We Know the Truth: Milo and Breitbart are Platforms for Fascism

By Alexander Reid Ross (October 9, 2017)

A journalist who interviewed me recently asked if the recent revelations regarding Milo and Breitbart angered me. I find it difficult to imagine how I could be further angered by the present situation. Of course it’s maddening, but anyone who spent more than 60 seconds clicking into Breitbart for the past five years has taken a crash course in cold, hard rage. To be honest, I feel more vindicated than anything else.

I’ve been arguing for a while now that the supposed clear division between “Alt Light” and “Alt Right” is more of a porous membrane that provides political credibility to the former while bringing the latter access to power in a “creeping” process. Most anarchists have been arguing this, which is why we’ve seen so many out in the streets protesting the so-called “Alt Light” as hard as the “Alt Right.” Those people have been mercilessly ridiculed and wrung out through the press, as a number of scholars and reporters cultivated direct relationships with the Alt Right.

The BuzzFeed report is stunning but doesn’t show the extent of the phenomenon, just its most intense and obvious iterations. One might say, “we now understand that Bannon declared Breitbart ‘the platform for the alt-right,’ which was only true insofar as Breitbart became a nexus through which members of the alt-right could interface with the radical right and conservative movement on common ground…. [Milo asserted] a pro-alt-right position… Breitbart established not so much ‘the platform’ as a kind of porous populist membrane known as the ‘alt-lite’ through which fascism could creep in and out of mainstream discourse. In a sense, the white nationalist movement had been given a perfect medium.”

That’s actually what I wrote… in my book… last year. We had the facts, folks. We know the truth. What are we going to do about it?

alex

Millennials Are Not Dictatorship Material

By Mark Naison (August 27, 2017)

If Fordham is Any Example, Millennials are Not Dictatorship Material

One of the reasons I am confident that Donald Trump will not take us on the path to dictatorship or authoritarian rule is the refusal of young people to be intimidated by authoritarian figures in their lives, be they parents, teachers, or school and university administrators

I have seen this first hand at my own university in the past year. In three separate instances, students have mobilized to protest what they consider unfair or inappropriate action by different wings of the university, risking suspension to get their point across.

The first example took place when Dean of Students Office refused to give club recognition to “Students for Justice in Palestine” after every student and faculty committee which evaluated the matter suggested it be given such recognition. Students not only organized rallies, vigils, and protest marches to challenge the decision, they brought the matter to the press and are now suing the University in court to challenge the decision.

The second example took place when the University refused to recognize or negotiate with an organization of contingent and adjunct faculty and even claimed a religious exemption from such negotiation. Students not only organized rallies and marches in support of contingent faculty, they tried to march on the President’s office and demand he begin negotiations, an action which led to a confrontation with Fordham security guards that led to some injuries and disciplinary action against the students. Following the incident, which caused widespread distress among faculty as well as students, the University changed its position and agreed to negotiate with the faculty group

Finally, and more recently, the Dean of Students made a presentation on Campus Sexual Assault to Resident Advisors that some found so offensive that they interrupted the presentation and walked out of the room. Following the protests, several students issues a public statement on the presentation demanding that remedial action be taken and last night, the University said it was launching a formal investigation

In all my years of Fordham, I have rarely seen students challenge actions by the administration so forthrightly and effectively.

I suspect this is part of a national, and generational pattern.

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Trump is Dangerous but Not a Fascist

By Marc Cooper (August 4, 2017)

I hope this is the last post EVER I do on the “debate” over whether or not Trumpism is Fascism.

As a student of 1930’s Europe I could give you a long and boring recount why it is not. I will reduce that whole history to two sentences: historically Fascism only rises to power to counter a revolutionary socialist movement that has been in power or threatens power. The primary focus of fascism is counter-revolution. If you think America faces the threat of socialist revolution you are crazier than Trump.

Now, I will speak from the personal experience of having lived in the flesh the fascist coups in Chile and Argentina and having also been in both countries during the dictatorships. In Chile I worked for the president at the time of the coup so with all humility I was more or less at the epicenter.

