Nina-Bytes: By Any Other Name

 

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

I must confess that recent ominous developments in Amerikkkan political life have forced me to write about Pig Empire fascism almost exclusively as a project of the larger political right in the West; including its violent street enforcers, the US Republican Party as a whole, and the reactionary billionaire muppets funding the fascist creep. These are important discussions in the near term, and it would be disingenuous to imply folks facing down fascist violence from the right are missing the bigger picture; these are questions of survival. By that same measure however, it is simply a historical fact that healthy societies don't birth politically empowered fascist movements; fascists don't create the conditions that allow fascists to topple a "liberal democracy."

Indeed, one of the reasons that America and the larger Pig Empire it influences has proven so vulnerable to fascist political techniques, is that our culture has wholly embrace numerous elements of fascist ideology because they are useful to capital; the carceral state, white supremacy, nationalism, and so forth. Take for example the fully bipartisan migrant carceral complex and America's objectively hyper-nationalist immigration policies. At the height of the Trump era, important voices in American media were willing to admit that we were running a concentration camp system; yet under Joe Biden, our society has done nothing to dismantle the camps, and in fact many influential voices have forgotten they exist.

Of course, not everyone has forgotten because not everyone treats human lives as political footballs; to examine this issue a little more closely lets turn to this November 21st, 2022 post by Jessica Corbett over on Common Dreams:

Rights Groups Demand Biden Close 'Inhumane' ICE Detention Centers

This relatively simple article is built around covering a letter by 114 rights organizations to U.S. President Joe Biden, demanding the dismantling of the migrant detention complex (those would be the concentration camps,) on the grounds that the practice is "inhumane, unjust, unnecessary, and fiscally irresponsible." While it would be nice to actually see the phrase "concentration camps" in this piece, it otherwise serves as a decent recap of three key issues surrounding the so-called "migrant crisis" under Biden; widespread human rights abuses in U.S. migrant detention facilities, the crass hypocrisy of a Biden administration that ran on ending "kids in cages" under Trump, and the existence of a lucrative industry built around warehousing asylum-seekers and refugees in private prison complexes.

As regular readers of my writing about America's fascist "border" politics will know, I consider that last point crucial to understanding why running concentration camps is a bipartisan position in American politics; it's definitely about the money, honey. Our focus here today however is less about the "whys" and more about the effects; specifically the ways in which our horrifying immigration policies feed racist, reactionary, and eliminationist ideology in our culture; ideas that have objectively paved the way for the rise of overtly fascist movements in the Pig Empire. It is after all very hard to stamp out fascism, when you're actively feeding into its component beliefs, as many folks quoted in this article noted:

"It is urgent for Biden to act boldly to rebuke white supremacy by protecting and welcoming immigrants in the next two years of his administration," Ghandehari argued. "Detention is inhumane, morally and financially costly, and completely unnecessary."

Andrea Carcamo, policy director at Freedom for Immigrants, similarly stressed that "immigration detention is animated by racism, xenophobia, and hate—the very forces President Biden vowed to fight against upon taking the White House."

"Instead, Biden has overseen a dramatic increase in the use of immigration detention since taking office," Carcamo said. "This administration has utterly failed our communities who continue to be subject to abhorrent human rights abuses inside detention. It's clear that immigration detention is beyond the reach of reform, which is why we demand Biden close detention centers and free people back to the love and safety of their communities."

Look folks, I'm not highlighting this article because I want to score "gotcha" points against a fake antifascist muppet like Joe Biden; this issue is about something much bigger than elections and political parties. The criminalization and incarceration for profit of (mostly) brown others, is simply another facet of America's long love affair with ultra-nationalism and white supremacy. This is gas for the fascist creep, because once you can de-person one group of people and toss them in concentration camp money machines, simply due the geographical randomness of their birth, you're well on the path to doing it to anyone else those in power don't like as well; a path we know ends in genocide.

