Nina-Bytes: Order of the Day

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web. Want more? Click here to subscribe to NIDC today. 

 

Nina-Bytes: Order of the Day

Just over five years ago, in the wake of the openly fascist "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, I came to an important realization that has shaped much of my work since. Specifically, that America was in the process of an obvious slide into overt fascism; fueled in part by the election of Donald Trump. Of course, I already knew and had repeatedly written that Trump himself was a fascist; but like many of my readers today, I had some faith that the American faux democratic system would contain Trump's personal ideological tendencies. Watching significant portions of the media establishment, and indeed the U.S. government openly embrace and enable the swine emperor's fascist political tactics, utterly shattered that faith within the first six months of Downmarket Mussolini's presidency; and little has happened to restore it since.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this devotion to the fascist cause and Trumpism as a whole, was particularly apparent in federal law enforcement, Amerikkka's odious immigration police, and the larger Department of Homeland Security. While many were content to ignore concentration camps for migrant children, even the mainstream media establishment stood up and took notice when Trump, his fascist Department of Justice, and his pet federal agencies declared war on the city of Portland and started black-bagging leftist activists off the street.

While this shift from the enemy without, to the presumed enemy within represented a clear warning sign on America's road to fascism, our society and its media influencers appear only too happy to forget Portland, and what it can tell us about the Pork Reich's current precarious dance with full fascist control. To avoid repeating that mistake, I'd like to take a look at this November 5th, 2022 article written by Dell Cameron over on Gizmodo:

Homeland Security Admits It Tried to Manufacture Fake Terrorists for Trump

As always you should read the whole article, but the short version is pretty straightforward. Facing down the end of his first term, Herr Donald sought to link his three major political enemies, Black Lives Matter protestors, the Democratic Party, and antifascists, together as a single terrorist organization called "Antifa." This was fascist conspiracy nonsense, but doing so would allow the swine emperor to unlock sweeping federal powers (and funds) to persecute his opposition in the lead up to the 2020 election; which he would ultimately lose, and attempt to overturn with a riot. Well as it turns out, Trump tasked the Department of Homeland Security to manufacture evidence to support this authoritarian nonsense; and to the surprise of precisely no one, they complied!

Lead by noted fascist sh*tbag Chad Wolf, DHS proceeded to go full "the Hunt for Osama Bin Laden" on the streets of Portland. Agents were ordered to assume all protesters were "violent antifa anarchists" unless they had specific intelligence proving otherwise. Anti-terrorism dossiers, the so-called DHS "baseball cards" so familiar from the fight against Al-Qaeda, were produced for numerous innocent protestors; including those merely exercising their free speech rights, and folks who weren't even arrested. As the article makes clear, those dossiers remain in government custody and would ultimately make their way far from the warzone Trump manufactured in Portland:

"The dossiers, known as Operational Background Reports, or OBRs, are known colloquially within the agency as “baseball cards,” the report says. The task of creating them was handed, “with little to no guidance on execution,” to the agency’s Current and Emerging Threats Center, an analysis unit whose “actionable intelligence” is distributed widely throughout the government. According to the report, the dossiers would’ve been shared with, among others, the agency’s Field Operations Division, which works closely with House and Senate committee staffers, and the Federal Protection Service, whose core mission is securing some 9,000 federal facilities across the country. The extent to which entities outside the federal government were meant to be involved is unclear; however, the report indicates that DHS state and local partners, which would naturally include law enforcement, but also potentially organizations like National Governors Association, could have also been in the loop."

At one point, these muppets even brought in the Homeland Identities, Targeting and Exploitation Center to try and prove the existence of a vast "antifa" financing network; more or less entirely to satisfy the delusions of a septuagenarian fascist and the white nationalists running his government. Ultimately and unsurprisingly, these efforts lead nowhere, but the plain and obvious truth here is that entire departments of the U.S. federal government happily went along with a fascist conspiracy that criminalized anyone daring to exercise their first amendment rights in Portland, as open enemies of the state. There was almost no pushback from either the foot soldiers in the street, or the ideologically compromised administrators who run these already quite fascist portions of the government.

So why does this matter in the here and now? Tomorrow in America, there is a very good chance that the midterm elections will hand multiple branches of the government back to a wholly-fascist Republican Party still quite enthralled by Donald Trump. With storm clouds gathering, there are many folks in our discourse encouraging you to sleepwalk through the rise of fascism with polite fictions, and wistful lullabies about the strength of our institutions. They say little will change, and that the American political experiment is too strong to succumb to fascists, even if rigged elections hand them power.

Those people are dead wrong. And everything we know about Portland is all you need to prove it.

