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by American Dream » Fri Jul 01, 2016 9:07 am
by American Dream » Fri Jul 01, 2016 1:46 pm
White Nationalist Group Involved in Sacramento Violence Plans to Defend Trump Supporters at RNC
By Kali Holloway, AlterNet
A white nationalist group that was involved in a violent brawl with anti-racist protesters this weekend in Sacramento has announced its plans to be at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on July 18-21 to protect Donald Trump supporters. A spokesman for the Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP), which organized Sunday's march where at least five people were stabbed, told McClatchy that roughly 30 members of the group would be in attendance at the GOP event. "We're essentially just going to show up and make sure that the Donald Trump supporters are defended from the leftist thugs," he said.
This has become a bit of a party line for TWP. The group, which was joined by the Golden State Skinheads (GSS) in planning Sunday's rally, said on its website ahead of the demonstration that it would serve "to make a statement about the precarious situation our race is in," as evidenced by protesters' previous "brutal assaults" against Donald Trump supporters.
The Southern Poverty Law Center notes that TWP head Matthew Heimbach -- who previously made a mainstream name for himself after he was captured on video physically assaulting a young black woman at a Trump rally -- tweeted before the event, "We won't bow down to leftist scum."
The conflict at Sunday's event reportedly occurred instantaneously, with the estimated 30 TWP and GSS in attendance being met by 400 counter-protesters. ("I don't think there was any verbal exchange, just full-on fight," the press officer for the California Highway Patrol told the Los Angeles Times.) Although followup reports have stated the injured represent both sides in attendance, Heimbach has boasted that the majority of those wounded were anti-racism protesters. "They got 1 of ours, but we got 6 of them," Heimbach tweeted after the clash, according to the SPLC. "[Six anti-fascists] on the way to the hospital."
TWP, which on its website states that "European-American identity is under constant attack by members of American institutions such as the state, education, culture and even churches," is just one of several pro- and anti-Trump groups gearing up for the convention. Other Trump-supporting factions include "Bikers for Trump...Tea Party-affiliated organizations, a new group called Stop The Steal led by Trump ally Roger Stone, Citizens for Trump, and Truckers for Trump," according to the AP.
Conventions always have a healthy turnout of demonstrators, but the rancorous tone of Trump's campaign and the violence that has become a staple of his rallies have made this year's RNC of particular concern to authorities. In anticipation of potential skirmishes between opposing groups, the city of Cleveland planned to have a nearly four-square-mile "event zone" with high-level security and bans on protests, but a judge just ruled against those measures, citing free speech violations. City officials say they will have 200 beds ready for "fresh arrests" during the convention, according to Talking Points Memo.
TWP's self-appointment as the guardian of Trump's masses is only vaguely surprising, considering the candidate has become a favorite among white nationalists and various other racists who form the base of his coalition. In Trump, America's white power types see a candidate who speaks directly to their bigotry; a presidential nominee who goes beyond dog-whistles and subtle codes to shout their racism out loud.
The Trump camaign selected a white nationalist as a delegate, then asked him to step down once Mother Jones ran a story that inspired outrage. Vice magazine recently covered the annual American Renaissance conference, held by the white supremacist magazine of the same name, where the suit-and-tie braintrust of the white nationalist crowd gathered to discuss how Trump has energized racists, embolding them to be loud and proud with their hatred. Attendance at this year's conference was up 50 percent over 2015, thanks in no small measure to the GOP's current bright, shining star.
"Donald Trump has not thought through questions of race in any depth at all, as far as I can tell," Jared Taylor, founder of American Renaissance, told Vice. "He just has instincts. His instincts, I'm guessing, are opposed to having to press one for English when he turns on the telephone. His instincts are against walking into a 7-11 and being surrounded by people that he can't understand. His instincts are against walking down a street in New York City and finding more people from Asia or Africa or the Middle East than people of European origin."
"I think Donald Trump is an expression of this general angst amongst white people," says Richard Spencer, head of the National Policy Institute -- an "independent organization dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent" -- in the video. "It's a kind of implicit identity politics."
From here, it's hard to know how disruptive a presence TWP, or any of the other white nationalists and racists supporting Trump, will be to the RNC. But they are, by virtue of their very presence, attempting to play up the idea of white people in America as victims of an increasingly multicultural society that has denied them every right to which they are entitled -- emphasis on "entitled" -- including free speech.
"Make no mistake," says Levin "I think the hatemongers wanted to have this violence take place."Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State University, tells Raw Story that violence against white supremacists allows them to keep up the falsified narrative of a class "under siege." While he acknowledged that "some of the anti-fascists" in Sacramento wanted to have a violent face-off with the white nationalists, being under attack is good for the white power crowd's image.
by American Dream » Fri Jul 01, 2016 2:25 pm
Meet the American white supremacist who thinks Brexit is the best thing to happen to Europe since Hitler
“Anyone who disagrees with the far-left agenda – not just those of us who are nationalists, but those who support Mr Trump for president – is under attack,” Heimbach says. “This was a stand for freedom of speech and freedom of assembly for nationalists. We knew there was probably going to be violence brought by the left, and that we would stand against it.” The attacks on his group’s members in Sacramento, he alleges, were “premeditated attempted murder”.
It's been something of a banner week for Heimbach, who also claimed the result of the UK’s EU referendum as a nationalist triumph, tweeting that “#Brexit is the greatest European nationalist victory since 1933”. The country’s decision to leave the EU, he says, “is the first blow against globalism in the post-war period: a nation re-establishing its sovereignty, organising to say, ‘We don’t want foreign powers dictating how our country is going to be run.’ They’re taking power back for themselves”.
Comparing the Brexit vote to the rise of the Nazi party, he goes on: “In 1933, the German economy was being destroyed by the Versailles treaty. So the German people, in a very similar way, said they were going to kick out the foreign powers and the bankers, and establish themselves as a German state for the German people. Now you’ve got global elites saying they’re going to punish Britain and hurt it economically. It’s the same thing that happened to Germany after 1933: they had to deal with economic boycotts and attacks by other powers.”
Heimbach’s opinion regarding Hitler’s Third Reich is unambiguous. He has espoused virulently anti-semitic views in speeches and blog posts, and once published a picture of himself on a visit to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, holding a sign that read: “Six million? More like 271,301.” His Brexit tweet was accompanied by a photograph of the British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, whom he describes as “an inspiration”, insisting: “If people had only listened to [Mosley] then we wouldn’t have had the Second World War.”
Matthew Heimbach holds up a Confederate flag outside the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where Martin Luther King Jr planned the Montgomery bus boycott
by American Dream » Sat Jul 02, 2016 9:28 am
The Working-Class Wounds Hidden Behind Trump Voters’ Racism
Racism is not a terminal disease
The two most prominent positions Trump voters take on immigration reveal opportunities for progressive campaigns in the future. The first describes immigration as a tax burden. At the Trump rally in Eugene, Michael, a 34-year-old courier, said, “You can’t just walk over the border and suck off the system, getting food stamps and health care.”
Mariah, a 40ish retail employee, agreed. “Immigration is the biggest thing,” she said. “Don’t come to this country and suck us dry.”
Providing class-based alternatives can help people unlearn racism.
Likening immigrants to parasites is a racist trope. And it’s incorrect: The difference between what the U.S. government spends on public services used by undocumented immigrants and what it earns from the taxes they pay is minuscule, if anything. It’s unlikely these voters can be won over to progressive economic policies because they are Tea Partiers hostile to social programs. Janice, a mill worker, was dead-set against Sanders because “he wants to tax us and spread our money around.”
But not all Trump supporters view undocumented immigration in this way. Others link it to wages, jobs, and free trade. Rick, 29, who studies electrical engineering at Oregon State University, said, “Illegal immigrants are driving down wages for lower-class workers.”
Paul, 42, a carpenter, said, “I’ve been laid off more than working the last three years. I see Trump as being for the little people.” Paul, who said Sanders was his second choice, supported restrictions on immigration. “It’s time to take America back. Bring our jobs back.”
While the language carries whiffs of racism, it’s crucial to remember that it’s not a terminal disease. It’s a learned behavior and a social system, as Michelle Alexander describes in her book The New Jim Crow. Providing class-based alternatives can help people unlearn racism. That was one of the lessons of the 2012 election. Running against Mitt Romney, Barack Obama did 56 points better among White male workers who were union members than among those who were not. It’s a powerful sign of how class can outweigh race—and disrupts the notion that the White working class is inherently racist.
