Nina-Bytes: Give the Devil Her Due

 

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

 

Explosive Report Says GOP Congress Members Helped Plan Jan. 6 Capitol Attack

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:

"This was a planned insurrection, attended by (ex) members of the military and American law enforcement, aided by Capitol Hill Police and the Department of Defense, funded by rich fascists, inspired by right wing media, as well as an openly fascist Republican Party and the goddamn president of the United States; this wasn’t harmless, people literally died and members of Trump’s fascist mob clearly had designs on committing politicized acts of violence against their perceived enemies."

As confirmed by every new piece of evidence revealed since, I was right. This was a planned coup attempt and the plotters do indeed reach into the highest levels of the Republican Party and the private sector. Of course its easy to say in hindsight that this was obvious, but frankly that wasn't a popular opinion in either the mainstream media or the online circles I was writing in at the time. Now, this October 25th article by William Rivers Pitt over on Truthout, really just puts the icing on the cake.

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. 

Of course none of this is particularly shocking, but it does all add up to a conclusion so obvious even the American political class can't ignore it; January 6th was a premeditated attack on the U.S. capitol to overturn the results of the election. In other words, it was a coup attempt; and since it was conducted by fascists, it was a fascist coup attempt. Will the fact that everyone knows that now change one single thing about how this plays out? Maybe, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for justice if I were you.

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.

Lock 'em up Merrick, or god help us all come 2024.

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…”

Great Moments in Media Muppetry: A Whole Jamil of Beans

 

Editor's note: so as I mentioned the other day, I'm bringing "back" a blogging-style variation on a popular feature I used to write over on ninaillingworth.com called The Wall of Shame. The twist is that rather than take-down pieces and tweet collections I'm randomly preserving evidence of media muppet headassery, one online clusterf*ck at a time. Is that petty as f*ck? You betcha, Sparky.

Typically these will just be quick blog posts with screenshots but let's just say today's subject inspired me to get a little involved and ended in this short, heavily sourced essay. I'm not saying you *have* to click on the links in this article to enjoy this piece, but today's serving of beef will certainly be more delicious if you do. 

Let's get down to business, shall we? 

A Whole Jamil of Beans

With the realization that Downmarket Mussolini's half-assed "chicken coup" has finally ground to an unofficial halt, the online discourse is turning towards discussions about Joe Biden's cabinet nominees or potential nominees and it's going just about as well as you'd expect - it's a travshamockery. 

While articulating the full contours of that debate would be beyond the scope of this piece, the basic gist of the controversy is that after relying on the so-called progressive wing of the Democratic Party to carry his decaying mummy carcass over the line against Donald Trump in the 2020 election, Joe Biden is currently shutting out qualified progressive candidates to stack his cabinet with corpse merchant lobbyists, investment bankers, and free market fundamentalists; a series of decisions that are highly unlikely to be popular with voters in general. Naturally, while progressives and the larger American left are by no means surprised at this development, they're certainly not pleased with Biden's completely predictable betrayal and many influential voices are speaking out against Palooka Joe's new pack of minions.

In response, someone has clearly given the Neoliberal Discourse Defense TeamTM marching orders to defend Biden's picks at all costs; with results that run the full gamut between farcical and Orwellian. Of course, all of that might sound like a conspiracy theory, but thanks to Clinton campaign emails published by Wikileaks and David Brock's big fat mouth, we already have a pretty good idea that this sort of thing goes on all the time. Now obviously I don't have the time to fish out dumb tweets from every blue-checkmarked lackey working in the Dem-Booster Bullsh*t Factory, but even just a cursory examination of headlines in the mainstream and faux-progressive media is fairly instructional here:

Joe Biden’s Cabinet Picks Send a Clear Message: The Adults Are Back in Charge
Here Come the Adults: Biden’s Cabinet is shaping up to be everything that Trump’s was not
Biden’s Cabinet is ‘delightfully boring.’ Can reality-TV-addled America deal with it?
Biden's dull-by-design plan
Kelly Evans: Boring Is (Hopefully) Beautiful
Analysis: Biden prioritizes experience with Cabinet picks
'A cabinet that looks like America': Harris hails Biden's diverse picks
Joe Biden nominates first woman to lead intelligence and first Latino to head homeland security
Republicans Are Really Trying to Argue That Biden's Cabinet Picks Are Corrupt
Biden keeps the peace with first Cabinet picks
Biden Cabinet picks largely unify Democrats — so far
Progressives Can’t Find Anyone in Biden's Cabinet to Be Mad About—Yet

Progressives Cheer Joe Biden's First Round of Cabinet Picks: 'A Great First Step'

Whew, that is certainly quite a lot of bullsh*t; I'm particularly impressed at the bold declarations that progressives have no issues with Biden's cabinet in light of the numerous linked examples I featured above, showing prominent progressives being actively pissed off by those picks. This is all very interesting and you could reasonably infer quite a lot about how power networks manipulate political propaganda in the American discourse just from clicking most of the links above; but ultimately the Biden Cabinet fight between neoliberals and progressives is only the backdrop in our story - the tableau on which our tale of flak goblin dipsh*tery plays out if you will.

That's because, as it turns out there is one potential Biden cabinet nominee too odious for even some portions of the braying Biden booster bunch - bawh gawd, is that Rahm Emanuel's music?!

Yes my friends, the conniving sh*t-weasel, clown prince mandarin of the neoliberal project, Rahm Emanuel himself is reported up for some sort of position in Biden's Cabinet; presumably as a reward for eating enough kittens to secure Palooka's Joes backroom support within the Party - although at this point it's fair to say, the quest to reanimate his zombie career is not going entirely swimmingly. 

And as you can see from the screenshot above, this time it isn't just progressives up in arms; Rolling Stone senior writer Jamil Smith was among the many mainstream liberals outraged by the mere idea that Rahm might be returning to national office. And quite frankly, Smith is right; Emanuel is a scumbag lying monster who helped cover up the execution-style murder of a 17 year old African American teen named Laquan McDonald by the notoriously racist and abusive CPD aka, the Chicago Police Department. While that certainly isn't the only part of Rahms resume that should automatically disqualify him from office, it's arguably the most repugnant note in a long career full of such; and yes, as Jamil notes, including Emanuel in the cabinet would be profoundly insulting for African American voters who overwhelmingly turned out for Palooka Joe in the 2020 presidential election.  

So, what's the problem? Well, as I get older, my memory isn't always what it used to be, but for some reason I recall Jamal singing a different tune the last time a portion of the base got shafted by the elite liberal establishment - sometime back in March, or so; right after the centrist power brokers and an immensely popular former President knifed Bernie Sanders, his 2020 primary campaign, and the democratic socialist movement? 

Whoops - I betcha didn't count on becoming a walking "sowing/reaping" meme when you typed that one up huh? Smooth move ya f*cking brain genius; would you like a side order of boot to lick with that schadenfreude Jamil? But hey don't blame yourself my good man. I mean who could possibly have predicted that spuriously accusing the only truly anti-racist candidate in the 2020 Democratic Primary of taking Black voters for granted, as opposed to the guy who romanticized segregationists, helped write the racist 1994 Crime Bill and still believes cracker bullsh*t about the deficiencies of African American parenting, would at some point backfire? What kind of staggering powers of deduction would it have taken to realize that a former anti-bussing advocate who is known for peddling stories about a razor-wielding gangsta named Corn Pop and repeatedly lying about his own participation in the Civil Rights movement, might cynically discard Black voters immediately after getting elected? However could anyone in political media at all have conceivably foreseen this kind of f*ckery in advance? I mean you'd probably have to be like a senior writer who throughout his career has "explored the intersection of politics and identity" or something to figure all that sh*t out - oh, wait.

Now look, I'm not about to go off on some kind of reactionary skred about the evils of "identity politics" here, but this tweet is a prime example of high-profile Democrats and their media minions weaponizing issues of race, identity and marginalization to punch left, delegitimize anti-establishment political leaders and attack voters whose only crime is believing life would be better if there were no billionaires and we all shared our resources a little more. Furthermore, this type of divisive f*ckery is nothing new for Smith, who has clearly spent the past several years actively weaponizing issues of identity against the so-called progressive wing of the Democratic Party. and in particular, Bernie Sanders. Please keep in mind that we're talking about a guy who went from demanding Joe Biden drop out after the third debate because he's a hopelessly out of touch cracker, (while Smith himself was rather clearly in the tank for Kamala Harris, might I add) to essentially describing Palooka Joe's low-key racist declaration that "if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black” as a teachable moment; for a then 77 year old career politician, who also happens to be a U.S. Senator, and former Vice President. I don't want to call Jamil a double-talking, puppet assclown here, but let's just say the last time I saw principles that flexible, the situation involved a shady subprime mortgage.   

