The Queen died

I'm no big fan of the British monarchy. But by God, from what I could tell the Queen was dignified, civilized, decent and reasonably coherent. These days, that's freaking rare among elected politicians. It's non-existent among dictators and authoritarians like T****, his good friend Putin, China's Xi Syria's Bashir Assad and other odious, murdering toads and corrupt, lying crackpots in power today. 

Is that sentiment uninformed, wrong and/or misplaced?

American authoritarianism in historical perspective: Hail, Caesar! MAGA!!

A Washington Post opinion comments:

MAGA Republican leaders take umbrage at being accused of “semi-fascism,” which is understandable: Twentieth-century dictators such as Mussolini and the German guy with the mustache gave fascism a bad name. But the MAGA crowd isn’t disavowing totalitarianism, per se. It’s just their taste in authoritarian figures skews toward the classics. They’re old-school — 1st century B.C. old. “Hail, Caesar” goes down so much easier than “Heil Hitler.”

J.D. Vance, the Republican Senate nominee in Ohio, is one resident of this newly platted Caesarian section, as a recent profile in the Cleveland Plain Dealer showed. It referred to a year-old interview Vance gave on a far-right podcast in which he spoke approvingly of Curtis Yarvin, a self-proclaimed monarchist who argues for an American Julius Caesar to take power.

“We are in a late republican period,” Vance said, referencing the era preceding Caesar’s dictatorship. “If we’re going to push back against it, we’re going to have to get pretty wild, and pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.”

The podcast’s host, Jack Murphy, endorsed this sentiment, discussing possible “extra-constitutional” remedies to be taken “if we want to re-found the country.” (He told Vance he thought voting an “ineffectual” way to “rip out this leadership class.”)

Vance, who said he had been “radicalized” by the actions of “malevolent and evil” political opponents, described what “wild” actions he had in mind at another point in the podcast. He wants to “seize the institutions of the left” and purge political opponents with “de-Nazification, de-Ba’athification.”

Vance is far from the only emperor-curious MAGA leader. Former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro called Mike Pence a “traitor to the American Caesar of Trump” because the former vice president refused to help overturn the 2020 election. Another former Trump adviser, Michael Anton, hosted a Claremont Institute podcast with Yarvin about the desirability of an “American Caesar.”

Some MAGA Republicans have a novel solution to resolve pesky constitutional restraints: Rewrite the Constitution. As Carl Hulse reports in the New York Times, Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Tex.) introduced legislation seeking to compel Congress to call a constitutional convention — the first since the framers wrote it — to overhaul the United States’ founding document. The effort likely isn’t going anywhere, but it shows the contempt MAGA Republicans have for the constitutional order. Hail, Caesar!  

Others in the MAGA movement simply reinterpret the Constitution to their own liking. County law-enforcement officials self-styling as “constitutional sheriffs” have assigned themselves power to decide what the law is, according to their own politics. One such sheriff in Michigan sought warrants in July to seize vote-counting machines to try to validate Trump’s false claims of voter fraud, Reuters reported last week. Armed lawmen going rogue to undermine elections? Hail, Caesar![1]

I thought fascism was the right label for Republican Party politics, being so modern and whatnot. Is Imperial Rome a better model? That thought never crossed my mind, until now. Were the Roman Emperors racists? They were definitely authoritarian and patriarchal.

Republicans in Ohio voted for Vance for US Senate. Vance wants an American Julius Caesar to take power. 

Qs: Since inquiring minds want to know, what is the best label for the modern Republican Party as a whole, including its rank and file, and with the kind, gentle understanding that in their hearts, not necessarily in their votes, some Republicans at least partly oppose at least some of its current agenda, lunacy &/or whatever beast it is the GOP has degenerated into: 

authoritarian, arrogant, aggressive, autocratic, autocratic-Christian theocratic, Christian Shariaistic, Christian fundamentalist, cowardly, gullible, grumpy, bossy, belligerent, hostile, slanderous, self-centered, faux victimized, cult, faux victimized cult, Faux News, dangerous, deadly, delusional, hallucinating, pompous, hypocritical, double hypocritical, triple hypocritical, rampaging, stampeding, unregulated capitalist, pro-pollution & climate change, rigidly ideological, irresponsible, imperialistic, ancient Rome imperialistic, fascist-lite, semi-fascist, fascist, Nazi (All Rise . . . . Be Seated), nasty, mendacious, double mendacious, immoral, evil, semi-evil, rotten, rancid, racist, bigoted, tactless, jealous, insulting, impolite, rude, vulgar, thin-skinned, callous, corrupt, cruel, confrontational, baseless, outlandish, crackpot, double crackpot, QAnon-level crackpot, QAnon, treasonous, cynical, idiotic, free-range idiotic, unvaccinated idiotic, playfully rambunctious, sneaky, Machiavellian, inflexible, non-compromising, contemptuous, arrogantly contemptuous, distrustful, irrationally distrustful, inflexible, intolerant, pig-headed, naughty, closed minded, wrapped too tight, or some combination thereof? 

Or, (i) did I leave out a correct label(s), e.g., robustly pro-democracy, or (ii) is this business with labels getting out of hand at Dissident Politics?

Footnote:

1. To emphasize the the kind of amazing new, foaming-at-the-mouth Crackpotlandia-Dementia that the Great State of Michigan's Republican Party has degenerated into, consider the newest lawsuit filed there to overturn the 2020 election. Democracy Docket reported:

On Friday, Sept. 2, the Macomb County Republican Party, a candidate for Michigan governor, a non-profit organization, voters and a county clerk — who allegedly turned over a vote tabulator to a group espousing unfounded claims of fraud in Michigan’s 2020 election — filed a federal lawsuit challenging the results of the 2020 presidential election in Michigan. In their complaint, the plaintiffs claim that the electronic voting machines and tabulators used during the 2020 presidential election “were not certified or accredited in accordance with” Michigan election law nor were they “certified by the US Election Assistance Commission.” Accordingly, the plaintiffs request that the state “rerun the Michigan 2020 presidential election as soon as possible, by way of a special election, with paper ballots only, on a single election day, with the votes being counted by hand, with members of all political parties present to observe, with a public livestream of all vote counting.”

Among other baseless and outlandish claims, the plaintiffs allege that the 2020 election was conducted in an “unlawful and illegal” manner and should not have been certified because Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) lacked the authority to hold elections under “uncertified” electronic voting machines.

Hail, Caesar!

Frontline: Lies, Politics and Democracy

The PBS investigative journalism program Frontline aired a two hour review of the events leading up to the 1/6 coup attempt and what happened in the weeks thereafter. Most of this is not new, but it is a very nice summary of what happened in reality, not in the minds of delusional people. 

This program is another blunt warning about the danger this country faces from America's radical right. It argues that (i) democracy is fragile, (ii) democracy requires good will to operate normally, and (iii) American democracy is under a severe, direct attack by the ex-president and his authoritarian  supporters, especially including the Republican Party and America's radical right propaganda Leviathan (Faux News, etc.).

Obviously, most T**** supporters and Republicans will instantly reject this narrative. They will vehemently argue that the Democrats, socialism and liberalism are the real threats to democracy, truth and civil liberties. 

Q: Is it possible to bridge the reality and reasoning gap that separates the side that sees severe threat in the Republican Party and its theocratic authoritarianism from the side that sees severe threat in the Democratic Party and its Godless socialist tyranny? (I don't think so, but that's just my opinion)

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Birdman for bringing this broadcast to my attention.

Florida's GOP finds culprits in its war for election integrity

By now, all reality-attached sane people know that American elections up to and including 2020 have been mostly free and fair. The absence of evidence of widespread voter or vote fraud is overwhelming. Republicans looked long and hard for it, but they could not find it because it does not exist. The main exceptions come from reality-detached authoritarian Republicans and the insane ex-president himself. They tried to rig elections to get thousands of fraudulent votes. 

Election integrity is under attack by Republicans, not Democrats or independents. That is fact, not opinion.

Newly obtained surveillance video shows fake Trump elector 

escorted operatives into Georgia county's elections office 

before voting machine breach

The Republican Party, the real threat to election integrity, 

and proud of it! ©

Despite the evidence, Florida's Ron DeSantis, a prominent Republican dictator wannabe, formed a police task force to find, prosecute and punish voters who voted illegally. The effort has led to the arrest and prosecution of 20 people out of 11 million votes cast in 2020. The Washington Post Editorial Board writes:

As Republican activists waved signs saying “My Vote Counts,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) stood in a Broward County courtroom last month to tout the first deliverables from the state’s controversial election police squad. “They did not go through any process. They did not get their rights restored, and yet they went ahead and voted anyways. ... And now they’re going to pay the price,” he said of the 20 people arrested and charged with voting illegally in the 2020 elections. Mr. DeSantis revealed little about the individual cases — and no wonder. Many of those charged had no idea they were unable to vote; some had even received official government notifications that they were eligible. None of that seemed to matter to Mr. DeSantis, whose crackdown on voter fraud isn’t about a real threat to election integrity but rather his desire to score political points as he runs for reelection and considers a possible 2024 presidential bid.

Since Mr. DeSantis’s stage-managed news conference on Aug. 18, details about the people caught up in his cynical campaign have emerged. Many, as Politico reported, have little education and few financial resources and believed, based on interactions with election or other officials, that they were allowed to vote. Romona Oliver, newly released from prison after serving a 20-year murder sentence, went to the Hillsborough tax collector’s office to register to vote. She admitted to having a felony conviction when asked, but the official helping her submitted an application, and she soon received a voter card in the mail. Peter Washington, nearing the end of his 10-year sentence in 2006 for attempted sexual battery, was enrolled in a class to ease his reentry into society when he said a probation officer told him his civil rights would be automatically restored upon his release from prison. Once home years later, he received a voter registration form in the mail in 2019, filled it out and received a voter card from the Orange County supervisor of elections.

Florida voters passed a state constitutional amendment permitting felons to regain their voting rights, but it doesn’t apply to those convicted of murder or sex crimes. Ignorance or confusion about the law doesn’t mean it was permissible for these people to vote. But it is a gross overreaction for them to be dragged from their homes in handcuffs at the crack of dawn, thrown into jail and publicly vilified. They face up to $5,000 in fines and up to five years in prison.

Instead of spending $1.1 million on a special police unit to root out a problem that doesn’t exist — the 20 votes of those arrested last month — most of whom are Black — account for 0.00018 percent of the 11 million ballots cast in Florida in 2020 — the state would be better off using its money to create a system that can easily verify whether someone has the right to vote after serving time for a felony conviction. Yet Mr. DeSantis, who tried to thwart passage of the Florida constitutional amendment restoring many felons’ voting rights, clearly is not interested in making it easier for these people to vote. He would rather scare them away.

Even if the DeSantis vote fraud squad finds another 100 illegal votes, which is highly unlikely after all this time, it would still not amount to anything close to widespread voter fraud in 2020. Most of those illegal votes were honest mistakes, not a massive conspiracy to throw Florida elections to democrats. The Editorial Board sees gross overreaction in dragging these people from their homes in handcuffs, throwing them in jail and publicly vilifying them. Maybe if rich and/or powerful White collar criminals were treated the same way in Florida, it might not be as much an overreaction. 

The important point here is crystal clear. The Republican Party is authoritarian. The GOP is desperate to subvert free and fair elections. Ugly authoritarians like DeSantis are shocking and shameless in their blatant cynicism toward democracy and elections. DeSantis very much wants to be elected president. If he is, he will make damn sure that elections will have Republican Party style integrity. Elections will be rigged and Republicans will win, at least in red states where the GOP can properly rig elections.  

The open question is whether Republicans have properly rigged red state elections. We are probably going to find out in November.

Look, all I want to do is this. 

I just want to find, ahh, 11,780 . . votes, . . . .

VOTE FRAUD ALERT!!!

LOCK HIM UP!! LOCK HIM UP!! LOCK HIM UP!!

About that special master the judge appointed

On first hearing that the judge appointed a special master to review documents the ex-president improperly kept at his residence, the fist thought that popped up was, "Is she a Trump judge?" The answer is yes. Common Dreams writes:

'Unfit for the Bench': Trump-Appointed Judge Orders Halt to DOJ Review of Seized Materials

"This judge is now an active participant in Trump's crimes," said one critic.

Political observers on Monday said U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon "engaged herself in obstruction of justice" by ruling that the U.S. Department of Justice must halt its review of materials seized at former President Donald Trump's Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.

Cannon, who was appointed by the former Republican president and confirmed after he lost the 2020 election, ruled that Trump "faces an unquantifiable potential harm by way of improper disclosure of sensitive information to the public" if the review of the materials, which included documents marked "confidential" and "top secret" continues.

Political scientist Norman Ornstein noted that lawyers for Trump hand-picked Cannon to oversee the case.

Cannon "has violated her oath and is unfit for the bench," he tweeted, adding that her ruling is "a clear-cut impeachable offense."

Slate journalist Mark Joseph Stern said he had been assured that "no judge would take Trump's absurd filing seriously" after the former president sued the DOJ over the FBI raid which was sparked by the department's finding that Trump had taken classified documents from the White House when his term ended in January 2021.

"The problem, of course, is that Cannon is not a real judge, but a Trump judge, and one of the most corrupt of the bunch," said Stern.

Since Trump people are not to be trusted, one can reasonably believe that this judge is complicit and should be impeached. 

What a mess. This is the new normal.

this judge is now an active participant in Trump’s crimes https://t.co/3NMRFAgRJg

— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) September 5, 2022

Arguments that Trump Republicans are not fascist

Actual fascists,

I think

Like all sound political conceptions, Fascism is action and it is thought; action in which doctrine is immanent, and doctrine arising from a given system of historical forces in which it is inserted, and working on them from within. It has therefore a form correlated to contingencies of time and space; but it has also an ideal content which makes it an expression of truth in the higher region of the history of thought. There is no way of exercising a spiritual influence in the world as a human will dominating the will of others, unless one has a conception both of the transient and the specific reality on which that action is to be exercised, and of the permanent and universal reality in which the transient dwells and has its being. To know men one must know man; and to know man one must be acquainted with reality and its laws. There can be no conception of the State which is not fundamentally a conception of life: philosophy or intuition, system of ideas evolving within the framework of logic or concentrated in a vision or a faith, but always, at least potentially, an organic conception of the world. 

Grouped according to their several interests, individuals form classes; they form trade-unions when organized according to their several economic activities; but first and foremost they form the State, which is no mere matter of numbers, the suns of the individuals forming the majority. Fascism is therefore opposed to that form of democracy which equates a nation to the majority, lowering it to the level of the largest number; but it is the purest form of democracy if the nation be considered as it should be from the point of view of quality rather than quantity, as an idea, the mightiest because the most ethical, the most coherent, the truest, expressing itself in a people as the conscience and will of the few, if not, indeed, of one, and ending to express itself in the conscience and the will of the mass, of the whole group ethnically molded by natural and historical conditions into a nation, advancing, as one conscience and one will, along the self same line of development and spiritual formation. Not a race, nor a geographically defined region, but a people, historically perpetuating itself; a multitude unified by an idea and imbued with the will to live, the will to power, self-consciousness, personality. 

The Fascist State , as a higher and more powerful expression of personality, is a force, but a spiritual one. It sums up all the manifestations of the moral and intellectual life of man. Its functions cannot therefore be limited to those of enforcing order and keeping the peace, as the liberal doctrine had it. It is no mere mechanical device for defining the sphere within which the individual may duly exercise his supposed rights. The Fascist State is an inwardly accepted standard and rule of conduct, a discipline of the whole person; it permeates the will no less than the intellect 

After socialism, Fascism trains its guns on the whole block of democratic ideologies, and rejects both their premises and their practical applications and implements. Fascism denies that numbers, as such, can be the determining factor in human society; it denies the right of numbers to govern by means of periodical consultations; it asserts the irremediable and fertile and beneficent inequality of men who cannot be leveled by any such mechanical and extrinsic device as universal suffrage. Democratic regimes may be described as those under which the people are, from time to time, deluded into the belief that they exercise sovereignty, while all the time real sovereignty resides in and is exercised by other and sometimes irresponsible and secret forces. Democracy is a kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more exclusive, tyrannical, and destructive than one, even if he be a tyrant. -- Benito Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism, 1932 

I keep getting criticized for calling Trump and the GOP fascist because the situation in the 1920s and 1930s that gave rise to Mussolini and fascism are quite different from the situation today. Despite that, my reading of Mussolini’s 1932 description of fascism, “The Doctrine of Fascism” is that there is enough overlap with then and now to be comfortable using the fascist and neo-fascist labels for Trump, GOP elites and most of his deceived supporters. But what do I know? I'm just a simple boy from the Midwest.

Anyway, it is good to consider counter arguments. It helps keep the mind open and sharp. Boston University Today magazine published an article last February, Are Trump Republicans Fascists?, based on an interview with BU history professor Johnathan Zatlin. He teaches Comparative European Fascism, a class that focuses on Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and similar regimes characterized by violence, racism, and repression. He argues that modern Republicans are not fascist.

1. Could the Republican Party be described as either fascist or fascist-leaning?

Zatlin: From the historian’s perspective, fascism was a response to problems after 1918—the collapse of multiethnic empires, economic crises—that we don’t have today. If we’re experiencing crises, they’re crises that only superficially resemble what was going on in the interwar period: high inflation, the pandemic [of] the Spanish flu. What we’ve been experiencing the last couple of years are just very different situations. And we don’t have a four-year-long war that killed millions and traumatized a whole generation of young people who found it hard to be integrated back into society and work 9-to-5 jobs, then later experienced mass employment and a Depression lasting years. That, plus weak democratic traditions, led many Europeans to conclude that democracy brought crisis and poverty, and that only authoritarian regimes could ensure prosperity and stability.

Fascism was a response to long-term trends and what was going on after 1918. What you see today, what Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene are saying, is completely unoriginal. It is an attempt to resurrect those responses in the interwar period to democratic and liberal rule. It’s not clear to me that you can call them fascists, since fascism was a historical phenomenon. Simply because you think violence is good, and you think racism is good, doesn’t make you a fascist.

There’s a libertarian strand of American politics, going back to 1776, that is used to interpret January 6 as a moment of positive antiauthoritarianism. If you think about Rosa Parks defying bad law, there’s nothing violent about that. Almost all January 6 insurrectionists—I wouldn’t call [them] fascists, because fascists are people who were involved in the interwar period. But there’s no question that they’re violent antidemocrats who are also violently racist. And the Republican Party is in danger of becoming the party of violence, antidemocracy, and racism. If there is any kind of similarity with the interwar period, it’s that you have conservatives willing to collaborate for political reasons with people who are often violent and racist and antidemocratic.

Germaine: Sure, if one defines fascism as a 20th century “historical phenomenon” that involved “people who were involved in the interwar period,” then by golly, Trump and supporters and his party are not fascist. This is definitely not the 20th century, I'm almost certain of that. So, if that is the definition of fascism, then this is a case closed matter. Is that the end of it? No.

One thing to consider is that Mussolini did not define fascism that way. What if one defines fascists as a group of people at any time in history who (1) are comfortable with violence, racism, and repression, and (2) are hard core nationalists, let’s call them something like America Firsters, (3) believes in rule by a few or one person and is explicitly anti-democratic, for example characterized by hostile to free and fair elections, and (4) use decades of ruthless, sophisticated divisive propaganda to the appearance of and widespread false belief in crises akin to those of the early 20th century? 

By that definition, Trump, his supporters and his party sound an awful lot like fascists. Or, is Germaine delusional?

Let's move on to one more Q&A with Zatlin.

2. Some observers argue that local Republican officials and Republican judges thwarted Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, so we aren’t headed for autocracy. Any validity to that argument?

Zatlin: If you look at the interwar period, there’s no question that the civil service—especially in Germany, where democracy was linked to economic crises and the defeat of the [First World] War—was opposed to democracy. And that’s simply not the case in the United States. I don’t think that has anything to do with Republicans, actually; I think it’s that we’ve all been taught that democracy is a really important value.

That said, the last president did try—and it seems Republican parties locally as well as on the state level are trying—to put public officials into office who don’t have democracy as a value, who believe violence is a legitimate part of public discourse, which it obviously isn’t. It’s a form of politics that is deeply disturbing, because it means the Republican Party has allied itself with antidemocratic values, violence, and racism.

Germaine: This bears repeating: “it means the Republican Party has allied itself with antidemocratic values, violence, and racism.”

Gosh, if one ignores Zatlin’s time in history limits on fascism, that sounds an awful lot like fascism as Zatlin himself characterizes it. At least both Zatlin and Mussolini agree that fascism is antidemocratic. In his essay, Mussolini seemed to think that fascism was a timeless and natural thing, at least for 20th century and later societies. He did not specify any time when fascism would poop out and simply go away. He thought it was the best way to do things.

A final thought. Google something like “the definition of fascism” and the hits include this from Wikipedia:

Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy. 

Historians, political scientists, and other scholars have long debated the exact nature of fascism. Historian Ian Kershaw once wrote that “trying to define ‘fascism’ is like trying to nail jelly to the wall.” Each different group described as fascist has at least some unique elements, and many definitions of fascism have been criticized as either too broad or too narrow. According to many scholars, fascism—especially once in power—has historically attacked communism, conservatism, and parliamentary liberalism, attracting support primarily from the far-right.

Trump, the GOP elites and most of the rank and file are undeniably autocratic, far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist, deeply concerned about the imminent demise of the White race (and its replacement with those nasty non-White people), and hell-bent on forcibly suppressing political opposition by rigging elections. Jeez, that sounds an awful lot like fascism.

Regardless, I'll probably stop using the label fascist (already stopped with neo-fascist) and go with milquetoast like autocratic, kleptocratic, mendacious, corrupt, Christian theocratic and/or etc.

Q: Is Germaine full of crap, or is there maybe reasonable validity to his belief that Trump, GOP elites and most of the (deceived) rank and file are fascist, or at least neo-fascist whatever the hell that is?