 

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…”

 

Article Analysis: Law and (the Fascist) Order

Editor's note: this article represents completely new content and has never before appeared elsewhere on the internet. Please also note that I didn't cram just under a hundred hyperlinks in this article to argue about whether or not I know what fascism is with alt-right trolls; click on the links and stop wasting my time.

At this point dear readers, I must confess to having become utterly exasperated with the cowardly and mendacious members of mainstream American society who utterly refuse to acknowledge even the existence, let alone the terrifying progress of the Trump-led fascist creep in America. I certainly don't think it takes a fortune teller to realize that when the President is signalling his open support for a deranged reactionary conspiracy theory that argues all of his political opponents are satanist pedophiles working with George Soros, Black Lives Matter and "Antifa" to conduct a coup against the rightful Furher, Donald Trump - we've gone a little bit past "dog-whistle" politics in America.

In particular however I have grown exceptionally weary of hearing about how Trump and his Pork Reich administration cannot represent an all-American form of fascism because "you can still say he's a fascist" - while the president actively conflates First Amendment protected protest with terrorism, unaccountable cracker murderpigs are taking head shots at journalists during riots started by the police and the administration is threatening to pull broadcast licences from media outlets that don't treat the President "fairly."

This argument is to say the least unsupported by an increasingly growing pile of evidence and perhaps more accurately represents a mendacious call for civility designed to attack the left, in the middle of a fascist takeover by the right. In recent days however, the objectively fascist Trump administration added two more pieces of damning evidence to the pile and disturbingly, the mass media at large hasn't really taken much notice yet. Let's start with this short piece from Vanity Fair's Caleb Ecarma on September 1st, 2020:

DHS Says It's "Working On" a Black Lives Matter Crackdown

First of all, I'd like to point out how completely dysfunctional the American corporate media has become if I'm seriously offering backhanded praise to Vanity Fair for having the balls to publish this story in any sort of context; other outlets that bothered to at least mention the fascist or authoritarian nature of Wolf's comments include the Daily Beast and Esquire, but all in all I think it's fair to say the American media basically sh*t its pants on this incredibly important story.

Why is it important? Well let's see, here we have the fascist head of the Department of Homeland Security (a man appropriately named Chad Wolf) telling noted fascist commentator Tucker Carlson, on national television, about another potential mass arrest plan to round up "the leaders" of "Antifa" and Black Lives Matter the Department of Justice (under noted fundie fascist William Barr, more on him in a minute) is "working on." Just so you don't think I'm f*cking with you, let's grab a screenshot:

Again, please keep in mind that this is the guy currently running the Department of Homeland Security and conducting an objectively fascist paramilitary "policing" war against protesters in Portland and other (primarily Democrat-led) American cities. In other words, when Chad Wolf threatens to do fascism against protesters, there's a fairly recent precedent that suggests you should take him seriously. As you'll see below however, I'm definitely not sure this author, Vanity Fair or the larger American media grasps that concept as of yet. 

After our quoted passage, the article then goes on to offer up some halfhearted, milquetoast push-back on some, but not all, of Wolf's outrageous statements and the conspiracy theories it implicitly supports:

"It’s unclear exactly who the DOJ views as the leaders of nebulous political movements like antifa and Black Lives Matter, as the past few months of nationwide protests sparked by police shootings of Black Americans are largely grassroots, often spontaneous demonstrations organized at local levels."

These are of course fairly logical counter-points to Wolf's argument but to say they leave a lot of important information out would be a bit of a mild understatement. 

What about the fact that Americans have a legal right to protest? What about the fact that a protest movement isn't the f*cking Mafia and trying to use RICO charges to silence antifascists and African Americans exercising their First Amendment rights is in fact, fascist? Should I applaud Ecarma for vaguely hinting at the idea Trump is wrong for suggesting simply protesting his Junta is "terrorism" at the top of the article, or would now maybe be a good time to expect our media to be a little more explicit about why that's textbook fascism? 

The article then goes on to tie-in Tucker Carlson's sympathetic coverage of far right vigilante murderer Kyle Rittenhouse, the growing (and open) GOP conspiracy that protesters are being flown around the country to conduct riots and finally Rand Paul's bizarre claim that protesters who targeted him near the White House after the Republican National Convention are “interstate criminal traffic being paid.” 

What it doesn't do at any point in time however is offer up any sort of righteous indignation, urgency or alarm at the fact that the f*cking head of Homeland Security is openly talking about "working with" the Attorney General on a plan to "round up" protesters like mobsters or terrorists based on the unhinged and objectively false conspiracy theories of the American far-right and their swine emperor, Donald Trump; conspiracy theories happily supported by fascists in US corporate media, might I add. 

