The Triumph of Fascist Aesthetics

The photograph is arresting: a bearded man stands at the top of a staircase located in the Senate wing of the Capitol bearing uniquely American symbols, marking both time and ideology. He holds in his right hand a red flag with the phrase “Trump is my president” written across it in bold white lettering. He wears a…Read more...
Tags: Photography, Science, Senate, Riots, Trump, Capitol, Fascism

Facebook Warns Employees Not to Wear Company Gear In Public After Banning Trump

Facebook’s internal security team has warned employees not to wear or carry any Facebook-branded gear in public, according to a new report from tech news site the Information. The warning comes after the social media giant banned President Donald Trump from the platform following a violent coup attempt by his…Read more...
Tags: Facebook, Twitter, Science, Social Media, Extremism, Donald Trump, Trump, Fascism, President Trump, Sheryl Sandburg, Neo Fascism, Facebook Warns Employees Not

San Francisco Prepares For Potential Pro-Trump Protest at Twitter HQ on Monday

San Francisco police are preparing for a potential pro-Trump protest at Twitter’s headquarters on Monday morning, despite the fact that most Twitter employees are currently working from home due to the covid-19 pandemic. The protest, which is being organized online at the website TheDonald.win and in private Facebook…Read more...
Tags: Facebook, Twitter, Science, San Francisco, Protests, Reddit, Coups, Jack Dorsey, Donald Trump, Trump, Fascism, President Trump, Twitter Nazism, Neo Fascism, TheDonald, Thedonaldwin

The Big Oil Money Behind the Members of Congress Who Fueled the Capitol Attack

On Wednesday, Chevron decried the assault on the Capitol by a mob of violent extremists hellbent on halting a democratic process. ,“We call for the peaceful transition of the U.S. government,” the biggest oil company in the U.S. tweeted. “The violence in Washington, D.C. tarnishes a two-century tradition of respect…Read more...
Tags: Science, Congress, Washington, Fossil Fuels, PACs, Coups, Chevron, Fascism, Insurrection, Capitol Attack

Google's new union has mounted a searing attack on YouTube for not stripping Trump of his account and fostering fascism

Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Denis Balibouse/Reuters The Alphabet Workers Union on Thursday published a blistering open letter attacking YouTube executives for their "lackluster" response to Donald Trump following the siege on the US Capitol. The letter accused YouTube of fostering fascism on its platform and giving employees "token concessions" rather than addressing the problem. The union criticised YouTube for only taking down one video from Donald Trump, rather than banning his account ou...
Tags: Google, Facebook, Gamergate, Youtube, Washington, US, Trends, United States, Silicon Valley, Donald Trump, Charlottesville, Christchurch, Alphabet, Riot, Trump, Reuters

The Climate Crisis Will Be Steroids for Fascism

The Capitol has a police force with a $500 million budget, and yet it failed at its one job on Wednesday. Members of Congress, among the most protected people on the planet, were forced to hide in undisclosed locations as violent extremists overran the Capitol.Read more...
Tags: Science, Congress, Coups, Donald Trump, Capitol, Fascism, Insurrection, Ecofascism

Trump Attorney Calls For Execution of Former DHS Cybersecurity Official

One of President Donald Trump’s remaining election lawyers, Joe diGenova, declared on Monday that former DHS cybersecurity official Chris Krebs should be executed. Krebs was fired from the Trump administration in mid-November after releasing a statement that the 2020 election had been the most secure in American…Read more...
Tags: Science, Supreme Court, Dhs, Cybersecurity, Lawsuits, Capital punishment, Treason, Donald Trump, Department Of Homeland Security, Executions, 60 Minutes, Trump, Howie Carr, Joe diGenova, Krebs, Neo Nazis

"A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everyone."

  That's the bit from "Grapes of Wrath" that I wasn't able to recite off the top of my head as I was recording my podcast yesterday and got to the item about the historian Jon Meacham, who'd helped write Joe Biden's victory speech.  Meacham has a book titled "The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels" and Biden's speech expressed a desire "to rebuild the soul of America."  Here's the post I was reading in the podcast, and here's the podcast. At 21:40, I begin speaking extemporan...
Tags: Podcast, Law, America, Joe Biden, Blogging, Biden, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Steinbeck, Meacham, Jon Meacham, Henry Fonda, Ann Althouse, Fascism, Biden rhetoric, Supreme Critic

