Is America Undergoing A Fascist Collapse? By Umair Haque

Is America Undergoing A Fascist Collapse? By Umair Haque

So the fascist society — which can’t be a democracy, remember — becomes one giant authoritarian exercise is seeing just who these people that are “born better” really are. Who among them is the most cunning, vicious, and ruthless predators of all, the Nietzschean uberman, who can dominate the weak the most savagely? It usually begins like this: can they exploit the weak, the alien, the immigrant, the foreigner, the disabled? Take their wealth and belongings? Kick and punch them down? But it’s a contest now. Who will go further? Soon enough, there is someone willing to put the weak in ghettoes. Then to split up families. Then to put children in camps. And then the unthinkable happens.

Rebecca Solnit:  The Coup Has Already Happened

Rebecca Solnit: The Coup Has Already Happened

After the coup, everything seems crazy, the news is overwhelming, and some try to cope by withdrawing or pretending that things are normal. Others are overwhelmed and distraught. I’m afflicted by a kind of hypervigilance of the news, a daily obsession to watch what’s going on that is partly a quest for sense in what seems so senseless. At least I’ve been able to find the patterns and understand who the key players are, but to see the logic behind the chaos brings you face to face with how deep the trouble is.
We still have an enormous capacity to resist the administration, not least by mass civil disobedience and other forms of noncooperation. Sweeping the November elections wouldn’t hurt either, if that results in candidates we hold accountable afterward. Or both. I don’t know if there’s a point at which it will be too late, though every week more regulations, administrators, and norms crash and burn—but we are long past the point at which it is too soon.

Lessons From The Holocaust For Our Times, Part 3, By Dianne Monroe

Lessons From The Holocaust For Our Times, Part 3, By Dianne Monroe

Shortly after Trump’s election, Yale History Professor Timothy Snyder (whose focus of study is Central and Eastern Europe and the Holocaust) published a book titled On Tyranny, Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. The first lesson is Do Not Obey in Advance. Sometimes footprints from the past can point the way forward through a perilous and uncertain future.

“A Complete Disaster”:  Noam Chomsky On Trump And The Future Of US Politics

“A Complete Disaster”: Noam Chomsky On Trump And The Future Of US Politics

What all of this portends, worldwide, is far from clear. Though there are also significant signs of hope, some commentators have — with good reason — been quoting Gramsci’s observation from his prison cell: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

Russiagate Or Deep State? What Some Progressives Get Wrong On Russia, By John Feffer

Russiagate Or Deep State? What Some Progressives Get Wrong On Russia, By John Feffer

When it comes to the Russiagate scandal, progressives usually take one of two positions. They either dismiss the scandal as a lot of hooey, a “nothingburger,” just a way for warmongers and the “Deep State” to revive a cold war between Washington and Moscow. Or they treat the scandal as just a means to an end, a way to cast doubt on the 2016 presidential election, implicate the administration in a variety of crimes, and ultimately impeach the president. Both of these positions are wrong.

It’s Pretty Much Inevitable That Trump Will Try To Stage A Coup And Overthrow Democracy, An Interview With Timothy Snyder, Yale Historian

It’s Pretty Much Inevitable That Trump Will Try To Stage A Coup And Overthrow Democracy, An Interview With Timothy Snyder, Yale Historian

You have to accept there is a time frame. Nobody can be sure how long this particular regime change with Trump will take, but there is a clock, and the clock really is ticking. It’s three years on the outside, but in more likelihood something like a year. In January 2018 we will probably have a pretty good idea which way this thing is going. It’s going to depend more on us than on them in the meantime. Once you get past a certain threshold, it starts to depend more on them than on us, and then things are much, much worse. It makes me sad to think how Americans would behave at that point.

John Kelly And The Language Of The Military Coup, By Masha Gessen

John Kelly And The Language Of The Military Coup, By Masha Gessen

Consider this nightmare scenario: a military coup. You don’t have to strain your imagination—all you have to do is watch Thursday’s White House press briefing, in which the chief of staff, John Kelly, defended President Trump’s phone call to a military widow, Myeshia Johnson. The press briefing could serve as a preview of what a military coup in this country would look like, for it was in the logic of such a coup that Kelly advanced his four arguments

Betrayal: The Pervasive And Defining Crime Of Our Age, By Chris Martenson

Betrayal: The Pervasive And Defining Crime Of Our Age, By Chris Martenson

Let me apologize in advance for what may be an upsetting piece of writing for some of you. If you’re in a state of shock or exhaustion from recent events, perhaps you should skip this one.

I don’t offer this analysis in order to further distress anyone — but until you understand what is happening and how that influences your psychological state, you’ll remain the emotional equivalent of a rag doll shaken to-and-fro by events. Such understanding may not bring you to a place of calm acceptance. But it will set you free.