This then brings us to our second and perhaps even more terrifying article of evidence that we are indeed roiling in the throes of an all-American fascist creep; let's start with this September 4th, 2020 article from Christina Carrega at CNN:

Barr says streets are 'safer' after killing of an alleged Antifa member

So for starters, just let me say here "holy f*ck" are you folks at CNN kidding me? The fundie fascist Attorney General cuts an objectively unhinged statement justifying the extrajudicial murder of a supposed member of a completely fictional organization, on the Friday before a holiday weekend no less - and the best you mendacious minions can come up with is a 281 word blurb treating Barr's assertions at face value, that somehow doesn't contain a printed copy of the (now repeatedly altered) statement? Let's take a look at that full statement below:

Okay so did the US Attorney General, the de-facto head of the U.S. Department of Justice just describe an extrajudicial execution (without evidence, a trial or any judicial process whatsoever) of someone suspected of a crime as a triumph for justice, while effectively signalling to law enforcement that the government will have their back if they kill anarchists or members of "Antifa?" You betcha; that is exactly what just happened - but don't tell CNN or the rest of mainstream "liberal" media in America, they clearly don't consider it very important that the President just put a hit out on a man (who might have acted in self defense) for political purposes, or that his fixer Attorney General then justified that revenge killing as necessary to maintain public safety. 

Naturally, CNN wasn't the only outlet to accept Barr's blatantly politically motivated arguments in favor of Michael Reinoehl's execution as gospel truth, they're just the ones that did so with the least amount of effort to do anything resembling journalism. There is of course just one problem, well aside from the fact that this isn't how the rule of law works at all; namely that it's increasingly looking like Barr straight up lied about Reinoehl pulling a gun on the fugitive task force that was trying to "apprehend" him by... shooting at him before they even uttered any commands. 

Now look, I might not have a fancy journalism degree from Columbia but I think it's safe to say that when protesting against the government is terrorism, it's worse in the eyes of the state to be antifascist than a violent nazi terrorist, and murderpigs are coordinating with far right extremists to exterminate the left, it's pretty f*cking obtuse to be quibbling about definitions of the word fascism. We're here, even if our media establishment is still too terrified to say it out loud.

So what pray tell has the stalwart opposition in the Democratic Party been up to while all of this is going on? Actually, it's probably for the best that you don't ask.

- 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, 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…”

Article Analysis: Two Examples of False Balance and Protecting Fascism in the Media (Re-Post)

 

Editor's note: as I mentioned in a recent post, Facebook's fascist-enabling decision to ban anarchist and antifascist pages has put me in the awkward position of having to transfer all of my unique content to another website; including older, archived material. These two article analysis journals (both concerning fascist U.S. immigration policy) were originally published in the fall of 2019 and are presented here with only minor formatting alterations.

Cuccinelli Wants Power To Reveal Personal Information Of Refugees Accused Of Crimes

Today's article analysis features an incredible important Buzzfeed news story that is sadly still a prime example of mainstream media framing a discussion in favor of establishment power - even when that establishment is a bunch of rabid white supremacists driving the country towards something quite akin to Mussolini's Italy, if not Nazi Germany itself.

The first half of this article is a mumble jumble of alphabet soup call signs in which Ken Cuccinelli is allowed to frame his plan to "unilaterally publicize personal information about asylees, refugees, and their family members in the US who are being prosecuted for certain crimes" as an issue of "law and order."

Only once you get halfway down the page does Buzzfeed provide an expert opinion by John Sandweg (Obama era former US Immigration and Customs Enforcement head) on what the real motivation is for this brazen and objectively fascist grab at power: 

“This is 100% about the media. This memo is in the guise of a public safety matter, but it’s really to publicize cases where asylum seekers were arrested or prosecuted for a criminal offense,” he said, after being told about the memo. “They are trying to undermine faith in the asylum and refugee system to suggest it is a public safety threat and the data does not support that.”

Look folks, they don't call it "creeping fascism" for no reason and there is a clear historical record of what happens when a society allows itself to constantly accept "just a little bit more fascism" in the name of "peace, order and profit." As I've argued time and time again elsewhere, treating these incidents in isolation while failing to register the bigger picture because it's too horrible is a pretty good way to end up on the back of truck headed for "Happy Patriot Labor Camp 17" in the not so distant future.

This story of course must be examined in the context of Trump's objectively white nationalist government, that government's war on brown migrants and the long and shameful bipartisan U.S. history of locking poor brown people in cages because they crossed an imaginary line to escape war and neofeudalism our society has imposed on them.

Furthermore, this news must also be considered in relation to the Trump administration's already existing policy of allowing ICE to publish a weekly list of "immigrant crimes" to demonize migrants in the eyes of the average American voter. I'm certainly not the only one to note the haunting echoes of Der Stürmer in this policy or Cuccinelli's terrifying grasp at power here (see below) but you'd be hard pressed to find any mention of it in the article Buzzfeed just presented.

