Rise up to resist Fascism 💩 💀 (circa putin-trump conspiracy/corruption cult 2022)
#fascism rises around us, like a virus, the ancient algorithm of barbs & toxicity & threat 
#Resist 
💀 #dɯnɹʇ ♞♘
From his first days as president to his last, how Trump stoked division, violence & insurrection.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/trumps-american-carnage/
In the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, FRONTLINE investigates how Donald Trump’s presidency laid the groundwork for bitter divisions, violence and ultimately insurrection.
“Trump’s American Carnage” investigates Trump’s siege on his enemies, the media and even the leaders of his own party, who for years ignored the warning signs of what was to come.
This journalism is made possible by viewers like you. Support your local PBS station here: http://www.pbs.org/donate
The GOP have embraced American fascism, an anti-democratic ideology that is unique to the US and is engrained deeper in Americans' collective consciousness & history
Our country's unique history with fascism goes back to the Antebellum South, when slaveowners mounted an insurrection against the US government to establish an anti-democratic society, the Confederacy.
The legacy of the Confederacy remains lodged in American politics, and its ideology has been violently reinforced by terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. We've chipped away at its power, but it may never disappear completely.
Trump's GOP has taken up that fascist legacy, and if we don't push back against it, it will ravage our democracy again.
Historians often come ever so close to calling American fascism what it is, before backing away and concluding that fascism is something from abroad. Robert Paxton, a preeminant historian of the political philosophy, called the Ku Klux Klan "the earliest phenomenon that can be functionally related to fascism." Yet somehow we do not own our American fascism.
In 1861 the rich plantation owners of the South were able to mobilize the entire region to fight the Civil War. It was a movement so violent that Union soldiers were forced to stay in Southern states for years after the Confederate Army surrendered just to uphold democracy.
Some historians call what the Confederate slaveholders did "a counterrevolution." It was an explicit rejection of a crucial line the founding father Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…."
The Confederacy's repudiation of equality is outlined in its founding documents, including "The Cornerstone Speech," a seminal speech given by Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens just a few weeks before the Civil War broke out. In it he outlined the the new nation's rejection of equality on the basis of white racial superiority. His country promised wealth and possibility, but only for a few white men.
It is equality that makes a democracy possible. Without it, the strong can crush the weak and impose their will on the rest of society. That is how fascist governments are structured, that is how the Confederacy came to be, and that is what Trump's Republican Party is embracing now.
The Southern slaveholders were fascists
To justify the institution of slavery as humane and just, rich Antebellum Southern planters and politicians (they were almost invariably one and the same) started rejecting democracy and equality in the mid-1800s. Instead they decided their society should be built on a strict order, with the plantation owner on top and the slave on the bottom.
"Thanks to Jefferson we have made a mistake... and pushed the love of democracy too far," the Georgia political journal The Southern Watchman declared in 1857.
"Vulgar democracy and licentious 'freedom' is rapidly supplanting all the principles of contintutional 'liberty'! When shall the American people perceive that all our difficulties arise from the absurdities of deciding that the 'pauper' and the 'landholder' are alike competent to manage the affairs of a Country, or alike entitled to vote for those who shall?"
It was clear to the Southern slaveholders that a sense of equality — or any attempts by the state to create equality — could disrupt their rule. So in an attempt to keep power with power they took equality out of the equation. They also starved their government coffers, much like the agenda of our modern GOP. The result was a society with crushing inequality not just between Black and white but the planter class and white, small-scale farmers.
The United States fought the Civil War to end slavery and preserve democracy on this continent. "The Cause" the doomed Confederacy fought for — that it raised private militias for — was the right to violently preserve an unequal society captured by a ruling class imposing its will on everyone else. This is the origin of American fascism.
Make the connection, then break it
Officially, the Civil War ended in 1865, but Union soldiers left the South 11 years later, after the contested presidential election of 1876. The Democratic candidate Samuel Tilden refused to concede to the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and would agree to do so only if Republicans agreed to end the US Army's occupation of the South.