Or f*ck it, maybe that's just too kind and I really do want to call Smith a goddamn minion. After all, this asinine little sh*t-puppet knew full damn well when he typed that tweet that Sanders wasn't calling African American voters in South Carolina the "corporate establishment." As he made very clear at the time, Bernie was obviously talking about a months, if not years, long corporate media "fear and smear" campaign, publicly exposed clandestine "Stop Bernie" meetings among Democratic Party luminaries and yes, the Barack Obama-lead centrist "Voltron" strategy that saw almost (thanks Liz!) every other mainstream candidate drop out and endorse Biden with Sanders on the cusp of otherwise winning the nomination contest. This is simply not an honest mistake on Jamil's part because you'd have to have been living under a rock to accidentally take Sanders out of context in this extremely precise and dishonest way - clearly as a professional journalist covering the Democratic Party nomination contest for Rolling Stone, the author knew full well what Bernie was talking about; it is after all, his job. In other words, Smith's criticism was disingenuous media muppetry at its finest; which might go a long way towards explaining why Jamil is now a senior writer at Rolling Stone instead of roundtable chair-meat at MTV News; after all, we already have documented evidence that he's a real team player. 

So, will a vampire scumbag like Rahm Emanuel end up in Biden's government in the final reckoning? I have no idea! But one thing I can tell you is that Jamil's (rightfully) angry tweets won't factor into the decision at all; because even a decaying rapist mummy like Biden knows that the grumblings of an in-pocket, lacky propagandist, just don't amount to a whole Jamil of beans.

Welcome to Great Moments in Media Muppetry, agent Smith - you've certainly earned the honor.

• 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…”

Article Analysis: What the Liberal Media Misses about the Threat Behind the Gaetz Gaggle Stunt

Editor's note: this article originally appeared on the morning of October 25th, 2019 on my Facebook page - if you're looking for sources, check out the comments section of the original article. For my latest piece "Polls, Joe Biden's Big Lead and other Elite Liberal Establishment Lies" please click here.

House Republicans Ratf–k Impeachment Hearing in Reckless Bid to Please Trump

My how quickly the worm turns; it was only a couple of days ago that I was praising Rolling Stone for publishing an intense critique of mainstream liberal neo-McCarthyism in Matt Taibbi's excellent "Everyone is a Russian Asset" - in today's article analysis we're going to take a look at a decidedly less impressive piece from Tim Dickenson. I chose this article not to pick on Dickenson (whose work I find hit and miss) but rather to highlight Rolling Stone's perplexing habit of slapping an edgy headline on what amounts to bog standard liberalism and calling it counterculture; the truth is that I could have picked any one of about twenty-five articles in corporate media - they're all terrible for the exact same reasons.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past forty-eight hours, there's a pretty good chance that you've heard about the Matt Gaetz-led political theater stunt in which roughly forty GOP Congress members "stormed" into a soon-to-begin impeachment deposition hearing in what has been largely described in the mainstream "liberal" media as an attempt to curry favor with the Klepto Kaiser.

To his credit, Dickenson's piece takes a half-assed stab at poking holes in Gaetz's ridiculous claims that his mayo mob where there to "protest a lack of transparency and due process for the president" in the ongoing Democrat-led House impeachment inquiry and the author is one of the few people to hint at the notable far--right (read: fascist) element among the GOP House brigade of belligerence. Unfortunately like virtually every other piece covering this story in the "liberal" corporate media, the article then bogs down into simultaneously declaring the Republican "stunt" pathetically ineffective and also over-hyping the fact that some of Gaetz's gang entered the "Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF)" - an issue which only resonates with unhinged national security liberals who think the CIA is dreamy; in other words the exact same Bircher nutbags who already want to impeach Trump because of the mythical "pee tape" and think Putin has decided the last twenty-five elections in the so-called West.

Now before we go any further here I just want to be clear about where I'm coming from; I've vocally supported impeaching Trump from almost the precise moment he took office for a growing list of reasons that include (but are not limited to) repeatedly profiting from open corruption, admitting he obstructed justice on television and that whole "being an actual goddamn fascist" thing. While I (correctly) never bought into the Russia part of Russiagate, I've known that Trump is a crook for a very long time and that was even before Downmarket Mussolini admitted he fired his own FBI director for investigating him on live TV.