Do you think I'm being hyperbolic? Then ask yourself if Trump built the concentration camps the liberal establishment so readily admitted he was running back in 2019? The answer is of course, no; Trump was able to double down on the cruelty of the migrant carceral system because that system existed in the first place. Furthermore, liberal media muppets who'd like to pretend the problem wasn't the concentration camps, but the Trump administration's cruel family separation policy are still being disingenuous because Biden hasn't ended that practice either. To prove that point, let's take a look at this November 21st, 2022 article by John Washington and Anna Cathrine-Brigida in the Texas Observer:

Biden Is Still Separating Immigrant Kids From Their Families

The plain truth here is that this article should make you absolutely furious with bougie liberal influencers trying to equivocate about America's still incredibly fascist border enforcement operations under Biden. From pretending that posting motivational signs in a concentration camp for kids makes it less of a concentration camp, to blithely ignoring this administration's gutless embrace of the same Title 42 policies all of these folks admitted were authoritarian and racist, if not outright fascist under Trump, this entire shitshow has been a willful act of deception perpetrated by people who pretend to be "resisting" fascism. Personally, I don't think the word hypocrisy covers enough ground here; this is craven and outrageous.

Furthermore, this piece itself certainly isn't winger propaganda, or progressive invective; the authors are in fact staggeringly charitable about the Biden administrations intentions, and they're quick to point out the areas where Palooka Joe's team have marginally improved on Trump's worst ethno-nationalist adaptations of America's always white supremacist immigration policies. Ultimately however, we're left with the facts on the ground, and they point to broken promises and a staggering lack of appetite for conflict with a hyper-reactionary Border Patrol power structure still quite partial to fascism; as the article demonstrates in the two quoted sections below:

"In January 2020, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) established select criteria under which children can in fact be separated from their families: Immigration authorities may only do so if they deem the parent unfit, if the parent is going to be prosecuted for a felony, if the parent is hospitalized, or other specific circumstances.

The incoming Biden administration promised to stop such separations for good and offer reparations for the previous administration’s harms.

But as the case of Felipe shows, immigration officials have continued to separate parents and children in violation of the policy. From the start of the new administration to August 2022—the latest month for which data has been published—U.S. authorities have reported at least 372 cases of family separation.

“We said never again, but here we are,” said Kassandra Gonzalez, an attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project."

 

“We still have a system in which individual agents who have no background in child welfare are making these decisions without any sort of oversight,” said Jennifer Podkul, an attorney with Kids in Need of Defense. “There’s no check on their decisions at all.”

Franzblau of NIJC said that the problem goes much deeper. A lack of institutional overhaul—both among top-level decision-makers and the bottom-level CBP officials who encounter families at the border—means that the overall mentality toward immigration policy has not changed.

“As long as they have this deterrence approach of trying to scare families from seeking refuge in the U.S. through punitive programs, they’re going to have separation,” Franzblau said."

 

If I sound frustrated my friends, it's because after two years of this nonsense, I'm getting pretty tired of make-believe antifascism in American political life. At this point I don't have the first bloody clue what Joe Biden thinks "semi-fascism" really is, except a way to lose an election less badly than expected. What I do know is that you don't fight fascism by agreeing with and empowering it. I know that you can't defeat fascism by throwing money at fascists cops and the carceral state. And I know that you don't drive white supremacy out of mainstream American politics by extending white supremacist immigration policies.

The fact is that antifascism isn't about intentions; it's about results. This administration wasn't elected to mitigate the horrors of Trumpian fascism, they were elected to end them. Can anyone reading this say they're even trying? I doubt it; at least not with a straight face. Given the choice between striking a blow against fascism and keeping the prison industrial complex happy, Biden has picked the path of the collaborator once again; and that choice is likely to have grave consequences for us all going forward. The bottom line here is that the liberal establishment either needs to start dismantling American fascism, or get out of the way; you can't stop the birth of the permanent Pork Reich with vibes.

