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: Shell Game

 

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

 

The Only Winning Climate Policy Is a Pro-Worker Climate Policy

Well my friends, it certainly looks like its all over but the crying for Biden's milquetoast climate agenda; and perhaps the human species at large. As I, and many others predicted, the fossil fuel industry, anarcho-capitalist billionaires, and their in-pocket Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema appear to have torpedoed the Clean Electricity Performance Program, or CEPP, that is the centerpiece of Joe Biden's still-woefully inadequate climate action policies. Baring some kind of last minute miracle, liberal incrementalism (if you can even really call Biden a liberal) has once again screwed the pooch on behalf of their wealthy donors. 

Predictably, most of the public ire has fallen on Senators Manchin and Sinema; and why not? They are after all the most visible face of the plot to kill the world for capitalists at this point; although I'd wager such an analysis is letting billionaire supervillains, corporate America, and the mainstream media off lightly. Unfortunately however, as this November 4th, 2021 article by Matt Huber in Jacobin points out, even this analysis allows important culprits to ultimately escape responsibility; specifically President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party he presides over.

As our author details, both the CEPP and Biden's environmental agenda were always technocratic solutions dependent on enticing the free market to "go green" on its own. Biden explicitly rejected the Green New Deal, failed to tie his environmental policies to material improvements for the labor class, and surrendered control of the process to insiders, wonks and corporate stooges. Furthermore, despite rhetoric indicating that Palooka Joe regards climate crisis as the most important issue of our time, the President has failed to use the executive powers granted by his office to do more to mitigate climate catastrophe. All of which reflects poorly on Biden's visit to COP26, as the article notes:

"Which brings us to this week’s underwhelming round of COP negotiations. Joe Biden’s speech featured lofty rhetoric asserting that this is the “decisive decade” for climate action. Yet he’s also come to the meetings without any credible plan to rapidly decarbonize the world’s leading historic emitter.

It’s very easy to blame the downfall of Biden’s climate agenda on Joe Manchin. But while GND advocates spent much of 2018–20 demanding a transformative approach to climate policy, 2021 has been more of the same. When it comes to climate politics, Biden and elite Democrats seem to be saying, “We’ve tried nothing, and we’re all out of ideas.”

Frankly, you don't need me to tell you the Democratic Party is broken; the fact that they're getting rolled by fascists and can't even pass a budget despite controlling the House and Senate kind of makes that clear already. We have however been here before, and when dark history repeats itself despite the names and faces changing, that's a clear indication the problem is systemic. This in no way absolves Manchin and Sinema, who deserve every bit of animosity they receive, but there is a larger lesson here. Capitalist neoliberal technocrats are not going to save us from climate catastrophe, no matter what lofty rhetoric to the contrary they deploy at fancy international conferences.

Look, this isn't doomerism. We are still capable of preventing a climate apocalypse, if we just surrender capitalism. The time for dithering away at climate summits however, is growing short. Our choices at this point are pretty simple; we get left, or we get boiled. And as long as those decisions remain in the hands of men like Joe Biden, you can bet it's not going to be the former.

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: Last Call For Ivermectin Rubes in the Online Left

 

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

Right Wing Health Care Providers Making Millions Off Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin

Over the past few weeks on Nina-Bytes, we've briefly touched on various forms of pandemic profiteering and its fallout; a problem that clearly goes well beyond price gouging and speaks to the fundamental neofeudalist transformation our society is undergoing as we speak. Today I thought I'd stay on theme by examining recent news that the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis is launching an investigation into two right wing propaganda groups for pushing bunk Covid treatments. Amazingly enough, this investigation is primarily the result of journalism published in Time Magazine, and facts revealed in this September 28th, 2021 story by Micah Lee, over on The Intercept.

In that article, Lee details how two (extremely) right wing-aligned organizations, America’s Frontline Doctors and telemedicine provider SpeakWithAnMD.com, raked in millions of dollars shucking ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and bogus online consultations. Delving into the politics of these organizations, Lee adds:

"America’s Frontline Doctors, which debuted in the summer of 2020, has close ties to a network of right-wing efforts to undermine public health during the pandemic, including the Tea Party Patriots. AFLDS’s founder, physician Simone Gold, was arrested and charged after the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6. She and other doctors have appeared in widely shared videos arguing that the drugs hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin — which are primarily used to treat malaria in humans and parasitic worms in livestock, respectively — are effective treatments for Covid-19, despite warnings from the World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention against using them.

The extremely partisan group also misleads people about Covid-19 vaccines, which they refer to as “experimental biological agents,” and against public health measures like vaccine mandates, masking, social distancing, and restrictions on businesses. In a video titled “The Truth About Covid-19 Vaccines,” which has received over 1.3 million views, Gold falsely argues that Covid-19 is not very deadly and that the vaccines are more dangerous than the virus itself. Over 690,000 Americans so far have died from the virus, and unvaccinated people now make up 99 percent of recent Covid-19 deaths."

Frankly I could quote the entire article, but the short story here is that the whole bloody thing is a scam to sell bunk medicine to sick people; and it's a scam with reactionary political overtones at that. In fact, when it comes to ivermectin in particular, this isn't even a new scam; Trump himself ran this same game with hydroxychloroquine all the way back in 2020. 

Now maybe that doesn't surprise you; it probably shouldn't, given the popularity of vaccine fearmongering and ivermectin on the openly fascist Fox News network. Unfortunately as anyone in the online left who hasn't been living in a cave for the past year can tell you, this news will come as a shock to a lot of people who really should have known better. Lead by faux-left pied piper reactionaries, online leftism has developed a massive anti-vax crank problem; one that doesn't appear to be vanishing even as the anti-vax movement itself disintegrates.

The mainstream media doesn't seem very interested in this story, and I don't have a lot of faith in the power of Congress to stop fascist culture war tactics at this point. As a member of the online left however, I need to ask the people around me if they're paying attention as this whole grift unravels? I don't know, and frankly I don't care why folks who think they're leftists signed up for reactionary anti-vax nonsense, but surely at the point you're following guys who hawk horse deworming paste alongside some of the worst nazis on the internet, it's time to reconsider your position, isn't it? 

If it isn't, maybe it's time you stopped calling yourself a leftist and just got on with your new life campaigning for "populists" like Josh Hawley.

- 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…”

 

Nina-Bytes: Globalization, Neoliberalism, and COP26 Promises

 

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

 

Corporations Have the Power to Sue Governments Over Resource Extraction Policies

As a woman whose herky-jerky journey towards becoming a socialist began in the anti-globalization movement of the late 1990s, it's been pretty surreal watching the dystopian future I was fighting against back then, become today's everyday reality. In those days, plenty of analysts on the left warned that more than a fight about jobs and wages, the battle over free trade policies was a contest about surrendering state power to corporate control. With each new trade agreement, came new international rules and bodies to enforce a capitalist framework on the participating countries; essentially forever, and certainly regardless of who they elected. 

Although I didn't know anything about it at the time, this line of reasoning tracks closely with theories about neoliberalism published by David Harvey and Karl Polanyi. Harvey in particular argues that the foundational goal of neoliberalism is to restore and increase ruling class power, specifically at the expense of democracy and people power. As Yanis Varoufakis and the citizens of Greece discovered, even if you elect a nominally socialist government, these agreements can prevent you from enacting socialist reforms. Which begs the question, what happens when socialist reforms become literally the only way to save life on Earth?

Well, as it turns out the answer is nothing good. In this November 2nd, 2021 article by Manuel Pérez-Rocha at Truthout, we come face to face with the results when globalization's free trade regime comes into conflict with preventing climate crisis. The answer is, rich guys and corporations can sue your government in a corporate kangaroo court, to block action and/or collect millions, if not billions of dollars in damages. To the surprise of precisely no one, this system has primarily been used by resource extraction companies in the global north, against developing nations in the global south; because capitalism is nothing if not consistently racist.

All of which brings us to the same problem with the COP26 climate summit that we discussed yesterday; none of the promises world leaders make in Glasgow mean anything at all, as long as the policies and agreements they pursue at home continue to lock us into a dystopian climate apocalypse. Telling me you're serious about fighting climate crisis while simultaneously signing and enforcing trade agreements that allow corporations to sue for their right to destroy the world, is a little bit beyond just insulting my intelligence. Literally nobody at COP26 is going to talk about dismantling the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system, which means most of their bold pledges are demonstrably nothing more than hot air.

Which sadly, is par for the course I'm afraid.

- 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…”

 

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…”

 

Beefing with White Supremacy in Online Left Spaces on NIDC

 

Editor’s note: welcome back to Film Sessions; a monthly feature on NIDC in which I share, analyze and expand on a relevant video created by someone on the left wing of YouTube.

If you're wondering why I've moved these posts off of Media Madness, check out this mid-October content update notice. 

 

Left Solidarity and Abolishing Whiteness

Hello my friends; happy, um, November I guess. After taking a month to kind of re-establish my bearings and fire up a new blog, I'm back in the swing of things early with a new essay-length Film Sessions post on ninaillingworth.com. Today we're returning to important discussions about whiteness, and the corrosive nature of low-key white supremacist ideology in online left spaces; with an assist from a creator never-before featured in our study rotation. Join me as we examine John the Duncan's new video about why decolonization is not genocide, and Vaush is not a credible source of left wing analysis; this month in Film Sessions.

 

"In practice then, whiteness is about stigmatizing, delegitimizing, and dehumanizing non-white people in an extremely pervasive, everyday sort of way. This tracks well with history, because whiteness is not a naturally occurring concept; it was invented justify genocide and slavery while greasing the wheels of settler colonial capitalism."

 

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

 

Film Sessions: Beefing with White Supremacy in Online Left Spaces

 

- 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…”

 

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…”

 

Nina-Bytes: Capitalism, Carbon, and Neoliberal Climate Denial

 

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

 

The ‘Sensible’ Climate Compromise Is Not Sensible

Look, I'm not trying to be a killjoy here, but sooner or later as a society we're going to have to talk about flavors and levels of self-deception in the fight to prevent climate catastrophe. Take for example this well-argued October 27th article by Alexander Sammon over on The American Prospect. As you may have heard, Joe Manchin and Big Oil are current eviscerating Biden's environmental agenda in real time; an agenda that was already a milquetoast liberal compromise fantasy, quite frankly. Discussing the now-gutted climate crisis mitigation measures in the Build Back Better Act, Sammon notes that the Biden climate strategy currently centers around tax credits to two technologies; nuclear energy and carbon capture, utilization, and storage or CCUS.

As the author points out however, there's a pretty big reason why that's a terrible idea:

"So alongside the remaining clean-energy and electric-vehicle tax credits, beefed-up support for nuclear and carbon capture is what Joe Biden is going to take to Glasgow’s COP26 climate talks as proof of the United States’ willingness to tackle climate change head on.

The inconvenient problem is that those technologies don’t exist, at least not in any meaningful way. In the name of compromise, Build Back Better is now forgoing proven, cost-effective technologies for unproven ones, because that, evidently, is less ideological."

Sammon then goes on to demonstrate that we're lightyears away from producing enough nuclear power to meet our energy needs despite plenty of pre-existing subsidies, and that CCUS technology is basically a pipe dream that rewards the worst carbon-spewing supervillains to boot. Finally, Alex really brings home the bacon by pointing out that betting all your chips on fantasy ideas instead of investing in clean-energy solutions we've had for decades, is itself a form of climate science or climate change denial. 

That last point is key. and what I've taken to calling the "neoliberal flavor of climate science denial" is an issue that deserves more regular discussion in our society. When we talk about climate science or climate crisis denial, most people think of astroturf campaigns by fossil fuel companies, or the unhinged ravings of reactionary right wing politicians. It rarely ever occurs to people to consider whether acknowledging climate catastrophe, and yet refusing to take meaningful action to prevent it because your donors profit from the situation, isn't also clearly a form of denial?

And therein lies the problem I have with this piece. I'm not trying to pick on Alex; he's absolutely correct that doing only a fraction of what is required to stop climate catastrophe is its own form of denial. Which unfortunately means writing an article that doesn't acknowledge there's no way to stop climate catastrophe without getting rid of capitalism, is also its own form of denial. Sammon is certainly not alone in this; just this morning I read a piece by a left leaning academic who admitted we're all barbeque unless we get rid of capitalism, but proposed we forget about trying for now because it's impossible. Clearly, the denial runs deep.

Can you hear me in the back? If you're for preventing climate catastrophe and averting a mass extinction event, you're against capitalism. You can't scream "I refuse to acknowledge this" at a boiling planet and pretend you're on the right side of this issue. There is no halfway position here; there's no acceptable compromise between killing the planet for profit and saving the people, no matter what "reasonable center" you start working from. It's capitalism, or the planet, and the rich guys have clearly made their choice already.

So the question I pose to the left-leaning media, who I agree with on so many other issues is simple: which side are you on? I'd choose quickly my friends; before capitalism gets around to deciding you're an acceptable sacrifice too.

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: Give the Devil Her Due

 

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

 

Explosive Report Says GOP Congress Members Helped Plan Jan. 6 Capitol Attack

Well my friends, it's good to know that during my recent illness-related absence, I really didn't miss anything important in the ongoing Pork Reich putsch storyline. You know what's coming next, right? I promised myself I wouldn't do this twice in one week, but I feel like events have forced my hand here. In the immediate aftermath of the coordinated fascist coup attempt in the U.S. on January 6th, 2021, I published an essay explicitly laying out the key details of what just happened. From that essay:

"This was a planned insurrection, attended by (ex) members of the military and American law enforcement, aided by Capitol Hill Police and the Department of Defense, funded by rich fascists, inspired by right wing media, as well as an openly fascist Republican Party and the goddamn president of the United States; this wasn’t harmless, people literally died and members of Trump’s fascist mob clearly had designs on committing politicized acts of violence against their perceived enemies."

As confirmed by every new piece of evidence revealed since, I was right. This was a planned coup attempt and the plotters do indeed reach into the highest levels of the Republican Party and the private sector. Of course its easy to say in hindsight that this was obvious, but frankly that wasn't a popular opinion in either the mainstream media or the online circles I was writing in at the time. Now, this October 25th article by William Rivers Pitt over on Truthout, really just puts the icing on the cake.

Pitt's report (which isn't paywalled) draws from two recent blockbuster stories in the mainstream media; one at The Washington Post, and the other in Rolling Stone. The first story reveals that a key team of Trump advisors, lawyers, and other conservative minions rented a space in the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. to use as a "war room" in ongoing efforts to overturn the 2020 U.S. election. Why did someone rent a "war room" if this was a political protest that spontaneously got out of hand? You'll have to ask Republicans; who are clearly lying because they're guilty of trying to run a coup to keep Trump in power.

The second report is even more explosive and damning; it's not every day you hear that a sitting Congressman offered Trump supporters blanket pardons in the event of a successful fascist coup after all. On October 24th, Rolling Stone reported that two January 6th (coup) organizers have described "participating in “dozens” of planning briefings" ahead of the coup attempt, with multiple Republican members of Congress and Trump White House staffers. As Pitt notes for Truthout:

"The report describes two January 6 protest insiders who claim they worked “back to back to back” with several Republican House members — Representatives Paul Gosar, Lauren Boebert, Mo Brooks, Madison Cawthorn, Andy Biggs, Louie Gohmert and Marjorie Taylor Greene — and their senior staffers, who they allege were “intimately involved in planning both Trump’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the Jan. 6 events that turned violent.”

Now this list of names is interesting for two reasons. First, it looks awfully similar to the list of people I (and others) insisted Biden's Department of Justice should immediately arrest back in March of this year. Furthermore, the list includes the name of Lauren Boebert; who actively live-tweeted out the location of the Speaker of the House during the coup attempt. Clearly, the Congresswoman from QAnon was quite busy in the post election period. 

Of course none of this is particularly shocking, but it does all add up to a conclusion so obvious even the American political class can't ignore it; January 6th was a premeditated attack on the U.S. capitol to overturn the results of the election. In other words, it was a coup attempt; and since it was conducted by fascists, it was a fascist coup attempt. Will the fact that everyone knows that now change one single thing about how this plays out? Maybe, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for justice if I were you.

Jokes aside, I didn't post this blog just for sweet "I told you so" action. This is serious, and the coup is clearly not over. As a rule, reactionary putsch attempts have to be stopped, and fascists have to be confronted. You don’t beat these people by giggling nervously and ignoring them; that’s how they beat you. Refusing to go after billionaire fascists and their in-pocket politicians after a coup attempt isn’t just cowardly, it’s suicidal.

Lock 'em up Merrick, or god help us all come 2024.

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

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“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”