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: Bleeding Soil and Climate Theater

 

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

 

Why We Must Defund the Global Climate Wall

I think the important thing to keep in mind when you're watching the news in the Pig Empire, is that despite corporate media's microscopic attention span and atrocious coverage, nothing truly happens in a vacuum. Indeed, this is why I can't say I have very high hopes for the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow; because I know the kind of policy these sociopathic world leaders pursue at home. Take for example this November 1st, 2021 article by Todd Miller over on Common Dreams that won't even so much as make a dent in the mainstream media news cycle.

As co-author of a new report called The Global Climate Wall, Miller crunched the numbers and discovered that the world's seven heaviest polluter nations spent literally twice as much money on border security as they did on helping vulnerable countries deal with climate crisis and transition to clean energy. Furthermore, that report goes on to pinpoint the alliance of nefarious public and private sector actors working to ensure this disparity only grows. From Kenny Stancil on October 26th, 2021, also in Common Dreams:

"This nexus of power, wealth, and collusion between fossil fuel firms and the border security industry shows how climate inaction and militarized responses to its consequences increasingly work hand in hand," the authors write. "Both industries profit as ever more resources are diverted towards dealing with the consequences of climate change rather than tackling its root causes."

"This comes at a terrible human cost," they add. "It can be seen in the rising death toll of refugees, deplorable conditions in many refugee camps and detention centers, violent pushbacks from European countries, particularly those bordering the Mediterranean, and from the U.S., in countless cases of unnecessary suffering and brutality."

Back in his article, Miller then talks about the big picture scope of border enforcement enforcement spending and offers a logical solution. Since funding a dystopian police state at the border is expensive and undesirable, why not shift that money over to climate financing instead? This is of course a logical solution that would help address two recognized humanitarian catastrophes in waiting; climate crisis itself, and mass migration. The problem in American in particular however, is twofold, and I don't think either of these barriers would particularly shock Miller; a guy who writes a blog called Border Wars.

First, as the report acknowledges and I've written about earlier this year, there's a lot of influential pigs at this particular trough. This includes obvious actors like private prison contractors, or border guard unions, and less obvious actors such as weapons contractors, or venture capital firms. Which is of course to say nothing of the absurdly powerful fossil fuel lobby that couldn't care less about climate refugees but is opposed to stopping oil consumption anywhere, including the developing world. As we've noted on this very blog, poor kids and polar bears can't afford to hire lobbyists, and clearly the rich guys are investing in some kind of extremely literal climate war. 

Further compounding the problem is the centrality of nativism and anti-migrant hysteria to fascist political actors in the Pig Empire; a topic I touched on while reviewing Greg Grandin's "The End of the Myth" this past spring. The short story here is that dehumanizing and caging non-white migrants has been both profitable, and politically useful, to the very same people pushing fascism on a boiling planet. All of which brings me to my larger point I guess. Given that this same ruling class tends to control every major political party in the entire "West," I'm not really holding my breath in anticipation of how the latest climate summit is going to shake out. 

Look, if you ask corporate media what an ecofascist is, they'll point to survivalist wingers and neonazis appropriating pagan symbols and preaching Volkish mysticism. I'd argue however that modern Pig Empire immigration and climate policy already form the core basis of an ecofascist outlook. If spending billions on cages for poor brown people, while dooming whole populations to an agonizing death from behind a battery of sophisticated weaponry isn't "ecofascist," then the word has no meaning. While we pretend that there is a materially significant climate crisis prevention "debate" going on in Pig Empire governments, the people who truly own those governments are preparing for class war and the apocalypse. 

This isn't a negotiation; they're stalling for time. Time the ruling classes are using to arm up and prepare to kill you rather than surrender their golden goose; capitalism.

- nina illingworth

 

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

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…”

 

Six Things I Think: A Bipartisan Propaganda Frontier (Link)

 

Author's note: I'm not going to lie, this essay took me six days to write. Given the dense material we cover here however, I hope readers will find it worth it.

Please also note this piece is also part of the “Leftist Theory” collection on ninaillingworth.com.

