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On Ice’s Der Stürmer turn and the U.S. Media’s Failure to Fight Creeping Fascism
Today’s article analysis features an incredible important Buzzfeed news story that is sadly still a prime example of mainstream media framing a discussion in favor of establishment power – even when that establishment is a bunch of rabid white supremacists driving the country towards something quite akin to Mussolini’s Italy, if not Nazi Germany itself.
The first half of this article is a mumble jumble of alphabet soup call signs in which Ken Cuccinelli is allowed to frame his plan to “unilaterally publicize personal information about asylees, refugees, and their family members in the US who are being prosecuted for certain crimes” as an issue of “law and order.”
Only once you get halfway down the page does Buzzfeed provide an expert opinion by John Sandweg (Obama era former US Immigration and Customs Enforcement head) on what the real motivation is for this brazen and objectively fascist grab at power:
“This is 100% about the media. This memo is in the guise of a public safety matter, but it’s really to publicize cases where asylum seekers were arrested or prosecuted for a criminal offense,” he said, after being told about the memo. “They are trying to undermine faith in the asylum and refugee system to suggest it is a public safety threat and the data does not support that.”
Look folks, they don’t call it “creeping fascism” for no reason and there is a clear historical record of what happens when a society allows itself to constantly accept “just a little bit more fascism” in the name of “peace, order and profit.” As I’ve argued time and time again elsewhere, treating these incidents in isolation while failing to register the bigger picture because it’s too horrible is a pretty good way to end up on the back of truck headed for “Happy Patriot Labor Camp 17” in the not so distant future.
This story of course must be examined in the context of Trump’s objectively white nationalist government, that government’s war on brown migrants and the long and shameful bipartisan U.S. history of locking poor brown people in cages because they crossed an imaginary line to escape war and neofeudalism our society has imposed on them.
Furthermore, this news must also be considered in relation to the Trump administration’s already existing policy of allowing ICE to publish a weekly list of “immigrant crimes” to demonize migrants in the eyes of the average American voter. I’m certainly not the only one to note the haunting echoes of Der Stürmer in this policy or Cuccinelli’s terrifying grasp at power here (see below) but you’d be hard pressed to find any mention of it in the article Buzzfeed just presented.
I think at this point it would be wise for Americans to remember that Nazi Germany and the horrifying “Final Solution” didn’t come about overnight – it took more than a decade of grooming by the reactionary German right in all levels of society to sculpt the kind of nation that would embrace the death camps. Along the way there were thousands of little but horrifying stories, so many that they could not all be remembered, about the creeping rise of antisemitic fascism. What we have learned since then, but seemingly forgotten at the worst hour in our collective history is that fascism doesn’t care who it hates, it just needs someone to hate. There will always been another other, another leftist threat, another treachery to the good volk who must be protected for the honor of the fatherland.
If you aren’t starting to see enough terrifying parallels here to actively name the beast, then I hate to tell you that you’re already well along the path to being a “good German.”
On Joe Biden, Media Gaslighting and “leaving the record player on at night”
For those of you who missed Joe Biden’s staggeringly racist “gaffe” at the last Democratic Party nomination debate or for some other reason have no idea what I’m talking about, please start with this article at the Intercept:
Joe Biden’s Stunningly Racist Answer on the Legacy of Slavery Has Been Overlooked
Look, I think it’s a little bit absurd for Biden’s numerous defenders in the American corporate media to demonize analysts who are pointing out the profound racism in Palooka Joe’s statements about sending social workers into black homes to educate parents who don’t know how to raise their children; in response to a question about slavery no less!
Not only did Biden’s shockingly incoherent answer completely avoid the question (a question I might add that only came up because Biden had previously uttered some cracker nonsense in opposition to reparations for slavery way back when) but it demonstrated his longstanding fundamental tendency to blame African Americans for not succeeding in a staggeringly unfair economic climate directly influenced by slavery and a 200+ year legacy of U.S. White Supremacy – that at times Biden has supported.
We are after all talking about a guy who brags about “working with” segregationists at every opportunity he gets. A man who when confronted on his role as the architect of the 1994 Crime Bill that turbo-charged an objectively racist U.S. mass incarceration policy that destroyed black families, responded by saying he didn’t regret anything he’s ever done in his career as a politician – which is pretty amazing when you realize he voted to authorize the disastrous Iraq War.