Here were their shared defining characteristics:

1. Seizure of power by the military backed by ultra-right parties and the immediate suspension or abolition of the constitution..

2. Immediate imposition of a state of siege and a prolonged curfew (10 years in Chile).

3. Closure of congress. Abolition of ALL civil liberties.

4. Abolition of all political parties and a free press. Round the clock censorship including of the arts.

5. Wholesale murder of leading peaceful opposition leaders and politicians. Mass jailings and systematic torture.

6. Squashing of an independent judiciary and an abolition of habeus corpus.

7. Outlawing by bayonet and gunfire all labor unions.

8. Deployment of govt and paramilitary death squads that engaged in forced disappearances, assassinations, throwing people out of helicopters and dumping of unidentified and sometimes mutilated bodies in mass graves.

9. Military control of all universities and schools, including grade schools.

10. Activation of a nationwide, organized support network that seized power in all major cities and rural districts. (Impossible in America where all big cities are Democratic).

11. An all-pervading FEAR that you were never safe, that at any moment your door can be broken down or you can be swept off the street and never seen again. And I do mean all-pervading.

This is what I saw and felt. I do not see anything similar here. If you do, you need to see an optometrist.

Saying that Trumpism is not Fascism no way denies he is personally an authoritarian, nor does it deny that authoritarians and fascists along with some other quite normal but confused people support him.

It does not mean that his administration is benign or that it has not and will continue to wreak as much damage as it can. Nor does it mean in any way he should not be confronted and resisted.

It does mean that the US in 2017 presents almost none of the social factors that are the building blocks of fascism.

So… then.. what difference does it make what we call it? IMHO, it means a lot. Calling his admin fascist grants him way more power than he deserves or has. It overestimates his strength and tends to make you overlook the splits and contradictions within the circles of power around him… or against him. That, in turn, renders you impotent to exploit and widen those splits. Susan Collins is a reactionary Republican… but hardly a fascist. The presence of people like her in the Senate clearly can make a difference.

Mostly, invoking Fascism scares people and has a tendency to DE-mobilize protest because, after all, no fascist state has ever been overthrown by peaceful marches or hashtags.

If you believe we are living under fascism or in its ante chamber you better get yourself an AK or an AR and learn how to use it. I have a couple extra if you want to buy one.

Trump is evil, malevolent and dangerous. He is also on the defensive and losing support. Nothing here is predetermined but we do have the political freedoms to oppose him and, yes. to defeat him. Defeating him will lead not to Deliverance but probably to Democrats. Not my first choice, but it’s better than what we have now.

Don’t let him off the hook by declaring him and the Americans who voted for him unbeatable fascists. You sound like scared crybabies.

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Trump Staff Changes Signal Growing Authoritarian Threat

By Alexander Reid Ross (July 28, 2017)

The evening after the Boy Scouts of America issued a public apology for Donald Trump’s behavior, his new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, went on a profanity laced rampage against the chief of staff, Reince Priebus. Instead of disciplining Scaramuci, Trump accepted Priebus’s resignation, hiring up a general from the Southern Command to fill his place.

While Trump lectured a group of police officers on the need to assault suspects, news emerged that Scaramucci’s wife had filed for divorce.

Priebus, the former chairman of the RNC, was the main symbolic tether tying Trump to the GOP. Without that formality, the Trump Administration is little more than a syncretic configuration of cranks, esoteric fools, and military careerists.

This apparently spontaneous change at the highest levels of the government illustrates a transition away from conventional party politics and toward an authoritarian administration.

As the Trump Administration’s state security imperatives have shifted from white nationalists to antifascists, Trump’s rhetoric on immigration has grown shriller than ever. The House’s massive budget for the wall has been passed. As the most recent director of DHS, General Kelly is his flavor of the month.