Nested Propaganda About Imaginary Lines

In this lengthy, heavily-sourced essay I take a look at the public discourse surrounding the story of the so-called US migrant crisis, through the lens of the propaganda model. There is certainly a crisis, but it's not about the border, and it's not really about migrants either. Looking at eight separate stories from a wide spectrum of the political media, I untangle both the spin, and the reality of this controversy.

I'm sure it will surprise no one to hear that the real villain here is capitalist extraction, and the reason nobody wants to tell you that is they're all in on the slaughter.

"Folks, this isn’t just the kind of story you won’t find on the news; this is the reality that the partisan blather they do put out as news, is designed to prevent you from seeing. And whether propagandists in the public eye like it or not, Biden’s stated intention is to continue the cycle of violence and plunder even if it means separating families in Mexico or locking up brown kids on a toxic military base. What Biden, his flunkies in the media, and indeed much of the ruling establishment really care about here, is keeping your attention focused elsewhere while rich people count the spoils." 

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

Six Things I Think: A Bipartisan Propaganda Frontier 

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 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: Two Examples of False Balance and Protecting Fascism in the Media (Re-Post)

 

Editor's note: as I mentioned in a recent post, Facebook's fascist-enabling decision to ban anarchist and antifascist pages has put me in the awkward position of having to transfer all of my unique content to another website; including older, archived material. These two article analysis journals (both concerning fascist U.S. immigration policy) were originally published in the fall of 2019 and are presented here with only minor formatting alterations.

Cuccinelli Wants Power To Reveal Personal Information Of Refugees Accused Of Crimes

Today's article analysis features an incredible important Buzzfeed news story that is sadly still a prime example of mainstream media framing a discussion in favor of establishment power - even when that establishment is a bunch of rabid white supremacists driving the country towards something quite akin to Mussolini's Italy, if not Nazi Germany itself.

The first half of this article is a mumble jumble of alphabet soup call signs in which Ken Cuccinelli is allowed to frame his plan to "unilaterally publicize personal information about asylees, refugees, and their family members in the US who are being prosecuted for certain crimes" as an issue of "law and order."

Only once you get halfway down the page does Buzzfeed provide an expert opinion by John Sandweg (Obama era former US Immigration and Customs Enforcement head) on what the real motivation is for this brazen and objectively fascist grab at power: 

“This is 100% about the media. This memo is in the guise of a public safety matter, but it’s really to publicize cases where asylum seekers were arrested or prosecuted for a criminal offense,” he said, after being told about the memo. “They are trying to undermine faith in the asylum and refugee system to suggest it is a public safety threat and the data does not support that.”

Look folks, they don't call it "creeping fascism" for no reason and there is a clear historical record of what happens when a society allows itself to constantly accept "just a little bit more fascism" in the name of "peace, order and profit." As I've argued time and time again elsewhere, treating these incidents in isolation while failing to register the bigger picture because it's too horrible is a pretty good way to end up on the back of truck headed for "Happy Patriot Labor Camp 17" in the not so distant future.

This story of course must be examined in the context of Trump's objectively white nationalist government, that government's war on brown migrants and the long and shameful bipartisan U.S. history of locking poor brown people in cages because they crossed an imaginary line to escape war and neofeudalism our society has imposed on them.

Furthermore, this news must also be considered in relation to the Trump administration's already existing policy of allowing ICE to publish a weekly list of "immigrant crimes" to demonize migrants in the eyes of the average American voter. I'm certainly not the only one to note the haunting echoes of Der Stürmer in this policy or Cuccinelli's terrifying grasp at power here (see below) but you'd be hard pressed to find any mention of it in the article Buzzfeed just presented.

I think at this point it would be wise for Americans to remember that Nazi Germany and the horrifying "Final Solution" didn't come about overnight - it took more than a decade of grooming by the reactionary German right in all levels of society to sculpt the kind of nation that would embrace the death camps. Along the way there were thousands of little but horrifying stories, so many that they could not all be remembered, about the creeping rise of antisemitic fascism. What we have learned since then, but seemingly forgotten at the worst hour in our collective history is that fascism doesn't care who it hates, it just needs someone to hate. There will always been another other, another leftist threat, another treachery to the good volk who must be protected for the honor of the fatherland.

If you aren't starting to see enough terrifying parallels here to actively name the beast, then I hate to tell you that you're already well along the path to being a "good German."

