Nina-Bytes: Order of the Day

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web. Want more? Click here to subscribe to NIDC today. 

 

Nina-Bytes: Order of the Day

Just over five years ago, in the wake of the openly fascist "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, I came to an important realization that has shaped much of my work since. Specifically, that America was in the process of an obvious slide into overt fascism; fueled in part by the election of Donald Trump. Of course, I already knew and had repeatedly written that Trump himself was a fascist; but like many of my readers today, I had some faith that the American faux democratic system would contain Trump's personal ideological tendencies. Watching significant portions of the media establishment, and indeed the U.S. government openly embrace and enable the swine emperor's fascist political tactics, utterly shattered that faith within the first six months of Downmarket Mussolini's presidency; and little has happened to restore it since.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this devotion to the fascist cause and Trumpism as a whole, was particularly apparent in federal law enforcement, Amerikkka's odious immigration police, and the larger Department of Homeland Security. While many were content to ignore concentration camps for migrant children, even the mainstream media establishment stood up and took notice when Trump, his fascist Department of Justice, and his pet federal agencies declared war on the city of Portland and started black-bagging leftist activists off the street.

While this shift from the enemy without, to the presumed enemy within represented a clear warning sign on America's road to fascism, our society and its media influencers appear only too happy to forget Portland, and what it can tell us about the Pork Reich's current precarious dance with full fascist control. To avoid repeating that mistake, I'd like to take a look at this November 5th, 2022 article written by Dell Cameron over on Gizmodo:

Homeland Security Admits It Tried to Manufacture Fake Terrorists for Trump

As always you should read the whole article, but the short version is pretty straightforward. Facing down the end of his first term, Herr Donald sought to link his three major political enemies, Black Lives Matter protestors, the Democratic Party, and antifascists, together as a single terrorist organization called "Antifa." This was fascist conspiracy nonsense, but doing so would allow the swine emperor to unlock sweeping federal powers (and funds) to persecute his opposition in the lead up to the 2020 election; which he would ultimately lose, and attempt to overturn with a riot. Well as it turns out, Trump tasked the Department of Homeland Security to manufacture evidence to support this authoritarian nonsense; and to the surprise of precisely no one, they complied!

Lead by noted fascist sh*tbag Chad Wolf, DHS proceeded to go full "the Hunt for Osama Bin Laden" on the streets of Portland. Agents were ordered to assume all protesters were "violent antifa anarchists" unless they had specific intelligence proving otherwise. Anti-terrorism dossiers, the so-called DHS "baseball cards" so familiar from the fight against Al-Qaeda, were produced for numerous innocent protestors; including those merely exercising their free speech rights, and folks who weren't even arrested. As the article makes clear, those dossiers remain in government custody and would ultimately make their way far from the warzone Trump manufactured in Portland:

"The dossiers, known as Operational Background Reports, or OBRs, are known colloquially within the agency as “baseball cards,” the report says. The task of creating them was handed, “with little to no guidance on execution,” to the agency’s Current and Emerging Threats Center, an analysis unit whose “actionable intelligence” is distributed widely throughout the government. According to the report, the dossiers would’ve been shared with, among others, the agency’s Field Operations Division, which works closely with House and Senate committee staffers, and the Federal Protection Service, whose core mission is securing some 9,000 federal facilities across the country. The extent to which entities outside the federal government were meant to be involved is unclear; however, the report indicates that DHS state and local partners, which would naturally include law enforcement, but also potentially organizations like National Governors Association, could have also been in the loop."

At one point, these muppets even brought in the Homeland Identities, Targeting and Exploitation Center to try and prove the existence of a vast "antifa" financing network; more or less entirely to satisfy the delusions of a septuagenarian fascist and the white nationalists running his government. Ultimately and unsurprisingly, these efforts lead nowhere, but the plain and obvious truth here is that entire departments of the U.S. federal government happily went along with a fascist conspiracy that criminalized anyone daring to exercise their first amendment rights in Portland, as open enemies of the state. There was almost no pushback from either the foot soldiers in the street, or the ideologically compromised administrators who run these already quite fascist portions of the government.

