Far Right takes power in Italy and Sweden

Only two weeks after Sweden's Social Democratic Prime Minister, Magdalena Andersson, conceded defeat as a Far-Right party which began as part of the Neo-Nazi movement in the 80s rose to prominence in a Right Wing coalition, Italy's next Prime Minister (based on current exit polls) is poised to be Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the Brothers of Italy, whose roots lie in Italy's fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI).  Meloni joined the pro-Mussolini MSI at the age of 17, later co-founding a party-- National Alliance-- with other  MSI members. In 2012, after cutting her teeth working with well known Right Wing populists like Matteo Salvini and Burlosconi ( both of whom are part of her new Right coalition) , she started her own party, Brothers of Italy (FDl) which, after today's general election,  will now form a coalition government that she will lead as PM

She has tried hard to sell herself and her party as "moderate conservatives," likening them to Tories in one speech. But that's false advertising. Here is a clip of a short speech from only a few years ago (December of 2018) well worth watching, as she will soon be PM of an important Western European economy (Europe's 3rd largest)  and a G7 country. In this short clip of her addressing her peers in Parliament, the topic is UN and EU policies regarding migrants, especially refugees from the global south.  But she speaks with similar vitriol and self-righteous anger on a variety of topics including European identity, traditional family, the "perversions" of the "LGBT Lobby," abortions, atheism and loss of Christian identity et al. The common thread is that Europe and Italy are in  political, social and cultural decline due to the rootless cosmopolitans, global elites, evil agents of George Soros, etc. This being the case, the evil and decadence must be decisively beaten back, and "real European-ness" asserted as basis for civilizational greatness for Italy,  just as, in her mind,  Orban is doing for Hungary and Kaczynski for Poland (among others).  At about the 3 minute mark in the vid,  she states  that the EU and UN "have used illegal immigration in recent decades to complete the Grand Plan of financial speculation to deprive nations and people of their identity. Because without roots you're a slave, and when you're a slave you serve the interests of Soros." Note the anger she channels on behalf of her many devoted followers as she says this. It is a nod to both replacement theory, Soros conspiracy theories (which she and Orban never tire of employing) and it highlights her mission to liberate the 'real people' of Italy/Europe who are currently "enslaved" by their evil globalist keepers.

In her campaign this summer, Meloni has been careful to *say* she approves of the EU, or at least a less centralized version of it. She claims to support the EU position on the Ukraine War, but Burlosconi and Matteo have well established Putin-friendly stances. She also  likens her own support of the EU to that of Viktor Orban who has just been rebuked officially by the EU as leading Hungary down a non-democratic path https://www.politico.eu/article/viktor-orban-rule-of-law-european-parliament-brands-hungary-as-no-longer-a-democracy/ .  She also expresses admiration for Poland's authoritarian Law and Justice Party. She has also spoken at the Republican organization CPAC-- currently ground zero of the MAGA movement. Further, while denying any lingering fascism in her party or herself, Meloni has refused to denounce Musolini,  and consistently deflects questions about the infamous tri-color flame which remains the logo of her party, as it was for the pro-Musolini MSI which she joined in her teens. Her standard line is "that was a long time ago" and "fascism has been consigned to the past by history."  (In a Vice Report below, you can see her immediately change the topic when asked by the reporter about the fascist tri-color flame logo she has refused to abandon; likely to keep the old faithful on board).  In a classic moment of damage control last week, Meloni suspended a party member when some of his comments from 2014 from Facebook surfaced. The fellow Brothers of Italy member "praised" Meloni in the comments,  likening her to Hitler ( referred to as "a great German statesman of 70 years ago"). https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62971802  

Yet many who feel desperate in Italy in the wake of the Covid crisis as well as economic and political problems that seem intractable, take her on her word-- or at least are willing to "give her a chance." As a charismatic rhetorician practiced in the "politics of resentment,"  she is able to tap into the anger and despair of many citizens, not all of whom are well informed. Since Italian governments come and go with some frequency (72 since WW2) one can only hope this one is particularly short-lived. But we see desperate and confused Europeans in the aftermath of economic displacement, a refugee crisis, and  the covid pandemic-- all in the space of a decade-- turning increasingly to Right Wing alternatives, as they feel the status quo of liberalism has failed them. 

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Below is a link to a  15 min. Vice Report on Meloni's campaign which provides further context and contains interesting interviews, followed by 1 or 2 articles on this major development.

Vice News:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnhkDjb6nec

The Guardian: God, family fatherland-- how Giorgia Meloni has taken Italy's far right to the brink of power:   https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/17/giorgia-meloni-brothers-of-italy-leader-far-right-elections-alliance-

Deutsche Welle Video Report on Victory of Far Right Sweden Democrats (also descendants of a fascist party, in this case of Neo-Nazis from the 80s) who will be prominent members of Right Wing Coalition gov't that just defeated the Social Democrats 2 weeks ago:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpDQ6r-jHRc

 

Q: Why do you think we are seeing so many elections in liberal democracies rejecting the status quo and embracing hard-line far right parties-- some with very dubious roots in the Neo-Fascist movements of 20th century Europe?

Prosecuting hate speech

A New York Times article reports that online hate speech in Germany is being prosecuted, with fines and sometimes jail time being part of the penalties. This touches on what I see as one of the most complex but important issues in modern politics. 

Americans are untrained and defenseless

American society is clearly not able to defend itself. We are overwhelmed by a vast online onslaught of divisive lies, slanders, flawed motivated reasoning, crackpot conspiracies, irrational emotional manipulation, slanders and all the other filth and moral rot that is protected free speech in the US. Social media companies claim to police it, but it is clear by now that such a claim is mostly window dressing (~95% ?). That is just a fig leaf that allows social media companies to claim that hate and lies are being policed. Profit prevents the companies from getting serious about hate speech.

On top of that, hate speech cannot be policed in public places and platforms. Only private sources and police and censor it. 

In my firm opinion, decades of dark free speech in America has been and is the single most potent and effective tool that radical right conservatives used to tear American society apart and subvert both politics and democracy. Decades of dark free speech has pushed conservative politics into normalization and acceptance of, a shocking degree of mendacity, authoritarianism, corruption and radical Christian theocracy that comes straight out of the Dark Ages. That is now accepted politics by tens of millions of conservative American adults.

The NYT writes:

At that exact moment in March, a similar scene was playing out at about 100 other homes across Germany, part of a coordinated nationwide crackdown that continues to this day. After sharing images circulating on Facebook that carried a fake statement, the perpetrators had devices confiscated and some were fined.

“We are making it clear that anyone who posts hate messages must expect the police to be at the front door afterward,” Holger Münch, the head of the Federal Criminal Police Office, said after the March raids.

Hate speech, extremism, misogyny and misinformation are well-known byproducts of the internet. But the people behind the most toxic online behavior typically avoid any personal major real-world consequences. Most Western democracies like the United States have avoided policing the internet because of free speech rights, leaving a sea of slurs, targeted harassment and tweets telling public figures they’d be better off dead. At most, Facebook, YouTube or Twitter remove a post or suspend their account.

But over the past several years, Germany has forged another path, criminally prosecuting people for online hate speech.

German authorities have brought charges for insults, threats and harassment. The police have raided homes, confiscated electronics and brought people in for questioning. Judges have enforced fines worth thousands of dollars each and, in some cases, sent offenders to jail. The threat of prosecution, they believe, will not eradicate hate online, but push some of the worst behavior back into the shadows.

In doing so, they have flipped inside out what, to American ears, it means to protect free speech. The authorities in Germany argue that they are encouraging and defending free speech by providing a space where people can share opinions without fear of being attacked or abused.

“There has to be a line you cannot cross,” said Svenja Meininghaus, a state prosecutor who attended the raid of the father’s house. “There has to be consequences.”

But even in Germany, a country where the stain of Nazism drives a belief that free speech is not absolute, the crackdown is generating fierce debate:

How far is too far?

Is it going too far to censor actual, provable lies, which are usually a non-trivial component of crackpot conspiracy theories? What about slanders? Essentially all of the liars, conspiracy crackpots and slanderers claim to speak truth. They vehemently deny that they are liars, crackpots and/or slanderers. By doing that they implicitly but undeniably point to truth, honesty and non-slander as something good.[1]  

What about flawed motivated reasoning? That is more complicated and subtle, but nonetheless a critically important consideration. The human mind is susceptible to it and we are usually completely unaware that it is in operation. Wikipedia:

Motivated reasoning is the phenomenon in cognitive science and social psychology in which emotional biases lead to justifications or decisions based on their desirability rather than an accurate reflection of the evidence. It is the “tendency to find arguments in favor of conclusions we want to believe to be stronger than arguments for conclusions we do not want to believe.” People can therefore draw self-serving conclusions not just because they want to but because the conclusions seemed more plausible given their beliefs and expectancies.

When I listen to most Republican politicians and partisans speak, motivated reasoning is usually a non-trivial or dominant part of what is being asserted. Usually, the reasoning is based on one or more provable lies that are folded into the argument being asserted. That is one objective basis to censor motivated reasoning. It seems that one or more lies or falsehoods cut through most dark free speech (~80% ?). 

What about motivated reasoning that is not based heavily on lies or falsehoods? Some arguments based on logic flaws can be like that. For example, relying on a circular or strawman argument or by positing a false dilemma. Many people, especially most partisans and ideologues, do that fairly regularly. They firmly believe their argument and reject allegations of any error in their reasoning. 

Questions of censorship are complicated but important. For years it seemed best to leave dark free speech free and untouched. Then it became clear that it is divisive, deadly and corrosive to society, respect for truth, democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. 

The stakes of leaving dark free speech untouched are very high. The stakes of touching it might be just as high. That is because, if autocrats, theocrats and/or kleptocrats (ATKs) rise to power, they could and probably would impose limits on free speech. Their limits would related to squelching criticism and inconvenient truth. That’s what the ATKs in places like China, Russia and North Korea have done. 

Yes, ATKs would try to subvert laws that censor some or most dark free speech that are intended to defend truth and democracy. That is an ever-present risk of censorship. 

Q: What runs the higher risk to truth and democracy, trying to censor some or most dark free speech or leaving it all alone and letting the ATK chips fall where they will?

Footnote:

1. That strikes me as being akin to Putin holding an election “referendum” in occupied Ukraine and then telling the World the people there, who were forced at gunpoint to vote as they were told, want to be part of Russia. Even a murdering thug like Putin must see at least propaganda value in elections, even if they are an obvious farce.

A tale of profit, pollution and who pays to clean up the messes

“Social responsibility is a fundamentally subversive doctrine" in a free society, and have said that in such a society, "there is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.” ― Milton Friedman, The Ethics of Competition and Other Essays, 1935 (Businesses do not stay within the rules of the game, and they probably never did. Deception and fraud have always been there. They were and still are important, not trivial aspects of normal business operations. And, most or nearly all businesses hate open and free competition.)

In America there are hundreds of thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells. Many of them continue to emit into the air and/or ground the potent greenhouse gas methane and/or toxic compounds such as xylene. In coming years, millions of wells will be abandoned as the economy transitions from carbon energy to other energy sources. This 13 minute video shows that private funds and taxpayers pay ~$30,000 to $1,000,000 each to plug and cap wells that drillers and well owners abandoned. 

Most owners of abandoned either cannot afford to cap their wells or they cannot be found and the land sold to other people, many of who are not aware that they have one or more abandoned wells on their property. The problem is left to the states, which choose to not fund well capping.

An obvious solution to this problem, assuming one sees it as a problem worth solving, is to (i) require plugging and capping before a well is abandoned, and (ii) tax what each well produces so that there is money to properly plug and cap old and newly abandoned wells. 

Obviously that solution is politically impossible. Oil and gas companies will scream bloody murder and unleash their hordes of lobbyists and campaign contributions to kill any such measure. On top of that massive barrier, the Republican Party will scream bloody murder, accusing the effort as more evil socialist tyranny, pedophilia, cannibalism, satanism and whatever else they come up with in their raging ideological fever dreams and crackpot conspiracy theories.

This is just another example of how callous and irresponsible people and companies that profit from pollution are. They could not care less about environmental or human damage. That is the heart and soul of energy sector capitalism. Laws could have and should have been passed decades ago making it mandatory to plug and cap wells. 

But as usual for most American capitalism, there is no such thing as social conscience. Social conscience is subversive to profit. Despite contrary capitalist public relations* rhetoric, social conscience is intolerable. It is blasphemy to core capitalist dogma of profit above all else. 

* Public relations from big corporations is mostly just propaganda, largely consisting of lies, deceit, opacity, deflection, flawed motivated reasoning, etc. 

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Peach Freeze for bringing this video to my attention.

A list of the 100 biggest greenhouse gas polluters

The Political Economy Research Institute at U. Mass. Amherst compiles polluter lists and updates them periodically. The Greenhouse 100 polluters index 2021 report is based on 2019 data. Clicking on a polluter opens a list of facilities and the town and state they are located in. PERI compiles other lists such as the top 100 air polluters and water polluters. Some of the Greenhouse gas polluter list is shown below:

Some of the air polluter list is shown below.

Humans are why it is hard to prosecute criminals

One thing that  criminal law usually requires is intent to commit the crime shown by evidence “beyond a reasonable doubt.” That is a very high standard. It is a major reason why prosecutors often choose not to prosecute a case. A Washington Post article about radical right representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) highlights this issue. The WaPo writes:

Career prosecutors have recommended against charging Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) in a long-running sex-trafficking investigation — telling Justice Department superiors that a conviction is unlikely in part because of credibility questions with the two central witnesses, according to people familiar with the matter.

Senior department officials have not made a final decision on whether to charge Gaetz, but it is rare for such advice to be rejected, these people told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the deliberations. They added that it is always possible additional evidence emerges that could alter prosecutors’ understanding of the case.

A criminal defense lawyer commented that when a witness changes their story, their credibility is damaged or completely blown. That is usually enough for defense lawyers to create a “reasonable doubt” in the mind(s) at least one of twelve jurors. That is all it takes for a criminal to get away with crime.

In this case, credibility issues were probably not because the witness is a sex worker. Instead, she probably either (1) gave inconsistent interviews during the investigation, and/or (2) gave one version, was shown some evidence, and with a refreshed recollection gave another. Either way, that’s a defense attorney’s bread and butter. That’s the case right there. Defense lawyers love going to trial where no matter what the alleged victim says, there is at least one prior inconsistent statement. And, the fact that her second story would be consistent with the documentary evidence makes it worse, not better.

This is a common example of how ordinary and easy it is to erect plausible deniability in criminal cases. Matt Gaetz is probably not going to be prosecuted for crimes he probably committed.[1]

If you’re interested -- a personal anecdote about witnesses

About 35 years ago, I witnessed a bad car accident on my drive home from San Francisco one night. Two cars were racing, going at least about 100 mph, my guess in court was about 110 mph. After the two cars blew past me going 72 mph on cruise control, one lost control. That car swerved across 4 lanes from the fast lane into the slow lane and broadsided a car in the slow lane. Both vehicles were totaled. I was one of the cars that stopped to see if anyone was hurt. The guy in the slow lane was hurt, bleeding and panicking because he could not open his door, which was smashed in. A couple of us forced the door open and that calmed the guy down. No one in the wrecked race car was hurt. I witnessed the whole thing with amazement.

I waited for police and medics to arrive and take care of the hurt person. Then the cops asked for witnesses. People were eager to tell their story, but I sort of hung back and just listened. The accounts that each of three witnesses gave were not only quite different from each other, they were just wrong based on what I saw. I was amazed again.[2] If that personal experience is probative evidence, many or most human witnesses are amazingly unreliable. 

Footnotes: 
1. Despite being a high burden of proof that prosecutors must show to get a criminal conviction, the system does sometimes convict innocent people. From what I can tell, there is significant bias in wrongful criminal convictions. A 2018 research paper’s abstract summarizes the issue:

We examine the extent to which DNA exonerations can reveal whether wrongful conviction rates differ across races. We show that under a wide-range of assumptions regarding possible explicit or implicit racial biases in the DNA exoneration process (including no bias), our results suggest the wrongful conviction rate for rape is substantially and significantly higher among black convicts than white convicts. By contrast, we show that only if one believes that the DNA exoneration process very strongly favors innocent members of one race over the other could one conclude that there exist significant racial differences in wrongful conviction rates for murder.

2. For the rest of the story: I started to slink away, but one of the cops was watching me and he stopped me. I gave him my version of events. When the court case came up, I was the only witness called, so my version of the event was on display. The race car driver’s defense attorney was unhappy with my version, especially the amount of detail about the accident I was able to recall. For example, I knew my exact speed due to my cruise control. So, he impugned my credibility by asking if I was some sort of scientist, and when I said yes, he dropped that line of attack and tried another. 

He asked me for the details of what was on each side of the highway in the area of the accident, stuff like what kind of trees, what buildings were like, etc. I could not answer that very coherently even though I could picture it in my mind pretty well. And that is where he left it. I could not answer what was on the sides of a road I had been driving 4-5 times per week for several years. That undermined my credibility. 

Satanic panic is making a comeback, fueled by QAnon believers and GOP influencers

PROVO, Utah — On June 1, David Leavitt, the prosecuting attorney for Utah County, stood behind a lectern in his windowless Provo office before a gaggle of reporters. Wearing a gray suit and an exasperated look, he wanted to make something categorically clear: Neither he nor his wife were guilty of murdering or cannibalizing young children.

It was, by all accounts, a strange declaration from the progressive Republican prosecutor, a Mormon and younger brother of a former Utah governor, Mike Leavitt, who had earned a name for himself by prosecuting a well-known polygamist in 2001. But David Leavitt was up for re-election, Utah County voters would start casting ballots the next week, and the allegations, ridiculous as they may have sounded, had started to spread online and throughout the community. 

Some of Leavitt’s most high-profile political opponents were willing to at least wink at the allegations against him: Utahns for Safer Communities, a political action committee opposing Leavitt’s re-election, posted his news conference to YouTube with the caption, “Wethinks He Doth Protest Too Much,” and on their website, the group wrote that Leavitt “seems to know more than he says.” 

Leavitt lost the election, most likely not just because of the allegations against him but because of his liberal style of prosecution in a deeply conservative county where opponents labeled him as “soft on crime.” But the allegations’ impact on Leavitt was clear. After decades of serving as a city and county attorney with grander plans for public office, Leavitt now doesn’t think he’ll run again. 

“The cost is too high,” he said recently in an interview from his home.

Leavitt’s experience is one of a spate of recent examples in which individuals have been targeted with accusations of Satanism or so-called ritualistic abuse, marking what some see as a modern day version of the moral panic of the 1980s, when hysteria and hypervigilance over protecting children led to false allegations, wrongful imprisonments, decimated communities and wasted resources to the neglect of actual cases of abuse.

While the current obsession with Satan was boosted in part by the QAnon community, partisan media and conservative politicians have been instrumental in spreading newfound fears over the so-called ritualistic abuse of children that the devil supposedly inspires, sometimes weaving the allegations together with other culture war issues such as LGBTQ rights. Those fears are powering fresh accusations of ritual abuse online, which are amplified on social media and by partisan media, and can mobilize mobs to seek vigilante justice. 

The daily invocations of Satan by the biggest players in conservative politics and media are too numerous to catalog in full. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green, R-Ga., credited the devil with whispering to women who choose to have abortions and controlling churches who aid undocumented immigrants. In June, she tweeted a video of a man dressed as the devil, stating that the mythical creature would be the next witness called by the House Jan. 6 committee. “They all know him, they all love him, and some even worship him,” she wrote.

Charlie Kirk, the president of one of the largest conservative groups in the country, Turning Point USA, recently opined that Republicans should “use the law to shut down Satanism.” Last year, Fox News host Tucker Carlson expressed his opinion on trans people, telling his viewers, “When you say you can change your own gender by wishing it, you’re saying you’re God, and that is satanic.” The Republican nominee for Missouri’s St. Louis County executive, the top job in the local government, is currently suing her former employer over its mask mandates, citing their use in “satanic ritual abuse.”

And after President Joe Biden’s recent speech on the threat that “MAGA Republicans” pose to democracy, the very subjects of his warnings framed the president’s address as “satanic,” because of the red lights illuminating the backdrop of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall.  (As an aside, that red background was definitely bad optics, just sayin')

In the U.S., a Republican candidate for governor in Georgia, Kandiss Taylor, campaigned on demolishing the Georgia Guidestones, a tourist attraction known by some as American Stonehenge. When the mysterious monument — made up of massive granite slabs etched with innocuous rules for living — was blown up in July, Taylor seemed to celebrate, calling them “satanic.” 

Much more on this story:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/satanic-panic-making-comeback-fueled-qanon-believers-gop-influencers-rcna38795