At this point there is now a staggering amount of evidence that Biden is more than just a pragmatic white liberal who feels compelled to work with racist elements in government to get anything done. It is clear that Joe Biden’s fundamental understanding of race, poverty and advantage in U.S. society is thoroughly corrupted by right wing talking points about single parent African American families and a whole load of bootstrap mythology.
That isn’t a lie, that isn’t a smear; that’s an objective analysis of not only Joe Biden’s decades in government but also his day to day statements in this very campaign – this issue is now way too obvious to keep brushing under the rug by mentioning Biden’s personal relationship with President Obama; a relationship initially forged in the realpolitik belief that Biden could deliver cracker Democrats to a black presidential candidate in the first place.
Palooka Joe may not be a dyed-in-the-wool white supremacist, but he *is* clearly a walking encyclopedia of out of date, racist ideas about why the U.S. has left African American families behind and how we can address this catastrophe.
It is neither illogical nor uncharitable to assume that these racist ideas would continue to influence Joe Biden if he were to win the nomination and ultimately become President of the United States.
And voters have a clear right to know that; feelings be damned.
Personally I couldn’t give a wet rat’s anus about the endorsement of the Working Families Party, especially after you consider their endorsement of Crowley over AOC in New York earlier; but this obfuscation, smearing and open gaslighting of leftists and Bernie fans is obscene.
Factually, the WFP’s endorsement vote was rigged by weighting the votes of 56 party leaders equally with the votes of the rest of the party; if you don’t understand how that almost certainly had a staggering effect on the final outcome, I sincerely question your basic math skills.
During 2016, when this “super-delegate” system was not used, Sanders won an overwhelming majority of the votes (87%) and thus earned the WFP’s endorsement. Now people are asking for the raw data behind the WFP’s vote and they are being met with nothing but obfuscation and bile.
First, WFP leadership declared that they couldn’t release the information and maintain the integrity of a secret vote, which is garbage because nobody needs to see a single name or other identifying piece of information to examine raw voting numbers, just leadership vs members.
Then WFP leader Maurice Mitchell goes on to give a number of baffling, rambling interviews where he claims that the Party’s endorsement of Warren over Sanders is about her superior ability to build a grassroots movement and address the “urgent threat posed by white nationalism.”
The problem with the first claim is that Bernie already *has* a grassroots organization, Our Revolution while by contrast, Liz Warren does not have one and has signed a presumably binding pledge with the DNC not to build one as it would be a competing political organization.
The problem with the second claim is that not only has Sanders (the child of Holocaust victims) more aggressively gone after white nationalism on the campaign trail than Warren, but he also has *the* most diverse supporters in the 2020 Dem Primary – Warren’s support is 71% white.
Finally, today the WFP party then releases a skred about the amount of racist abuse their leadership has received from randos on Twitter, which they specifically claim are the result of the WFP’s new, racially diverse leadership before going on to purposely conflate angry labor class leftists with bigoted fascists including the truly f*cking astounding line “we refuse to concede to white terror from the Left as well as the Right” – just in case your day was short of a little literal nazi propaganda or something.
This is absolutely obscene.
First of all, the reason this didn’t happen last time has nothing to do with your new diverse leadership; it’s because last time you didn’t rig the vote with super-delegates, refuse to release data on the vote breakdown and insult everyone’s intelligence with dishonest interviews.
Secondly, you have got to be out of your mind if you don’t think people who got screwed by the DNC in 2016 aren’t going to recognize the same ridiculous gaslighting scam being run on them now, three whole years later.
Rig the vote, hide the numbers, call anyone who complains a conspiracy theorist and then when the sh*t hits the fan, respond by calling everyone who disagrees with you (even visible minorities) racist is getting old, really fast, and nobody is interested in your blather anymore.
I don’t know Mitchell from Mitch McConnell but I can assure you if this is how this young man leads “Working Families” into the most crucial political moment of our lifetime for the labor class, he sure as sh*t does not represent my labor class butt or any working family I know.
This isn’t sour grapes about some largely meaningless endorsement; this is an open reminder that liberals will gleefully hijack your movements for themselves while viciously attacking the real and *extremely diverse* labor class left to maintain a stranglehold on power.
The leadership of the Working Family Party have decided to cast their lot with the professional class and for all their blather about “two choices” have now declared open warfare on the actual labor class candidate and his supporters.
Saying so doesn’t make you a fascist or nuts.
- nina illingworth