So why does this matter in the here and now? Tomorrow in America, there is a very good chance that the midterm elections will hand multiple branches of the government back to a wholly-fascist Republican Party still quite enthralled by Donald Trump. With storm clouds gathering, there are many folks in our discourse encouraging you to sleepwalk through the rise of fascism with polite fictions, and wistful lullabies about the strength of our institutions. They say little will change, and that the American political experiment is too strong to succumb to fascists, even if rigged elections hand them power.

Those people are dead wrong. And everything we know about Portland is all you need to prove it.

 

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: The Impending Rule of Unreality

 

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

 

Yesterday on my Facebook Journal, I published several discussions that touched on what it means when fascist lies, fantasies, and conspiracy theories acquire the force of law, and with it real power to distort our supposedly democratic society. Today then, let's look at a couple of articles that demonstrate what fascists weaponizing "unreality" in the political process actually looks like, and why that's a very ominous sign in a Pig Empire actively falling under overt fascist rule. 

First up, let's take a look at this October 24th, 2022 article about the Pennsylvania GOP's most recent attempt to impeach Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, written by Akela Lacy over on the Intercept:

Larry Krasner Impeachment Committee Relies on Widely Panned Journal Study

Frankly I don't want to wade too deeply into the left wing side of the debate about the so-called "progressive prosecutor" movement here; you can be certain that American fascists aren't tossing their cookies about guys like Krasner because of his insufficient commitment to prison abolition. As the article notes, what we're really talking about here is an establishment Republican (and conservative Democrat) attempt to remove a marginally progressive official they loathe, explicitly against the will of his constituents; who surprise, surprise, aren't affluent white fascists:

"Monday’s report is the latest step in a series of yearslong efforts to curb Krasner’s power or remove him from office entirely — despite the fact that the progressive DA was overwhelmingly reelected a year ago. Krasner’s attempts to implement criminal justice reforms and address the underlying causes of mass incarceration have made him a target of lawmakers from both parties since his election in 2017. As removal efforts built steam among Republicans, state House Democrats joined the opposing party last month in voting to hold Krasner in contempt for his refusal to comply with a subpoena in the impeachment efforts."

While this all looks very official, the twist here is that almost every accusation against Krasner is pure nonsense. The arguments being used to impeach Krasner are based on fascist election propaganda about crime, conspiracy theories, and a politically-motivated study that's been widely debunked by data scientists. It's not just about Larry Krasner either, research shows that there is literally no evidence linking progressive prosecutors to rising crime rates in cities anywhere; which exposes a lie that underpins the entire unhinged fascist attack on any prosecutor that so much as utters the words "bail reform." Bonus points if you guessed that this "moral panic about crime as politics" operation is secretly about race; because it is.

In other words reactionary politicians are transforming lies, into the force of law, for the purposes of actively violating the democratic will of Philadelphia voters; which is precisely what legally and politically-empowered fascism in progress looks like. Why is that bad news even if you don't live in Philly? Because as this October 25th, 2002 article by Kaleigh Rogers at FiveThirtyEight points out, fascist fantasy as the law of the land seems poised to strike well beyond the mean streets of Pennsylvania: 

Most Candidates Who Think 2020 Was Rigged Are Probably Going To Win In November

If you've read my writing, you know I loathe "horse race" political coverage as much as anyone reading this does, so let's not waste too much time on this piece of fluff. The important point we need to take from this article is that over a hundred Republicans pushing the objectively fascist "Big Lie" about the 2020 election, are about to take real political power in Amerikkkan society;

"Luna is one of well over a hundred of candidates running this fall who have denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election and have a strong chance of winning their race. Of the 185 Republican candidates running for House, Senate and governor’s seats who have denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election, 124 — or 67 percent — are in races our forecast currently pins at “Solid R,” meaning they have a 95-in-100 or better chance of winning. Overall, a bigger share of election deniers are running in Solid R races than Republican candidates in general: Of the 496 Republican candidates running for House, Senate and governor, 225 — or 45 percent — are in Solid R races."

