Nina-Bytes: Rigging America In The Open

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

Inside Steve Bannon’s ‘disturbing’ quest to radically rewrite the US constitution

Recently on Twitter, I devoted a few pithy words to mentioning that fascists in American society were "tapping every possible route to power that they can and hoping one hits." I know this because I've been writing about these efforts to override what passes for our "liberal democracy" for several years now; whether they occur by legalist means, or through highly illegal acts of terror and politicized violence. Given this, I think that it's probably saying something when I note that this October 19th, 2022 article by Ed Pilkington over in The Guardian made my blood run cold. 

While I strongly advise you to read the entire article, "the too long didn't read" here is that noted fascist strategist Steve Bannon is using his trash fire podcast to push a highly-plausible right wing conspiracy to re-write the constitution pretty much any way they please. The tactic involves using a thirty-four state conservative majority, to hold a Constitutional Convention. Given that this is a fascist movement that is currently denying the results of the last Presidential election, attempting to rig elections going forward, and organizing a pogrom against trans people, all out in the open, that prospect should be quite concerning to you. As the piece itself makes clear:

 

"Mark Meckler, a founder of the Tea Party who now leads one of the largest groups advocating for the tactic, the Convention of States Action (Cosa), spelled out some of the prime objectives on Bannon’s show. “We need to say constitutionally, ‘No, the federal government cannot be involved in education, or healthcare, or energy, or the environment’,” he said.

Meckler went on to divulge the anti-democratic nature of the state convention movement when he said a main aim was to prevent progressive policies being advanced through presidential elections. “The problem is, any time the administration swings back to Democrat – or radical progressive, or Marxist which is what they are – we are going to lose the gains. So you do the structural fix.”

The “structural fix” involves Republican state legislatures pushing conservative amendments to America’s foundational document. By cementing the policies into the US constitution, they would become largely immune to electoral challenge."

 

So how plausible is this really? Well this is where things get terrifying because we're talking about an extremely well-funded project with support across the broader mainstream right; this isn't one of Bannon's fascist fantasies, this project is on the wish list of powerful lobby groups and billionaires like the Mercer family and groups run by Leonard Leo. Furthermore, and as this article makes clear - these guys are making progress:

 

"Under Article V, 34 states would have to call for a constitutional convention to reach the two-thirds requirement. Cosa has so far succeeded in getting 19 states to sign up, with a further six in active consideration.

ALEC, which sets a narrower remit for a convention focused on its balanced budget amendment, has gone further with 28 states on board.

Either way, there is a shortfall. To address it, constitutional convention leaders have invented increasingly exotic mathematical formulas for attaining the magic number, 34."

 

Please keep in mind that due to aggressive gerrymandering and a concerted effort to control state legislatures by the Republican Party, the GOP currently controls thirty-one states and only needs thirty-four; even if not all of those state legislatures are currently on board with this plan, there's nothing to suggest that will remain true as the GOP continues to slide further into open fascist politics. Once that happens, all bets are off; and that's even setting aside the fact that a GOP Congress could simply decide to fudge the numbers.

All of which leaves only one obvious question; is it still "ridiculous" to call political movement actively working to eliminate democratic rights and permanently lock the destruction of all life on Earth into the constitution on behalf of fossil fuel capital, fascist? Asking for about seven billion friends who aren't part of the capitalist ruling class.

 

 

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. 

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

 

Nina-Bytes: At Your Service

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

The Jan. 6 Committee Gave Us Some Bad News About the Secret Service

I really don't think it's a secret at this point that I don't have a lot of faith in liberal antifascism, or a January 6th Committee that promised in advance they weren't going to recommend charging any powerful fascists for conducting a failed autogolpe. Long before President Biden went on stage to call the MAGA movement "semi-fascist," the largely useless ruling liberal establishment was signaling that their plan was to use the commission to lay out the coup plotter's crimes, and then pass the ball back to voters without taking significant action to stop a still ongoing fascist insurrection at all. Needless to say, I think this is a pretty terrible plan. 

