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: It Can't Rain All the Time Eric

 

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

How the Starbucks Worker Organizing Model Can Accelerate Unionization Across the Country

I must confess that, out of necessity it seems, most of the articles I share and analyze here in Nina-Bytes are overwhelmingly infuriating, heartbreaking, or negative in some very obvious and often overwhelming way. Such is the price of trying to decode messages from the propaganda model in a neofeudalist society, on a boiling planet. Given that capitalist life in the Pig Empire is essentially a never ending class war rigged in favor of the owner and investor classes, I'm not really sure what good it would do to try and put a positive spin on the situation anyway.

Today however I'd like to work against type for a moment, and look at this exciting March 28th, 2022 article from labor organizer Shuvu Bhattarai over at Jacobin; because for once, I think the good news here is more useful for the ongoing conduct of labor class liberation. Inside, Bhattarai catalogues the surprising (but welcome) successes of the Starbucks Workers United campaign in the United States; described here as "one of the most invigorating labor campaigns in recent U.S. history." More importantly however, our author breaks down the SB Workers United method of unionization in great detail, while demonstrating why this thus far overwhelmingly successful model can easily be extrapolated to organizing in any other corporate chain environment.

All of this is, quite frankly, exciting news for the labor class here in the Pig Empire. For far too long, the public image of organized labor has existed as an overwhelmingly white, producerist caricature of what the actual labor class in America looks like. If the labor class in America is going to organize in the workplace, that workplace is going to be defined by the jobs we actually have; and that means we're talking about organizing against corporations like McDonald's, Amazon, and yes, Starbucks. These newly unionized Starbucks workers are the very face of what an American labor movement that actually wants to change anything is going to be, by necessity as Bhattarai notes:

"There are practical reasons why workers must be the ones driving and leading the unionization drive. For one, they are the ones who best understand and feel the numerous ways they are exploited by their management and thus are best able to develop tactics to use their shared conditions as a point of unity. Second, the common driving factor for workers seeking unionization is a lack of agency, which manifests itself in numerous forms: management abuse, poor pay, and unstable schedules. By creating a space where the workers are able to exert control over their workplace, through leadership of their unionization campaign, a space of empowerment is created that can bring forward the best from every worker. To create a force of highly motivated worker-organizers, worker control over strategy is an absolute precondition."

 

Of course, the old Wobbly in me questions whether union organizing under the auspices of capitalist predation, also know as "the workplace," can ever be an effective way to liberate workers and destroy capitalism itself. Given however the simultaneous need to both organize the labor class, and protect labor from the tender mercies of extractivist capital and the supervillains who make it go; this sure does look like a great starting point to me. In that light, I'm happy to offer up three cheers for the Barista revolution and all their successes. In a class war that never ends, the only hope for the exploited remains refusing to allow our exploiters to define what labor is, and who has a right to a union. The Starbucks Workers United campaign drive, and the instructions provided in this article, can be a light in a purposely-darkened path forward; if we remember that all workers are labor, not just the guys in hardhats. 

Update: literally a couple hours after I published this, Amazon workers in Staten Island formed their own, completely new union; becoming the first group in America to do so successfully. Today has indeed, been a good day.

 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: Shell Game

 

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

 

The Only Winning Climate Policy Is a Pro-Worker Climate Policy

Well my friends, it certainly looks like its all over but the crying for Biden's milquetoast climate agenda; and perhaps the human species at large. As I, and many others predicted, the fossil fuel industry, anarcho-capitalist billionaires, and their in-pocket Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema appear to have torpedoed the Clean Electricity Performance Program, or CEPP, that is the centerpiece of Joe Biden's still-woefully inadequate climate action policies. Baring some kind of last minute miracle, liberal incrementalism (if you can even really call Biden a liberal) has once again screwed the pooch on behalf of their wealthy donors. 

Predictably, most of the public ire has fallen on Senators Manchin and Sinema; and why not? They are after all the most visible face of the plot to kill the world for capitalists at this point; although I'd wager such an analysis is letting billionaire supervillains, corporate America, and the mainstream media off lightly. Unfortunately however, as this November 4th, 2021 article by Matt Huber in Jacobin points out, even this analysis allows important culprits to ultimately escape responsibility; specifically President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party he presides over.