 

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: Snitch Culture and Fascism in America

 

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

Nina-Bytes: Snitch Culture and Fascism in America

In my recent writing, I've briefly touched on two important concepts for understanding life under a fascist political order; a subject that's increasingly relevant to anyone living in the Pig Empire, whether they want to admit that or not. First, it is important to understand that fascist political persecution laws are always retroactive. Fascists are not particularly interested in fairness, so much as excuses to persecute an ever-growing number of "enemies" necessary for "the politics of us against them" to properly function. Second, fascist laws and ideological conformity are always enforced by not only the state, but also extra-legal vigilantism and ad hoc policing efforts among the volk. 

These are of course grim realities in an Amerikkka falling to open fascism at high speed, and as such it's pretty rare to find anything in mainstream corporate media that's going to put these issues into the proper, and ultimately threatening, context. You can imagine my utter shock then, when I stumbled on this exceptionally blunt November 1st, 2022 article by Thor Benson over at Wired; let's take a closer look at it here:

When Your Neighbor Turns You In

Although it's still couched in editorial "weasel" words like "authoritarian" and "may," it's impossible not to read this as Benson starkly firing up an ominous signal flare on the edge of an impeding Pork Reich fascist takeover. First he points out that a defining feature of an authoritarian state is the establishment and incentivization of a snitch culture; then the author notes that many of the American GOP's new political persecution laws explicitly feature a snitch culture component:

"In the United States, we appear to be creeping toward this culture of community surveillance. Texas’ SB 8 deputized everyday Americans to sue anyone who has had an abortion or assisted with one. Texans are reporting the parents of transgender children to authorities. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin set up a tip line and encouraged parents to report teachers who are teaching “divisive” subjects. Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law encourages parents to monitor teachers. With the Republican Party increasingly embracing authoritarianism, this is likely just the start."

 

Given that this is an article in Wired, our author is quick to mention that modern technology enables a reactionary surveillance culture to operate in ways far more effective than Nazi Germany could hope for, but this piece is still rooted firmly in recognizing the existence of this fascist snitch culture in present day Amerikkka; even if he won't call it "fascist." As Benson points out repeatedly, when fascist ideology and fantasy become the law, these snitching structures enable an efficient and relentless persecution of folks criminalized by their beliefs, or indeed their very identities:

"If the US moves further toward authoritarianism, you can imagine states passing more laws to disempower, criminalize, or otherwise marginalize certain groups. Anyone you encounter on a regular basis who doesn’t agree with politically could be encouraged to report you for violations of these laws as some sort of act of civic duty. They’ll have more ways to do it than ever before, considering modern technology allows us to monitor people’s social media feeds, watch them through Ring cameras, report them through community-watch apps like Citizen, and more."

Finally for our purpose here, perhaps the most important thing Benson discusses in this article gets touched on only briefly, and is brought up by one of his expert sources. Specifically the retroactively punitive nature of fascist political repression laws designed to divide and control our communities:

"Consuelo Amat, an assistant professor of political science at John Hopkins University, says that when a state becomes authoritarian, anything people in your community learned about you during democratic years can be used against you once the new regime takes power. She’s closely studied Chile under dictator Augusto Pinochet and says that’s what happened there. Amat says those who support the new regime can essentially become informants for it.

“When that starts happening, the dynamic for communities and neighborhoods is extremely bad,” Amat says. “The distrust that people have is huge, so people start not sharing information at all. One of the cores of democracy is neighborhood trust. You need to trust others in your society and in your community for democracy to work. Period. When there’s a very high level of distrust, you will see a fracturing of community.”

Of course, the biggest flaw with this piece is Benson's insistence on implying this is a mere possibility, when in his own article he's actively pointing out that this snitch culture enforcement of fascist political laws is already a reality in many Republican-controlled parts of the country. Furthermore, this isn't just a fascist community surveillance issue. To properly understand the speed with which the fascists are currently exerting control here, you need to factor in things like using police forces and challenges by local reactionary cranks for widespread voter intimidation and suppression, or the now-ubiquitous presence of antagonistic security forces and armed vigilante groups at virtually every protest against fascism in all its forms, across much of America. 