As such I haven't spent a whole lot of time writing about the findings of the January 6th Committee, under the mistaken belief the mainstream liberal media would handle that for me. When I see dozens of mainstream corporate media outlets respond to clear evidence that the Secret Service was involved in the failed coup plot like it was a threat estimation error however, I feel obligated to push back on that idea. Please keep in mind, all this is despite the fact that we already know the Service hid evidence of a plot to murder Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, deleted text messages from that day, and openly speculated on the lifespan of then-Vice President Mike Pence while the riots raged outside. 

To correct this absurd state of affairs, let's turn to this October 14th, 2022 article by David Rothkopf in The Daily Beast of all places; starting with a quote that sums up what you should have heard on the evening news:

"The contents of some of those documents were revealed on Thursday. They made it clear that reports of an “intelligence failure” related to Jan. 6 were nonsense. The agency had clear and specific warnings describing an armed attack on the Capitol and threats against members of Congress as part of plan to block the certification of votes. And nonetheless, they let the president’s speech go on. And they did not do much to prevent the attacks from happening. While some in the agency reported on the escalating dangers during the day of Jan. 6, others clearly chose to let events transpire. They were even planning to bring Trump to the Hill until shortly after the Capitol barricades were breached. Rather than presiding over an intelligence failure, they had actually actively enabled the insurrection to take place, with some among their ranks content to look the other way and ignore established protocols."

 

Wow; I'd pay real cash money to hear even one single politician on my TV talking like David does here, instead of milquetoast admonishments about the dangers of "semi-fascism" - and I'm not alone on that one, I assure you. Thankfully for those of us who're tired of feeling like we're taking crazy pills while Weimar America implodes around us however, Rothkopf doesn't stop there. He also clearly articulates the mainstream, legalist nature of the fascist threat, and the growing sense of doubt that Merrick Garland's Department of Justice is up to the challenge of taking it on:

"The real culmination of the inquiry must be left to the Sphinx-like Department of Justice, whose silence might reveal its commitment to the secrecy that should surround an historically significant investigation. Or that silence might be followed by inaction. We just cannot know at this point, even though the Jan. 6 committee’s revelations made it clear that inaction in the face of the evidence that exists would be one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in U.S. history and would set a dangerous precedent, leaving our entire system at risk.

But there were other disturbing threads that emerged from the congressional inquiry that themselves appeared to require their own independent inquiry. Several of these concern the seeming existence of what might be called the “dark state.” This is not the conspiracy theory fantasy spun by the far right about a “deep state” permanent government that was foiling the will of the people: That was always such a stalking horse, a concept that would enable MAGA officials to root out public servants who placed fealty to the Constitution ahead of loyalty to a political party. Rather it was a real loose alliance among Trump allies in the government who were willing to set aside the rule of law in the service of Trump himself.

At the core of this movement were officials within key government agencies—including the Department of Homeland Security and within it the Secret Service, the FBI, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice and the intelligence community—who had been placed in positions of responsibility because they could be counted upon to bend the rules for Trump."

Quite frankly folks, I don't really have a whole lot else to add here. This isn't an "I told you so" moment, although quite frankly I did. The fact of the matter is the Capital Hill riot was a coup attempt, conducted and then justified by then-President Trump as well numerous mainstream figures in American "semi-fascist" politics with very real positions of power. If after months of the January 6th Committee "making the argument" literally nobody in the voting public seems to really give a damn anymore, maybe it's time to ask whether or not the our wise liberal leaders and the corporate muppets that pass for our media might bear some responsibility for that reality. 

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. 

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

 

Nina-Bytes: Crash Courses in Modern Fascism

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

Fascists Are Benefiting From World Crisis

Recently on Instagram, I mentioned my belief that a review of basic concepts and ideas presented in my anti-fascist writing might be in order. I've been away for a while, and it's easy to lose track of the bigger picture when an entire political and media class has got you chasing sensationalism while the fascist creep accelerates forward at an alarming pace. In that vein, I'd like to highlight this October 9th, 2022 interview University of Michigan professor Geoff Eley, conducted by Arjun Chaturvedi over at Jacobin.

Unsurprisingly given the title of this article, Eley's field of expertise in history includes fascist movements. Although our interviewer does manage to rope him into one question about the historical study of fascism, Eley's answers in this piece are otherwise hyper focused on providing a practical understanding of modern fascism. For example, when discussion portability of fascist politics, the professor offers up this explanation of the conditions required to enable this kind of political movement to thrive:

"[F]ascism can flourish under the impress of an especially extreme dual crisis. First, the established political arrangements no longer enable the achievement of stable and effective governance; second, those governing arrangements malfunction so badly that they forfeit the consent of the people. When these twin crises happen together — crisis of representation, crisis of consent; government paralysis, democratic impasse — states of exception are created where a specifically fascist politics can start to gain traction."

Along the way, Eley also talks about the three things all fascist movements have in common (rejection of liberal democracy, preference for authoritarianism, desire to violently disenfranchise an other they define,) and how society can fight fascism; with broad coalition building and a popular front approach. If you don't have time to read dozens of, or even just one whole book about fascism, this is more or less an excellent little primer; with one big caveat.

That caveat is that by way of injecting the talking point into a question about Narendra Modi, our interviewer pushes the idea that Donald Trump isn't a fascist, because he "lacks a coherent ideology that is a crucial aspect of fascism." This weaksauce argument has been an asinine hobby horse for Jacobin magazine ever since noted reactionary trashfire and friend to fascists Ben Burgis published an article telling folks to "relax, it's not fascism" days after the January 6th MAGA coup attempt; they were wrong then, and they are wrong now. For starters, Trump is definitely a fascist; secondly, if being a fascist requires understanding ideology, then illiterate Nazi murderers who did pogroms in World War II weren't fascists either - absurd.

Furthermore, you can tell Eley doesn't like this nonsense either, because he spends a paragraph trying to form a convoluted definition of ideology that allows both him and the host to be correct; before specifically referencing the rise of Trump in his conclusions about what type of political environment allows fascist movements to succeed. Despite this bad noise, the interview is a worthwhile read; even if I'm giving Jacobin and its interviewer zero stars and a failing grade on anti-fascism as a whole.

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. 

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

 

Nina Bytes: Fascism is on the Docket

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

Hello friends; long time no see. My life has been pretty terrible for the past several months, but it's better now, and I'd rather not waste a lot of time going over the gory details. Please bear with me while I work myself back into shape; writing is way harder than emo trash-posting on Twitter.

In today's post I'd like to provide some evidentiary examples for a thesis I published over on Instagram called "Fascism is a Legalist Doctrine." As I mentioned, two major reactionary arguments designed to dismantle what passes for American democracy are making their way before a pro-fascist Supreme Court in America. Let's take a closer look at both of those cases:

 

The Supreme Court Is On The Verge Of Killing The Voting Rights Act

First of all I'd like to note that I chose this rather bloodless October 3rd, 2022 article by Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux over at Five-Thirty-Eight on purpose because I need the "very serious" liberals in my life to understand that the fascist judicial assault on American democracy is very real, not even remotely abstract, and definitely not some far left political theory. The article revolves around the pivotal Alabama map-rigging case currently before a 6-3 fascist high SCOTUS in America; Merrill v. Milligan.

Now on the surface, this might look like just another crooked gerrymandering case in a very long line of crooked gerrymandering cases in the United States. Once one delves a little deeper into the fascist argument being presented, and likely to be accepted by the court however, the horrifying implications become more clear:

 

"Up until now, the court has taken the perspective that, in order to comply with the act, states are in some situations required to take race into consideration as the primary factor in the redistricting process. Alabama Republicans are now arguing that it’s discriminatory to prioritize race over other traditional redistricting techniques, such as having compact districts, contiguous boundaries or avoiding crossing county or town boundaries. Several experts, including Pildes, told FiveThirtyEight that a ruling that sides with Alabama would be a radical departure from previous interpretations of the law and would likely free states to draw congressional or state legislative maps where minority voters have less political power relative to their numbers.