As you can see, this problem isn't really about Democrats versus Republicans, but rather a Republican Party happily nominating fascist conspiracy theorists in safe seats, over pretty much every other type of reactionary on offer. This is not only evidence that the party as a whole has embraced fascism, but also a deadly perilous moment in American history. Fascists stand on the verge of legally declaring their reactionary propaganda and conspiracy theories the understood law of the land, and no amount of "respecting the standards and norms" is going to protect us from that kind of 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…”

 

Aaron Rodgers and Covid: A Thanksgiving Analysis on NIDC

 

Editor’s note: as regular readers will know, I’m always absolutely thrilled to welcome a new writer over on NIDC as part of our Friends of the Blog initiative; and that’s precisely what we’ve got on today’s docket. 

In a memorable pop culture takedown, Wisconsinite and podcaster extraordinaire Charles Minnich explores the intersection of celebrity, privilege, and responsibility towards the common good in an unlikely place; the National Football League. 

 

Fourth and Wrong

To tell you the truth, I've been fishing around in my social circles for a left wing popular culture writer for a little while; so when my friend and soon-to-be partner in podcasting crime Mr. Minnich volunteered to cover the Aaron Rodgers COVID story, I snapped at the chance to publish that. While an opinion piece about Rodgers' coronavirus lies might seem out of place on ninaillingworth.com, the truth is that this is a tale that exists inside a vortex of fame, obligations, and the politicization of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. Whether Rodgers intended this or not, his decision to blame the fallout from his reactionary behavior on a rampaging "woke mob," has made this entire story inherently political.

Writing from the perspective of both an informed observer on the left, and a Green Bay Packers fan, our guest author tackles the facts, as well as their larger meaning; and in doing so, drops the hammer on Aaron Rodgers.

 

"Like everything political in the Badger state, feelings about football and the pandemic are very complicated. Masking and vaccination mandates have driven anti-vax fanatics to their local school boards in ginned-up outrage. With Thanksgiving conversations about football and COVID looming large, it is important to consider the facts of the matter. Aaron Rodgers lied to the public and said he was vaccinated, although he added that he wouldn’t judge those teammates who refused. But that was back in August. Fast forward to today and we come to find out through a positive test for COVID, that he was lying all along. A lie complicated by the knowledgeable complicity of everyone involved, from the Packers players and organization, to league officials."

 

Check it out over on ninaillingworth.com by clicking on the quotation block above, or the title header below:

 

Aaron Rodgers and Covid: A Thanksgiving Analysis

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: A Fascist Cult of Useful Crackpots

 

Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web. This post is archival and originally appeared on October 6th, 2021 over on our Facebook page.

French child kidnap plot shows global sway of QAnon style

One of the most frustrating things about the vast majority of mainstream media reporting on Q-Anon is the liberal establishment’s general inability to accept the movement for what it is – a fascist conspiracy cult that has gone completely global. More specifically, it’s a globalized fascist conspiracy cult that works by blending all the other reactionary conspiracy theories into one, and then conveniently aligning believers with far right, objectively fascist politicians, parties, and political organizations. 

The fact is that while believers in the cult may not always perceive themselves as acting politically, the conductors marshalling the cult are explicitly political in nature. Therefore, it does no good to approach Q-Anon as a grift, because it literally doesn’t matter if the freaks pushing these conspiracies into the mainstream are true believers or not. What matters is that they’re able to draw on a massive, preexisting undercurrent of people motivated by anger, reaction, and bugsh*t conspiracy writings, and then point those people at the enemies of the would-be fascist order. In some ways this makes Q-Anon almost something of a “rent-a-mob” organization, to be summoned and deployed by more organized fascists – both in politics and in the streets.

Of course, linking and empowering these folks has a cost, usually paid in crime, violence, and sometimes human lives, but generally it’s not the rich nazis paying it, so they don’t care. Indeed, one might argue that the blowback produced by the Q-Anon cult in and of itself works towards the fascist goal of destabilizing our faux liberal-democratic order, and creating the demand for a more authoritarian form of government. The chaos is a feature, not a bug.

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…”

Russiagate Retrospective: Of Course Malcolm Nance is a Grifter

Editor's note: this article is a revised version of a lengthy Mastodon thread I originally posted on the morning December 4th, 2019; you can find additional sourcing for this piece by clicking through to the thread and scrolling to the bottom.  

Readers searching for recent examples of my regular writing are encouraged to check out my recent review of David Neiwert’s “Alt-America: the Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump” over on my image/book blog at Can't You Read.