Furthermore, I absolutely support impeaching Herr Donald for his attempts to use US foreign policy to leverage American allies into persecuting his political rivals - even if those rivals are almost certainly guilty of their own corruption, as Palooka Joe Biden likely is in this case. In my opinion debating Trump's guilt or the legitimacy of this impeachment inquiry pretty much went out the window when the president (again) went on TV and asked Ukraine and China to investigate Palooka Joe; a sentiment at least one Trump ally says was clarified by the administration to mean "investigating corruption is an easy way to earn goodwill with Trump" when asked by Chinese government officials "if Trump was serious when he suggested China open an investigation into Biden."

In other words, this guy is guilty and while I may sincerely doubt the Democratic Party's ability to get this impeachment across the goal line, I'm very much in favor of trying. So what's the problem with Dickenson's piece and the nearly infinite number of articles just like it in the "liberal" corporate media?

Simple, they're wasting time selling fairy tales about national security and our brave spies while still missing the clear and present danger that Gaetz's little "stunt" exemplifies; despite the clever talking point disseminated throughout the usual suspects in the media, the GOP's slow-speed assault on the impeachment inquiry deposition hearing did not have an audience of merely one person.

Look, I don't know if you've taking a look at the overarching themes and tenor of GOP rhetoric surrounding the possible impeachment of Herr Donald, but it seems pretty clear to me that these folks are purposely trying to stir up armed protest and far right violence in response to any attempt to impeach Trump. Sure you can say that the right has been gibbering about a coming "Civil War" for a very long time, but I'll remind you that we aren't talking about shock jock radio hosts here - these are extremely prominent administration surrogates, big time Republican donors and actual elected Republican officials trying to turn up the hate seed to eleven and marshal the armed reactionaries whose votes and support lie behind this entire far right movement, into the street. It's not an accident that the Gaetz mob included an open nazi like King and a couple of casual nazi sympathizers like Scalise or Hunter, just like it's not an accident that Sleaze Bannon (the street fighting right wing populist who had a plan to fight Trump's impeachment from day one) is back to defend against this threat to the Klepto Kaiser's rule.

The Bannon-Trump plan (as frequently hinted at in self-aggrandizing interviews by Bannon himself) always revolved around using the threat of armed right wing crazies to keep the system from stopping Trump's attempts to mold America into a budding white ethno-state - do you sincerely think a guy like Roger Stone wasn't choosing his words carefully when he said "try to impeach him. Just try it. You will have a spasm of violence --an insurrection-- in this country like you have never seen before... Both sides are heavily armed, my friend... this is not 1974... people will not stand for [the impeachment of President Trump]. Any politician who votes for it would be endangering their own life?" It's not desperation or a coincidence that Republicans, including high-level officials in the GOP, are now speaking in terms of a religious war, soviet-style totalitarianism, violent armed insurrection and yes, a civil war - this is a strategy, and an extremely dangerous one.

Will it work? Will the fascists behind Trump be able to pull Fox News Nation into the streets to shut down any attempt to hold Trump accountable for violating the Constitution and abusing his (considerable) power? Well to some degree it's already working; everyone from prosperity gospel Pastors, to Major League Baseball Umpires are now low-key (but actively) threatening armed resistance to Trump's impeachment; thankfully however a few random crackers with large gun collections, an army of blackshirts does not make - for now.

Frankly the problem here is that I'm not really sure it matters precisely how *many* right wing nutjobs the pro-Trump forces convince to threaten or perhaps even carry out violence in the long run. From armed standoffs in Nevada, through the militant occupation of Oregon's Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and on to GOP minority state senators killing a climate change bill in Oregon by fleeing the capitol and hiding behind a phalanx of armed right wing militia nuts, history has demonstrated that it doesn't take a very large number of gun-toting fascists to make cowardly liberals shut up about their "rules and norms" before quietly submitting to whatever the fascists demand.

Truthfully half the time the reactionaries don't even need to get violent; anyone who saw the Gaetz Gaggle's march on television and wasn't immediately reminded of the infamous "Brooks Brothers riot" that helped end the recount and secure George W. Bush's stolen presidency in 2000, clearly hasn't been paying much attention to American history - and yet, there's no mention of the Brooks Brothers riot in this article, or the vast majority of the articles on the subject in the mainstream "liberal" media. I guess something like that just doesn't rate when compared to salacious the possibility GOP congressmen were secretly there to bug a SCIF chamber on behalf of Snowball, the greatest enemy of the people - I mean, Vladdy Putin.

*eye roll*

- 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.

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