ON THE DAY AFTER THE ELECTION HALF — BUT ONLY HALF — OF AMERICANS WOKE UP SOMBRE, STUNNED, SICKENED, AND RIGHTLY VERY SCARED ~ Louis Further ~ On Tuesday Rudy Giuliani, disgraced and debarred lawyer and felonious election denier, arrived to cast his vote in Florida in a car which he had been ordered by a court to surrender. This was part of the $148 million settlement for defaming two poll workers from Georgia after the 2020 election, in furtherance of the lie that the election was stolen. Also voting in Florida on Tuesday was convicted felon Donald Trump — despite the fact that over a million ‘regular’ voters are banned in that state because… they are felons. Those episodes epitomise the smug lawlessness of the elite which is gripping the United States. To list only the most egregious of his many crimes (for none of which is he now likely to be held accountable), Trump tried to overturn the last election with deadly violence; he boasts of his many sexual assaults and serial rapes; he is avowedly and proudly supremacist, racist and misogynist; he stashed classified national security documents in his bathroom on leaving office in 2021 and refused to give them back when ordered to do so; he called for the assassination of his (political) opponents and of members of the press; his staggering number of lies and unpredictability made his last administration chaotic as well as dangerous. A majority of voters willingly elected a fascist dictator. It was no ‘fluke’. Now, his lawlessness may give way to laws simply being changed to allow massive oppression of the populace and destruction of the Earth. Maybe MAGA should stand for Manipulable, Aggrieved, Gullible, Ahistorical. Grievances are real. An acquisitive, hierarchical, and coercive society like that of the capitalist United States ensures that large sections of the population (working people, non-whites, women and LGBTQ+ folks) are systematically oppressed. But even in those groups many nevertheless chose their own oppression and disease anyway (junk science merchant Robert F Kennedy is likely to hold a key post in the next administration’s public health plans). Why did they vote in such decisively large numbers for Trump? Three factors account for this week’s outcome. The first is that Trump’s character, conduct and transgressions — from ‘indelicacies’ to proven criminality — simply don’t matter to his cult’s members. Facts don’t matter. The electorate seems to have got fixated on lies they were told about the economy, which in the end was ‘stronger’ under the Biden administration than it was under Trump’s. But spend an hour or two with cult members’ main sources of disinformation and you’ll discover that a sizeable minority of voters has a frighteningly slim grasp of reality. Worse, they tend to see and believe what they want to see and believe. Trump’s unsuitability to run a roadside lemonade stand — let alone have his hands on the nuclear codes of the most powerful and influential country in the world — long ago became irrelevant to his supporters. They dismiss his crimes and failings as too far in the past to worry about, or as ‘communist propaganda’. Reason doesn’t play much of a part in the MAGA approach to ‘analysing’ the (political) scene; from the point of view of clinical psychology, confirmation bias is much more powerful. Secondly, the propaganda which is fed to both sides of the post-truth US electorate is based, not on substance, but on personalities and their positioning. For instance, to level the charge at Trump or his party that they are likely to further hasten climate collapse, does not provoke the response that there are evidence and facts against which such a plan of his can be judged, but that the critic’s identity or position on the political spectrum make their opinions invalid. The criticisms are deemed invalid because the critic is a political enemy, a communist, a ‘bad person’, or someone that should be dismissed with a silly epithet — ideally of a crude or foul nature. For most commentators or allies, that suffices. Argument over. Issues as such are rarely discussed; “they’re the enemy”, “she’s an extremist”, “he served our country in the military”, “she lives in a ‘transgender neighbourhood'” is all you will hear. Similarly, the reasons why someone would advocate peace in Gaza and the West bank and not want to see (southern) Lebanon reduced (further) to rubble doesn’t seem to grab anyone’s attention. The fact that an opponent sided with Palestinian protesters is what counts — their label-able stance is as simple and important as the colour of their hair. Thirdly, the official ‘opposition’ to the MAGA movement, the Democratic party, acted consistently as if it was oblivious to political science, and the history of fascism. Indeed, they admit no substantial or effective critique of the way capitalist, male-led polities work. For the candidates and vast majority of commentators this all looked to be little more than the usual game of tennis: “First it’s my turn to run an oppressive and destructive system in the interests of the elite. Then it’s your turn”. None of the many correspondents, pundits, commentators, observers — even celebrities — on the so-called mainstream left stopped even once in the last couple of years, took a deep breath and (eyebrows and voices slightly raised) asked, “Just a minute. How the hell did we get here?! Why didn’t Biden’s Attorney General (Merrick Garland) assemble and press the charges against Trump as soon as he could after his crimes were committed? And why didn’t the Department of Justice foil the evasive actions by the judges to whose courts the cases were assigned? Why did Biden insist on a ‘softly softly’ approach to the MAGA cult? And why did Harris have Polyanna with her at every rally”? Indeed, post-election ‘analysis’ almost immediately began to argue about ways to present a “better and more convincing message” to the voters, one which “addresses the grievances” mentioned above… time for fresh balls from the freezer, change ends and continue the match. Anarchists put no stock in elections, politicians and party systems. Yet in the US, the Democrats stand for ostensibly (but not really) honest and ‘neutral’ ways to support the status quo with all its inequalities, belligerence and destruction. ‘Old style’ Republicans pretend to stand for those things too; but their platform is really a way to aggressively and unapologetically promote selfishness and destruction. And over the past eight years the MAGA cult has developed an unstoppable promotion of white supremacy, misogyny and anti-intellectual denial of the sciences, in particular climate collapse and decaying public health. Few outside the genuine radical left appear to have even begun to understand the threats of fascism in the United States and its rise globally. Now that Trump can deploy Project 2025 with absolute immunity and without the opponents in the Republican party who were there last time to temper at least some of his excesses, things look very grim indeed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo: Wikimedia commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 The post Trump’s victory: “Manipulable, Aggrieved, Gullible, Ahistorical” appeared first on Freedom News.

WHILST TRUMP’S CANDIDACY MAY HAVE SPICED THINGS UP IN DRAMATIC FASHION, IT’S CLEAR THAT THE WAR MACHINE CONTINUES OPERATING AS IT WAS MEANT TO ~ Andrew J Boyer ~ In the past few years since taking up writing, I’ve managed to avoid tackling the topic of Donald Trump. Not for any lack of material, but because entire news outlets and internet blogs are saturated with think-pieces on this man. The way liberal media has fanatically concentrated all of its critique onto this one person whilst ignoring the bigger, darker picture has frustratingly caused me to really question: between his supporters and his detractors, which Trump-centric cult is bigger? It’s been nearly ten years since he descended the escalator at Trump Tower and announced his candidacy. His controversial actions in office were constantly dissected and discussed (and, rightfully so). Since leaving office, his court cases continue to fill headlines. Now, as he runs for a second non-consecutive term, many are noticing a lack of lustre in his approach and our attention spans. I used to believe that Trump was a charismatic (albeit crooked) public figure who’s most dangerous asset lies in his ability to command an audience. I thought he was another example of a silver-tongued devil whose oratory skills hypnotized citizens into devotion. But as people leave his rallies early and the media takes notice by producing op-eds on how he lost his appeal, – it’s forced my hand into clarifying something very important: Trump has always been boring. He isn’t charismatic; he was just part of a spectacle. It’s funny how you never process the details in history until after some time has passed and the fog has lifted. Trump’s personality has been made out to seem larger than life. In all actuality, any wealthy TV show host who trolled their way through politics would have produced the same results. It was never Trump’s ramblings that captivated people; the deflated ratings of his final seasons hosting The Apprentice proves this easily.  It was the spectacle of a non-politician buying their way into politics and “disrupting the status quo”. The stickler with spectacles is that they’re often fake. The status quo was never disrupted. Smoke and mirrors can create a show worth watching, but the circus being over is what’s creating the lack of lustre that citizens are feeling. We’ve seen this act already. Anarchists, revolutionary activists and free thinkers alike have long spoken out about the superficiality of electoral politics. As Frank Zappa succinctly put it: “Politics is the entertainment department of the war machine”. Whilst Trump’s candidacy may have spiced things up in dramatic fashion, it’s clear that the war machine continues operating as it was meant to. We mustn’t go as far as to say Trump has had no impact in the slightest. The ‘spectacle’ of his candidacy revitalized and emboldened American conservatism, furthering the neoliberal agenda in which his predecessor Ronald Reagan laid the groundwork for. But let’s not get carried away in thinking this was the sophisticated plan of a mad genius. Very little in American politics is the result of one person and their vision, but rather a calculated and crafted set of paths put forth by mega-corporations using their influence and channels to secure their own longevity. Had Trump not been in the picture, an equally concerning figure would have emerged. In the era of memes, social media, blogging and Facebook arguments – the old fashioned ‘good ol’ boy’ Republican has become a relic of the past, giving way to more populist acts.   It’s easy to get lost in this analysis as if it’s a strategy for how to win. But there’s no winning for working people when it comes to presidential elections. Very few actually vote for someone, but rather they vote against who they don’t want to win. The dramatics of Trump’s candidacy temporarily distracted American citizens from the disillusionment they had with Democrats. Obama’s time in office was peppered with drone strikes, police brutality and deportations, despite being promised as a departure from Bush’s conservatism. Similarly, Biden’s term has seen the loss of Roe v. Wade, and further police funding at a time when citizens were calling for abolition. When both parties prove to be incapable of meeting people’s basic needs, the spectacle of a villain is needed to entice people back into the system. Trump’s impact on history and American politics continues to be over-hyped, as the mechanics of neoliberalism remain rarely acknowledged in mainstream media. As with most seemingly ‘larger than life’ historical figures, his fame and attention are owed to the changing trend of society at large. As society shifts again, and the Oz-like little man behind the curtain is revealed, we’re left to realize that Trump has always been just as boring and mundane as any other politician promising to spice up the Sisyphus’s rock that is U.S. ‘democracy’. The post Trump has always been boring appeared first on Freedom News.

RACISM AND THE THREAT TO ENFORCE IT BY VIOLENCE SEEM TO BE LAPPING INTO EVER MORE AREAS OF PUBLIC LIFE ~ Louis Further ~ The fervent inbuilt racism of many (most?) members of the élite — especially, but not only, on the right, and certainly woven into the fabric of the Republican Party — continues to blast through public discourse as the country and its media and propaganda outlets approach the general election on 5 November. Indeed, perhaps the most salient points which both candidates made in the recent presidential ‘debate’ (really a sequence of poorly-crafted presentations) were racist. From Donald Trump: that hordes of nasty, sick non-white ‘lowlife’ criminals are invading the United States in their millions; so you’d better dread them. From Kamala Harris: that Palestinians are going to have to content themselves with verbal token sympathy; her administration would continue to promote and fund their massacre under the guise of the United States’s perceived duty to help Israel ‘defend’ itself. This time last month Trump spared no-one’s blushes when he posted on X the vile nonsense that voting for his opponent would cause something bad: more black people in the United States. His post was accompanied by two images side by side: a mass of immigrants with the legend “Import the third world” under Harris, and “white suburbia” under Trump. The post passed with only minor comment. That offence came the day after a twaddle-filled ‘interview’ between Trump and X’s owner, Elon Musk, who himself continues to augment the ferocity and foulness of his (presumably influential) supremacist views. But Trump didn’t stop there. On his Truth Social site the candidate officially nominated for president by the Republican party actually said that women should vote for him (Trump) or expect their daughters to be raped by black ‘monsters’. Other examples of outright racist tirades abound; but no-one outside the progressive movements seems either too surprised or much motivated to object. It has all become the norm. Animals appear to be no safer: Haitian immigrants apparently now eat true white Americans’ pets – at least in Springfield (Ohio), they do. Last week Republicans – including the Republican nominee for vice president, J D Vance – got all excited because the daughter of someone’s mother’s neighbour’s friend might have claimed that her (who knows whose?) cat had been “strung up” by a nasty Haitian. A pool of Republican racists like this senator retweeted and otherwise repeated the lie. As did Trump during that same debate, although he got the animal wrong. He also repeated the falsehood multiple times at his rallies (to huge cheers) thereafter and was clearly determined to continue the hateful rubbish – even after it was otherwise accepted as being debunked, and even after local government offices in Springfield had to be closed because of an anti-Haitian-immigrant bomb threat obviously ‘inspired’ by the racist talk. Of course, none of it ever happened. But that’s of no consequence: the alleged perpetrators are black and foreign. There has been no retraction from Vance or his party. When moderators in the presidential ‘debate’ pushed back on Trump’s reference to the lies, his retort was that he’d “seen it on television”. Indeed most of his ‘policies’ are actually half-baked ideas lifted from the latest rubbish he’s just watched on Fox and other far right TV outlets. Parents in Ohio have also had to ask Trump and Vance to stop making political capital out of their son’s death last year, where the driver of a minivan which collided with the school bus in which he was riding happened to be Haitian. Nor does anyone seem too upset at the logical fallacy of ascribing evil to the entirety of a substantial demographic (guest workers) because of an alleged handful of unrepresentative transgressions in those communities. Racism and the threat to enforce it by violence seem to be lapping into ever more areas of public life. Last month an ex-Army sniper and FBI informant, Joe Moore, made public his experiences of infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan; he revealed the lengths to which the ‘Klan’s members and now ‘affiliated’ staff from the police and armed forces etc are prepared to go in order to get Trump elected and a white supremacist agenda implemented in the United States. Famous motorcycle manufacturer, Harley-Davidson, is the latest large company to allow itself to be bullied into abandoning progressive DEI initiatives (diversity, equity, and inclusion) because of pressure from members of the intolerant right. Yet again, the pressure came from the bigot and conspiracist, Robby Starbuck, who celebrated his ignorance and hatred on X shortly after the company yielded to the pressure. GAZA The promotion, facilitating and funding of genocide, injury, destruction, torture and murder of Palestinian children, women and (non-combatant) men in Gaza goes on unchecked. There continues to be an almost fantasy-like feel to the coverage of the war by the vast majority of the US media and propaganda outlets. For them the only story to tell is that of upholding Israel’s right to ‘defend’ itself. The tens of thousands of Palestinians killed and the almost total reduction to rubble of their property, healthcare facilities, schools and infrastructure is just not happening. The fact that the United Nations reported that over a million people in central and southern Gaza received no food rations in August has made worse a situation which the UN calls “beyond catastrophic” went entirely uncovered by the mainstream propaganda outlets in the US. The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, went further last week. She posted on X that “Israel’s assault could end up exterminating almost the entire population in Gaza over the next couple of years”. At the very least — with a probable significant undercount of 40,000+ Palestinians murdered by Israeli terrorists – the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, accused Israel of mounting a ‘starvation campaign’ in Gaza: the World Food Programme assesses the number of Palestinians in urgent need of (such) aid at well over two million. Deporting the millions of murderers from South and Central America is of much more pressing concern, though, and appeals to far more people who make and report on the news. When (mostly young and left-leaning) protesters speak up to draw attention — if nothing else — to the imbalance of the Israeli élite’s response to Hamas’s own terrorism last October and articulate the reasonable exhortation not to punish Palestine and Palestinians now for the oppression of Jews over millennia, they are silenced. Either by the law; or by sanctions where they are students. There is evidence that universities and other institutions of higher education are systematically suppressing any whiff of addressing or examining what Steven Thrasher calls ‘faux objectivity’ – even though it is the job of lecturers in journalism, history and politics to work with students towards equipping them for careers in which they can report and comment critically – even if to do so refuses to reduce discussion of every circumstance to a story with two equally valid ‘sides’. It is the United States which supplies over two thirds of the weapons which Israeli terrorists use to injure and kill people. And not just in Gaza. There really is no spuriously alternative, imaginary ‘balanced’, way of presenting that fact. It is to be remembered that none of the bawling from the broad right about standing up for Jews and Jewish identity should be taken seriously when one of the most prominent far right pundits, Tucker Carlson, sides with Holocaust deniers and apologists for Nazism, as he did last week when he hosted fascist podcaster Darryl Cooper. Vice presidential nominee, J D Vance, is to undertake a ‘speaking tour’ with Carlson to re-enforce the lie. Absent a vociferous and unambiguous denial from the Republican nominees for president and vice president, it isn’t too much of a stretch to conclude that they — like Carlson and Cooper — are of the opinion that US opposition to Hitler was essentially wrong because “Hitler was right”… his treatment of the Jews, ‘asocials’, trade-unionists and socialists etc was appropriate. Add in the fact that self-professed fascist, Laura Loomer, joined Trump at a recent event commemorating the attacks on September 11, 2001 and it’s hard convincingly to sever lines between Republican plans and aspirations and those of ‘accomplished’ fascists already in power like Victor Orban, whom Trump cited with approval — admiration, in fact — in the recent ‘debate’. OPPRESSION Project 2025 is the programme and plan with which Trump is intimately involved; though – with his usual lies – he denies (any and all knowledge of) it. This is presumably because he knows how unpopular its contents are — especially with undecided voters. It’s known that – were the worst to happen and were he to be elected president in November — he would swiftly implement (parts of) Project 2025: so far advanced and detailed are Project 2025’s schedules that the first changes would be made immediately after Trump’s inauguration on 20 January 2025. Project 2025 prepares for the deployment of the justice system in the US to go after his opponents with an army of supporters and cult members, whom Trump is confident he can use to replace the current civil service. Indeed, at least one Project 2025 ‘designer’ and cult member has been caught on camera exposing in chilling detail some aspects of how it would work. What exactly does Project 2025 plan in its 900+ pages? Last month ProPublica obtained nearly two dozen ‘training’ videos containing 14 hours of material intended to instruct members of a new Trump administration on what to do and say, if (when?) the time comes. At their heart are directions for the development of a fascistic government with ways to outwit and circumvent any existing laws which, and bureaucrats who, may have managed to remain. “Avoid paper trails of what we propose to do… If you need to resolve something, if you can do it, it’s probably better to walk down the hall, buttonhole a guy [sic] and say, ‘Hey, what are we going to do here?’ Talk through the decision”. According to these videos such avoidance and obfuscation include, for example, strategies not to have to give disclosures according the Freedom of Information Act, which at times reveal truths and intentions that would prove embarrassing to a far right government. They also suggest ways to make sure that their ‘policies’ aren’t struck down by ‘left-wing judges’. Although some of these moves would be standard practice for any incoming administration with different priorities from the last one, Project 2025 is different: the training videos lead participants to change fundamentally how the federal government works and what it does far in excess of what the electorate will have knowingly voted for. Bethany Kozma, for instance, former deputy chief of staff at the US Agency for International Development in the last Trump administration, explains how the movement to tackle the climate catastrophe is really aimed at “control[ing] people”. So references to climate change will be eliminated from “absolutely everywhere”. Gender fluidity is “evil”. The thought that “…advanc[ing] equal rights and opportunities, regardless of gender or gender identity…” is so bad that it will have to be “eradicated”; all “…websites; [and] the language in internal and external policy documents and grant applications…” will have to remove all such language. “The noxious tenets of critical race theory and gender ideology should be excised from curriculum in every single public school in this country.” Are you frightened yet? Let’s go on. Project 2025 lays out a huge set of ‘policy’ changes: elimination of the Department of Education, and the National Endowment for the Arts (the rough equivalent of the British Arts Council); drastically cutting Medicaid; further restricting abortion access; and finding ways to sack and replace large numbers of government officials so that Trump has greater power to control the Department Of Justice. Indeed, the person who helped to lead the transition team from Obama in 2016, Rick Dearborn, explains how crucial staffing and personnel will be in implementing the next transition. As an example, in one of the videos, former legal White House advisor to Trump, Dan Huff, explains how anyone serving under the aegis of the plan will need to be ready to push really significant changes through — against all likely and inevitable opposition. To watch your way through the videos in their entirety is also to come away with the clear sense that the perpetrators of this are well aware of opposition, of how the whole oppressive and destructive project is shot through with what would otherwise have to be praxes that are amenable of negotiation, would involve give and take, persuasion and compromise. For those are the ways in which governments have hitherto been officially designed to work in the United States (however imperfectly). But here will be needed subterfuge, obfuscation, obscurity, deceit and — above all — force. Lastly, amongst the oppression envisaged by Project 2025 is an increase in the élite’s ‘right’ vigorously to censor especially books whose content frightens them; or goes against the white, heterosexual, male ‘norm’ which is the only sense of presumed monolithic lifestyle of which it approves. Of these book bans it is particularly the Trumpy states (in the South) which are guilty. But there are increasing signs that students, parents, families and communities are fighting back. MAGA Vulgarity, offensive insults and blatant lies are among Trump’s favourite weapons. He knows that members of his cult feel at home with them; they help to bind the cult. A pointed example was on display last month when convict Trump posted scurrilous lies designed to titillate and to suggest that his opponent had engaged in, or indeed was still active in, salacious sexually ‘deviant’ practices. But, as several commentators remarked, these lies (picked up and amplified by a few members of Trump’s cult, and some media outlets) were also made as clear and violent messages of misogyny to accompany the MAGA cult’s racism, supremacism and anti-LGBTQ+ filth. This should come as no surprise. For Trump loyalty is everything. As you think what the reaction would have been if those who invaded the US Capitol in Washington DC on January 6 2021 and tried to overturn the recent election had been black or Latina/o, take note of an event which Trump hosted earlier this month at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey, to celebrate and ‘honour’ those who did take part that day. Twenty of those who took part were praised and received ‘awards’. In fact, Trump also claimed recently that he has “every right” to change the results of elections if he wants to. What’s more his nominee for vice president, J D Vance, said in a recent interview that if he had held that office in 2021 he would have done the same as Trump and tried to avoid certifying the real result of the 2020 presidential election. Alarming. ENVIRONMENT At the end of last month Republicans in two dozen states led from Oklahoma who are either ignorant of and/or who deny the climate catastrophe approached the US Supreme Court to insist that its MAGA majority aid them in hastening the collapse of life on Earth by stopping the meagre attempts by the Biden administration to reduce emissions. ‘Meagre’ because the changes which went into force in 2024 envisage only an 80% decrease in the next quarter of a century. We should not — of course — be taken in by promises on the environment from the Democratic nominee for US president this year, Kamala Harris. Although obviously a better alternative than Trump, Harris has backtracked on a previous gesture towards animal welfare to ban red ‘meat’ — on which a promise may not even have really been made. Her position on fracking seems previously to have been partially plausible. But now apparently no longer is. She’s in favour. Indeed, the broader approach of the only alternative to Trump’s commitment to augment fossil fuel extraction exponentially is predictably weak and destructive. Fewer than 50 days to go… The post Notes from the US: Subterfuge and force appeared first on Freedom News.