Book review: Anthro-Vision

The 2021 book, Anthro-Vision: A New Way to See in Business and Life, was written by Gillian Tett an anthropologist (PhD, anthropology, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom). Tett is a journalist at the Financial Times, and chair of the editorial board and editor-at-large. The book is non-technical, easy to read and written for a general audience. This is a good book for understanding how to open one's mind to new perspectives. For example, it got me to reassess and change my prior understanding of  relationship between business and how social concerns for the environment are affecting it. There's a lot more complexity in it than I thought.

Tett argues that we live in a time of intensifying global volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (“VUCA” in US military jargon). Because of that and the nature of the environmental, social and governmental problems that humans face, societies, governments, businesses and individuals need to change the way they view the world, other cultures, their own culture and themselves. The point of adopting a different mindset is to better see, understand and adapt to problems, human needs and social changes as pressures from VUCA intensify.

Tett argues for what she calls anthro-vision. It amounts to trying to see the world through the lens of anthropology. The case she lays out looks pretty solid. In the last ~20 years most major businesses have gone from being hostile to anthropology and social science generally, to a mindset that now embraces an anthro-vision and social science generally. Even crusty old engineers and nerdy computer programmers have come to understand that they need to understand humans, human behavior and societies much better than they did in the past. The anthro-vision mindset, i.e., pro-social science, including pro-anthropology, is becoming more influential in governments too.

The business community did not adopt anthro-vision willingly. Business adopted anthro-vision because of painful economic losses and catastrophes that came from ignorance about the human condition and societies and their traditions. Huge companies and banks such as GM (General Motors), BP (British Petroleum) and HSBC learned the hard way that they ignore humans and human behaviors at their peril. In the process of learning their peril, big companies also learned two other extremely valuable lessons. First was some humility about the arrogant illusion of their own infallibility. 

Second, and most importantly, was some empathy for various things, traditions, groups of people and recently, business externalities, that seemed strange, not worthy of consideration or irrelevant. Turns out that sometimes even little things can be critically important in human behavior, commerce, global geopolitics and war and peace. On first look, those little things usually look to be so trivial that even thinking about them at all appears to be a waste of time. That can occasionally be a fatal mistake for a company or a catastrophe for a country or the entire human species.

Tett raised a point about the business community's mindset. It strikes me as important to mention. Specifically, what drove businesses to even look to anthro-vision? Profit and risk. Some huge companies were suffering crippling losses and the executives didn't have a clue about why. Some looked and looked and looked but found nothing. Some big companies were dying but executives did not have a clue why. Out of sheer desperation, a few major companies started by hiring an anthropologist or two, asking them if they could see what was wrong. It turned out that over time they came to see what was wrong. The problems were grounded in a combination of things like corporate tribalism, tunnel vision, complexity and reliance on economic ideology that was not working. All that made the company dysfunctional, inefficient and/or misguided in its product development and performance. There was too much blind arrogance and too little understanding and empathy. That was hurting or even killing companies.

What is anthropology? 

Tett describes it as an interpretative science, not an empirical one. The classical anthropological methodology was to plunk an anthropologist down in a tribe or ethnic group somewhere and then quietly watch and listen for a long time, months or years, not weeks. Over time, the things that are discussed and not discussed become apparent. Relations and traditions between families and groups start to appear and make sense in the local context. Even strange local music starts to feel normal to the quiet observer and their body instinctively reacts just like the rest of the tribe or group. 

It is not a matter of “going native.”  It is a matter of coming to see reality through the eyes and minds of the strange people and their strange behaviors. Empathy and acceptance tends to arise from the visions and understanding. Tett repeatedly emphasizes the empathy-inducing aspect of keeping quiet, listening and asking open-ended questions. 

In complex industrialized and technological societies like the US, modern anthropology is now focused on plunking an anthropologist down in a company or a group of a company's customers, then quietly watching and listening for a long time, and then etc. In other words, the main thing different between classical and modern is where the anthropologist gets plunked down, an exotic milieu or an apparently non-exotic one. Turns out that the non-exotic sites in big companies or banks are just about as exotic and weird as the exotic locations. They are about equally tribal and siloed in their respective cultures. The siloing tends to blind people and groups to a broader, more nuanced and accurate vision of reality, including misunderstandings, opportunities and threats.

An example helps clarify some of this.

The Ebola epidemic

Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.

Rene Dubois, Celebrations of Life, 1981

In 2104, the Ebola virus was tearing through Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. Western aid groups and governments sent in help to contain the outbreak. The mortality rate was about 50%. Despite Western expertise and help, the epidemic was spinning out of control and killing a lot of people. Reports were coming out of the region that local people who were infected with the virus were engaging in what appeared to be bizarre behavior that was likely to kill them. Specifically, people were running away from Western medical facilities and aid workers, sometimes killing them. Just as strange, at funerals of people killed by the virus, mourners were touching and even kissing the dead bodies, which were known to be highly contagious. Westerners on site kept warning the people there not to do these things, but they kept doing them. The Westerners especially disliked getting killed. 

The chief science advisor to the British government asked some anthropologists why modern science was failing so badly in Western Africa. One of them had spent 40 years studying the Mende people in the forest regions of Sierra Leone, one of whom he married and was also an anthropologist. She was at the meeting. She angrily told the British government science guy that Western science was failing because it was looking at the problem through Western eyes and minds. In her mind, the problem was blatant and obvious. But the Western experts were dumbfounded. They had no idea of what she was talking about.

Without empathy for the local people and their strange behaviors Western medical advice was sometimes useless because it ignored the cultural and social context that Ebola was rampaging through. The cultural and social context did not matter to Western experts but it sure did matter to the locals. One problem was local tribalism. Tribes in the affected region were attuned to threats from outside their own tribe, but not to ones from inside. The Western experts spoke in terms used in the West, but meant nothing to the locals. Also, Western computerized disease monitoring using cell phones was misleading people in the West, while a medical anthropologist in Liberia, Susan Erikson, saw a different reality on the ground.

The problem with Western monitoring of cell phones in Africa was that Westerners failed to understand that a cell phones was usually used by a family, group or whole village, not an individual person. Because of that misunderstanding, the data flowing into the West was based on far less information than what tracing cell tower pings would reveal. A cell tower ping was not a person, which is what the Westerners falsely believed. 

Another problem was grounded in language. In villages where the chief spoke English and BBC broadcasts reached local radios, there was much better compliance with Ebola protocols. In villages where the chiefs did not speak English, Ebola was attributed to witchcraft or to government plots, and Ebola abatement measures tended to be ignored with predictable bad consequences. African traditions in the region were to keep dead bodies in the house for several days to pay proper respects and to hold a funeral with the body to keep the dead person and everyone around them from going to hell. This was a critically important part of life for those people. 

The anthropologists who understood the nature of the problems in Western Africa were somewhat paralyzed by their own tribalism. Anthropologists tended to be shy about intruding into events. Tett writes:

“‘I had an American journalist call me up and ask why the Africans kept behaving in this barbaric and stupid way,’ [an anthropologist commented]. .... Until the early decades of the twentieth century, American had routinely kept the bodies of deceased family or friends in their houses after death ....Yet Western journalists, doctors and aid workers were now decrying the West African’s ‘primitive’ rituals and claiming (wrongly) that Ebola was caused by strange ‘natives’ eating ‘bushmeat.’ .... A lack of empathy was quite literally killing people and fueling the spread of the disease.” 

In time, advice from anthropologists got Western aid and communications efforts to align with local customs and culture. Once that mindset had set in and began to operate Ebola patients stopped running away and killing aid workers. The people were taught that hazmat suits could be made of materials available to the local people. Within a period of months, the epidemic and been contained.

Tett goes on to assert that some of the Ebola mistakes have been repeated with COVID-19. She cites the example of the ex-president blaming the pandemic on China and closing the border there. That tended to blind the US response to the threat from Europe. That's tribalism again. Threats from outside the tribe are seen but not ones from inside. She argues that public health is generally better served when medical science includes consideration of social science or cultural concerns. 

 Conclusion

Tett cites other examples of where anthropologists have been able to shed light on problems in an effort  to try to avoid making the same mistakes more than once. She described the 2008 financial crisis in detail. It was an example of a tribe, financial experts, living in their silo and unable to see threats and a broader context for what they are doing. Tett writes:

“... one problem was that many people who worked in the world of money assumed that money was the only thing that made the world ‘go round’. That was also wrong. ‘Bankers like to imagine that money and the profit motive is as universal as gravity .... They think it’s basically a given and they think it’s apersonal. And it’s not. What they do in finance is all about culture and interaction.’” 

Tett’s argument that we live in a time of intensifying VUCA is persuasive. Her goal for the book is simple. “The core message of this book: we find it hard to see what is really happening in the world around us today and need to change our vision.” Tett argues that adopting anthro-vision involves at least five beliefs or behaviors. 

• Recognition that we are creatures of our environmental, social and cultural environments
• Human existence is diverse and there are multiple social cultural contexts
• We need to repeatedly try to enter the minds of others who are different to foster empathy
• We need to try to see our own reality and society from the lens of an outsider
• We need to listen to and see what people say, including what they do not say (their social silence) 

The fascist propaganda machine remains unfazed by, and unashamed of, contrary reality

The New York Times writes: 

In the hours and days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, rattled Republican lawmakers knew exactly who was to blame: Donald J. Trump. Loyal allies began turning on him. Top Republicans vowed to make a full break from his divisive tactics and dishonesties. Some even discussed removing him from office.

By spring, however, after nearly 200 congressional Republicans had voted to clear Mr. Trump during a second impeachment proceeding, the conservative fringes of the party had already begun to rewrite history, describing the Capitol riot as a peaceful protest and comparing the invading mob to a “normal tourist visit,” as one congressman put it.

This past week, amid the emotional testimony of police officers at the first hearing of a House select committee, Republicans completed their journey through the looking-glass, spinning a new counternarrative of that deadly day. No longer content to absolve Mr. Trump, they concocted a version of events in which those accused of rioting were patriotic political prisoners and Speaker Nancy Pelosi was to blame for the violence.

Their new claims, some voiced from the highest levels of House Republican leadership, amount to a disinformation campaign being promulgated from the steps of the Capitol, aimed at giving cover to their party and intensifying the threats to political accountability.

This rendering of events — together with new evidence that Mr. Trump had counted on allies in Congress to help him use a baseless allegation of corruption to overturn the election — pointed to what some democracy experts see as a dangerous new sign in American politics: Even with Mr. Trump gone from the White House, many Republicans have little intention of abandoning the prevarication that was a hallmark of his presidency.

Rather, as the country struggles with the consequences of Mr. Trump’s assault on the legitimacy of the nation’s elections, leaders of his party — who, unlike the former president, have not lost their political or rhetorical platforms — are signaling their willingness to continue, look past or even expand his assault on the facts for political gain.

The NYT quoted one expert, Laura Thornton, director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, as saying “this is happening all over the place — it is so much linked to the democratic backsliding and rising of authoritarian movements. It’s about the same sort of post-truth world. You can just repeat a lie over and over and, because there’s so little trust, people will believe it.”

Not surprisingly, the fascist ex-president blames Pelosi for his coup attempt. He asserts that Pelosi should “investigate herself.” The fascist liar and traitor continues to insinuate that (i) BLM and antifa extremists caused the 1/6 coup attempt, and (ii) corrupt Democrats stole the 2020 election from him. Fascist GOP leadership supports the lies. Although Mitch McConnell once condemned the riot and the ex-president's role in it, he has made no effort to contradict or reduce the lies. 

Other Republican fascists pretend that the propaganda will have no effect on public opinion. For example, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) said “I don’t think anybody’s going to be successful erasing what happened. Everybody saw it with their own eyes and the nation saw it on television.” If that is true then why is the fascist Republican Party's propaganda machine all in on repeating whoppers over and over and over? Obviously someone influential in the FGOP must believe that repeating lies, e.g., BLM and antifa did it, is an effective propaganda tactic when applied to at least some people.

In view of the evidence in the public record so far, it seems reasonable to estimate that the chance that American democracy and the rule of law will fall to some form of plutocratic or autocratic-kleptocratic fascism in the next 5 years is about 42%. In view of how high the states are, that estimate ought to be terrifying to most people who accept it as a reasonable threat estimate. For most people who don't see that level of threat, the estimate is just not believable and thus not as concerning.

Question: How likely is it that American democracy and the rule of law will fall in the next 5 years to some form of autocratic-fascist dictatorship-kleptocracy, optionally tinged with bigoted Christian nationalist theocracy, ~0%, ~5%, ~25%, ~50%, ~70%, etc.?

POSTULATE

 Postulate:

There are those who predict doom and gloom for the U.S.

Everything from Fascism to a complete societal breakdown, while others believe it will be less severe, more a return to an era of Jim Crow, banned abortions, rightwing policies.

Others, and I include myself in this, think this is all overblown. I grant you, it looks bad right now, but we did un-elect the One and Done, even in Red states electric charging stations are popping up, solar farms popping up, Confederate statues being taken down, etc.

BUT it is also what we don't see, at least in the Media that likes to spread Angst.

I have posted this on previous threads, but let me try again:

Black and white kids playing together.

Gay couples opening walking down the street.

Prior to Covid, violent crime DOWN across the nation, it really was, but you wouldn't know it from the day to day bombardment of violence in the news.

Growing up all I saw were white faces, now almost all neighborhoods have Hispanic, Muslim, Asian faces. 

OUR YOUNG PEOPLE are overwhelmingly progressive, except of course, they don't vote in large numbers, but one day they will and we will see a swing back to Liberalism in this country.

However, there is no denying, that with the Right becoming more engaged and dangerous, with new Covid variants likely to grow in number, not diminish, with more extremists taking up arms, there is good cause for SOME Angst.

Now for the rub:

The biggest threat to our existence is INTOLERANCE OF SOMEONE'S ELSE'S VIEWS.

We have devolved into a nation of name-callers, labelers, and hatred towards any group that doesn't side with us.

So going back to my opening line: Postulate

Not just for this year or next year, but further down the road, where are we heading?

Are we really heading for Fascism, or just a rollback to the 1950s before there is another correction and we move again towards Progressiveness?

Postulate.

Vaccine regret stories

Some stories are coming out about people who did not get vaccinated and then got infected and became sick. Ones who did not get sick probably don't regret their decisions. Others who are sick now continue to deny they are infected with COVID and firmly believe they have the flu. The New York Times writes:

Some people hospitalized with the virus still vow not to get vaccinated, and surveys suggest that a majority of unvaccinated Americans are not budging. Doctors in Covid units say some patients still refuse to believe they are infected with anything beyond the flu.

“We have people in the I.C.U. with Covid who are denying they have Covid,” said Dr. Matthew Sperry, a pulmonary critical care physician who has been treating Mr. Greene. “It doesn’t matter what we say.”

Still, some hospitals swamped with patients in largely conservative, unvaccinated swaths of the country have begun to recruit Covid survivors as public health messengers of last resort.  

Theirs are Scared Straight stories for a pandemic that has thrived on misinformation, fear and hardened partisan divisions over whether or not to get vaccinated.

One woman in Utah who regretted not getting vaccinated now worries that her hospitalized husband will die from his COVID infection. She wrote on her Facebook page: “We did not get the vaccine. I read all kinds of things about the vaccine and it scared me. So I made the decision and prayed about it and got the impression that we would be ok. If I had the information I have today, we would have gotten vaccinated.”

The woman in Utah with her family at home 

while dad is in the hospital critically ill

She told the NYT, “I have such incredible guilt. I blame myself still. Every day. I will always regret that I listened to the misinformation being put out there. They’re creating fear.” In that, one can clearly see the destructive power of dark free speech and disinformation about COVID. Some people believe it. Some who are infected refuse to believe the literal reality of their situation.

This again shows that dark free speech leads some people to firmly believe things that are clearly false. The NYT described people's fear as coming from “a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories touted by anti-vaccine lawyers and YouTubers, and videos in which anti-vaccine doctors and nurses decried the Covid-19 shots as bioweapons.” 

Questions: What responsibility, if any, do people and groups, e.g., Fox News, the Republican Party, etc., that spread lies about COVID bear for the suffering and deaths their deceit has caused, even if they themselves were deceived? Do people who fall for the lies and emotional manipulation bear full responsibility? Does it matter for those who now express regret are honest and public about their mistake? 

Fox News doing its best to keep 

the pandemic alive and growing

Go Laura! Keep on lying to the public!

Keep on killing people!!

Politifact has a huge list of COVID

lies

On the fragility of democracy

Fareed Zakaria writes in a Washington Post opinion piece:

The news this week that democracy is imperiled in Tunisia — the only success story of the Arab Spring — comes just three weeks after we heard that Haiti’s president had been assassinated. Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the government seems unable to establish authority across the country. It got me thinking about one of the fundamental questions of politics: Why is it so difficult to develop and sustain liberal democracy?

The best recent work on this subject comes from a remarkable pair of scholars, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. In their latest book, “The Narrow Corridor,” they have answered this question with great insight. In every society, they note, the first step is simply achieving some measure of order and stability. History is littered with places where gangs, warlords and tribes rule and the state is never able to effectively consolidate power and govern. That was Afghanistan’s past and might be its future.

If political order is rare, liberal political order is rarer still. Liberal democracy is the Goldilocks form of government. It needs a state that is strong enough to govern effectively but not so strong that it crushes the liberties and rights of its people. The authors call this “the shackled Leviathan.” (Thomas Hobbes used the biblical monster Leviathan to describe a powerful state.) Getting to liberal democracy requires that societies travel through a “narrow corridor,” one that allows the state to build power while allowing for the growth of a civil society that asserts itself and fights for rights. Together, they create the delicate balance between stability and freedom. Countries in the West have succeeded because they have managed to build up both strong states and strong societies.

In Afghanistan, despite two decades of efforts, the state has failed to gain control over much of the country, creating what the authors call the “absent Leviathan.” In Egypt, the state is too strong. After a brief flirtation with democracy after the Arab Spring, the country reverted to dictatorship. Other parts of the world have “paper Leviathans” — governments that exercise power mostly to enrich a small elite at the top. Think of Nigeria or Venezuela.

How did the West get Goldilocks politics? The authors cite two opposing forces. First, there was the legacy of the Roman Empire, which provided institutions, laws and traditions that made it possible to create order. Second, the northern European tribes, rooted in egalitarian assemblies, had a tradition of challenging powerful leaders. The contest between nobles and kings — and later, I would add, between church and state, and among the hundreds of states, duchies and principalities of medieval Europe — all helped individual liberty grow and flourish.

Zakaria goes on to argue that liberal democracy in the West is a matter of an unusual history, not cultural superiority. Although a few countries such as India and South Korea had a similar balance, but it is hard to maintain it. Liberal democracy really is fragile and rare. The phenomenon of “illiberal democracy” began to arise in the 1990s when democratically elected leaders started systematically abusing power and depriving people of democratic rights. They attacked and weakened liberal, constitutional government and supporting institutions. Established democracies such as India are moving into anti-democratic authoritarianism. 

Zakaria asserts that Russia lost its democracy and has reverted to dictatorship, apparently the normal human condition. Countries such as the US that have the right state-society balance are in a good situation. The US is in an era of democratic dysfunction, with populism threatening political institutions and norms that used to be taken as neutral. He argues that this anti-democratic mindset is the most dangerous in the Republican Party with its successful push to politicize vote counting and access to voting in red states.

Where does the main threat lie?

Based on poll data, most Republicans, conservatives and a significant number of independents see radical Democrats, socialism and government tyranny as the main threat to democracy and the rule of law. Others see the radical right Republican Party and radical fundamentalist Christianity as the grave and imminent threat, especially in view of the progress that movement has made in the last ~5 years. Where does the most urgent threat lie? 

Is the American liberal democracy a Goldilocks form of government that is inherently too unstable to last much longer? If it is unstable and on the verge of collapse, what is most likely to replace it, e.g., fascist tyranny, socialist tyranny, kleptocratic plutocracy, endless social instability and violence, maybe driven by two flavors (left and right) of autocratic tyranny, Christian theocratic autocracy, etc.? Or, is American democracy just fine and not under any serious imminent threat?

Names and companies to remember: Patrick M. Byrne, former CEO of Overstock. com, et al.

American fascists

By now it is clear that most of the fascist GOP (FGOP) and most of its rank and file want to reject the 2020 election and just install the ex-president by fiat. The most common "reason" is the blatantly false claim there was widespread election fraud  and Biden is illegitimate. The 2nd most common is "to reassure voters that the election was not fraudulent." Neither excuse amounts to anything close to honest or persuasive based on the evidence in the public record so far. For example, the need for voter "reassurance" is based on a continuous torrent of FGOP lies that the election was stolen. 

So, when names of rich and powerful backers and companies of this new American brand of fascism pop up, it seems reasonable to at least mention them. Not surprisingly, most try to hide, downplay or deny their immoral role in fomenting American fascism. They like to invoke plausible deniability and pretend they are patriotic and pro-democracy. Instead, they are fascist thugs lying to the American people to manipulate and betray them and democracy. As usual for autocrats and kleptocrats, they rely heavily on toxic but legal dark free speech.

The New York Times writes today about the fraudulent "vote audit" the FGOP-corrupted state of Arizona is pretending to conduct:

It had been apparent since the review began in April that supporters of Mr. Trump were both donating money to the effort and recruiting volunteers to work on it. But the sources and size of the donations had not been disclosed until Wednesday.

According to the Cyber Ninjas statement, the largest donation, $3.25 million, was made by a newly created group, The America Project, led by Patrick M. Byrne, the former chief executive of the Overstock. com website and a prominent proponent of false claims that the November election was rigged.

Mr. Byrne resigned his post at Overstock in 2019 after it was disclosed that he had an intimate relationship with Maria Butina, a gun-rights activist who was jailed in 2018 as an unregistered foreign agent for Russia and later deported. He later said he had contributed $500,000 to the Arizona review, and produced a film featuring [Cyber Ninja CEO] Doug Logan that claimed the November election was fraudulent.

The statement said that another pro-Trump group, America’s Future, contributed $976,514 to the review. The group this year named Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, the retired Army officer Michael T. Flynn, as its chairman. Mr. Flynn is a vocal conspiracy theorist who once called for the military to “rerun” the 2020 election.

An additional $605,000 came from Voices and Votes, a group organized by Christina Bobb, an anchor for the pro-Trump cable channel One America News, who solicited donations for the review while covering it. A fourth group that was reported to have donated $550,000, Defending the Republic, is tied to Sidney Powell, the former attorney to Mr. Trump who led a failed legal campaign to overturn the election results.

The last reported donor, the Legal Defense Fund for the American Republic, was reported to have donated $280,000. The fund was established by a Michigan lawyer, Robert Matheson, to help finance Ms. Powell’s lawsuits, but since has launched other fund-raising efforts.

Of course, one cannot overlook the fascist company Cyber Ninjas and its fascist CEO Doug Logan. Logan is a well-known spreader of the anti-democracy stolen vote lie. He is making money from doing the faux vote audit in corrupted Arizona. The NYT reported that although Logan claims the identity of its funders was being made public “as we continue our commitment to transparency,” that is yet another lie. The audit has been opaque. Logan fought efforts to allow observers of his sloppy, faux audit. 

Logan was forced to reveal the funders in response to an Arizona county court order two weeks ago that the sources of the review’s funding be released to the public. That court order came after fascist Republicans in the state Senate fought against making them and other records of the faux audit process public. That's fascist "transparency" for you. The rest of us call it opacity hiding lies, corruption and anti-democratic sleaze.

American fascism

To summarize, here's the list of corrupt FGOP fascists and their lying fascist groups and companies from this article:

Patrick M. Byrne, traitor, liar and fascist former CEO, 

Overstock. com, The America Project

Doug Logan, liar and fascist CEO, Cyber Ninjas

at the "audit" in Arizona

Logan without the mask

Michael T. Flynn, traitor, liar and fascist pardoned felon, 

America's Future

Christina Bobb, liar and professional fascist propagandist, 

One America News, Voices and Votes

Sidney Powell, liar and fascist lawyer, 

Defending the Republic

Robert Matheson, liar and fascist lawyer, 

Legal Defense Fund for the American Republic

Notice how some of the fascist political groups involved in attacking the Republic and democracy have names that imply or are the literal opposite of what they actually do, e.g., "Defending the Republic" is attacking the Republic. That tactic is common in politics. To mislead people, all kinds of things get named to invoke the opposite of what they want and work for. Even the names of these groups constitutes a lie. Lies are everywhere in American fascism. More honest and transparent names would be:

The America Project = The American Fascism Project

America's Future = America's Fascist Future

Voices and Votes = Fascist Voices and Votes

Defending the Republic = Building a Fascist Republic

Legal Defense Fund for the American Republic = Legal Defense Fund for a Fascist America

And, it's tax exempt!

Unfortunately, all of the groups are (probably) tax exempt "non-profit" organizations under tax law. In essence, the American Tax code subsidizes fascism in its attempt to overthrow democracy and the rule of law in America. And, it just might succeed. That is really screwed up.

American fascists

Questions: Is the emphasis here on fascism over the top or warranted in view of the evidence in the public record so far? Whatabout Antifa?