Today in Labor History May 30, 1381: Tax collector John Bampton sparked the Peasants’ Revolt in Brentwood, Essex. The mass uprising, also known as Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, or the Great Rising, began because of attempts to collect a poll tax. However, tensions were already high because of the economic misery and hunger caused by the Black Death pandemic of the 1340s, and the Hundred Years’ War. During the uprising, rebels burned public records and freed prisoners. King Richard II, 14 years old, hid in the Tower of London. Rebels entered the Tower and killed the Lord Chancellor and the Lord High Treasurer, but not the king. It took nearly six months for the authorities to suppress the Peasants’ Revolt. They slaughtered over 1,400 rebels. Roughly 600 years later, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher tried again to impose a poll tax on Britain’s working class. It also sparked a revolt which brought an end both to the tax and Thatcher’s regime. Billy Bragg references Thatcher’s poll tax in his song, All You Fascists.
#Trump has been discussing with Elon #Musk for several months a possible appointment to the post of presidential adviser if he wins, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing sources.
And Musk himself also calls Trump several times a month.
They first met at a donor breakfast in early March at Trump’s Florida residence. At the same time, the topic of the adviser was raised.
Trump wants to involve Musk in areas of the economy and the border with #Mexico, which the #SpaceX founder has publicly discussed. They also discussed the #US Space Force, electric vehicles and immigration.
On the eve of next week’s EU #election, French far-right leader Marine Le Pen is inviting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to team up and form a right-wing super-grouping that would be the second-biggest party bloc in the European Parliament.
The far right is projected to perform well in the June 6-9 election but there are still intense doubts about which parties would be able to work together as cross-border political groups — because many of the national parties are sharply divided — especially over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The latest projections suggest 68 seats for ID and 71 for ECR, making 139 lawmakers in the 720-seat chamber. #AfD is on course for 17 seats and the unaffiliated Hungarian Fidesz party currently has 12 MEPs. All together, something over 165 seats would seem to be in play for the (currently disunited) far right.
New McCarthy in #UK: Former #Labour candidate Faiza Shaheen has been suspended from the Labour Party for liking a video by American Jewish comedian, Jon Stewart, which criticizes Israel's apologists. British media described the video as "downplaying antisemitism accusations."
This is just unbelievable. The labour party is turning into a front for #IDF in UK.
... we can spend this election year in one of two ways. We can spend it debating whether Trump meets the nine or 17 points that define fascism. Or we can spend it saying, “He’s damn close enough, and we’d better fight" — Michael Tomasky #quotes#quote#Trump#Election2024#Fascism
Today in Labor History May 28, 1968: Students occupied the University of Madrid (still under control of fascist dictator Francisco Franco). Cops raided the campus and removed the occupiers, and then shut down the University. At the time, all political parties had been banned, except the Falange. Franco had banned all protests and labor unions, too. Thousands had been rounded up and tortured, imprisoned or killed. Like much of the world at the time, a New Left movement had formed in Spain, though Spain’s was completely underground due to the repression of the dictatorship. Protests and demonstrations had been occurring for months. Most were met with violent repression and imprisonment.
The 'real' #polls in the #US presidential race are pretty meaningless, so why not a #Mastodon#poll?
Here's the question - Will Donald #Trump be elected president of the #UnitedStates in November? (Clearly he should not be elected to any office, or even allowed on the ballot, but that's not the question)
Everyone lucid in the West is freaking out about the rise of fascist thinking, well, everywhere.
Why? Didn't we defeat this obscenity 80 years ago after much suffering? Why is it resurging?
The problem is not that people don't learn from history (they don't but it's another issue), the problem is that fascism is always with us. Since the dawn of time, and forever more.
All fascism requires is:
ignorance
indecency
a demagogue to yoke these walnut brains and ride them to power
made by the US War Department at the end of WWII, a discussion between a regular Joe who almost gets seduced by a fascist street preacher, and a Hungarian immigrant who tells him this is how Hitler started, in detail
at a moment of historical clarity, an inspired piece of propaganda
how #fascism rises: divide and conquer with hate, while regular folks go "just crazy talk"
#Fascism: Extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy & political & cultural liberalism, belief in natural social hierarchy & rule of elites, & the desire to create a people’s community, where individual interests are subordinated to the nation. Let's not go there. #VoteBlue
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Two essays on the stakes, the scholarship, the key arguments, and the politics of the question of whether or not Trumpism is best understood as fascism that is revealing key fault lines on the Left.