---

As those of you who've been reading my writing for a few years are no doubt aware, I was among the earliest and most vociferous skeptics of the "Russiagate" conspiracy narrative pushed in mainstream liberal media; primarily to ensure that nobody got fired for punting a highly winnable election against a reality TV show fascist billionaire whose catch phrase is, I kid you not, "you're fired."

Furthermore, I feel it’s fair to say that my ongoing analysis of the "Russiagate" saga has, in the light of history, proven to be among the most accurate available online; specifically because I never argued that Trump wasn't a crook, didn't take bribes and wasn't actively attempting to obstruct investigations into his administration - just that he wasn't a Russian asset, hadn't committed treason and that Vladimir Putin hadn't rigged (or significantly influenced) the 2016 election.

As you can likely imagine if you were online during the height of the "walls are closing in" phase of the neoliberal fever dream that is Russiagate, as a result of expressing these opinions (even on my tiny little website) I was attacked, smeared and repeatedly gaslit by a fairly broad cross section of the "Russiagate Conspiracy Complex" community online - of which one of the most prominent members was former US Naval cryptologist and frequent MSNBC guest Malcom Nance; a man who I had the misfortune of interacting with several times online between late 2016 & 2018.

 

I don't want to spend too much time going over old flame wars with a trash-fire propagandist like Nance but just to give you an idea of the measure of the man we’re talking about here; I will mention that during our argument I referred to him as a "spook" in reference to his career as a naval intelligence officer. Astoundingly, Nance responded by feigning obliviousness and pretending I had called him a racial slur; even though the context was obvious and the actual onboard nickname for Cryptologic Technicians in the Navy is "spook."

In light of this prior incident and others like it, I couldn't help but crack a few broad smiles when I read this November 24th, 2019 interview-cum-evisceration of Nance by the New Yorker's resident interrogation specialist Isaac Chotiner - deliciously titled "Malcolm Nance on the Danger of Conspiracy Theories" of all things:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/malcolm-nance-on-the-danger-of-conspiracy-theories

The interview/interrogation itself is a marvelous read in which Chotiner carefully reels the openly defensive Nance in with a few softball questions, before trapping him inside his own prior statements and exposing the NatSec grifter's constantly shifting definitions of intelligence terminology and moving the goalposts that frame his often completely absurd and wholly fabricated accusations. The whole thing is in a word, delightful and I strongly encourage interest observers to read all of it. As such I'm not going to waste a lot of energy reviewing every single thrust and parry in the interview, but I would like to zero in on a few answers Nance gives that line up with arguments I made back in early 2017; mostly because at the time of course I was called a crypto-fascist, a liar and literally a Russian agent by #TheResistance (including Nance himself as I recall) for making these same arguments - my how things change in the light of time and evidence, don't they?

First up, in response to a question about whether or not Nance is arguing that Donald Trump is an actual agent of the Russian state, our intrepid intelligence analyst flatly says "no." This is interesting to us because as Chotiner points out, Nance has repeatedly called Trump a “witting asset" of the Russian government, Russian intelligence or Russian President Vladimir Putin. At this point Nance desperately sputters into a long and complicated equivocation on the difference between a "witting asset" and an "agent" in spook-speak, but absolutely none of it is convincing whatsoever and it’s very clear he’s splitting hairs to cover his own backside in this situation.

This of course repeats a long pattern of New Cold War conspiracy liberals constantly moving the goalposts further and further away from their initial claims that launched the neoliberal fever dream we now know as "Russiagate." The accusation spread across virtually every major news network and periodical was that Trump is a Russian agent, a willing Manchurian candidate and literally working for Putin to undermine America, weaken Pig Empire hegemony and punish Hillary Clinton - and it's an accusation Nance clearly made a lot of money pushing, at least if his book sales are any indication.

It really doesn't matter what professional American spies understand "witting asset" to mean; the fact is Nance knew what calling Trump a puppet of the Russian government was going to imply to the American public and he said it anyway, repeatedly - his complicity in spreading the conspiracy theory and his efforts to profit from public interested in that conspiracy theory, could not be more apparent; and as you'll see below, this is not the only way he pushed the lie that is the "Russia" part of "Russiagate."