I think at this point it would be wise for Americans to remember that Nazi Germany and the horrifying "Final Solution" didn't come about overnight - it took more than a decade of grooming by the reactionary German right in all levels of society to sculpt the kind of nation that would embrace the death camps. Along the way there were thousands of little but horrifying stories, so many that they could not all be remembered, about the creeping rise of antisemitic fascism. What we have learned since then, but seemingly forgotten at the worst hour in our collective history is that fascism doesn't care who it hates, it just needs someone to hate. There will always been another other, another leftist threat, another treachery to the good volk who must be protected for the honor of the fatherland.

If you aren't starting to see enough terrifying parallels here to actively name the beast, then I hate to tell you that you're already well along the path to being a "good German."

- nina illingworth

Trump administration to expand DNA collection at border and give data to FBI

One of the more frustrating aspects about analyzing the fascist creep in "Trump's America" and how it's covered by a largely complicit, but still fully politicized corporate media is learning to walk the line of truth and accountability; to avoid having to choose between absolving a fascist society for the obvious fascist consequences of its open embrace of fascist ideology and absolving a clearly fascist leader and his clearly fascist administration for making things demonstrably worse because "well it's always been like this."

I mention this because in today's article analysis we're looking at a brief October 3rd, 2019 update in the Guardian about the Trump administration's (still theoretical) proposal to "expand the collection of DNA from migrants who cross US borders, and to include the information in a vast criminal database operated by the FBI." 

Now the first thing most people are going to notice about this description is the word "expand" which implies that the U.S. government is currently collecting DNA records on migrants. If you read the whole article however you'll discover that this is at best marginally true; the government currently does rapid DNA testing to detect adults "falsely posing as parents" of migrant children at the border between the United States and Mexico. Although on the surface this discrepancy might seem fairly minor (after all, it is covered in the article) the ultimate effect here is both extremely dangerous for society at large and openly advantageous to architects of the fascist creep slowly strangling the entire "West" as we speak. 

In The Guardian's defense, they are one of the few major outlets that reports on the bipartisan nature of America's nightmare fascist immigration policies but the idea that cataloguing the bio-metric data on millions of migrants and turning it over to the FBI for criminal enforcement purposes has any real relation to a genetic paternity test used to identify potential child trafficking victims at the border crosses the line from "fair minded" and into an objectively "false balance."

In light of the fact that almost all of the undocumented migrants who pass through the southern border are Mexican, Central American and South American, what the Trump administration is proposing here is nothing short of a high-tech version of an ethno-nationalist or Nazi watch list; a necessary precursor to apartheid, mass deportations or open ethnic cleansing. While The Guardian does not make the effort to connect these dots, they do point out that this proposed plan fits in neatly with the Trump administration's attempt to associate migrants with criminal behavior and that such a genetic record would provide identifying information about the families of migrants, regardless of their individual citizenship status. The fact that turning the list over to the FBI happens to help generate the narrative that brown migrants are dangerous criminals is really just icing on the cake however; this DNA list makes the dystopian, police-state possibilities of Bush Administration's objectively racist and Islamophobic "no fly list" look like joke by comparison.

This policy is not an expansion; it's new (DHS secretary Janet Napolitano refused to do it in 2010), terrifying and when combined with the fact that we *already* have concentration camps housing people whose only crime is crossing an imaginary line to escape U.S. sponsored violence, poverty and environmental destruction, this proposal is a rather obvious sign of America's descent into open fascism - a topic the Guardian doesn't even remotely address in this article.

Look, I'll be the first person to tell you that the Democratic Party of the past half-century has been just as brutal, repressive and xenophobic towards brown migrants along the southern American border, as their sh*thead Republican counterparts. We didn't get here overnight. Trump didn't make undocumented migrants a class of people it was okay to violently persecute and lock up for profit. Downmarket Mussolini's administration didn't even build the concentrations camps that Trump's fascist lapdog Stephen Miller is using to create space for the "white ethno-state" of his dreams. Healthy societies don't elect fascists and America has spent a very long time embracing the principles a man like Trump embodies with every monstrous action he undertakes.

But in our quest to recognize that it is important that we still understand that Trump is crashing our society through barriers and taboos that exist for a reason - he might not have battered the gates down, but he's happily steering the nation towards something that looks eerily more like Nazi Germany every single day. 

If you forget that simple truth, you end up writing articles that accidentally leave out the important part of the story and strongly suggest that one of the most terrifying potential policy decisions in the history of U.S. immigration enforcement is merely an "expansion" of policies we already have. 

Articles like this one.

- 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, 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…”