In short the reactionary volk are already both empowered by, and empowering, a fascist political order in America; it's not a future possibility, it's happening right now. There is no point in ruminating on what a fascist America might look like in a grim potential future; that future is already here, and it's spreading rapidly. It might be a good idea for a liberal establishment now under direct assault from these forces of fascism to stop policing anti-fascist protestors, and to start arresting the rich and powerful nazis running this sh*tshow. It would be a damn shame if we all ended up in labor camps waiting to die just because octogenarian liberal politicians can't tell the difference between violent fascists, and the everyday people trying to oppose this nightmare.

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: Accelerator

 

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

After the fascist coup attempt on January 6th, 2021, I wrote that the removing Donald Trump from the White House would by no means end the rise of American fascism, or the powder keg of violence that goes along with it. I further warned that a policy of ignoring, legitimating, and appeasing fascists would likely fuel that rise, and bring with it violence acts of reactionary stochastic terrorism. Needless to say, this turned out to be a very unpopular opinion in some (then) rather surprising portions of the online "left" community. 

Unfortunately for us all, as of last Friday those warnings are now distinctly less abstract; a fascist conspiracy theorist broke into the Pelosi home and attacked the Speaker of the House's husband with a hammer. The assailant, a 42 year old fascist Gryoper into just about every right wing conspiracy you could imagine, reportedly attempted to tie Paul Pelosi up with the intention of waiting until his wife Nancy came home. You can read more about this clear act of political violence in this Oct 29th, 2022 summary over on the Guardian:

Paul Pelosi, husband of Nancy Pelosi, in hospital with skull fracture after attack

While I certainly don't want to minimize the severity of an 82 year old man's violent assault with a hammer, what's important to our larger discussion about fascism is the fact that the current Democrat Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi was the target of the attack. And despite the protestations of conspiratorial fascist propagandists, it sure does seem political:

"It was reported by CNN that the suspect intended to tie the victim up “until Nancy got home” and that he had posted rightwing and conspiracy theories online, including content promoting the lie that Donald Trump was deprived of victory in the 2020 election because of voter fraud."

There will of course be those, even in the mainstream "centrist" media who insist that this is a crime story, or that the primary issue here is the attacker's mental health. These arguments however ring hollow once you understand that triggering violence from unstable individuals among a faceless reactionary mass is precisely how stochastic terrorism is designed to work. It certainly doesn't take a genius to connect calls for Pelosi's public execution by a fascist GOP Congresswoman, to a disturbed ultra-reactionary conspiracy theorist's attempts to do just that. Even liberal media minions too cowardly to describe this as fascism in writing, fully concede that the result was utterly predictable. And as this October 29th Guardian article by Joan E. Greve ominously predicts, the fascist political violence has only just begun:

Attack on Pelosi’s husband heightens fears of increasing US political violence

Although it remains utterly inexplicable to me that "liberal" media outlets still refuse to use the word "fascist" to describe right wing political violence in the Pig Empire, even after Joe Biden's "semi-fascist" speech, the overall sentiment here is correct. The mainstreaming of conspiracy theories, eliminationist propaganda, and reactionary ideas in the Pig Empire has lead to a drastic rise in political violence; and that violence is by no means from "both sides" as our author makes clear:

"The US Capitol police has reported an overall rise in the number of threats against members of Congress since the deadly January 6 insurrection last year.

According to USCP data, officers tracked 9,625 threats and directions of interest (meaning concerning actions or statements) against members of Congress in 2021, compared with 3,939 such instances in 2017. The House sergeant at arms has responded to this worrisome trend by giving lawmakers up to $10,000 to upgrade security at their homes.

Although both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have faced a number of threats in recent months, the increase is not evenly distributed along the political spectrum. According to a study conducted by the Anti-Defamation League, rightwing extremists have committed about 75% of the 450 political murders that occurred in the US over the past decade, compared with 4% attributed to leftwing extremists."