One of the keys to authoritarianism is managing shifting power relations by playing underlings against one another with the ever present fear of being fired. Others include maintaining autonomous mass support through large rallies, constantly attacking opposition or independent media, inflaming ethnic or racial tensions through dehumanizing, violent rhetoric, sanctioning political and social violence through non-governmental groups, and securing impunity through the power of the official pardon.

alex

When They Come Knocking On Our Door, Will We Resist?

By Ana Castillo (July 25, 2017)

IN WHICH THE POET PAUSES TO REFLECT (NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME AND MOST ASSUREDLY, NOT THE LAST) ON THE WHITE SUPREMACIST PROGRAM THAT GOVERNS THE NATION TOWARD ESTABLISHING A TOTALITARIAN POLICE STATE

POC all over the land momentarily held our collective breath when the tragic news resounded that a blond, white woman (and from a white dominated foreign country) was senselessly murdered by a police officer. (Fox news has focused on the officer’s ethnic background, a first generation Somalian.)

On the one hand, we knew, if history taught us anything, that the unprovoked killing of a white woman might be the start of bringing attention to the ongoing murdering of innocent citizens of color. On the other hand, we also knew that this seeking of justice may not necessarily apply to our people.

In the broader spectrum of things, we may be encouraged by the extent of national and international outrage at the policies and actions being implemented by the Bannon-Puppet agenda to emulate the Third Reich handbook in the 21st century. The desire for a complete police state would inevitably effect Whites and it already has. Until then the World, they believed, was theirs and, therefore, protected them and secured their rights, become our allies. As we have learned, that is when previously indifferent individuals retaliate.

Beyond the immediate tragic numbers of random murders of innocent people and children by the police, the broader goal of a police state is to instill fear, numbness, apathy, and resignation so that the day they come knocking on our doors we do not resist.

ana castilo

What if Handmaid’s Tale Was About a Black Theocracy?

By S. (June 14, 2017)

Thought experiment for my white friends: In The Handmaid’s Tale a cabal of elite, white Christians seize control of the government, send all of the black people away (to reservations or death camps, it’s not clear), and then turn every white woman into a slave. What feelings arise when you imagine the same scenario, except that it is a group of black men who seize control, send all whites away, and then enslave all black women?

There’s no wrong or right answer to how you feel about this. For me, this experiment heightens the racial tensions in the book. It adds another level of threat and urgency to the story. This makes me wonder if we are all too familiar with the idea of black erasure. Atwood deals with race in a few ambiguous sentences that completely remove black people from the novel. Yet when I imagine the reverse it’s somehow even more shocking.

Further, what happens when we imagine a world in which black men are dominating and controlling all aspects of women’s lives? This plays into our society’s ideas about black men being dangerous, sexual predators (one might even call them superpredators). Is the thought of black men dominating women scarier than the thought of white men dominating women?

Finally, how scary is the idea of a nation controlled by black theocrats compared to white theocrats? This might not be a big difference for you unless you’ve been exposed to some of the extremes of black, Christian theology.

Again, I have no answers. I just think that this is an interesting and possibly fruitful line of inquiry. I’ll end by pointing out that Atwood specifically wrote the book with examples of actual human domination in mind. Every aspect of the book, and much worse has already been played out in the history of slavery in America and abroad. Many armchair theorists have argued that white fears of blacks, men’s fears of women, straights fears of gays, and more are rooted in projection and fear of retaliation. I don’t know if it’s true or not but maybe Atwood’s story is in part horrifying because we are still haunted by our nation’s history of slavery.

Athena Hates This: Notes on Alt-Right Recruiting In Oregon

By Chris Lowe (June 13, 2017)

hey

(Photo:  Flyer found in Eugene, Oregon near the University of Oregon campus)

1) Athena hates this. In the days of the greatness of her city, it was Mediterranean, brown was beautiful, and Europe was the domain of pasty faced barbarians reddened by shame, shyness or anger.

In the words of the famous graffito “Wogs begin at Macedon”

2) Poster maker clearly has never been to Nigeria, or South Africa, or Kenya, or pretty much any African country — even Swaziland is multicultural.

Pro tip: Confusion of skin color with culture is diagnostic of racism.

3) Ressentiment is ressentiment is ressentiment.

Antifa, Not the Patriot Movement, Stand for Freedom and Liberty

By Alexander Reid Ross (June 10, 2017)

I’ve seen a lot of snark from the Patriot movement saying that antifascists are demonstrating today in defense of Sharia law. The problem is that the Patriot movement has no idea what either Islam or Sharia law actually are, let alone why antifascists have taken to the streets today.

Joey Gibson came close when he said that 1/3 of Muslims believe in Sharia law. The number, according to a Pew poll, is closer to 50 percent. However, there is a broad divergence of opinion on what that means. A vast majority of Muslims surveyed believe in religious freedom—likely a larger percentage than the Patriot movement’s constituents.

Sharia law, in general, connotes an attempted formalization of the spiritual law. Since spiritual law changes, Sharia is always imperfect. However, it is the closest that many Muslims believe people can come to obeying their religious faith through practice.

People who believe in Sharia law are not necessarily pro-life, like the Patriot movement is. They are not necessarily patriarchal, like the Patriot movement is. They don’t believe in racialized hierarchies like the Patriot movement does.

When people come out into the streets to oppose the Patriot movement, they are not making of confession of the faith; they are standing up for the rights of people everywhere to practice their own faiths without hurting others. The Patriot movement has shown that it does not share this sincere believe, which incidentally is right there in their constitution.

Antifascists stand on the side of freedom and liberty. The Patriot movement gets Islam wrong and perpetuates the racist misogyny they claim to fight in the name of the civil liberties they attempt to destroy. The Patriot movement would do better to single out and alienate the Nazis in their own midst, rather than pointing the finger at everyone but themselves.

Solidarity with antifa!

alex

Should We Care About Comey?

By Joe Lowndes (May 11, 2017)

The Comey firing puts the left in a bind. On the one hand, he was the head of the most powerfully repressive institution within the US. The chief enemy of all struggles for liberation, the damage it has done to people, organizations, and movements over the last century is incalculable.

Under Comey, the FBI has been no different. It has harassed and intimidated antiwar activists, manipulated fragile individuals to ensnare organizations with terrorism charges, surveilled Muslim students, menaced ecology movements, coordinated the national crackdown on Occupy, and did the same with Black Lives Matter. And this is only what we DO know.

On the other hand, firing Comey during an investigation of Trump’s Russia connection is an obviously authoritarian move to keep himself and his administration above scrutiny, one which seems to expand autocratic power in the executive office.

Comparisons to Nixon abound, and they are apt as far as they go. But there are differences. Nixon acted when he was truly cornered, when mounting evidence pointed directly at him – which the White House tapes would reveal, he knew. And firing Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox was, it was ruled, illegal. Trump, on the other hand, is well within his authority to fire the head of the FBI before his ten-year term is up. There are no statutory conditions attached to his power to do this.

What’s more, there is nothing Trump can do to prevent a Congressional select committee from carrying on a thorough investigation of Russiagate. Should they fail to do this, it is not evidence of Trump’s executive authoritarianism as much as the GOP’s congressional collusion, which is a different issue. And in any case, if there is really a smoking gun here, there is nothing to prevent Comey or other FBI agents from coming forward now, particularly if they sense that there is in danger of their institutional autonomy being destroyed.

At some other level, where Nixon acted with increasing paranoia, fearing loss of control, Trump seems to revel in the humiliating the FBI director, as Edmund Fong suggested. Sending a courier to blindside Comey at a speech to the FBI in Los Angeles was theatrical and sadistic, not a fearful, cagey attempt to shield his own actions. Roger Stone, the old Nixon dirty trickster and current Trump confidante, buoyantly told Politico Tuesday night that he enjoyed a fine cigar after hearing of Comey’s dismissal. It all feels somehow more like masterful trolling than damage control.