Yet Hillary Clinton’s campaign has veered the other way, declaring single-payer health care will “never, ever come to pass,” attacking Sanders’ calls for free higher education, and dismissing calls to break up investment banks because doing so would not end sexism, racism, or homophobia.
The best way to defeat Trumpism is by fusing race, class, and gender issues.
She’s charted a similar course on free trade, providing an opening for Trump. Her election-year flip-flop on the Trans-Pacific Partnership can’t distract from her longstanding allegiance to Wall Street. The legacy of NAFTA and the $21.6 million she has pocketed from corporate speeches since 2013 has weakened her credibility among White working-class Democrats in the industrial Midwest. But rather than try to win them back, some Democrats have mused that she can snatch “two socially moderate Republicans and independents” away from Trump for every blue-collar voter she loses in the region.
Trump has also found a surprising opening with Republicans like Jon Lovell, who are concerned about cuts to social programs. Trump attacks Clinton from the left by flirting with raising the minimum wage and strengthening Social Security. These positions resonate with supporters who rely on Social Security, military and police pensions, Medicaid, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and welfare. Three supporters I spoke with acknowledged receiving Supplemental Security Income for disabilities. The Clintons are no friend of the workers on this front either, as in the 1990s they pushed through the disastrous cuts to welfare and even wanted to privatize Social Security.
No doubt many Trump voters are cold-hearted, racist, and view life as dog-eat-dog. But many others are suffering, and the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party is responsible for much of the economic pain they’re experiencing.
Given how many voting blocs he’s alienated, Trump’s paths to victory are narrow at best. But having blown up a campaign system dependent on fundraising, advertising, consultants, polling, and careful scripting, Trump has blazed a path for a future demagogue who can employ racist populism while ditching the vulgarity.
By cynically using race and gender to pit workers against each other, Hillary Clinton is able to advance her Wall Street agenda. This will only alienate more workers from the Democrats. The best way to defeat Trumpism is by fusing race, class, and gender issues.
A starting point is learning to listen to Trump voters, finding genuine points of connection that can lead them away from divisive bigotry to the common good.
by American Dream » Mon Jul 04, 2016 3:13 pm
Matthew Heimbach’s Connections of a Strange and Curious Nature
July 3, 2016
Sometimes you have to wonder why certain mainstream right-wing outlets keep glossing over this guy. Other times, you don’t have to wonder.
It has been seldom reported, but Matthew Heimbach, who organized last Sunday’s neo-Nazi rally in Sacramento, CA that had to be aborted in what became a full-on brawl was not even at the rally he organized. Citing car trouble, the leader of the Traditional Workers’ Party (TWP) was at his home in Indiana corresponding with persons on the ground over 2100 miles away. It is still his organization however, so media outlets have gone to him to learn more about the rally from his perspective, and that has meant many in social networks learning a lot more about Heimbach and his history, particularly his rather close association with more mainstream politics.
It is rather old news to those that have followed Heimbach since he started his career as a neo-Nazi gloryhound just four years ago, but that career started with him starting a chapter of the White Supremacist Youth for Western Civilization (YWC) at Towson University in Maryland, where he was studying at the time. YWC was an organization that was started by interns and others associated with the Leadership Institute, which has made a name for itself training high school and college students to be conservative activists on their respective campuses. YWC had the right connections from the very start, having their inaugural event during the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), and those connections loved them right back. Conservative propagandists James O’Keefe, who in 2006 attended a White Supremacist meeting sponsored by a small organization called the Robert A. Taft Club accepted an invitation to speak at Providence College in Rhode Island by the College Republicans chapter there, which was actually YWC that worked under that auspices because Providence College would not recognize YWC as a student organization. Coincidentally, Kevin DeAnna, the principal founder of YWC, also founded the Robert A. Taft Club.
O’Keefe was also working with Andrew Breitbart, another conservative propagandist who created a series of networks that have since been consolidated after his 2012 death to Breitbart.com. His schtick was to paint conservatives as victims of oppression and those conservatives routinely attack as the aggressors, and that often meant communities of color. To that end, he made it a point to specifically smear those communities and that had made him open to working with the paleoconservative circles that YWC was a part of. To that end it is not surprising that he was photographed with Heimbach, then a YWC member and wearing a YWC shirt, at an Americans for Prosperity conference. And it was apparent years after his death that Heimbach was still a fan. “Andrew Breitbart, he definitely shook things up with the political system,” he said last year.
