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.
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.
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:
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.
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 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.
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.
Well my friends, it's good to know that during my recent illness-related absence, I really didn't miss anything important in the ongoing Pork Reich putsch storyline. You know what's coming next, right? I promised myself I wouldn't do this twice in one week, but I feel like events have forced my hand here. In the immediate aftermath of the coordinated fascist coup attempt in the U.S. on January 6th, 2021, I published an essay explicitly laying out the key details of what just happened. From that essay:
Pitt's report (which isn't paywalled) draws from two recent blockbuster stories in the mainstream media; one at The Washington Post, and the other in Rolling Stone. The first story reveals that a key team of Trump advisors, lawyers, and other conservative minions rented a space in the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. to use as a "war room" in ongoing efforts to overturn the 2020 U.S. election. Why did someone rent a "war room" if this was a political protest that spontaneously got out of hand? You'll have to ask Republicans; who are clearly lying because they're guilty of trying to run a coup to keep Trump in power.
The second report is even more explosive and damning; it's not every day you hear that a sitting Congressman offered Trump supporters blanket pardons in the event of a successful fascist coup after all. On October 24th, Rolling Stone reported that two January 6th (coup) organizers have described "participating in “dozens” of planning briefings" ahead of the coup attempt, with multiple Republican members of Congress and Trump White House staffers. As Pitt notes for Truthout:
"The report describes two January 6 protest insiders who claim they worked “back to back to back” with several Republican House members — Representatives Paul Gosar, Lauren Boebert, Mo Brooks, Madison Cawthorn, Andy Biggs, Louie Gohmert and Marjorie Taylor Greene — and their senior staffers, who they allege were “intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent.”
Now this list of names is interesting for two reasons. First, it looks awfully similar to the list of people I (and others) insisted Biden's Department of Justice should immediately arrest back in March of this year. Furthermore, the list includes the name of Lauren Boebert; who actively live-tweeted out the location of the Speaker of the House during the coup attempt. Clearly, the Congresswoman from QAnon was quite busy in the post election period.
Jokes aside, I didn't post this blog just for sweet "I told you so" action. This is serious, and the coup is clearly not over. As a rule, reactionary putsch attempts have to be stopped, and fascists have to be confronted. You don’t beat these people by giggling nervously and ignoring them; that’s how they beat you. Refusing to go after billionaire fascists and their in-pocket politicians after a coup attempt isn’t just cowardly, it’s suicidal.
Well, if this lengthy write up by Natasha Leonard over on the Intercept isn't enough to make your blood boil, I don't know what it would take to do so. You should read the whole story, but to summarize; a Florida judge just sentenced an anti-fascist to almost four years in federal prison for tweets calling for "armed defense against possible far-right attacks on the state’s Capitol." As Leonard points out, this is obscenely bonkers for several reasons.
First, in the wake of the January 6th Capitol Hill coup attempt, and a widely-publicized FBI warning about possible armed protests by right wing extremists at state capitols, the man (Daniel Baker) had every reason to believe such an attack might happen. Additionally, Baker didn't threaten anyone individually, and took no significant action on the tweet. Finally, the pre-trial and post sentencing total of forty-four months is far longer than most of the fascists who actually tried to overturn an election on January 6th will receive. Yes, you read that correctly; the guy got more time for tweets than armed fascists are getting for trying to hunt down and execute a Vice President.
This story exists at the nexus of so many aspects of the American fascism problem that it's hard to know where to start unpacking them. We're talking about a judiciary and a Justice Department riddled with reactionaries, authoritarians, and fascists; and I don't just mean the ones Trump appointed either. Throw in litigators and fascist-friendly police eager to buttress corporate media claims of a (false) moral equivalency between fascist violence, and those who oppose it. Then you top it all off with a liberal political establishment more than happy to purge the left to appease fascists in right wing politics. Please keep in mind, this is Palooka Joe's DoJ now; Merrick Garland works for him, not Trump.
Look kids, there's a reason I'm constantly telling you to watch what you say on social media, and this is that reason. The machine doesn't need anti-terrorism laws to send leftists to jail for speech in opposition to fascism; they're doing just fine already. It's not an accident when Democrats talk about unity with fascists. Biden doesn't keep blathering on about "anarchists" because he's confused. Liberal antifascism doesn't extend any further than "Orange Man bad," and if they can knife the left to get the GOP to go back to a neoconservative normal, so much the better; it solves two problems for bougie centrists at the same time.