 

Look folks, I'm certainly not trying to be an alarmist. But when everyday people find ourselves watching a trans pogrom in progress, organized voter intimidation parties, and actual "lone wolf" assassination attempts on high profile liberal politicians, it's fair to say we're now talking about a fascist sprint, and not a fascist creep. Furthermore it's increasingly difficult to place much faith in a liberal establishment too disinterested, or too afraid, to materially challenge fascist violence; even when it targets one or more of their own kind. Instead they hide behind weasel words, punch left, and continue to arm up a police state that increasingly looks like it will soon belong to the fascists the police themselves already support.

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: In Between Days

 

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

 

Days After Climate Summit, Biden To Hold ‘Carbon Bomb’ Gulf Oil Sale

It is not lost on me that I've spent a lot of time recently here on Nina-Bytes essentially wasting my breath, by pointing out the hypocrisy of neoliberal leaders when it comes to the subject of climate crisis. The problem with this approach of course is that we live in a time of unprecedented ruling class power; our society is post-accountability, and post-shame, so the capitalists merely shrug and go right on killing us for dollars. Still, there are times when the stench of corruption and rot become overwhelming; moments when the "my bum is on your lips" nature of the news is too infuriating to ignore. So, despite the fact that I wanted to talk about something else, virtually anything else today, let's talk about how Joe Biden is literally killing the planet while pretending he gives one solitary rat's anus about the climate apocalypse.

In this November 13th, 2021 piece by Chris D'Angelo over on Huffington Post, we discover that on November 17th, mere days after the end of the COP26 climate conference, the Biden administration intends to conduct the largest offshore oil and gas lease sale in U.S. history. Yes, that would be the administration working for Joe Biden, the same guy who promised just last week that America would lead "by the power of our example" in the fight against climate catastrophe. Inexplicably, spokespeople for the U.S. government, and the President himself, have insisted that this all ties into a short term strategy to increase fossil fuel production, while still meeting long term goals. There's just one problem with that excuse - the fields being sold today won't be operational for five to ten years; long after our time runs out to cut emissions in half by 2030.

To be clear, there are mitigating circumstances involved in this story. Specifically, the Biden Administration argues that it actually cannot stop the oil lease sale "following the June decision by a Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana to strike down Biden’s executive order temporarily pausing new oil and gas leases across federal lands and waters." The government has appealed this highly-spurious ruling, but as our author's study indicates, this isn't even close to the full means Biden had at his disposal to stop this. Furthermore without an injunction, the leases will be sold in the meantime, long before the appeal plays out. This in turn makes it very unlikely the projects on those oil patches will ever be stopped by the government.

The fact is, Joe Biden is almost eighty years old and neither he, nor his political party, have ever given one flying f*ck about climate crisis. Biden's rhetoric is simply that, rhetoric, and if he has to doom every future generation on Earth to geohell to please his corporate donors, that's what he's going to do. You don't have to take my word for it, just watch his actions and the actions of his government for all the proof you'll ever need.

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. 

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…”

 

In the Aggregate: Critical Overload on NIDC

 

Editor’s Note: In the Aggregate is a regular round-up feature over on NIDC, that showcases and expands on my social media analysis from around the web.

 

It's All in the Wrists

Well my friends; the world doesn't stop just because you've had a difficult week and you'd rather play with kittens. This weekend I'm back with a new edition of In the Aggregate; collecting the very best of my social media analysis from all across the internet. I hope you've got a comfy chair because this is a long one. Touching on topics like climate crisis, supervillain billionaires, and the growing menace of American fascism, this edition of our bi-weekly roundup is a swirling vortex of bullsh*t repellent. Join me this week on NIDC for "In the Aggregate: Critical Overload."

 

"At this point, whether it’s a question of complicity, fecklessness, or cowardice is largely irrelevant; the center-right Democratic Party establishment and those who insist we place our faith in them are leading us all on a death march towards fascist totalitarianism on a boiling planet. You can kindly shove Godwin’s Law up your backside; the parallels between the elite “centrist” response to Americanized fascism and what went down in Weimar Germany are now becoming far too alarming to ignore. We are literally already in the fascist moment; and liberals are still waiting around for the magical politics referee to punish the right."

