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Fascism

On Contact: Fascism – America’s DNA

November 29, 2020 Chris Hedges, RT. , , ,
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Gabriel Rockhill about the undercurrents of fascism in America’s DNA, and the US role in internationalizing fascism after World War II through clandestine activities such Operation Paperclip and Operation Gladio. Rockhill is a Franco-American philosopher and the founding Director of the Critical Theory Workshop and Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University. His books include Counter-History of the Present: Untimely Interrogations into Globalization, Technology, Democracy, Interventions in Contemporary Thought: History, Politics, Aesthetics, Radical History & the Politics of Art and Logique de l’histoire.

Free Speech Is More Complicated Than You Think

November 17, 2020 Eleanor Goldfield, Art Killing Apathy. , , ,
The truth is – words are dangerous. Words are the catalysts of all action – good or evil. To start with a cliché but solid example: words inspired millions of Germans to direct their ire towards Jews, Romani, LGBTQ and other state-labeled “degenerates.” Words inspired the Manson family to murder innocent people. Words inspired the murder of entire villages of Vietnamese, Afghan, and Iraqi civilians. Words convinced thousands of colonizers that this land was their land and that the native people were nothing but mere savages to be removed by force in the name of a pearly white Manifest Destiny.

On Contact: American Fascists And The Christian Right

November 15, 2020 Chris Hedges, RT. , , ,
On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to the Rev. Dr. Mel White about the Christian Right, which Hedges describes as “a homegrown fascist movement.” It has been organizing to take political power for decades, he says. During the Trump administration, it seized senior positions in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government – a move violating US Constitutional powers of separation of Church and State. In his book ‘American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America’, Hedges states that there are 70 million evangelical Christians in the United States...

The Bush/Cheney Administration Was Far Worse Than Trump

November 9, 2020 Glenn Greenwald, Substack. , , ,
That the liberal belief in and fear of a Trump-led fascist dictatorship and violent coup is actually a fantasy — a longing, a desire, a craving — has long been obvious. The Democrats’ own actions proved that they never believed their own melodramatic and self-glorifying rhetoric about Trump as The New Hitler — from their leaders joining with the GOP to increase The Fascist Dictator’s domestic spying powers and military spending to their (correct) belief that the way to oust The Neo-Nazi Tyrant was through a peaceful and lawfully conducted democratic election in which vote totals and, if necessary, duly constituted courts would determine the next president.

The Long Shadow Of Racial Fascism

November 6, 2020 Alberto Toscano, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
In the wake of the 2016 election, public intellectuals latched onto the new administration’s organic and ideological links with the alt- and far right. But a mass civic insurgency against racial terror—and the federal government’s authoritarian response —has pushed hitherto cloistered academic debates about fascism into the mainstream, with Peter E. Gordon , Samuel Moyn , and Sarah Churchwell  taking to the pages of the New York Review of Books to hash out whether it is historically apt or politically useful to call Trump a fascist.

Confronting Bipartisan Repression And The US-led Axis Of Domination Beyond Election Day

November 5, 2020 Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
Chaos, violence, legal challenges, voter suppression and party suppression all culminated in the pathetic display of democratic degeneration on Election Day. After two decades of losing wars, plus the economic collapse of 2008, the response to COVID-19, and now the election debacle, if there were any doubts the U.S. is a morally exhausted empire in irreversible decline, they would have been erased with yesterday’s anti-democratic spectacle.  Democratic Party propagandists and “frightened” leftists are desperate. They tell their supporters and the public that the republic will not survive another term of Donald Trump.

Deception 2020: One Party, Two Flavors

October 27, 2020 Eleanor Goldfield, Art Killing Apathy. , , ,
In this second installment of the Deception 2020 Series, we dig into the so-called Two Party System in order to highlight the stark similarities that drive both the red and blue — namely, corporate power. Interestingly enough, Mussolini had a good quote on just this form of government… Then, we sit down with Nick Braña, National Coordinator for The Movement for a People’s Party, to talk about one alternative to the blue and red dumpster fires.

Why We Need To End Capitalism To Defeat Fascism

October 26, 2020 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , ,
With the presidential election coming up, there is a lot of focus on how the election will go and who will win. One thing is certain, no matter which corporate candidate wins, the people and the planet will lose. To understand where we are and how we got here, I speak with Gabriel Rockhill, a philosopher, author and activist. He explains the connections between our governance structure and capitalism and how both liberal democracy and fascism in a sort of good cop/bad cop relationship  are used to protect the profits of the few while exploiting the many.