Once they were gone, Southern fascists were able to organize their region's society in the anti-democratic way they wanted to, creating the Black Codes, Jim Crow, poll taxes, and poll tests. This is how fascism — a mass movement to enforce the social order of white supremacy — has been allowed to grow within a democracy for generations since the Civil War.
President Donald Trump has openly talked about refusing to accept the outcome of the November elections if he doesn't win. He is not the only one in his party who has suggested the party may not respect the will of the people. On Wednesday in his debate against Sen. Kamala Harris, Vice President Mike Pence dodged a question about the peaceful transfer of power, refusing to reject Trump's stance in favor of democracy. Trump was elated.
In part because of our refusal to acknowledge this history, American fascism is lodged so deeply into our system that we are still fighting it on multiple fronts — voter suppression, right-wing terrorism, and racial injustice. That same denial has permitted men like Trump and Lee to delude themselves into thinking they have some kind of commitment to freedom when they are, in fact, carrying on that fascist history. It's time we all acknowledged that.
Howard Dean: The Republicans Are Now a Neo-Fascist Party
THE NEW ABNORMAL
The former presidential candidate says the Republican Party has plunged into a “crazy” abyss of “whack jobs,” “autocrats,” and “nutjobs.”
The Daily Beast Apr. 23, 2021
The Republican Party has suffered a total moral collapse and is now held together by a bunch of “nutcases” happy to endorse autocracy and neo-fascism, according to Howard Dean, the former presidential candidate and ex-chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
“I hate to call Republicans right-wing fascists because often they supported me, but this is unrecognizable,” he said. “They believe in autocracy, not democracy, they are racist. It’s just shocking what’s happened to the Republican Party.”
He has said Republican members of the House of Representatives were particularly inept. “There are some House Republicans who are basically a sentient YouTube comment section,” Dean said. “They have nothing to contribute, frankly, to American politics, except for incendiary and sometimes delusional public statements.”
“These people are crazy. They’re conspiracy theorists, they’re whack jobs. They’re embedding their own reality. I mean, if they ever really run the country, it’s going to be a disaster for us. ’Cause you... this is why autocrats don’t run good economies, because they start believing in their own BS,” he said.
“You have a Republican Party, which emotionally, essentially are neo-fascist. They fundamentally do not believe that another legitimate point of view exists other than theirs.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/howard-dean-the-republicans-are-now-a-neo-fascist-party
American Insurrection | FRONTLINE
FRONTLINE, ProPublica and UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program present “American Insurrection”: a timely, 90-minute documentary that probes the far-right groups and leaders responsible for the recent threats and violence.
FRONTLINE, ProPublica and UC Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Program team up to examine how far-right groups were emboldened and encouraged by former President Trump and how individuals were radicalized and brought into the political landscape. #AmericanInsurrection #Extremism
from outside USA it appears vintage KKK politics, from McConnell to McCarthy, from #Trump to DeSantis...#GOP clearly a fascist criminal conspiracy, bent on destroying democracy & installing a white-power authoritarian regime, in every state, using corruption & deception #dɯnɹʇ ☠ https://t.co/cNPSvPpotc
— ҽɑɾԵհ ՏԵɑԵíօղ 𝓐𝓵𝓹𝓱𝓪 💜 💫 ♪ ❣ (@WonderPlucker) May 30, 2021
Sound the Alarm: GOP in DC & State legislatures signaling an intent to blatantly STEAL the next elections, in order to install a fascist authoritarian police state (ie: "Putin style" extremist corruption regimes)
.@AndreaChalupa: "The Republican Party itself is a national security threat continuing Putin's dirty work."
— GaslitNation (@gaslitnation) May 26, 2021
Listen to more of this @gaslitnation episode here: https://t.co/pUGkDLervD pic.twitter.com/BpfuFWieqD
After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made
After the Fall is a hugely ambitious and essential work of discovery. In his travels, Rhodes comes to realize how much America’s fingerprints are on a world we helped to shape.
Along the way, a Russian opposition leader he spoke with was poisoned, the Hong Kong protesters he came to know saw their movement snuffed out, and America itself reached the precipice of losing democracy before giving itself a second chance.
https://www.amazon.com/After-Fall-Being-American-World/dp/1984856057