Excellent articles! On whether the term "fascism" fits the here & now. Includes look at 2021 Claremont Institute essay, which presents:
"[A] vision of redrawing the boundaries of citizenship & excluding over half the population: Anyone who is not an “authentic American,” as he put it – literally every single Democratic voter. In his view, people who voted for Joe Biden…were simply not worthy of inclusion in the body politic…'zombies' & 'human rodents.'”
“Mussolini’s propaganda was full of references to Latin and ancient Roman imagery. In 1936, after the end of the Italo-Ethiopian colonial war, the Duce boastfully announced from the balcony of Palazzo Venezia “the reappearance of the empire on the fatal hills of Rome.” A racial legislation carefully regulated the interactions between Italians and Ethiopians.”
If you’re still confused and don’t understand what’s happening with the Hamas-Israel war (the genocide in Palestine) watch Starship Troopers.
It’s around to watch free…
Just look at IDF propaganda videos vs the satire propaganda ones in Starship Troopers. They’re almost the same. That’s very scary! It’s scarier that most people aren’t picking up on it or think it’s normal advertising.
@halcionandon@DenimsTV@palestine Apologies in advance for the wall of text, but I have seen people bring up Starship Troopers a lot the past few months.
I don't know how much media literacy is going to help here. I think people need to come to terms with the reality of modern journalism being devoid of content on the ground without a military ride-along, making it indistinguishable from the State Department stenography most of the press performs.
Verhoeven can make a good action flick, but even he lamented the incoherent message of this film was lost on the audience.
Is that surprising considering the coed shower scene was supposed to emphasize to us these people were more fascist because they were able to be around each other without letting lust consume them? It's a kind of George Orwell incoherent take on fascism being about suppressing the author's desires instead of performing a historical analysis of it as a counteraction against anticapitalism. I'm not even sure that's adequate since here it supports colonialism which is keeping Palestine from even developing the capitalist mode of production.
We are finding out who the real fascists are in the world today. The christian Taliban leadership of Poland standing firm behind the genocidal regime of Israel.
EU should have punished and even kicked Poland out of EU when they became the torture center for CIA and US state department during Bush presidency.
But sadly, crimes against EUs so called fundamental foundation of human rights, don't cover crimes against Muslims or people of color. Not to forget their outrageous Taliban style abortion laws or continues torture, mistreatment and even murder of immigrants.
“Why have large carbon-consuming countries allowed the systematic murder of thousands of children in Gaza? Because Hitler has already entered their homes and they are getting ready to defend their high levels of carbon consumption and reject the exodus it causes.”
--Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s speech at the COP28 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai in December.
Today in Labor History May 23, 1928: Anarchist Severino Di Giovanni bombed the Italian consulate in Buenos Aires to protest against the Italian dictatorship. He did it because the fascists were assassinating Italian antifascists living in exile. The bomb killed nine and wounded thirty-four. Prior to that, he bombed the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires in 1926 because a U.S. court had sentenced Sacco and Vanzetti to death. He also blew up a statue of George Washington, Citibank and the Bank of Boston, among other targets. At one point, he planned to assassinate Herbert Hoover. Many of the leading anarchists of the day criticized his bombings because they thought the backlash would facilitate a fascist coup in Argentina.
"One of the pre-conditions to any fascist seizure of power is the acceptance by a sizable percentage of the electorate of the need for, and justification of, political violence. A time-honored strategy for would-be dictators is to create 'false flags' to enrage and radicalize the populace, or at least enough of it to take control of government.
That’s why Trump’s latest ploy, though utterly absurd, is so dangerous."
"On Monday evening Trump posted a 30-second video on his Truth Social site featuring images of hypothetical newspaper articles celebrating his 2024 victory and referring to 'the creation of a unified Reich' under the headline 'What’s next for America?'
References to 'the creation of a unified Reich' appear three times in the short video."
"This Third Reich video is the first time Trump has explicitly embraced Nazi fascism. …
The Trump campaign has distanced itself from the video. A campaign spokesman claimed it was 'not an [official] campaign video' and was 'reposted by a staffer who clearly did not see the word.'
Yet it remained posted on Truth Social for 19 hours before finally being taken down yesterday."