As our author details, both the CEPP and Biden's environmental agenda were always technocratic solutions dependent on enticing the free market to "go green" on its own. Biden explicitly rejected the Green New Deal, failed to tie his environmental policies to material improvements for the labor class, and surrendered control of the process to insiders, wonks and corporate stooges. Furthermore, despite rhetoric indicating that Palooka Joe regards climate crisis as the most important issue of our time, the President has failed to use the executive powers granted by his office to do more to mitigate climate catastrophe. All of which reflects poorly on Biden's visit to COP26, as the article notes:

"Which brings us to this week’s underwhelming round of COP negotiations. Joe Biden’s speech featured lofty rhetoric asserting that this is the “decisive decade” for climate action. Yet he’s also come to the meetings without any credible plan to rapidly decarbonize the world’s leading historic emitter.

It’s very easy to blame the downfall of Biden’s climate agenda on Joe Manchin. But while GND advocates spent much of 2018–20 demanding a transformative approach to climate policy, 2021 has been more of the same. When it comes to climate politics, Biden and elite Democrats seem to be saying, “We’ve tried nothing, and we’re all out of ideas.”

Frankly, you don't need me to tell you the Democratic Party is broken; the fact that they're getting rolled by fascists and can't even pass a budget despite controlling the House and Senate kind of makes that clear already. We have however been here before, and when dark history repeats itself despite the names and faces changing, that's a clear indication the problem is systemic. This in no way absolves Manchin and Sinema, who deserve every bit of animosity they receive, but there is a larger lesson here. Capitalist neoliberal technocrats are not going to save us from climate catastrophe, no matter what lofty rhetoric to the contrary they deploy at fancy international conferences.

Look, this isn't doomerism. We are still capable of preventing a climate apocalypse, if we just surrender capitalism. The time for dithering away at climate summits however, is growing short. Our choices at this point are pretty simple; we get left, or we get boiled. And as long as those decisions remain in the hands of men like Joe Biden, you can bet it's not going to be the former.

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 “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…”

Nina-Bytes: Ahead of the Curve

 

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

 

Personally, I have never quite mastered the important internet art of relentless self promotion. In fact, that might be why this blog generally tops out of a few hundred readers. If there is one thing I've learned in my time publishing analysis online however, it's that sometimes you have to toot your own horn a little; if only because nobody is going to do it for ya. So today we're going to try something a little different; I'm counting coup with some help from bigger voices in the progressive media sphere online. 

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article arguing that most mainstream media coverage of the reconciliation bill fight in the US Senate amounted to complicit codswallop and "corporate-sponsored fan fiction for lanyards." In that article I noted that anarcho-capitalist billionaires and corporate America had poured millions into stopping the Build Back Better Act at all costs. This including buying off Democrat Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema; whose support is necessary to pass the bill. Finally I observed that corporate media was engaging in active propaganda on behalf of their rich owners by pretending this was any sort of good faith political dispute. The whole mystery was a stalling tactic, and as of now it appears to be working.

Well, it turns out that I'm not the only person who noticed:

 

TV Reports on Manchin and Sinema Leave Out Their Financial Conflicts 

In this October 22nd report by Spencer Snyder over at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, we find documented evidence that the willful blindness I observed in print media carries over to cable news coverage. In a review of twenty-one news programs covering the reconciliation bill fight (including programs from major players in corporate cable news), the author identified a total of forty-five seconds spent discussing conflict of interest issues; also know as corruption. Indeed, ABC's "Good Morning America" actually had former Senator Heidi Heitkamp on to admonish folks for questioning Manchin and Sinema's motives in stopping the bill. 

The article also goes on to detail Manchema's flagrant conflicts of interest; including donor money, Machin's one-step-removed coal empire, and Sinema's obviously corrupt relationship with a lobbying group in cahoots with Big Pharma. Finally, Snyder hammers away at cable media for spinning a narrative that ultimately sides with corporate power and the two corrupt Senators, while blaming the left for refusing to surrender. This is all great stuff, but given that I already wrote all of these same things, you probably could have guessed I'd feel that way.

 

Joe Biden Is Poised to Gut His Own Political Agenda; and the Democrats’ Electoral Prospects

In this October 21st article by Luke Savage in Jacobin, the author looks at the same corruption and coverage I did, and comes to the same conclusion; the fix is in and the media is in on it. In fairness to Savage, he then uses this discussion to point out that the Democratic Party (and Joe Biden; who was tepidly supporting the progressive position when I published) is also complicit in letting corporate lobbyists and two Senators hijack the negotiations. From the article:

"In exposing the deep dysfunction of America’s political institutions, the reconciliation battle has also, yet again, laid bare the structuring contradiction of the Democratic Party as a vehicle for real reform. Having begun the process by proposing trillions in big programs and new spending, the party’s subsequent negotiation with itself looks set to yield something both ideologically feeble and electorally counterproductive.

Among other things, that’s because the Democratic coalition is less a coherent ideological formation than it is a Frankenstein hodgepodge of progressives, public interest groups, liberally minded voters and corporate lobbies — with the latter, by virtue of its influence in DC, bottomless reserve of campaign cash, and de facto purchase of many elected representatives almost invariably carrying the day."

 

Now, I want to be clear; I'm absolutely not accusing either of this guys of plagiarism. What I'm suggesting you to do is look at the dates all three of these pieces were published, and then ask yourself one simple question. Why wouldn't someone who wanted to be informed on the cutting edge of left wing political analysis, subscribe to ninaillingworth.com, this blog, and all the social media services listed in my signature at the bottom of this post? 

Exactly, such a decision would be inexplicable; which is why you should sign up if you haven't already my friends.

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 “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…”

Nina-Bytes: Rigged Games, Supervillains, and Neofeudalism

 

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

 

U.S. Billionaires Got 70% More Wealth Under COVID. They Didn’t Deserve Any of It.

A little over a week ago, I published a blog that briefly touched on the historically unprecedented levels of financial inequity in our society. In that post I theorized that this phenomenon was both a contributor to, and side effect from, our society's ongoing transition to a state of capitalism I, and others, have been calling neofeudalism. In this Jacobin article by Luke Savage, we get a glimpse of what that actually looks like in the context of an ongoing class war during a pandemic; and it's predictably infuriating. 

Using data from an Institute for Policy Studies report, Savage reports that the combined wealth of America's billionaires has risen by seventy percent during the pandemic. This includes the minting of a hundred and thirty one new billionaires; creating a situation where just under seven hundred and fifty people "now own almost 70 percent more wealth than half the country combined." Although Savage doesn't mention it, the report also notes that this comes during a pandemic when eighty-nine million people in the U.S. have lost their jobs. "We're all in this together" my shiny pink ass.

 

Although the numbers are staggering, it's tempting to write them off as pandemic profiteering. As Savage notes however, the real driving force behind this intense concentration of wealth during the pandemic is keystroke hot money injected into financial markets by central bankers. In other words; this is plutocratic disaster capitalism on steroids. As nearly everyone on the left predicted, the pandemic relief strategy of just giving rich people a bunch of money to buoy the stock markets, worked out well for rich people and not so much for the rest of us.

 

This pandemic windfall is of course on the heels of, and in addition to, the unprecedented transfer of wealth granted to America's rich by Donald Trump's barely-remembered tax cuts. Furthermore, all of this wealth concentration must be understood in the context of a lobbying fight against even moderate tax increases, that these same rich people are waging against Joe Biden's Build Back Better Act as we speak. Clearly, it's always a good time to be rich in America; which brings me to my larger point.

 

Unfortunately, explaining precisely how I think neofeudalist capitalism works is beyond the scope of this blog. I can however easily tell you what it looks like. And what it looks like is a society rigged so that no matter what happens, good or bad, the billionaires always win. It looks like a society where the political solution to every crisis, or even the absence of a crisis, is to give billionaires more public money. Most importantly, it looks like a society prepared to herd eight billion people off the ecological cliff so knock off supervillains like Jeff Bezos and Charles Koch can pocket unheard-of wealth for just a little while longer. 

 

I have seen the enemy, and he is Musk.

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 “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: Portland, Aurn Gupta and How to Write About Fascism

Editor's note: as I mentioned in yesterday's post, a recent throttling of my Facebook account has forced me to re-post some informal media analysis op-eds I published on that site; just to ensure that someone actually gets to read them. For those of you looking for something fresh off the grill, head on over to my main website and check out my latest op-ed "Why I Support Impeachment but Fear Incompetent Democrat Hubris."

Today's piece originally appeared online during the evening of September 23, 2019. All analysis by Nina Illingworth unless otherwise indicated.

Getting Andy Ngo and His Fascist Friends Off Our Streets

Continuing with the theme of sharing and analyzing articles I actually *like* for once, today I'd like to examine and offer some well deserved praise for this longer piece about fighting fascism by Arun Gupta over at Jacobin magazine.

First and foremost I'd like to note that with a few minor exceptions I'll talk about a little later, this essay is a picture perfect model of how to proactively write about opposing modern Americanized fascism without ending up on an FBI watch-list. 

In his analysis, Gupta wastes precisely zero ounces of energy on an objectively false "both sides" narrative and you won't find any homages to "dapper white nationalists" in this essay. The author refuses to either normalize or glamorize far right thugs disguised as free speech activists and while that's pretty easy when you're blogging from your living room, it's actually quite the accomplishment when you're directly quoting the violent fascists themselves. 

Despite including plenty of direct and unaltered quotations from various violent fascist agitators in Portland, Gupta never once allows the neo-nazis to claim hold of a "false balance" by presenting the reactionary right's arguments without context as is so terrifyingly common in mainstream corporate media. 

This is accomplished by counterbalancing each claim and accusation made by the fascists, with numerous mainstream media accounts of the violence they've undertaken during thinly-disguised exercises of reactionary right-wing terrorism and intimidation. In particular, Gupta's use of this "accusation" then "revelation" technique is absurdly effective when employed against fascist provocateur and fake journalist Andy Ngo's selectively edited videos of "antifa terrorist violence" - by posting the larger contextual counter-evidence that reveals the violence was actually initiated by far right reactionary "protestors", Gupta essentially exposes and de-fangs Ngo's entire narrative as highly-lucrative fascist agitprop; which it is! 

Furthermore, this finely-sourced piece represents a literal wealth of knowledge about not only the neo-fascist "free speech" rallies in Portland, but the contours of the battle against rising, street-level fascism in America as a whole. In one single essay Gupta exposes the modern "MAGA free speech" movement as a ruthless roving neo-nazi street gang looking to cow political opposition with violence, puts flame to the lie that Andy Ngo is a journalist, excoriates corporate media for lending credibility to fascist provocateurs, exposes the direct connection between right wing street gangs and the Trump administration, and shatters the argument that anti-fascist activists are "the *real* terrorists" - all thoroughly supported by a variety of links referencing the full spectrum of primarily mainstream media websites.

It is however in the final third of the article under the heading "Stemming the Tide" in which Gupta both rises to his highest moment and yet tragically still stumbles in that unfortunate way most liberal or liberal-adjacent media figures are so incentivized to do.

First the author rises to the challenge by taking a sledgehammer to the infantile argument that "if no opposition were to show up when the far right marches, then there would be no violence, hence no story for the media, which would in turn deprive the far right of the visuals they need to recruit. They would thus flounder and dissipate." 

As Gupta rightfully notes however these "far-right rallies are neither discrete nor static events. Like Trumpism, they are part of a dynamic of extremism, benefiting both from polarization and the disruption of norms." Naturally the purpose of these rallies is to draw attention to, fortify and recruit for a white nationalist, anti-migrant, anti-left wing neo-fascist movement that is already killing people all over the country - simply allowing that to happen unmolested represents a crime of negligence against society as a whole, no matter what the law books say.