After a long interval where Nance hides behind his former profession as an intelligence office, babbles about “sourcing” and insists that he's not responsible for the analysis he gives on TV (only that found in his books) Nance responds to a question about whether or not Donald Trump committed treason with Russia by once again admitting "no" and providing the exact same legal justification I've been giving for three years. Namely, you can't have a legal charge of treason as defined under the US Constitution without the nation being at war because “aiding and comforting an enemy” is not a mere expression of speech; we don’t have “enemies” because we're not at war – with Russia or anyone else for that matter.

This is of course all well and good for Nance to admit now, after his #TheResistance friends gaslit numerous left wing media observers (like myself) for... reading the US Constitution, but the simple truth is that Nance is once again playing word games here to avoid accountability for his wild accusations and fear mongering. He has absolutely used the specific word treason (despite clearly knowing how the law works in this area, as the writing in his books indicates) and literally on the day the Mueller report was to be released, Malcolm said that it would reveal treason exceeding that of Benedict Arnold - you don't bring up Benedict Arnold, the most infamous traitor in American history, if you're not talking about REAL treason for f*ck’s sake.

Nance then goes on to falsely deny claiming that Wikileaks was working with Russia to rig the 2016 election, and to equivocate about his claims that homophobic blog posts by Joy Ann Reid (herself a member of the Russiagate conspiracy brigade) were a result of Russian hacking, before finally exposing himself completely as a liar when his infamous "black propaganda" tweet, designed to discredit the completely, 100% authentic Podesta emails, finally comes up. At this point Nance tries to escape this jam by once again pretending "black propaganda" is a term of art in the intelligence community that somehow random civilians are supposed to know already, and then purposely conflates the Podesta leaks with an unrelated hoax post on Twitter (about Hillary Clinton's Goldman Sach's speeches) that had nothing whatsoever to do with the again, 100% real leaked emails in the Wikileaks Podesta dump. Even though Choitner doesn’t bother to press the advantage, the metaphorical drawing of blood is unmistakable - clearly Nance was lying then and clearly despite his excuses today, he's still lying now.

In summation I think it’s fair to say that if you can read the whole interview without realizing how completely full of sh*t Nance is, I've got some swampland in Florida to sell you real cheap; the obvious level of open mendacity behind this sociopath's now full-time grift is simply staggering – nobody in America should take Malcolm Nance seriously ever again. And how did Nance himself respond to this scathing critique in the normally benign interview column of the New Yorker? By attempting to loosely connect Chotiner to Russia, through Glenn Greenwald and suspected (by Nance) Russian spy, NSA leaker and American hero Edward Snowden of course:

https://twitter.com/MalcolmNance/status/1199027909073260546

While I certainly won't deny I found a certain joyful vindication in reading Chotiner's evisceration, the simple truth is that this article itself is far too little and far too late.  Over the past three years, millions of people have read Nance's outrageous claims and due to the author’s former work in U.S. Intelligence and National Security, believed them. By contrast, perhaps at best a few thousand people will read this article exposing Malcolm Nance as a dishonest grifter and an unrepentant fabricator; and even fewer of those readers will actually remember or care.

This too will be a familiar pattern to those who've spent any amount of time tracking the ongoing unraveling of Russiagate - from more than fifty mainstream media stories that eventually turned out to be lies, to a Mueller investigation that found precisely none of the treason the mad Bircher fools who sold this lie promised, to even Rachel Maddow's recent admission in court that using the words "really literally is paid Russian propaganda" to attack a conservative think tank was just hyperbole – this is all pretty much par for the course in the American public discourse. In the end it’s hard to ignore the fact that Russiagate has long since accomplished all of the goals its architects hatched it to achieve - defense spending is up as the West adopts a perpetual war footing with Russia, mainstream media has garnered billions of dollars worth of consumer interest tracking this daft spy novel and absolutely nobody who was ultimately responsible for punting a winnable election to a moron fascist who literally hung out with a teen sex slaver for years, lost their job or was held accountable at all. 

Truly then it can be said that at least in this instance "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes” - the same as it ever was.

- 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, Mastodon and Facebook.

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

Fantastic Lies: Of Bernie Bros & Bolshevik Bot Networks - Link

Read "Of Bernie Bros & Bolshevik Bot Networks" here.

- Nina Illingworth