Breitbart.com, for their part, seemed to reciprocate in the wake of the Sacramento rally, which would not be surprising as they recently published an article by Breitbart Editor Milo Yiannopoulos exalting the so-called “alternative right”, a name given to the particular circle of White Supremacists and fascists that Heimbach is a part of. As the narrative became that it was antifa that first became confrontational, a number of writers at the website took the side of the neo-Nazis and at least three articles were written attacking antifa, calling them “a rising danger” and giving no such critique, let alone much mention, to the neo-Nazis. Ironically Lee Stranahan, the author of two of those articles who was particularly vocal on Twitter about Sacramento, suggested in a tweet that a protest should be held against one of the groups that opposed the neo-Nazi rally, which was held in particular to protest such groups in the first place. Stranahan even retweeted a well-known racist troll calling themselves “Ricky Vaughn” when they suggested that “Absolute best thing we can do is keep having public rallies and bait antifas into attacking police and reporters.”
by American Dream » Mon Jul 11, 2016 2:50 pm
BLOOD IN THE VALLEY: WHY PEOPLE PUT THEIR LIVES ON THE LINE TO RUN NAZIS OUT OF SACRAMENTO
Despite this positive picture that is painted, we also have to be aware that the autonomous far-Right is growing and in various, sometimes opposed, directions. From intellectuals that are pushing more into the mainstream like those that attend the American Renaissance and National Policy Institute conferences, to more sub-cultural groups such as the Wolves of Vinland, to publishers such as Counter-Currents in San Francisco, aspiring activist organizations like Identity Evropa, to finally the Traditionalist Workers Party which is trying to build a fascist ‘working-class’ fighting force for the streets. While of these groups have different audiences and ways that they are pushing their politics and projects, they also all reinforce each other; creating paths into a multi-faceted movement and working to develop a strategy for themselves while also supporting each other. Furthermore, the TWP is pushing to occupy much of the space that anarchist or left-wing activist groups would. They talk about organizing and reaching out to communities and use slogans, rhetoric, and images commonly associated with the Left or anarchism. Screaming “Nazi” at these groups isn’t going to make them go away, and more and more, such words are also loosing their meaning as millennials continue to make up their base. Thus, not only do we have to physically confront them, we also have to out organize them as well. This means working within poor and working-class white communities and also showing solidarity and support with groups already engaging in that work which share our politics.
by 82_28 » Mon Jul 11, 2016 4:25 pm
by American Dream » Mon Jul 11, 2016 4:28 pm
by American Dream » Wed Jul 13, 2016 7:21 pm
The Traditionalist Youth Network, a white nationalist group that promotes a racist interpretation of Christianity, has long flirted with anti-Semitism. Writers for the group frequently discuss “the Jewish question” and the idea of “Jewish Subversion.”
But that long courtship is over. The Traditionalist Youth Network (TYN) and its sister Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP), has partnered with The Barnes Review (TBR), a journal dedicated to historical revisionism and Holocaust denial. In a post on TYN’s website announcing this partnership, the group called the publication known for its vile take on history “an esteemed revisionist publication.”
“Despite maintaining rigorous scholarly standards and following the truth whichever direction it may lead … the Southern Poverty Law Center [has called TBR] ‘one of the most virulent anti-Semitic organizations around,’” TYN wrote in announcing the partnership. “Perhaps … but only because real history is virulently anti-Semitic!”
Real history? The Barnes Review is hardly real history.
The publication practices an extremist form of revisionist history that includes defending the Nazi regime, denying the Holocaust, discounting the evils of slavery and promoting white nationalism. TBR's now-deceased founder Willis Carto once said that, “Without a means of confronting the onrushing third world, white civilization is doomed.”
The publication also has published articles entitled, "Treblinka Was No Death Camp", "Is There a Negro Race?", "‘Reconquista': The Mexican Plan to Take the Southwest", and "David Duke: An Awakening." Most recently, in a blog posted after the death of Elie Wiesel, a TBR writer referred to Wiesel as ”a proven holocaust hoaxer.”
But as for TYN, pairing up with the world’s most prominent Holocaust denial magazine represents a stark dive in a new direction for Matthew Heimbach and Matthew Parrott, co-founders of TYN and self-declared ethnonationalists who often cite “faith, family and folk” in defense of their ideology.
“Do I believe there was an organized gassing campaign of Jews? No, I do not,” Heimbach told Hatewatch.
The offer includes an annual subscription and three anti-Semitic books at a discount for exclusively for supporters and members of his groups, including the Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP). For a two-year subscription, subscribers “receive everything in the first year’s offer and also an annual subscription to American Free Press,” a weekly newspaper that contains stories on anti-Semitism, secret "New World Order" conspiracies, American Jews and Israel.
Heimbach hopes the partnership will “convert more people, open more people's minds” and allow his followers “to share [issues of TBR] with family members or friends.” Heimbach added that accepting this special offer, “promote[s] unity” amongst white nationalist organizations."
“One of my main missions is to be able to … promote one another,” he said during the interview.
Questions about the partnership have shed some light on understanding the ever-evolving ideology behind Heimbach’s organizations. Heimbach claims it was during conversations with former members of the John Birch Society who shared with him his first issues of TBR around the time he was head of a white nationalist Youth for Western Civilization chapter at Towson University.
When asked if Adolf Hitler had a reason to separate Jews from German society during World War II, for example, Heimbach oddly compared the treatment of Jews in Europe to siblings in a fight. “Your mom, when she gets mad at you as a kid if you're teasing your brother, she doesn't make you stay and play together,” Heimbach said. “She sends you to other rooms to have your own space."
Shockingly, Heimbach used that comparison to justify the Nazi Party’s treatment of the Jews. “The main mission wasn't to penalize Jews, it was to rebuild German society,” he said.
Heimbach didn’t always believe in Jewish conspiracy theories, though. He attended evangelical church services when he was younger and used to describe himself as an “ardent Zionist.” He cites disgraced British historian David Irving, a holocaust denier who once claimed that Adolf Hitler “was probably not at all anti-Semitic,” for changing his perspective on National Socialism.
“I have never found answers to the questions and critiques brought up by issues of The Barnes Review or David Irving,” Heimbach said. “That was really the turning point for me.
by American Dream » Thu Jul 14, 2016 12:24 am
The Most Important White Supremacist Of 2016
When he was in high school, Heimbach encountered the writings of neo-conservative Pat Buchanan and has relied on his writings for insight ever since. This is the Buchanan who called the “aging, dying, disappearing” of people of European descent “the existential crisis of the West” and said that the “rise of egalitarian society means the death of free society.” Lately, Heimbach’s also been taken with Corneliu Codreanu, a far-right Romanian politician from the 20th century. Codreanu was—like Heimbach today—deeply anti-Semitic.
Inspired by these thinkers, Heimbach’s own philosophy relies on racial realism. Racial realism claims that different races are inherently distinct from each other—despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. He also pulls from the far-right European concept of identitariansim. The premise of identitarianism is that regions should be split up along cultural and ethnic lines. In America, this translates to creating communities based on racial identities; this is why he suggests that cities like Atlanta, which is predominantly black, should become exclusively black.
“I support white power, black power, brown power, and yellow power,” Heimbach has said. “All races should be the dominant political force in their region. That is why America needs to be divided into smaller, ethnically and culturally homogeneous states … We need to stop the hate and separate.”
You might remember Heimbach from his undergraduate years at Towson University, where he founded the controversial White Student Union. “We [Towson students] have black student development, Latino student development, gay student development, student success programs for those who can’t make it, and things for women,” he said. “So one day white people will be on there. We’ll be treated equally with every other single group, hopefully. But demanding equality for white people on campus apparently isn’t very popular.”
It became even less popular when he started a night patrol to target “black predators” who he claimed “prey upon the majority white Towson University student body.”
by American Dream » Thu Jul 14, 2016 9:20 pm
However haltingly and painfully, change is coming to America. But a core of white American men- many of them Trump supporters- are in open revolt. Railing against the cultural and demographic shifts taking place in the U.S., they have pledged allegiance to the demagogue and authoritarian that gives voice to their rage. Trump now elevates and legitimizes the most base instincts and bigotry of certain portions of the electorate. Thus it is assured that, even given his likely electoral defeat, there are many more years of ugliness and conflict around race, immigration and a host of other issues, to come.
-Dr. Enid Logan
by American Dream » Fri Jul 15, 2016 3:37 pm
MAKE AMERICA GREAT CONVOY BRINGING OVERT RACISM TO MASSACHUSETTS
Apparently Nick Sheridan and his friends thought they could wrap themselves in American right-wing populism and his racism would get a pass.
...The biker support of Donald Trump was not surprising given that certain elements in the “1%” motorcycle club community have had their ties to white power organizations and subcultures. In 1992, a large section of motorcycle riders came out to publicly support Pat Buchanan’s reactionary Republican primary bid. Today, groups like Bikers for Trump have been organized as a working-class show of support for the candidate, often coming across as more militant and brash than the average Donald Trump supporter. Many of these bikers have had crossover with groups like the Soldiers of Odin or the Lion’s Guard, who use Mussolini quotes to organize a paramilitary support to attack Trump counter-protesters. It should be noted while there is some biker support, that is certainly not uniform, and many motorcycle groups have come out as explicitly anti-racist and anti-fascist.
While this event is not motorcycle only, it will be heavy on both those and large trucks, and people have been posting on the Facebook event page with Confederate flags attached to their vehicle of choice. Though they are attempting to code the language, there is “white pride” posts throughout the page, all of which go uncontested and receive many “Likes.” It should be noted, however, that several of the organizers have tried to make this more “inclusive” by posting that it will be LGBT friendly, but the rhetoric is directly in line with attempts to use the Orlando tragedy as a way of creating a larger anti-Muslim block in support of Donald Trump.
...Nick Sheridan, one of the key organizers, has been known for his racist behavior online. Whether it is using the n-word or accusing people of color of being lazy, his Trump politics are a thin veil to cover racialist behavior that goes unchallenged in his “patriot” echo chamber.
by American Dream » Sun Jul 17, 2016 8:21 am
Making America Worse
By Matthew N Lyons | Saturday, July 16, 2016
[This is the text of a talk that I gave at the event "Trump, White Supremacy, Fascism? Building New Resistance Movements!" on June 25, 2016, in Brooklyn, New York. My thanks to Resistance in Brooklyn, sponsors of the event, for the invitation to speak.]
Donald Trump speaking at a campaign rally in Fountain Hills, Arizona, 19 March 2016
I want to start by reading a couple of quotes. This first one is by Teju Cole and it’s from Facebook this past December:“Trump is a dangerous clown, and we must continue to strongly oppose him and his hateful crowds. But it is important to understand that his idea of ‘banning all Muslims,’ scandalous as it is…, is far less scandalous than the past dozen years of American disregard for non-American Muslim lives…. Trump didn’t murder thousands of innocent people with drones in Pakistan and Yemen. Trump didn’t kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people with bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Trump didn’t torture people at Baghram, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, or the numerous black sites across the planet. Trump’s weapons aren’t incinerating Yemen now, and didn’t blow up Gaza last year. No American president in the past fourteen years has openly championed Islamophobia, but none has refrained from doing to Muslims overseas what would be unthinkable to do here to Americans of any religion.”
The other quote I want to read is by Mark Rupert. This is also from Facebook, just last month:“The US now has a massive, institutionalized, globally active surveillance and assassination apparatus…. The President routinely authorizes extrajudicial killings of suspected terrorists along with anyone who happens to be in the vicinity. Within the ‘homeland’ we are monitored as never before by the national security state. Our police forces are militarized so that even small towns have armored vehicles and swat teams. People of color are routinely killed by police with apparent impunity. Muslim religious communities have been singled out for surveillance and infiltration by law enforcement agencies at all levels. The immigration enforcement apparatus has been massively expanded, and immigration agents act effectively without constitutional restraints within a zone extending 100 miles from all US borders.
“Now imagine all of that in the hands of a racist, authoritarian narcissist with millions of militant followers who love him precisely for those characteristics and the ‘bold and strong’ actions that reflect them, and who are prepared to scapegoat racial and religious others for seemingly intractable social problems that will not be getting better anytime soon in the absence of radical social change.
“Now add in the real possibility of another major terrorist attack. Or two. Or three. Or urban unrest sparked by concentrated poverty and hyper-policing of these ‘zones of disposability’.
“What kind of America are you imagining right now?”
Both of these quotes help us put Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in context — but they put the emphasis in different places. On one hand, Trump’s racist and authoritarian politics don’t come out of nowhere, and they don’t even just grow out of the Republican Party. They grow out of a system that practices large-scale repression and murder, under both Republicans and Democrats.
