The fact that far too many people cannot recognize fascism unless it looks exactly like Nazi Germany is very dangerous — @Strandjunker#quotes#quote#fascism
Today in Labor History February 10, 1898: Marxist playwright Bertolt Brecht was born. Brecht was a doctor, poet and playwright. He fled the Nazis only to be persecuted in the U.S. by HUAC during the Cold War. He is most well-known for his play, “The Three Penny Opera.” He also wrote “Mother Courage and Her Children” and “The Days of the Commune,” about the Paris Commune. Additionally, he wrote poetry and composed the lyrics to many of the songs performed in his plays, like “Mack the Knife” and “Alabama Song” (AKA Whiskey Bar).
#Biden / In Private Remarks to Arab Americans, Biden Aide Expresses Regrets on Gaza
In a private meeting with Arab American leaders on Thursday, Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer acknowledged that the Biden administration made mistakes in its response to the Gaza war that has killed over 27,000 Palestinians since October 2022.
“We have left a very damaging impression based on what has been a wholly inadequate public accounting for how much the president, the administration and the country values the lives of Palestinians. And that began, frankly, pretty early in the conflict.”
Finer admitted the U.S. failed to properly convey the value it places on Palestinian lives. He expressed regret over the White House statement on the 100-day mark of the conflict that did not mention Palestinian casualties. Finer also said the administration should have faster condemned dehumanizing rhetoric by Israeli officials comparing Gazans to "animals."
@GhostOnTheHalfShell@oatmeal@israel@palestine #Biden is a snake and only slightly preferable to #Trump. He says he believes in climate change while he lets US oil companies pump more oil than any administration in history. I guess climate activism will have to wait if it means gas prices go up and his popularity goes down. He pretends to care about the rights of minorities and women but keeps funding #genocide and #apartheid in #Palestine. per standard US doctrine he supports Saudi Arabia which has policies against women, and LGBTQ+ that would make Texas jealous if anyone in Texas were capable of reading about it. What is happening in Palestine is just one more Crusade #GenocideJoe#ClimateChange#Crusade#Fascism
"The new University of Massachusetts–Amherst poll conducted with YouGov finds that 'a startling 39 percent of Americans, including 74 percent of Republicans, think it’s a decent idea for Donald Trump to act as a dictator for a day to begin his prospective second term, according to a University of Massachusetts Amherst survey released Wednesday.'”
Gaetano Salvemini smuggled a copy of the court transcripts of Matteotti's trial out of Italy:
"Per conto mio, già nell'agosto del 1925, avevo trafugato fuori d'Italia una copia della requisitoria del Pubblico Ministero Santoro nella inchiesta senatoriale sulle accuse mosse da Giuseppe Do- nati contro il direttore generale della pubblica sicurezza, generale De Bono. Dopo averli utilizzati affidai quei docu- menti alla biblioteca della School of Economics di Londra, nel dicembre 1926"
The day after there was an unsuccessful attempt to steal the transcripts, but they were kept in the Library's safe.
Very excited that we are now going to be digitising these transcripts and putting them freely available online, 100 years after Matteotti's murder. Hopefully they will be available by end of June this year. Attached is a photograph of them in situ.
So, in a nutshell, the billionaire owner of the #NFL team the #BuffaloBills is taking food out of the mouths of children to build his stadium that will make him billions more in profits.
I'd say something about what happens next in a country that starts jailing people for having a book the government doesn't like, but we all already know.
"West Jordan Republican Rep. Ken Ivory introduced HB417, which would allow teachers and other public school employees to be charged with a class A misdemeanor if they keep materials specifically deemed “objectively sensitive” available to students.
If found guilty, they could be charged a fine of no less than $500 and could be jailed for a term lasting no fewer than 30 days, according to the bill.
... a single book would be removed from all Utah schools if at least three school districts banned the same book for being “objectively” sensitive, or at least two school districts and five charter schools did.
That means less than 10% of Utah school districts and charter schools combined could trigger a book’s statewide removal"
"The very attempt to narrativize and moralize fascism translates what is perceived as the object of this moral narrative, the event of fascism as a "lived experience," into representation, which consequently implicates such moral and political representations of fascism in the restaging, stylizing, or aestheticizing of such an event."
How would you define Zionism?
How would you define anti-Zionism?
Who do you consider a Zionist?
Who do you consider an anti-Zionist?
Please also include how (or if) you identify yourself in this regard.
@noam I'm Jewish. It's colonialism, and aamof ISIS has been noted using the same tactics and strategies as Irgun and the other Zionist invaders did.
Know why? Because #Fascism. Zionism has been hijacked, post wwii, by a fascist doomsday cult and someone should set about securing Israel's nukes before they do something truly tragic when they discover their artificially created "nation" is finished, soon. @cferdinandi@israel@palestine@whitedove@eyald
Today in Labor History February 2, 1942: The Osvald Group took the first anti-Nazi action in Norway, to protest the inauguration of Vidkun Quisling, by bombing the Oslo East Station. Over 200 members of the Osvald Group committed at least 110 acts of sabotage against the Nazis and Quisling’s collaborationist government during World War II. The Osvald Group was aligned with, and support by, the Soviet Union. The Nazis occupied Norway starting on April 9, 1940. The Osvald Group continued its sabotage until 1944, when the USSR officially disbanded the organization.
"Along with that sector of the electorate which seems detached and uninterested in our fate as a nation, we also have the problem of collective denial. American political elites who have the resources to be fully informed about the devastation Trump 2.0 would cause are among this group."