With all this in mind, I’m not sure that we should be putting efforts into demanding impeachment (which will never happen anyway), or defending the institutional role of the FBI. If Comey’s firing is a failure of democracy, it will have been a systemic failure of an increasingly decaying Constitutional frame, not merely one of Trump’s own authoritarian desires.

The dangers of Trumpism are very real and very serious, and I think we have to combat them. But those dangers are plain to see: mass detainment and deportation, the DOJ’s greenlighting of local police attacks on people of color, and the very rapid growth of fascist formations in communities across the country among them. it seems to me that these are far more egregious than dubious claims of foreign control of the executive branch.

The French Election Shows Us the Power of Branding

By Alexander Reid Ross (April 23, 2017)
Marine Le Pen’s popularity at 21% of the electorate is not much higher than her father’s 16.9% in 2002, which earned the Front National their first second round visit. However, her higher stature is due largely to her attempts to soften the FN’s brand by relaxing its stance on homosexuality and Israel, among other things.
Meanwhile, the trouncing of the Parti Socialiste is the damning result of Hollande’s neoliberal austerity politics. Yet Hamond, who carried the weight of that condemnation, represents the PS’s left-most faction. If you want to find a true inheritor of Hollande’s worst, look no further than Macron and En Marche! His skillful rebranding of the status quo would be Justin Trudeau worthy if he was a few more notches to the left—and that’s saying something.
Expect Le Pen’s rebranded image to burn brighter than her father’s old party, but not by much. I’m forecasting around 31% for her in the second round, as pieces of Fillon’s reactionary wing shift to her side.
As François Luong noted, “Macron lacks the party infrastructure to govern.” En Marche will be mostly the “centrists” of Euronext Paris from Republican and Hollande camps, but the French will fight austerity all the way and make France ungovernable.
The best thing the left can do, short of intervening in some grand, spectacular general strike, is line up against fascism in the elections and then resist austerity after. In parliamentary terms, this could look like Mélenchon getting over himself and forging a coalition party to contest the upcoming legislative elections. Such a group would cement infrastructure through local elections and then have a serious chance of defeating Le Pen after five more years of austerity.
It is either this or the defeatist whimper: “Macron in 2017, Le Pen in 2022.” The Republicans may shift back toward the center after Fillon’s embarrassment, but that still might not be enough. On their own, the Socialists in France seem as pathetic as the Dutch Labor Party. There is a new political paradigm emerging and the left, as they say, can let fate guide them or be dragged along by it.

We Need to Make Our Communities Bastions Against Fascism

By Alexander Reid Ross (April 17, 2017)

It is indeed disappointing that Trump’s fascist supporters eventually got to take over a couple major intersections in Berkeley, CA—but don’t feel dispirited.

The alt-right and Oath Keepers streamed in from places as far flung as Colorado. They made a point of forcing their way through Berkeley *because* they’re so unpopular. The cops protected them against antifas, which is typical.

The fact that they were able to hold a rally in Berkeley isn’t a defeat, in itself—it’s just the state doing what it does. We stopped JT Ready in the streets in Phoenix in 2010, but the cops made sure they could still eventually make their way to their destination and rattle off boring speeches.

The antifascists who went toe to toe with the indiscriminate violence of misogynistic racists are courageous as fuck. They stood up for their communities, because they know that this is how pogroms begin. Fascists running riot through the streets is only a taste of what would happen were they are not opposed.

This was not Cable Street in ’36 but it also was not Rostock in ’92. The long-term struggle demands recalibration and forward thinking, making communities bastions against fascism, and maintaining broad-based solidarity. Claim no easy victories, as Cabral once wrote, but don’t concede defeat to a pathetic group of fascists desperately striking out at an entire metropolitan center.

Let them revel in their supposed “victory.” Their president’s approval rating is lower now (39%) than it was before he bombed Syrian air fields. The Oath Keepers have no further recourse to the rhetoric “freedom” having thrown in their lot with the fascist alt-right. The struggle against fascism and empire is clarifying in the minds of people around the world. The movement for collective liberation grows stronger and more powerful every day.

alex