What We Are Up Against: Fascism In The United States

October 25, 2020 Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance. , , , ,
Last week, I wrote about what is needed in this moment and urged people to look more deeply, beyond the Biden-Trump spectacle, to understand where we are as a country and what we must do to change course. I cited the work of Gabriel Rockhill. Read his three recent articles in Counterpunch and the fourth in the series here at Black Agenda Report for an enhanced understanding of how we got here and what we are up against. This week, I delve more deeply into the question of where we are and what Rockhill means when he writes that "...liberalism and fascism...

Protests Against Greed And Inequality Are Spreading Like Wildfire Through Latin America

October 25, 2020 Alan Macleod, Mintpress News. , , ,
With attention fixed on this week’s events in Bolivia, you would be excused for not realizing that much of the rest of the region has for weeks also been ablaze in the flames of protest. In Costa Rica, the neoliberal coalition government of Carlos Alverado attempted to force through a $1.75 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to deal with the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. As has been its modus operandi this year, the organization offered the money attached to a host of free-market changes, including tax changes, cuts to public services, and privatization of state-owned assets, something Alverado was more than happy to do.

Fascist Culture, Critical Pedagogy, And Resistance In Dark Times

October 24, 2020 Henri Giroux, Counterpunch. , , ,
Across the globe, democratic institutions such as the independent media, schools, the legal system, certain financial institutions, and higher education are under siege. The promise, if not ideals, of democracy are receding as the barbarians who breathe new life into a fascist past are once again on the move subverting language, values, courage, vision and a critical consciousness. Education has increasingly become a tool of domination as right wing pedagogical apparatuses controlled by the entrepreneurs of hate attack workers, the poor, people of color, refugees, immigrants from the south and others considered disposable.

Chris Hedges: The Politics Of Cultural Despair

October 19, 2020 Chris Hedges, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
The physical and moral decay of the United States and the malaise it has spawned have predictable results. We have seen in varying forms the consequences of social and political collapse during the twilight of the Greek and Roman empires, the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires, Tsarist Russia, Weimar Germany and the former Yugoslavia. Voices from the past, Aristotle, Cicero, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Joseph Roth and Milovan Djilas, warned us. But blinded by self-delusion and hubris, as if we are somehow exempt from human experience and human nature, we refuse to listen.

The US Did Not Defeat Fascism In WWII

October 17, 2020 Gabriel Rockhill, Counterpunch. , , ,
One of the founding myths of the contemporary Western European and American world is that fascism was defeated in WWII by liberal democracies, and particularly by the United States. With the subsequent Nuremburg trials and the patient construction of a liberal world order, a bulwark was erected—in fits and starts, and with the constant threat of regression—against fascism and its evil twin in the East. American culture industries have rehearsed this narrative ad nauseum, brewing it into a saccharine ideological Kool-Aid and piping it into every household, shack and street corner with a TV or smartphone, tirelessly juxtaposing the supreme evil of Nazism to the freedom and prosperity of liberal democracy.

Liberalism And Fascism: Partners In Crime

October 15, 2020 Gabriel Rockhill, Counterpunch. , , ,
Time and again we hear that liberalism is the last bulwark against fascism. It represents a defense of the rule of law and democracy in the face of aberrant, malevolent demagogues intent on destroying a perfectly good system for their own gain. This apparent opposition has been deeply engrained in contemporary so-called Western liberal democracies through their shared origin myth. As every school child in the U.S. learns, for instance, liberalism defeated fascism in World War II, beating back the Nazi beast in order to establish a new international order that—for all of its potential faults and misdeeds—was built upon key democratic principles that are antithetical to fascism.

Chris Hedges: Trump’s Barrett Nomination

October 5, 2020 Chris Hedges, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
The Christian Right is content to have the focus on Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett revolve around her opposition to abortion and membership in People of Praise, a far-right Catholic cult that practices “speaking in tongues.” What it does not want examined is her abject subservience to corporate power, her hostility to workers, civil liberties, unions and environmental regulations. And since the Democratic Party is beholden to the same donor class as the Republican Party, and since the media long ago substituted the culture wars for politics, the most ominous threat Barrett’s appointment to the court represents is going unmentioned.
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