Editor's note: Film Sessions is a weekly feature here on Media Madness in which I share, analyze and expand on a relevant video created by someone on the left wing of YouTube. Please note: this essay contains numerous citation links that are not included in the "Additional Resources" section below (because there are a f*ck lot of them) - you can click, or not click on the hyperlinks, but don't b*tch to me about "sources" because they're in there.
Hello friends; it's certainly been a hot half-minute since we talked, hasn't it? As I mentioned in a recent Facebook Update; I've spent the better part of the past couple weeks sick in bed, battling some complications in my life as a dissident, and morosely ruminating on how to fight the spread of reactionary thought in communities native to the extremely online "left." In between fever-induced bouts of rage posting on social media, I've also spent a lot of time thinking about the last essay-length journal I published before life forced me to take a couple of weeks off: "Unity with Fascists Undermines Liberal Antifascism" over on my (always) free Patreon blog. I don't want to re-hash the entire piece in this space, but I think the essential gist of it can be summed up with the following quotes:
"There is a deep, culturally ingrained, and institutionally reinforced lack of accountability, and craving for normalcy (for capital accumulation, but I digress) at work here among our ruling classes that fundamentally makes them incapable of fighting fascism, even if they wanted to. This perspective is so entrenched, it even makes just acknowledging that the Republican Party as a collective entity, has adopted fascist political techniques and theories wholeheartedly at this point, impossible."
"I could obviously keep going, but I think the picture should be clear to you by now; all the rich fascists behind not only the coup attempt on January 6th, but also the entire fascist movement that propelled Trump to the White House, are going to walk away from this free and clear, without suffering any consequences. Hell, except for some very dumb people who made the FBI's job too easy for ignorant pigs to screw up by posting evidence of their crimes all over social media, even the street chud rioters will mostly escape punishment for this."
"The liberal establishment has made a choice to make Trump (who is again, clearly guilty of inciting an insurrection attempt, among other crimes) a singular scapegoat for the larger fascist thread in our society; a thread that ultimately made the Trump presidency possible in the first place. They've made that choice not only because they lack the courage, conviction, and desire to engage in proper antifascism, but also because they really do want to get this over with and go back to f*cking over poor people over six martini lunches with their sh*theel fascist friends "across the aisle" and I'm sorry, as much as nobody who owns a West Wing boxed set wants to hear this, people can smell the bullsh*t in that position.
You can say "this is not normal" and "we must protect our democracy" until you're blue in the face; the fact that rich liberals are eager to go back to bipartisan power sharing with rich nazis who just organized a coup attempt, lends an air of unreality and make believe to the entire proceedings that is only broken when someone like AOC shouts out "hello, they tried to have us murdered" and no amount of babbling on CNN is gonna change that. Either it's fascism, or it's not. Either it's an existential threat to our democracy, or it's not. And when the entire sum total of the liberal establishment’s response to a full f*cking Seven Days in May fascist coup attempt (with attempted political assassinations, widespread institutional support, and even clearly some backing from the Pentagon,) is to expel Donald f*cking Trump from the magic kingdom without dessert, and then go back to brunch? The message you're clearly sending is that it's not fascism, and it's not serious.
And mark my words, that is a mistake that will come back to haunt us all."
Given that I've literally just spent the past two and a half weeks either lying sick in bed, or trying to figure out which of the many fascists who hate my roommate are gang stalking my house, I feel a little bit behind the eight ball here in terms of content production. Under normal circumstances, it's entirely possible I'd save this wonderful video by The Serfs for a separate post. I am however including it here for two reasons:
As for the vague title of the presentation, I believe this is a result of YouTube having flagged the Serf's previous video about this subject as somehow actively peddling the conspiracies and lies featured in these compiled clips; which would be pretty absurd in its own right, but approaches the Kafkaesque when you realize that YouTube continues to leave the very same batsh*t right wing videos these clips were taken from on their site! While this is certainly a farcical example of the Orwellian way Big Tech companies are ultimately feeding the fascist creep, I'm also inclined to suggest that you will find no more obvious example of the social, and economic inertia impeding any efforts to purge fascism from the American establishment, than the story behind the making of this video; which sort of brings us back around to the essay I quoted at the beginning of this article - albeit, in the most round about way possible.
As always you can check out this video by The Serfs on YouTube by clicking the header below, or just watch in the embedded window:
