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"Right-wing strategist Steve Bannon, who once pledged to make the world 'as exciting as the 1930s,' promotes the ideas of the Italian Traditionalist Julius Evola, who wrote: 'We would like a more radical, more intrepid Fascism, a really absolute Fascism, made of pure force, inaccessible to compromise.”'
~ Janet Bufton and Tom G. Palmer
#Trump #JDVance #Republicans #fascism
/1
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/your-comprehensive-guide-to-the-far
"Trump is running a fascist campaign, the most un-American in U.S. history. Below, I offer eight unofficial rules of American democracy that Trump has broken—rules it would have been unthinkable for an American politician to break before Trump arrived on the scene. If he wins despite doing all that, the system itself will break."
~ Nicholas Grossman
"At stake is nothing less that democracy itself.
Whether we will preserve the peaceful transfer of power or devolve into a white Christian nationalist oligarchy. Whether we will have rule by the people or rule over the people."
~ Jemar Tisby
#Trump #JDVance #Republicans #fascism #WhiteChristianNationalism
/3
https://jemartisby.substack.com/p/heres-the-recording-from-preparing
"In an interview with Michael S. Schmidt of the New York Times published tonight, [General John] Kelly noted that he had decided not to speak out about Trump unless Trump said something deeply troubling or something that involved Kelly and was wildly inaccurate. For Kelly, Trump’s recent talk about the 'enemy within' was dangerous enough that he felt obliged to make a public comment."
~ Heather Cox Richardson
"The retired U.S. Marine Corps general confirmed that Trump is 'certainly the only president that has all but rejected what America is all about, and what makes America America, in terms of our Constitution, in terms of our values, the way we look at everything, to include family and government—he’s certainly the only president that I know of, certainly in my lifetime, that was like that.'”
"Kelly added that 'in his opinion, Mr. Trump met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.'”
@wdlindsy@toad.social"Kelly’s comments, two weeks from Election Day, are the latest in a line of warnings from former Trump White House aides about how he views the presidency and would exercise power if returned to office.
In addition to the fascist comments, Kelly — who was Trump’s chief of staff from 2017 to 2019 — told The New York Times that the former president 'certainly prefers the dictator approach to government.'”
~ CNN
#Trump #JDVance #Republicans #fascism #JohnKelly
/7
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/22/politics/trump-fascist-john-kelly/index.html
"He also confirmed to The Atlantic that Trump had said he wished his military personnel showed him the same deference Adolf Hitler’s Nazi generals showed the German dictator during World War II, and recounted the moment."
"If Harris wins, it’s because just enough voters accept the rule of law and reality itself. That’s probably why we remain so nervous about the outcome. The election won’t merely determine the next president. It’ll define who we are as a nation."
~ Stephen Robinson
#Trump #JDVance #Republicans #fascism
/9
https://www.publicnotice.co/p/harris-trump-how-the-hell-is-this-close
"The mystery that will provide full employment for generations of historians is why so many Americans willingly embraced the con and spread the hate that fuels Trump's campaign."
~ Robert B. Hubbell
#Trump #JDVance #Republicans #fascism
/10
https://roberthubbell.substack.com/p/harriswalz-campaign-in-overdrive
"He has now gone all-out demagogue and promised his supporters that he would have no qualms about ordering our military to execute his opponents. Which has left men like John Kelly with few options but to be honest about who Trump is."
~ Brian Tyler Cohen
#Trump #JDVance #Republicans #fascism
/11
https://plus.briantylercohen.com/p/leaving-it-all-on-the-field
"When you’re so undisciplined that you can’t control yourself for the final TWO WEEKS of the campaign, imagine if Trump was unburdened by another election, with his official immunity gifted from the Supreme Court he stacked, his brain cooked, all guardrails removed, and nobody to hold him accountable."
“It says everything you need to know about the U.S. media that Trump’s clown show at the McDonald’s gets more attention than his former defense secretary and chair of the Joint Chief of Staff warning that Trump is a dangerous fascist with no respect for democracy.”
~ Dean Baker quotes by Margaret Sullivan
#Trump #JDVance #Republicans #fascism #media #MediaFail
/13
https://margaretsullivan.substack.com/p/a-media-call-to-action-fcb
It all begins, always, with coercion. It begins with bullying and acts of accelerating violence. It begins with demonstrations that "we" have power over "you" and intend to expand and use that power to put you in your place. To hurt you.