In that sense, the outcome of this case could be very similar to a 2013 ruling in which the Roberts court gutted another section of the Voting Rights Act, freeing a group of states with histories of discrimination against minority voters to change their election laws without federal approval. In the years afterward, those states shuttered thousands of polling places, intensified their voter purges and changed voting laws in other ways that disproportionately affect minority voters."

 

Yes folks, you read that correctly; fascist lawyers and the Alabama GOP are arguing (more or less) that being forced to draw voting districts in such a way as to accurately reflect minority voting populations and protect their constitutional rights, are actually discriminatory against white Republicans. In short, Tucker Carlson's reverse racism propaganda from Fox News is about to become a fundamental plank of election law; to the advantage of fascists and the disadvantage of anyone who doesn't like being ruled by fascists. 

Astoundingly enough however, Merrill v. Milligan isn't even the most serious threat to American democracy about to appear before an objectively far right and reactionary Supreme Court:

 

How the Supreme Court could make it legal to steal the next presidential election

Whelp, that's pretty bleak my friends. In this July 11th opinion piece over on MSNBC, law professor Jessica Levinson lays out the terrifying implications in another upcoming case, Moore v. Harper.

Although understanding this case does involved wading into the weeds a bit, the fascist argument here broadly stipulates that state lawmakers more or less have the right to conduct elections any way they want (including rigging them,) without oversight from anyone except federal courts, and even then only narrowly. This is literally a green light for Republican controlled states to not only rig their own elections, but award their state delegates to whichever presidential candidate they want; and if that sounds familiar to you, it probably should:

 

"Even more significantly, this doctrine, taken to its catastrophic and logical conclusion, could allow state lawmakers to legally steal presidential elections. Let’s imagine that in 2024, Florida residents vote to re-elect President Joe Biden. This has always meant Florida’s 30 Electoral College votes would go to Biden. But maybe the lawmakers there would want the Republican challenger to win. The lawmakers could decide not to certify the election results and instead submit their own slate of electors to the Electoral College who would vote for that Republican. By pure luck and coincidence, this is pretty damn close to the plan espoused by former President Donald Trump and his supporters in their attempt pilfer the 2020 election."

 

Naturally of course, we can't know how the Supreme Court will ultimately rule in Moore v. Harper. but given the court's current composition, and the fact that four reactionary judges on the court have already indicated they support the “independent state legislature doctrine,” it's probably not that hard to guess.

All of which of course leads me back to the point I was trying to make on Instagram; it does no good for liberals to rail away against fascist street gangs and open neo-nazis, while patently refusing to resist the judicial branch of fascism that is actively working to end what passes for American democracy, once and for all. Biden can walk out on stage and warn us all about the "semi-fascists" until he's blue in the face, but until Democrat lawmakers are prepared to abolish the filibuster and secure voting rights for all, the fascists are going to keep winning these fights in the halls of power, and telling folks to "vote harder" is a sick joke.

That doesn't mean society has to accept fascist rule, but if the Democratic Party isn't even prepared to fight fascism to preserve its own existence at the ballot box, what good are they to anyone who isn't a fascist, at all?

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. 

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

Nina-Bytes: Stochastically Yours in Weimar America

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.

 

Rep. Paul Gosar shared an anime video of himself killing AOC. This was her response.

As a socialist writer trapped in a capitalist dystopia, I spend a lot of my time pointing out the links between the study of political economy, and events occurring in the news of the day; you might call it an educational commitment to exploring both theory, and praxis. Earlier today on Instagram, I published a Pinko Postcard discussion that briefly touched on the organized efforts of American fascists to mainstream reactionary ideology and political practices. Here on Nina-Bytes then, I'd like to explore what this normalization and weaponization of fascist political techniques looks like in real time; with an assist from everyone's favorite coup plotter and white supremacist in Congress, Paul Gosar. 