 

To read more over on ninaillingworth.com, click on the quotation block above or the header below:

 

In the Aggregate: Critical Overload

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: It Pays to Be an Insider

 

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

 

Burr’s Brother-in-Law Called Stock Broker, One Minute After Getting Off Phone With Senator

After what has certainly been an exhausting month, I thought we'd close off October with an old fashioned story about corruption in American politics. Do you remember the coronavirus insider trading in government scandal from back in the spring of 2020? In March of that year, we learned that several U.S. Senators dumped millions in stock on Wall Street right before the virus became an inescapable fact and Wall Street melted down. The scandal involved members of both major American political parties, but the actions of two Republican Senators who downplayed the severity of the virus threat at the time, stood out most; Kelly Loeffler and Richard Burr. 

You can read more about it by clicking the links in this article, but the short version is summed up well by David Leonhardt in the New York Times:

"Given the disconnect between what they knew and the public’s understanding, Burr and Loeffler had an opportunity to sound the alarm. They could have broken ranks with other congressional Republicans and told the country to take the situation more seriously. They could have criticized Trump for not doing more. Such criticism, coming from Trump’s own party, would have received major attention. It would have had the potential to alter Trump administration policy and, by extension, the course the disease took.

But Burr and Loeffler did virtually nothing to protect the health and safety of their constituents or of Americans in other states. (Burr went so far as to co-write an article for FoxNews.com bragging about the country’s readiness.) Here’s what the two senators did instead: They sold large amounts of their personal stock holdings, cashing in before the market sharply declined, as the severity of the virus became apparent to everyone."

 

Frankly, this should have been a huge story; this kind of pandemic profiteering by elected officials is beyond outrageous. It's not even remotely a stretch to say that people literally died so rich public officials could bank a profit here. Unfortunately we live in an environment of pervasive corruption and zero accountability, so most of the Senators were eventually cleared by the Department of Justice and the whole scandal just melted away.

As this October 28th report on ProPublica from Robert Faturechi reminds us however, most is not all; former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and soon to be retiring North Carolina Senator Richard Burr remains in the SEC's crosshairs. Turns out there's still an ongoing insider trading investigation into trades made by both Burr and his crooked brother-in-law, Gerald Fauth. And if the Securities and Exchange Commission filing about it is any indication, things are not going well for the Senator. From Faturechi's article:

"After Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina dumped more than $1.6 million in stocks in February 2020 a week before the coronavirus market crash, he called his brother-in-law, according to a new Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

They talked for 50 seconds.

Burr, according to the SEC, had material nonpublic information regarding the incoming economic impact of coronavirus.

The very next minute, Burr’s brother-in-law, Gerald Fauth, called his broker.”

Well sheeit; how's that for getting your hand caught in the cookie jar? In an environment of legalized bribery where it's almost impossible to prove a give corruption case against powerful public officials, I think Burr might have just found a way to get there. So, presumably arrest warrants for Burr and Fauth (who Biden inexplicably reappointed to the National Mediation Board despite most of this already being in the public sphere) will be forthcoming, right? Don't bet on it sparky. We are after all, talking about a country that just recently realized there's an ethics problem with senior Federal Reserve staff owning and trading stock while controlling much of the American economy. 

No, my money is on Richard Burr riding off into the sunset like none of this ever happened; much the same way Loeffler did. Burr's retirement from the Senate will quell public outrage, and there is no appetite for prosecuting this sort of corruption in Washington. Opening up that can of worms might threaten all the other corrupt Senators in office, and that's a club too numerous and too powerful for even a motivated Department of Justice to challenge. Membership does after all, have its privileges.

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
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Republicans Are Really Trying to Argue That Biden's Cabinet Picks Are Corrupt
Biden keeps the peace with first Cabinet picks
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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!

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