Jews, and liberals. White Americans are justified — maybe even obligated — to take up arms to protect their people and their culture.

Immediately after Kyle Rittenhouse’s acquittal on Friday, the fringe right’s online forums lit up with celebration — and among some, a belief that they too can kill without legal consequence. On Telegram, a secure messaging app popular with extremists, the leader of a neo-Nazi group wrote that the verdict gives “good Americans legal precedent and license to kill violent commies without worrying about doing life in prison if we defend ourselves in a riot.”

There is every reason to take such rhetoric seriously. “It has never taken more than a whisper of approval to fan the flames of militant right action. The Kenosha acquittal is a shout,” writes Kathleen Belew, a historian of white power movements at the University of Chicago. Based on how it’s been cheered in some quarters, the verdict is potentially setting the stage for future violence.

Data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project shows that, between January 2020 and June 2021, there were 560 protest events where either demonstrators or counter-demonstrators showed up with guns — about 2 percent of all protests in the United States during the studied time period. The data also shows that these demonstrations are more than five times more likely to involve violent or destructive behavior as compared to unarmed ones.

Johns Hopkins political scientist Lilliana Mason — the co-author (with Nathan Kalmoe) of the forthcoming Radical American Partisanship — worries that this trend will escalate. At future protests on charged issues like racial justice and voting rights, armed right-wing counterprotesters may continue to descend on America’s cities, in increasingly large numbers. “The January 6 folks coming by, Kyle Rittenhouse-style,” as she put it.
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Cut-Rate Nazi Clowns Found Liable For $26 Million
by Abby Zimet
November 24, 2021

https://www.commondreams.org/further/20 ... 26-million

Introduction:
(Common Dreams) For Thanksgiving, two modest steps toward a justice devoutly to be wished: Ahmaud Arbery's killers go down, and after a landmark, month-long civil trial, a federal jury has found two dozen neo-Nazi, white supremacist and other squalid groups of "very fine people" liable for over $26 million in damages for race-related violence against nine plaintiffs in 2017's infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. The rally, dubbed Woodstock for Fascists, saw a ragged, ugly coalition of white nationalists descend on the University of Virginia that August, with tiki-torch-bearing white goons in khakis and polos screaming "Jews will not replace us" and hurling their torches at anyone who disagreed. The menacing scene culminated the next day with Hitler-fan-boy James Fields slamming his car into a crowd of peaceful counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer, 32, and injuring 19 others. Now serving several life terms in prison, Fields is one of 24 defendants named in the Sines v. Kessler civil lawsuit brought on behalf of the plaintiffs by Integrity First for America, a nonprofit rights organization formed in the wake of Charlottesville; in a rare legal move, they sought to convict the extremists under an 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act that protected newly freed slaves by allowing them to file civil lawsuits against anyone conspiring to commit race-based violence. The jury deadlocked on those two federal charges, but in a major win they did find the defendants violated similar Virginia state laws banning racial violence or intimidation - historically, coincidentally a strong suit for Nazis and white nationalists.

What became a noxious festival of fascist hate where anyone in a bandana became a sinister player in an Antifa plot began as a protest against city plans to remove racist icon Robert E. Lee from his lofty downtown perch. Using dark chat rooms and unregulated social media - thanks Zuck - it quickly evolved into a fervid scheme to amass foot soldiers, assemble makeshift weapons, and do as much damage as possible to their perceived enemies.
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And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
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The Kremlin Continues Its Care and Feeding of American Extremist Groups
by Kristofer Harrison
November 29, 2021

https://www.thebulwark.com/meet-the-tex ... by-russia/

Extract:
(The Bulwark) The shiny ball that caught (Ted) Cruz’s attention was The Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM). TNM is Texas’s most prominent secessionist organization. In 2015, TNM attended a St. Petersburg gathering of worldwide extremists organized by Rodina—that’s “Motherland” in Russian—the fascist-adjacent offshoot of Putin’s United Russia party.

That gathering was a safe space where the likes of German Neo-Nazis, the KKK, Greece’s Golden Dawn, and Roberto Fiore (the Italian terrorist responsible for a 1980 bombing in Bologna that killed 85), could gather and praise Putin’s defense of Western (read: “white”) culture. Here, featured on Rodina’s website, is Nate Smith, TNM’s executive director, in attendance. Howdy! Russia’s info warriors were very pleased with his comments at the event. This skulduggery got so bad and Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russians who were working with the Texas secessionist movement in 2016 to—please put down your coffee—spread misinformation about Ted Cruz during the presidential primary in order to help Donald Trump.

There’s a nice symmetry there. Some day when Hollywood comes calling the film can be titled, “From Victim to Dupe: The Ted Cruz Story.”
One of the nastier conferees at Putin’s 2015 conclave was the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group who was credited by Charleston shooter Dylann Roof in his manifesto for inspiring him to “take it to the real world.”

There’s a white nationalist group called Atomwaffen which venerates Roof as a hero. Atomwaffen was founded by a teenager in Florida using a messaging platform created by a Russian. You can find Roof’s manifesto—along with manifestos from other white nationalist killers—on 8chan, which has been relaunched as 8kun, by two Russians.
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Defining Fascism
by Robert Kahn
December 3, 2021

https://www.courthousenews.com/republic ... s-pop-off/

Introduction:
(Courthouse News) The online O.E.D. today defines fascism as “an extreme right-wing political system or attitude that is in favor of strong central government, aggressively promoting your own country or race above others, and that does not allow any opposition.”

Fascist today is not limited by political parties or national borders. The word, as an adjective, correctly characterizes Xi’s China, Modi’s India, Putin’s Russia, Duterte’s Philippines, Orbán’s Hungary, Ortega’s Nicaragua, Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia, the French presidential candidate Éric Zemmour, and our own Republican Party’s dreams.


Here is the question:

At what point does “patriotism” become fascism?

I’d say it’s the point where the “patriots” threaten, attack, injure and kill their fellow citizens. And the patriots’ preferred politicians sit back and watch it happen, and smile. (See: Jan. 6, 2021, et seq.)
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