Given the uniformly atrocious coverage this event has garnered in the mainstream media, I decided to use this November 9th, 2021 post by Rachel Treisman on npr.org as our primary anchor because while it still misses the mark, she at least provides some context on the reactionary nature of Gosar's actions. In case you missed it, Congressman Gosar published an explicitly fascist anti-immigration video that featured modified anime footage of himself murdering Congresswoman, and noted target of reactionary ire, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. While much of the media has inexplicably chosen to cover this event as inter-personal drama between rival factions on the Hill, students of fascist propaganda techniques will recognize immediately that this is no laughing matter. Let's fill in that context, shall we?

The first thing you need to remember is that Paul Gosar is absolutely a fascist; you can call him a Trumpist if you prefer, but because the terms are largely synonymous, it really doesn't make a whole lot of difference. He's spoken at white nationalist conferences, raised money with fascist influencers, and oh yeah, there's that small matter of Gosar's intimate involvement with the January 6th fascist coup plot to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election; which reportedly included the Congressman promising blanket pardons to participants in the event of a successful coup. Even this guy's own family says he's a white supremacist.

The second bit of largely-missing context here, comes from the nature of the video Gosar shared, and how it has been edited. The video explicitly employs fascist political propaganda about an "attack of immigrants" and shows multiple elected GOP nazis committing acts of outrageous violence in response, through edited anime clips. Furthermore, given the fact that the anime chosen, Attack on Titan, has strong fascist overtones and has already been coopted by reactionary extremists in the Pig Empire, I don't think the stench of neonazism involved here is any sort of accident. In other words, even if Gosar's staff hadn't depicted him slashing AOC's throat, this would still be a fascist video tweeted out by a sitting Congressman in America. 

Finally of course, there's the context of the violence depicted in its own right, and Gosar's predictable keyboard reactionary response to being criticized for it. While crackers and collaborators absurdly pretend that folks are accusing Gosar of literally threatening to cut Ocasio-Cortez's head off with a sword, the specter of stochastic terrorism and the usefulness (for the fascists) of injecting the threat of violence into standard political discourse, is largely ignored. Even the bizarre insistence from the Congressman's office that folks "relax" because it's just "a cartoon" echoes the standard playbook of f*ckboi "ironic" nazis online. 

Frankly the truly alarming thing about this story is that we as a society, and mainstream American media as an institution, already know all of this because we've collectively seen it all before. Sara Palin taught the media that right wing politicians are fine with stochastic terrorism as long as their rhetoric fires up the base. Andrew Anglin's leaked style guide for the Daily Stormer makes it clear that nazis are actively trying to mainstream fascist ideology every waking moment of the day. We know ironic nazism, is really just nazism. And as of last week, we can no longer deny the fact that these folks are fascists, actively plotting an authoritarian takeover of America, and the larger Pig empire.

It would be nice if an American media establishment that claims to be defending democracy from the fascist creep, deemed all that worth mentioning in between blow by blow coverage of the back and forth between Gosar and the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, it's just not in their nature.

 

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

You can find my work at NIDC, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. 

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

NinaIllingworth.com Link: ‘The Devil You Know? A Response to Recent Revisionist History From the Contrarian “Left”

 

Editor's note: well my ongoing battle with online censorship hasn't ended, which means I continue to be obliged to cross post my essays on other websites, over here on Media Madness - at least if they are in fact about media issues; and this one certainly is.

-----

Well my friends, after stirring up the chuds, and then Jimmy Dore Youtube Nation with my last two full-length articles, I'm back to kick the beehive that is the contrarian left today on ninaillingworth.com. 

It has become quite fashionable in twitchy crypto-libertarian circles of reactionaries grifting left, to gaslight actual left wing antifascists and proclaim calling Trump a fascist is merely liberal scaremongering. This is in a word bull-puckey, and I've written a fully-sourced rebuttal essay to demonstrate why. 

Check out my latest by clicking on the title header below:

‘The Devil You Know? A Response to Recent Revisionist History From the Contrarian “Left” 

• nina illingworth

 

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”