A Handy 14-Point Guide To Identify Fascist Leaders

The following article by Kali Holloway was posted on the Alternet website December 8, 2016:

In 1995, Umberto Eco, the late Italian intellectual giant and novelist most famous for The Name of the Rose, wrote a guide describing the primary features of fascism. As a child, Eco was a loyalist of Mussolini, an experience that made him quick to detect the markers of fascism later in life, when he became a revered public intellectual and political voice. Eco noted that fascism looks different in each incarnation, morphing with time and leadership, as “it would be difficult for [it] to reappear in the same form in different historical circumstances.” It is a movement without “quintessence.” Instead, it’s a sort of “fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions,” he wrote.

Eco’s famous 14-point list outlines what the author dubbed “Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism”—and it fits hand in glove the political persona created by Donald Trump. Hours after 60 million Americans voted to give the presidency to a dangerously incompetent narcissist whose campaign was based on nativist fear-mongering and racist appeals, British historian Simon Schama lamented that Trump’s newly sealed win would “hearten fascists all over the world.” Sure enough, congratulations poured in from far-right admirers around the world, who recognized Trump as one of their ilk. Continue reading “A Handy 14-Point Guide To Identify Fascist Leaders”

From Nixon To Trump: Democracy and Indecency

The following article by Rick Perlstein was posted on the National Memo website December 2, 2016:

shutterstock_364331684-668x501This January marks my 20th anniversary writing about the American right wing as a historian and a journalist. Wearing my historian’s hat, I’ve documented lunatic John Birch Society members convinced that President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a “conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy”; underground militias stockpiling guns against imminent Communist invasion, threatening death to congressmen who dared abet the evil socialist agenda; drunken louts in a Queens, New York, bar describing Richard Nixon’s impeachment as a liberal coup, opining, “If I was Nixon, that’s what I’d do—I’d shoot every one of them.” I stroked my chin, and explained how such maniacal, anti-democratic, and violently anarchic rage had always been part of the story, though really only at the margins of the American conservative movement.

At the same time, as a citizen and as a journalist, I documented that margin encroaching on the center, until, with Donald Trump’s apotheosis, it seems now to have consumed the entire damned thing.

Let’s look at the score. Continue reading “From Nixon To Trump: Democracy and Indecency”

WMO: Five hottest years on record have occurred since 2011

_92322067_mediaitem92322066We know we now have a president-elect who refuses to believe in climate change or that it’s something China is doing to us. But, that doesn’t stop climate change from happening.

The following article by Matt McGrath was published on the BBC website November 8, 2016:

New data released by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) shows that the five years from 2011 to 2015 were the warmest on record.

The report, published at global climate talks in Morocco, strongly links human activities to rising temperatures. Continue reading “WMO: Five hottest years on record have occurred since 2011”

Secretary of State Simon target of anti-Semitic online post

So, if you thought we were overstating the brass the haters have now to come out of the swamp (probably not the same one the Republican presidential candidate says, but one covered in a deeper, darker brand of muck), the following article by Lorna Benson was posted on the mpr.org website November 1, 2016:

94d493-20150105-010515inauguration07Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon was the target of an anti-Semitic online post accusing him of plotting to steal the election from Donald Trump.

This comes at a time when anti-discrimination advocates have seen an increase in online hate speech aimed at politicians and journalists.

Simon said he stumbled upon the post on Craigslist late Monday night while scanning his news feed for election-related stories. The anonymous commenter referred to Simon with multiple disparaging terms, such as “Jew scum” and “Little Jew Fagot (sic),” and accused him of working to orchestrate a Democratic win for the state. Continue reading “Secretary of State Simon target of anti-Semitic online post”

Perils of eroded civic knowledge forewarned by fmr Justice Souter

Rachel Maddow ran the video below of then-Supreme Court Justice David Souter talking about the importance of civic knowledge in the maintenance of a democracy. In the face of Donald Trump’s positions and lies, and his supporters willingness to believe everything and follow him, it’s chilling to watch: