Nina-Bytes: Rigging America In The Open

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

 

nina illingworth

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic, and analyst. 

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

Updates available on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. 

Podcast at “Kropotkin’s Barbershop” on Soundcloud.

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“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!