In what is undoubtedly the author's finest moment in the essay, Gupta once and for all shatters the idea that simply ignoring the violent nazis and hoping they'll go away is an effective strategy by pointing out that the fascist street-gangs have already gone on the offensive against even milquetoast liberal organizing:

"Patriot Prayer, Proud Boys, and their allies shifted strategy in 2018, says O’Banion. “They began showing up in small, well-armed groups at places like the IWW [Wobblies] Hall. They threatened the Occupy ICE encampment last summer. They went to Planned Parenthood in Olympia and harassed people. They harassed people at an immigrant solidarity event shortly before August 17.” Patriot Prayer has also tried to disrupt a general meeting of the Portland DSA, the Women’s March in 2018, and LGBT Pride, and they threatened a climate change event at a local college, which was canceled by the administration. And they attacked the Cider Riot bar on May Day.

In effect, the far right is using the big rallies to recruit, stoke more violence, and disrupt peaceful left, labor, and liberal organizing."

The above quoted paragraph is in and itself quite amazing because while I know every single person reading this analysis has heard about the "horrifying attacks on Andy Ngo" there's a pretty good chance you've heard nothing at all from the national media about any of the above *right* wing attacks on regular people organizing for political purposes the far right deems unacceptable. Why do you think that is? 

All of which brings us to unfortunate ebb where I think Gupta's work falls short as he ends the article by talking about harnessing the anti-fascist energy of a soccer game "in the streets." This continues an unfortunately sour note of ivory tower liberalism that runs throughout the entire piece. While noting that direct and sometimes violent action has been the only method even the fascists acknowledge has hampered their efforts to organize, Gupta riddles this piece with observations like:

"There was no justification for the attack, if no other reason than that Ngo was cast as the victim in a story that became national news and was exploited by Trump in trying to label Antifa terrorists."

"Some antifascists were eager to rumble, as well. But others jumped in to defuse the violence every time. No doubt dumb acts are committed in the name of antifascism. But that’s true of any movement, and dumb is not deadly."

 "The mainstream media are failing as well, by starving reporters of the time and resources needed to expose the unsavory characters and ideas lurking on the far right."

Most of this is ultimately the same type of liberal "both sides" nonsense that Gupta himself decries in the early portion of his own article. 

For starters the widely-publicized justification for the assault on Andy Ngo is that he publicly broadcast the names and addresses of anti-fascist protestors arrested at a previous rally, apparently with the help of a sympathetic police officer. This action put lives in danger and whether or not you agree that this justification is sufficient to give Andy Ngo a decidedly non-lethal shiner for his trouble, it is not non-existent. If Gupta was unaware of these facts, he's failed his readers and he's helped Andy Ngo hide the fascist violence behind his actions - actions that then lead to the assault; please keep in mind that nobody punched Andy in the face during the numerous *previous* rallies he attended and filmed, after all.

Additionally, it's pretty ridiculous for Gupta to blather on about soccer games attended primarily by affluent white liberals and scold, however mildly, "some antifacists" for being "eager to rumble" in an article where he points out that the key to stopping fascist organization is anti-fascist counter protesting. Why exactly does Gupta think the right is trying to target smaller groups and avoid massive hordes of antifascists? It's because they'll get their butt whupped by those hordes, in a very physical sense, obviously.

Of course as Gutpa reveals in the third quote above, all of this is further colored by his largely liberal (and disastrously incorrect) opinion that the answer is "more journalism" - uttered with an apparently straight face, as if the mainstream corporate media wasn't actively prepared to side with fascists over left wing protestors for both economic and class warfare reasons.

At this point I might be inclined to say something snarky about entrusting a labor class left wing revolution to self-aggrandizing trust fund babies who own a magazine but I'll save it for another day. Despite its few (and deeply annoying) flaws, this is an excellent article and if the mainstream media put half as much effort into covering these stories properly as Gupta and Jacobin have done here, the fascist menace that looms over the 2020 election might already be receding. 

Alas as many reading this already know - most liberals in the media, deep in their heart of hearts would prefer fascism to sharing with poor people and the marginalized."

- Nina Illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus.

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.