- nina illingworth

Trump administration to expand DNA collection at border and give data to FBI

One of the more frustrating aspects about analyzing the fascist creep in "Trump's America" and how it's covered by a largely complicit, but still fully politicized corporate media is learning to walk the line of truth and accountability; to avoid having to choose between absolving a fascist society for the obvious fascist consequences of its open embrace of fascist ideology and absolving a clearly fascist leader and his clearly fascist administration for making things demonstrably worse because "well it's always been like this."

I mention this because in today's article analysis we're looking at a brief October 3rd, 2019 update in the Guardian about the Trump administration's (still theoretical) proposal to "expand the collection of DNA from migrants who cross US borders, and to include the information in a vast criminal database operated by the FBI." 

Now the first thing most people are going to notice about this description is the word "expand" which implies that the U.S. government is currently collecting DNA records on migrants. If you read the whole article however you'll discover that this is at best marginally true; the government currently does rapid DNA testing to detect adults "falsely posing as parents" of migrant children at the border between the United States and Mexico. Although on the surface this discrepancy might seem fairly minor (after all, it is covered in the article) the ultimate effect here is both extremely dangerous for society at large and openly advantageous to architects of the fascist creep slowly strangling the entire "West" as we speak. 

In The Guardian's defense, they are one of the few major outlets that reports on the bipartisan nature of America's nightmare fascist immigration policies but the idea that cataloguing the bio-metric data on millions of migrants and turning it over to the FBI for criminal enforcement purposes has any real relation to a genetic paternity test used to identify potential child trafficking victims at the border crosses the line from "fair minded" and into an objectively "false balance."

In light of the fact that almost all of the undocumented migrants who pass through the southern border are Mexican, Central American and South American, what the Trump administration is proposing here is nothing short of a high-tech version of an ethno-nationalist or Nazi watch list; a necessary precursor to apartheid, mass deportations or open ethnic cleansing. While The Guardian does not make the effort to connect these dots, they do point out that this proposed plan fits in neatly with the Trump administration's attempt to associate migrants with criminal behavior and that such a genetic record would provide identifying information about the families of migrants, regardless of their individual citizenship status. The fact that turning the list over to the FBI happens to help generate the narrative that brown migrants are dangerous criminals is really just icing on the cake however; this DNA list makes the dystopian, police-state possibilities of Bush Administration's objectively racist and Islamophobic "no fly list" look like joke by comparison.

This policy is not an expansion; it's new (DHS secretary Janet Napolitano refused to do it in 2010), terrifying and when combined with the fact that we *already* have concentration camps housing people whose only crime is crossing an imaginary line to escape U.S. sponsored violence, poverty and environmental destruction, this proposal is a rather obvious sign of America's descent into open fascism - a topic the Guardian doesn't even remotely address in this article.

Look, I'll be the first person to tell you that the Democratic Party of the past half-century has been just as brutal, repressive and xenophobic towards brown migrants along the southern American border, as their sh*thead Republican counterparts. We didn't get here overnight. Trump didn't make undocumented migrants a class of people it was okay to violently persecute and lock up for profit. Downmarket Mussolini's administration didn't even build the concentrations camps that Trump's fascist lapdog Stephen Miller is using to create space for the "white ethno-state" of his dreams. Healthy societies don't elect fascists and America has spent a very long time embracing the principles a man like Trump embodies with every monstrous action he undertakes.

But in our quest to recognize that it is important that we still understand that Trump is crashing our society through barriers and taboos that exist for a reason - he might not have battered the gates down, but he's happily steering the nation towards something that looks eerily more like Nazi Germany every single day. 

If you forget that simple truth, you end up writing articles that accidentally leave out the important part of the story and strongly suggest that one of the most terrifying potential policy decisions in the history of U.S. immigration enforcement is merely an "expansion" of policies we already have. 

Articles like this one.

- 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. 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…”

A Brief Thought: Send Em Upriver Sessions & The Trump Era - Link

In the rush to analyze the Trump administration's new war posture, Jeff Sessions almost managed to slide a serious bit of immigration fuckery by me - almost.

Read "Send Em Upriver Sessions & The Trump Era" here. 

- Nina Illingworth