"Not wanting to accept the reality that the GOP has become an autocratic party and supporter of White supremacist violence, they lose time hoping futilely that a return to the before times is possible."
An Arizona lawmaker who signed on to be a “fake elector” for Donald Trump after the former president lost his bid for a second term has introduced a bill that would allow members of the statehouse to overturn future election results that they don’t like....
#politics#trump#fascism#BlackMastodon#BlackTwitter@blackmastodon#ThoughtExperiment
Let us assume Donald Trump is a distraction. I don’t want a dissertation on whether he is or not. Follow the instructions for the exercise. What is the root concern of the MAGA/right wing conservatives?
*edit - phrased question better, not the goal but their root concern. I think it doesn't apply to non US folks unless you are ex-pats.
I've been sitting on this story for a few days because the editorial tone of the piece is at least mildly flippant, and vaguely reminiscent of prior fascist-normalizing debacles such as the New York Times' infamous "Meet the Nazi Next Door" piece. It's also absurdly long. That having been said, despite its flaws, I think it's worth examining because it offers insight into the world of fascist astroturf operations and attempts to create the illusion of popular support for Trumpism/fascism, even among minority communities who're being targeted by nazi political figures:
The piece itself is a lengthy examination of fascist "influencer" and general shitheel, Brandon Straka. Unless you're super plugged into the MAGA-sphere of babbling reactionary social media influencers, you might not know who Straka is (more on why below), but you're probably familiar with the two major reasons he's "famous" - the "WalkAway" social media hashtag campaign designed to give the impression that millions of marginalized Americans were "leaving" the Democratic Party and joining Trump, and his participation as a key "Stop the Steal" figure in the January 6th storming of the Capitol as part of an attempted fascist coup. In the time since his conviction, and extremely light sentencing for his involvement in that shitshow, Straka has become, with a great deal of help, something of a symbol of the "repression" meted out by "the tyrannical liberal establishment" - which turned out to be three months home detention, and three years of probation. Yes, you heard that right; the guy pretending Biden threw him in Gitmo for participating in a real as fuck coup, got 3 months of house arrest; a laughable sentence in light of the crime, as the article later points out: “If that had been a group of 2000 ISIS supporters that had broken into the Capitol,” Pape asks, “do you think we’d only be prosecuting them for trespassing?”
As interesting as all that is however, I think what's really worth examining here is Straka himself, and the process by which he became a well-funded, well-connected "MAGA influencer" because this guy's path to "stardom" and profit, has absolutely nothing to do with popular sentiment and everything to do with kayfabe fascist propaganda operations and the folks who promote and fund them. As the article makes clear, before he hitched his wagon to the MAGA train, Straka was an utterly inconsequential hair stylist with big acting dreams and a YouTube channel that had accrued a whopping 50 regular viewers. Desperate for fame and fortune, Straka decided to latch onto the rising fascist tide by becoming a pro-Trump influencer: "Eventually, Straka, a lifelong Democrat, figured out the time-honored strategy of getting noticed: He switched sides. In 2018, with help from his friend, the gay anti-trans activist Mike Harlow, he made a Facebook video declaring that he was “walking away” from the Democratic Party." As the article further explains without directly saying it, this "movement" is itself clearly astroturf, and Straka's impassioned plea to sign up people the fascists want to kill, to support the fascists online, was quickly picked up and rebroadcast by numerous key figures in fascist media and politics; folks like Donald Trump Jr for example.
I think it's key here to note that under no circumstances was WalkAway an actual grassroots movement, and indeed most of its supporters aren't liberals who "walked away" but fascists the movement calls (quietly) "Walk Withs." This is pure fucking astroturf, designed to give folks the impression Trump, Trumpism, and the fascist takeover has a broad base of popular support among people the fascists are openly targeting. Using his newfound fame, Straka immediately plugged into the network of far right extremists selling Trumpism/fascism to rubes online, on TV, in fascist conferences and public debates; collecting filthy lucre at every point along the way. By 2019, Laura Trump was interviewing him for campaign videos created in Trump Tower and he was openly signaling to QAnon freaks, before becoming a public figure in the Stop the Steal movement (more astroturf) and ultimately participating in the coup attempt.
You should read the entire story to get a sense of just how fake everything about Straka and his "struggle" really are, but the key point to take away here is this: fascism is not a popular, grassroots movement in our society. There is literally no such thing as organic, popular support for fascists and they certainly aren't attracting marginalized people to their worldview. This is manufactured, coordinated propaganda. All of these people on your screen are losers and freaks, willing to debase themselves for nazi money and YES, the rich guys running this shitshow are happy to pay for the ILLUSION of popular, grassroots support to get what they want - a fascist police state in total submission to neofeudalist overlords, them. It's an op.
#politics#trump#fascism#BlackMastodon#BlackTwitter@blackmastodon
Can you participate in a thought experiment with me? The posts warning about fascism are good, but I'm wondering what you think fascism actually looks like. Give a thought, and list what it looks like. Don't just say "the end of democracy." List what the concrete changes will be and make it local. "In my town/city/county/state the following will happen......" Think about it before replying. Not just for #BlackMastodon .
Disturbing Bill Would Let Arizona Legislators Ignore Election Results ( www.thedailybeast.com )
An Arizona lawmaker who signed on to be a “fake elector” for Donald Trump after the former president lost his bid for a second term has introduced a bill that would allow members of the statehouse to overturn future election results that they don’t like....