Nina Bytes: Fascism is on the Docket

 

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

Hello friends; long time no see. My life has been pretty terrible for the past several months, but it's better now, and I'd rather not waste a lot of time going over the gory details. Please bear with me while I work myself back into shape; writing is way harder than emo trash-posting on Twitter.

In today's post I'd like to provide some evidentiary examples for a thesis I published over on Instagram called "Fascism is a Legalist Doctrine." As I mentioned, two major reactionary arguments designed to dismantle what passes for American democracy are making their way before a pro-fascist Supreme Court in America. Let's take a closer look at both of those cases:

 

The Supreme Court Is On The Verge Of Killing The Voting Rights Act

First of all I'd like to note that I chose this rather bloodless October 3rd, 2022 article by Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux over at Five-Thirty-Eight on purpose because I need the "very serious" liberals in my life to understand that the fascist judicial assault on American democracy is very real, not even remotely abstract, and definitely not some far left political theory. The article revolves around the pivotal Alabama map-rigging case currently before a 6-3 fascist high SCOTUS in America; Merrill v. Milligan.

Now on the surface, this might look like just another crooked gerrymandering case in a very long line of crooked gerrymandering cases in the United States. Once one delves a little deeper into the fascist argument being presented, and likely to be accepted by the court however, the horrifying implications become more clear:

 

"Up until now, the court has taken the perspective that, in order to comply with the act, states are in some situations required to take race into consideration as the primary factor in the redistricting process. Alabama Republicans are now arguing that it’s discriminatory to prioritize race over other traditional redistricting techniques, such as having compact districts, contiguous boundaries or avoiding crossing county or town boundaries. Several experts, including Pildes, told FiveThirtyEight that a ruling that sides with Alabama would be a radical departure from previous interpretations of the law and would likely free states to draw congressional or state legislative maps where minority voters have less political power relative to their numbers.

In that sense, the outcome of this case could be very similar to a 2013 ruling in which the Roberts court gutted another section of the Voting Rights Act, freeing a group of states with histories of discrimination against minority voters to change their election laws without federal approval. In the years afterward, those states shuttered thousands of polling places, intensified their voter purges and changed voting laws in other ways that disproportionately affect minority voters."

 

Yes folks, you read that correctly; fascist lawyers and the Alabama GOP are arguing (more or less) that being forced to draw voting districts in such a way as to accurately reflect minority voting populations and protect their constitutional rights, are actually discriminatory against white Republicans. In short, Tucker Carlson's reverse racism propaganda from Fox News is about to become a fundamental plank of election law; to the advantage of fascists and the disadvantage of anyone who doesn't like being ruled by fascists. 

Astoundingly enough however, Merrill v. Milligan isn't even the most serious threat to American democracy about to appear before an objectively far right and reactionary Supreme Court:

 

How the Supreme Court could make it legal to steal the next presidential election

Whelp, that's pretty bleak my friends. In this July 11th opinion piece over on MSNBC, law professor Jessica Levinson lays out the terrifying implications in another upcoming case, Moore v. Harper.

Although understanding this case does involved wading into the weeds a bit, the fascist argument here broadly stipulates that state lawmakers more or less have the right to conduct elections any way they want (including rigging them,) without oversight from anyone except federal courts, and even then only narrowly. This is literally a green light for Republican controlled states to not only rig their own elections, but award their state delegates to whichever presidential candidate they want; and if that sounds familiar to you, it probably should:

 

"Even more significantly, this doctrine, taken to its catastrophic and logical conclusion, could allow state lawmakers to legally steal presidential elections. Let’s imagine that in 2024, Florida residents vote to re-elect President Joe Biden. This has always meant Florida’s 30 Electoral College votes would go to Biden. But maybe the lawmakers there would want the Republican challenger to win. The lawmakers could decide not to certify the election results and instead submit their own slate of electors to the Electoral College who would vote for that Republican. By pure luck and coincidence, this is pretty damn close to the plan espoused by former President Donald Trump and his supporters in their attempt pilfer the 2020 election."

 

Naturally of course, we can't know how the Supreme Court will ultimately rule in Moore v. Harper. but given the court's current composition, and the fact that four reactionary judges on the court have already indicated they support the “independent state legislature doctrine,” it's probably not that hard to guess.

All of which of course leads me back to the point I was trying to make on Instagram; it does no good for liberals to rail away against fascist street gangs and open neo-nazis, while patently refusing to resist the judicial branch of fascism that is actively working to end what passes for American democracy, once and for all. Biden can walk out on stage and warn us all about the "semi-fascists" until he's blue in the face, but until Democrat lawmakers are prepared to abolish the filibuster and secure voting rights for all, the fascists are going to keep winning these fights in the halls of power, and telling folks to "vote harder" is a sick joke.

That doesn't mean society has to accept fascist rule, but if the Democratic Party isn't even prepared to fight fascism to preserve its own existence at the ballot box, what good are they to anyone who isn't a fascist, at all?

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: Trainspotting in the Heart of the Pig Empire

 

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

 

"Total Asymmetric Warfare" - Georgia GOP Redraws Political Map as US Senate Dems Do Nothing

Have you ever wondered what it would look like if a whole society caught "deer in headlights" syndrome? Yeah, me neither; until I started living it. After Joe Biden's election victory and inauguration, I (and many other observers) warned that with, or without Downmarket Mussolini, American fascism as embodied by the Republican Party, was just getting warmed up. As the forces of reaction seek to intimidate political opponents into submission and force the system to warp around fascist conspiracy theories, we have been proven largely correct. Now we're seeing the poisonous fruits of a longstanding, yet entirely exposed GOP plot to rig the next decade's worth of elections, inside the context of a fascist political takeover being conducted by folks who seemingly regard any vote against them, as foundationally illegitimate. 

In this November 23rd, 2021 article by Jessica Corbett over on Common Dreams, we go inside GOP attempts to effectively disenfranchise perhaps millions of predominantly minority voters through the magic of gerrymandering; the art of ensuring all the people who won't vote for cracker supremacists are jammed into the same voting districts. This is of course in addition to other ways the fascist Republican Party is working to rig the next election cycle; including threatening their political opponents until they quit, offering bounties for evidence of presupposed voter fraud, and just downright making it as hard as possible for poor and marginalized people to vote against them.

Now you might be tempted to assume that the ostensible opposition to the fascist party in American politics, the Democrats, would be working night and day to solve this problem; after all, even if they couldn't give a rat's backside about folks living under the threat of fascist violence, this could affect their own political careers in a very direct way. As the article and voting rights observer Ari Berman noted however, you'd be wrong:

 

"It’s beyond enraging that Manchin and Sinema continue to say voting rights legislation needs 60 votes when GOP is rigging elections and shutting Democrats out of power for next decade on simple majority party-line votes. Total asymmetric warfare."

 

Yes, you heard that correctly; literal fascists who at least pretend to believe Trump's "big lie" are about to rig the next decade's worth of elections because two corrupt as f*ck Democratic Party Senators are being bribed to, among other things, keep the filibuster intact. This in turn has allowed the GOP to repeatedly block measures that would at least help secure voting rights, including the For the People Act, Freedom to Vote Act, and John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act; despite Joe Machin's clown-shoes attempts at bipartisanship and appeasement. Please keep in mind that none of this is any sort of secret, and neither is the fact that corporate America is playing both sides of the battle against the fascist creep; some folks who know Trump well are already promising a second Herr Donald presidency would come with reprisals against his enemies.

This, at the end of the day, is what I mean when I talk to you about Weimar America. It's not so much a set of historical circumstances shared between interwar Germany and modern America, as it is a social ethos built around exceptionalism and liberal capitalist norms, that leads to a seemingly inevitable, and wholly predictable surrender to fascism. Right now, it feels like most of the country knows full damn well that the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train full of nazis; the question then becomes, is anyone going to do anything to stop the carnage that's about to ensue, at all? Clearly, if you're asking the corporate liberal establishment, the answer to that question is ultimately "no," and history says that course of (in)action, has consequences.

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…”