It begins with brownshirts, and moves on to worse and worse things.
#Trump #JDVance #Republicans #fascism #thuggery #bullying #coercion #violence
/14
This election cycle, there are reports from all over the place of widespread stealing of Harris-Walz signs. Here's one (see the link below) from Springfield, Missouri.
This is coercion and bullying, widespread stealing of signs designed to shut people up and tell them what they'll get if they don't comply. It's violence. It's a prelude to fascism that will unleash more violence.
#Trump #JDVance #Republicans #fascism #thuggery #bullying #coercion #violence
/15
"Kelly raised two bright red flags that paint a dark and deeply disturbing picture for our nation if Trump were to return to office. First, there was Kelly’s comments to The Atlantic that Trump made it clear that, 'I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.'”
#Trump #JDVance #Republicans #fascism #JohnKelly
/16
https://deanobeidallah.substack.com/p/john-kelly-is-warning-us-that-jd
"Then Kelly went further. Kelly noted that Trump 'met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.'”
Diana Butler Bass kindly offers a gift link to the New York Times interview with Trump's presidential chief of staff General John Kelly, in which Kelly warns us that Trump meets the definition of a fascist, will govern as a dictator of elected, and has no respect for the Constitution or rule of law.
You can access the gift link by clicking the link to Bass' site and finding the gift link in her essay.
David Kurtz points out that two generals, Mark Milley and John Kelly, have now issued dire warnings that Trump is a fascist. As Kurtz notes,
"Kelly’s dual interviews came the same day Trump touted at a campaign event the 'extreme power' he would have if elected again: 'As president, you have tremendous — it’s called extreme power. You have extreme power.'”
#Trump #JDVance #Republicans #fascism #JohnKelly
/19
https://morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com/p/two-generals-have-now-issued-dire
"The sobering fact is that nearly half this country is willing to dispose of democracy in order to win. They view it as a matter of survival. Well, so do we. It is not Democrats who are attempting to manage the lives of Republicans. It is the Republicans who are determined to force the rest of us to live under their warped screed."
~ Mark Mansour
"John Kelly won't let us avert our eyes. …
47 percent of our fellow Americans want this man to be commander-in-chief.
How is this possible?
Because they look away. They choose not to see."
~ Jonathan V. Last
"Kelly was one of the people closest to Trump during his presidency, having served as his Secretary of Homeland Security and then as his longtime chief of staff. Kelly didn’t write a book or take a gig on a news network, so he had no financial incentive to come forward."
~ Jay Kuo
"Indeed, by speaking out as he has, Kelly has put his future and even his own life at risk, because if Trump regains the White House, Trump will likely seek political retribution.
Otherwise put, Kelly has no incentive to fabricate stories, and he has come forward only reluctantly because Trump has grown so extreme."
"When someone of Kelly’s stature and proximity to Trump says the ex-president is a fascist and praised Hitler’s generals, it should send a great chill through our body politic. If this becomes a half-a-day story, it will be an indictment on all of us."
~ Sarah Longwell
#Trump #JDVance #Republicans #fascism #JohnKelly
/24
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-sad-pathetic-spectacle-of-john
"'Come on, Hitler isn’t going to do any of that, not really' is what old-line German conservatives told themselves in voting for the National Socialists. It is what every modern social constituency that claims to not want authoritarianism or fascism says before supporting or voting for an authoritarian or fascist."
~ Timothy Burke
#Trump #JDVance #Republicans #fascism
/25
https://timothyburke.substack.com/p/trump-essentials-2-long-cons
"Men who worked with Trump in high positions of authority are telling the American public that he will govern as a fascist would, and this time, without anybody who might try to check those tendencies. The Trumpist future is all in plain sight. Nothing is hidden, nothing is ambiguous, nothing is deniable.
So what do we make of people who should know better who nevertheless deny it?"
"Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable, and in a second term people like John Kelly would not be there to be the guardrails against his propensities and his actions. Those who once tried to stop him from pursuing his worst impulses would no longer be there — and no longer be there to rein him in. So the bottom line is this, we know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power."
#KamalaHarris #Trump #JDVance #Republicans #fascism #JohnKelly
/27
https://www.lawdork.com/p/kamala-harris-v-donald-trump-unchecked-power
️ 
@wdlindsy yup, happened in my small town in CT. Someone posted about signs being stolen and as you can expect, there were maga trolls laughing at the person etc. This man, this deeply flawed thing, has torn this nation to pieces. It’s all so sad.
@Phreba Deeply sad. I know signs have been taken in the past, perhaps by people from every political stripe — but not in the blatant, contemptuous way I am seeing (and hearing reports about) in this election cycle, as Harris-Walz signs are taken all over the place.
@wdlindsy Crooks and Liars has a CNN clip of Ana Navarro where she properly frames this, what kind of person Kelly is and how much it would take for Kelly to come out and draw attention to this. Worth the watch. https://crooklyn.social/@crooksandliars/113357448853140654
@hakona Thank you for the link. I'll watch with interest.
@wdlindsy “So what do we make of people who should know better who nevertheless deny it?"
Or, far worse, embrace it?
@wdlindsy i mean, tbf, how could the people back in the time know what Hitler planned? It's not like he'd written a book about his plans and spread it all over Germany...
@Dingsextrem Irony detected here — good irony. Yes, how, indeed, could they have possibly known?
@wdlindsy "besides, if he did, I'm not one of the group that would be affected, so no problem."
@xinit That's right. This is so central to the thinking of elites — like the folks who own, manage, and write for the New York Times. We won't be affected, after all, they tell themselves. Only they will.
@wdlindsy Sadly Cult 45 doesn't care. they like his awfulness becuase it validates their awfulness. While HRC was correct in calling them deplorables, saying it out loud motivated them. I am hoping that this time around the utter incoherence of the TFG's campaign and the numbers of women voters voting against The Handmaid's Tale will sink this POS for good and take JDV with him.
@Flowermob No, they don't care. I don't think those speaking out are speaking out because they imagine that Trump's cult follows care. I think they're speaking out because they know it's the right thing to do.
@wdlindsy I feel that number is closer to 95%. Maybe 5% of us support democracy and draw a line in concrete over the concept. Maybe 5%. MAYBE.
@Jon_Kramer It seems that way. But the popular vote election after election tells us that a majority of Americans do not buy the MAGA agenda. The problem is that, with lavish help from the Republican party and the Supreme Court, a minority has gamed the system in order to exert minoritarian control over the majority.
@wdlindsy MAGA is not the only anti-democratic movement. They are roughly 50% of the movement away from democratic rule. They are just the loud stupid 1/2.
The other 1/2 is far more subtle. The half that doesn't want primaries, wants candidates picked by the party leaders, resuses to enact laws that the majority of Americans want, etc. These are also people who don't want democracy.
@Jon_Kramer I see no daylight between the puppet-masters you're describing here and MAGA.
@wdlindsy They don't vote for the same person... But you are mostly correct. I have heard them called 'blue maga' fairly often, and I think that is an apt term.
@wdlindsy His supporters are in a cult. Many are on some form of government handout, yet they're against the government.
And none of those warnings hurt the orange man. He loses not one vote, whereas in normal situations and/or countries, he would be finished long time ago. He and republicans are not even hiding those statements anymore, as they learn the darker they get, the more support they obtain.
@locksmithprime Yes, you're right. And, yet, we have no option except to keep sounding the warning bell, with so much at stake.
@wdlindsy It's even hard to keep track on which former official has said which terrible things about Trump:
John F. Kelly, Chief of Staff: Trump meets the definition of a fascist.
Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Trump is fascist to the core and the most dangerous person ever.
James Mattis, Defense Secretary: what Milley said
Mark Esper, Defense Secretary after Mattis: Trump is unfit for office, a national security threat and a threat to democracy.
@Kraemer_HB It's hard, indeed. And none of this makes a dent in his cult followers, who seem to be at least a third and maybe more of Americans.
@wdlindsy I just read a psychological analysis about this cult and its mental dispositions. It said "only" around 10% of voters were Trump cultists. (So the rest of GOP voters are what?)
https://mastodon.social/@univienna@fediscience.org/113356217168600884
@Kraemer_HB 10% sounds like a very low calculation to me.
@wdlindsy That's what a cult wants. I don't remember who said things like 10 devout followers are better than 50 normal people. It might have been some Nazi.
Trump selected his followers for devoutness, that's the function of him requesting them to repeat any of his lies. This way they always have to avow to him being their saviour. (What I can't wrap my head around is religious Christians doing such oplenly blasphemous things.)
@Kraemer_HB "What I can't wrap my head around is religious Christians doing such oplenly blasphemous things."
And, yet, in the American context, there is a very long history of distorting and warping Christianity to rob it of its teachings critical of injustice and calling for solidarity with the poor. Christian leaders who defended slavery invented a peculiar form of Christianity to justify that immoral practice, and their thinking remains alive in the MAGA movement today.
@wdlindsy Is this invention of Christianity to justify slavery connected with Calvinism? I'm from a Calvinist region of Germany, and I often acknowledge US Evangelical thoughts that seem familiar.
@Kraemer_HB Calvinist theologians, as in Presbyterian divines at Princeton University, did play a major role in establishing that pro-slavery reading of the bible for the South.
@wdlindsy Thank you! I read "Great Awakening" in Wikipedia and come from there to "Pietism" (that was strong in my home region) and the "Charismatic movement" that sure had some influence on Trumps performance. One could say he is speaking in tongues these days when his followers believe he has something profound to say, and all other people find him rambling incoherently. The complex religious history of the US is very interesting for its influence on todays political phenomena.
@Kraemer_HB Yes, and in the US, a very rigid and retrogressive form of Calvinism is now ascendant in many quarters, pushed hard by a group who have been called the TheoBros, whose influence in evangelicalism in general is increasingly significant.
@wdlindsy or “maybe we’ll dispose of her” 
@wdlindsy He has also threatened campaign donors and voters who he thinks are "unAmerican" and "vermin" and, if I recall correctly, "liberal leftists" and "marxists" and so he thinks we don't have a right to vote in the elections, even though we were born in the USA. What MAGA doesn't seem to care about is that people have a right to disagree with them and to vote in favor of someone other than their dear felon leader, Con-Don.
I'm grateful that our ballots are secret. A lot of GOP women haven't been voting because their husbands told them not to, but they're starting to find ways around that. I applaud them for doing so. Regardless of who they vote for, their voices are being heard, many for the first time. I have a suspicion they are voting for Kamala and other Democrats, because the GOP is against women entirely.
Black people are also turning out in record numbers, despite all the GOP tricks to suppress the vote! Kinda think they're voting in their best interests too. 
@JustRosy Thank you for this good summary of reasons to maintain hope. When I recently posted on my Facebook page a quote (in graphic form) by Jess Piper reminding white women that their ballots are secret and their husbands have no right to instruct them how to vote, Facebook immediately took that posting down.
@wdlindsy 
. It would define us as a nation too stupid, shallow, hubristic, cruel, destructive & self-destructive to lead in this world, or for decent people to bear living in. And I absolutely think most of us ARE decent, kind, law-abiding, responsible citizens, but if we don’t all rise up w/our votes against this existential threat & seriously address the systemic flaws in our society (politics, economics, media, etc) that allow & encourage such malignancy to flourish & spread, we are doomed.
@Laloofah Well-stated. I agree, though I wonder how many of us actually would be decent, kind, and law-abiding if push came to shove. The results of the Milgram experiment, which has repeated a number of times at different points in time and in different cultural settings, always with the same results, give me pause to think.
@wdlindsy I was referring to how I think most of us are in our current circumstances. When society breaks down & chaos reigns, I agree; most of us really don’t know how we’d respond to alien situations & experiences.
I 1st saw Milgram’s Obedience to Authority film in a college psych class, & it horrified us all, as it does most people. But I learned later the experiment isn’t free of controversy. I think you’ll find this interesting, if you’ve not read it (or similar):
https://www.npr.org/2013/08/28/209559002/taking-a-closer-look-at-milgrams-shocking-obedience-study
@Laloofah Thank you very much for the link. I'll read with interest. Have you seen the film "Experimenter" telling Milgram's story and starring Peter Sarsgaard and Winona Ryder? I thought it was really great.
@wdlindsy You’re very welcome! And no, I not only haven’t seen that film, I’d never heard of it! So thank you for bringing it to my attention — I will be looking for it.
@Laloofah I think we watched it on Pay Per View, so that might be one place to find it if you have access to PPV (we no longer do, but find lots of good movies for free at both Tubi and Kanopy, the latter via our local library system).