On the other hand, it’s a mistake to say that it doesn’t matter whether Trump becomes president or not. Because bad as things are now, Trump has the potential to make them qualitatively worse.
Donald Trump has taken naked bigotry and hate mongering to levels way beyond any major presidential candidate in decades. He has called for massive use of state power against immigrants and against Muslim Americans. He has advocated the use of torture. He has called for stifling freedom of the press. He has encouraged his supporters to use physical violence against opponents. And he has presented himself as a political savior who alone has the strength and the will and the vision to lead America back to greatness.
So it’s not surprising that many people have called Donald Trump a fascist. It is surprising that this charge hasn’t just come from leftists and liberals — it’s also come from conservatives, libertarians, and even prominent members of his own Republican party. If people across the political spectrum are calling Trump a fascist, maybe that’s all the more reason to say the shoe fits. One the other hand, if Trump is being called a fascist by mainstream politicians who support a vast national security state, murderous military policies, and big subsidies for wealthy capitalists, are these politicians speaking out of concern for democracy or to make themselves look more legitimate by comparison?
The question of “what is fascism?” is a complex, emotionally loaded topic that we could talk about for hours. Even among leftists, there’s no consensus about how to even go about defining fascism. Is it based on certain ideological characteristics, or a particular relationship of class forces? Is it a political process? Is it stage of capitalism? So let’s talk about fascism, but let’s not get too fixated on the word. Because what’s more important is how we analyze the situation, and what we decide to do about it.
As a political category, fascism isn’t an objective thing — it’s a tool for analysis, a tool for making connections and distinctions between different political movements or regimes. Definitions of fascism aren’t objectively true, they’re just more or less useful in helping us understand political developments, and helping us choose a course of action. Some people say, the only time we should call a movement fascist is if it looks almost exactly like the movements that Hitler and Mussolini led in the 1930s. That’s not very useful, because far right politics has changed a lot since 1945, or even since 1975. Some other people say, any example of right-wing authoritarianism, especially one that’s racist or militaristic, is either fascist or something close to it. That’s not very useful either, because it lumps together widely different kinds of politics under one label. I wrote about this in 2007 in an article titled, “Is the Bush administration fascist?”:“militaristic repression -- even full-scale dictatorship -- doesn't necessarily equal fascism, and the distinction matters. Some forms of right-wing authoritarianism grow out of established political institutions while others reject those institutions; some are creatures of big business while others are independent of, or even hostile to, big business. Some just suppress liberatory movements while others use twisted versions of radical politics in a bid to ‘take the game away from the left.’ These are different kinds of threats. If we want to develop effective strategies for fighting them, we need a political vocabulary that recognizes their differences.”
In my political vocabulary, authoritarian conservatism wants to defend the old order, and generally relies on top-down forms of control, while a fascist movement is a kind of right-wing oppositional politics, which uses a popular mass mobilization in a bid to throw out the political establishment and create a new kind of hierarchical, supremacist, or genocidal system. Fascism is a specific kind of right-wing populism. That means it claims to rally “the people” against sinister elites, but the way it defines elites is at least simplistic (like “greedy bankers”) and usually poisonous (like “greedy Jewish bankers”). Right-wing populism combines this twisted anti-elitism with stepped up attacks against oppressed and marginalized communities. Right-wing populism tends to have a special appeal for middle-level groups in the social hierarchy — notably middle- and working-class white people — who feel beaten down by a system they don’t control but also want to defend their relative privilege against challenges from oppressed communities below.
Most right-wing populist movements accept the established political framework, but fascism doesn’t. Fascism rejects liberal-pluralist institutions and principles and wants to impose its totalitarian ideology on all spheres of society. In this sense, fascism is a kind of right-wing, revolutionary politics. It doesn’t want revolution in any liberatory sense, but it wants to throw out the old political class, build a new system of rule, and transform the culture so that everyone is loyal to the same ideas and the same values. Fascism doesn’t abolish class society, but it may radically transform it, as the Nazis did when they reinstituted a system of racially based slave labor in the heart of industrial Europe.
How does all this related to Donald Trump and his campaign? I’m afraid I’m not going to give you a simple answer, because I think the issue is complicated, and it’s also a story that’s still being written. Trump’s campaign has a mix of fascist and non-fascist characteristics, and it represents several different kinds of threats. If Trump is elected president, he will certainly make the United States a more authoritarian and more supremacist society. I think he would probably do this within the framework of the existing political system, and would not be able to impose a full-scale dictatorship — but I could be wrong about that. And whether Trump wins or loses in November, even if he loses by a lot, his campaign has already helped to revitalize the white nationalist far right in this country. Four more years of another centrist neoliberal president will only make that movement stronger.
Let me unpack all that a bit. Clearly, the Trump campaign is an example of right-wing populism. It’s a vortex of rage defending white, male, heterosexual privilege, but it’s also a scathing rejection of the political establishment, both liberal and conservative. Trump’s positions don’t necessarily follow the mainstream conservative script, but they do closely follow the examples set by earlier right-wing populist candidates such as Pat Buchanan and George Wallace. Like Buchanan in the 1990s, Trump claims to defend native-born American workers against both immigrants taking their jobs and multinational capitalists moving their jobs overseas. Like George Wallace in the 1960s, Trump supports some “liberal” measures — such as protecting Social Security and raising the minimum wage — that directly benefit his white working- and middle-class base. This echoes the standard fascist claim to be “neither left nor right.”
by American Dream » Mon Jul 18, 2016 1:38 pm
Lawsuit Threatens to Expose Trump Campaign’s White Supremacist Links
Posted by Bill Conroy - July 17, 2016
The litigation, which has received scant media coverage, contends Trump is complicit in violence perpetrated by hate groups
Barring any last-minute surprises, Donald Trump will emerge from the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this week as the Grand Old Party’s sanctioned presidential candidate. His victory also will be a triumph for white supremacist groups nationwide, if allegations in a federal lawsuit pending in Kentucky are on the mark.
The litigation was filed in state court in Kentucky in late March of this year and a month later transferred to U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky. The national media reported on the initial complaint filed in the lawsuit, but the litigation has since dropped off the media’s radar.
Recent pleadings filed in the case, however, are newsworthy in that they allege Trump and his presidential campaign have more than a coincidental relationship with the various white supremacist groups that have frequented his campaign rallies.
If the litigation, now pending in the courts for some five months, survives Trump’s continuing efforts to get it dismissed, it would go to the discovery phase. At that point, the attorneys representing the victims in the case would have subpoena power to dig into the Trump campaign and expose any communications or direct relationships that might exist between Trump or his campaign staff and white supremacist groups around the country.
That makes the stakes quite high for the Trump campaign, as the lawsuit would be probing these issues over the next several months —at the height of the Trump campaign’s bid for the presidency. Stories have already surfaced in the media alleging Trump is a fan of Adolf Hitler's speeches and, at one point, kept a book of the former Nazi dictator's collected speeches, titled "My New Order," near his bed.
The plaintiffs in the court case are three individuals who attended a Trump campaign rally on March 1 in Louisville, Kentucky, that was held at a public venue — the Kentucky International Convention Center. The plaintiffs, one of whom is African American, concede they were at the rally as protestors. The plaintiffs allege they were assaulted by members of the audience — in particular by members of a white supremacist group called the Traditionalist Worker Party — after presidential candidate Trump incited the audience to expel protestors.
“Instead of allowing his own security, the Secret Service, or [the building’s] security to remove protestors, Trump stopped his half-hour speech five different times to point out protestors and, in most cases, to tell his crowd of supporters to ‘get ‘em out of here,’” the plaintiffs’ state in their initial complaint. “… On or around the time injuries occurred to the plaintiffs … Trump also stated: ‘Don’t hurt ‘em. If I say ‘go get ‘em,’ I get in trouble with the press, the most dishonest human beings in the world.’”
The plaintiffs’ pleadings continue: “Trump went on to state: ‘In the old days, which isn’t so long ago, when we were less politically correct, that kinda stuff wouldn’t have happened. Today we have to be so nice, so nice. We always have to be so nice.’ Then Trump went into a discussion about waterboarding, and how it is ‘absolutely fine.’”
The three protestors bringing the lawsuit were subsequently forcibly ejected by members of Trump’s audience, with several individuals from the Traditionalist Worker Party allegedly playing a major role in shoving and pushing them out of the building and punching one of the plaintiffs in the stomach at one point. A good portion of the assault on plaintiff Kashiya Nwanguma, a 21-year-old African American female and a student at the University of Louisville, was captured on video. [Links to video clips here.]
by American Dream » Mon Jul 18, 2016 2:24 pm
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