The Boys Showrunner Eric Kripke Has No Time for Nazis and Their Sympathizers

Watching The Boys, one could easily come away from the show with the impression that series creator Eric Kripke has a bone to pick with the superhero adaptations that have fundamentally altered the shape of modern day Hollywood. In reality, though, Kripke’s beef is less about stories about caped heroes, and more about…Read more...
Tags: Hollywood, Science, Nazis, Marvel, Disney, Racism, Streaming, Marvel Studios, Kripke, Amazon Studios, Eric Kripke, Fascism, The Boys, Avengers Endgame

Historians and election experts warn Trump is behaving like Mussolini and despots that the US usually condemns

President Donald Trump walks on the tarmac as he arrives on campaign travel at Dobbins Air Force Reserve Base in Marrietta, Georgia, September 25, 2020. Tom Brenner/Reuters President Donald Trump has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election.  Historians and experts on fascism warn that Trump is behaving like the dictators the US is often leading the way to condemn on the global stage.  "This is the way dictators come to power," historian Michael Beschloss ...
Tags: Politics, Rachel Maddow, News, Oregon, Church, US, America, Trends, Analysis, United States, Italy, Portland, North America, Msnbc, Donald Trump, Mussolini

Trump Facebook Ads With 'Real People' Actually Feature GOP Political Operatives

President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is currently running Facebook ads with “real people” who support the president. And while it’s accurate to say these people are “real” in the sense that they’re human beings and not robots from the TV show Westworld, they’re not just average people off the street. Many are…
Tags: Facebook, Science, Minnesota, Iowa, Facebook Ads, Donald Trump, Trump Facebook, Political advertising, Fascism, President Trump, 2020 Election, Antifa, Coronavirus, Covid 19, Steve Wenzel, Fern Smith

U.S. Troops Asked About Using 'Heat Ray' Weapon Against Protesters, According to Whistleblower

Federal troops in Washington, D.C. considered using high-tech weapons, including sound cannons and so-called “heat rays,” against protesters outside the White House in June, according to sworn testimony from a whistleblower with the D.C. National Guard. The new evidence was obtained by both NPR and the Washington Post…Read more...
Tags: Science, Washington Post, Washington, Attorney General, White House, War, Drones, Darpa, Ads, Npr, Weapons, Air Force, Donald Trump, Whistleblowers, US Air Force, National Guard

Right-wing Poland and the glorification of Hani’s killer

Polish anti-racism groups grow more concerned as the image of Chris Hani’s killer becomes normalised, with Janusz Walus’s likeness and name displayed on products for sale on a Naspers-owned website The post Right-wing Poland and the glorification of Hani’s killer appeared first on The Mail & Guardian.
Tags: Racism, Poland, National, Naspers, Openaccess, White Supremacy, Hani, Chris Hani, OLX, Janusz Walus, Fascism, South African Communist Party, Never Again, Prosus, The Editors Picks, Alex Mashilo

Louisiana City Sues Comedian Who Created Fake 'Antifa' Events on Facebook

The mayor of Lafayette, Louisiana has filed a lawsuit against a 28-year-old comedian who created three fake events on Facebook that claimed “antifa” was coming to the town. Police responded to one of the fake events in late August with at least 30 squad cars and heavily armed officers, shutting down a shopping mall…Read more...
Tags: Facebook, Science, Cops, Police, Lawsuits, Google Docs, Louisiana, Police Shootings, Taser, Donald Trump, Fake, Gofundme, Fakes, Lafayette Louisiana, Acadiana Mall, Fascism

Comedian Sued For Creating Fake 'Antifa' Events on Facebook

The mayor of Lafayette, Louisiana has filed a lawsuit against a 28-year-old comedian who created three fake events on Facebook that claimed “antifa” was coming to the town. Police responded to one of the fake events in late August with at least 30 squad cars and heavily armed officers, shutting down a shopping mall…Read more...
Tags: Facebook, Science, Cops, Police, Lawsuits, Google Docs, Louisiana, Police Shootings, Taser, Donald Trump, Fake, Gofundme, Fakes, Lafayette Louisiana, Acadiana Mall, Fascism

1940s anti-fascist cartoons updated with Trump as the dictator

Eric Godal's anti-fascist cartoons from the 1930s and 40s have been reimagined by Chris Piascik as anti-Trump cartoons. Piascik has left the captions mostly intact because history is repeating itself. From Kottke: Godal, a German Jew, had escaped the clutches of Nazi Germany in the 30s and labored to warn America and the world about the fate of the Jews in Europe.Godal's mother was able to get out of Germany on a boat but was denied entry to the United States as a refugee by the Roosevelt...
Tags: Europe, Post, News, Germany, America, United States, Trump, Roosevelt, Kottke, Chris Piascik, Fascism, Piascik, Eric Godal, Godal

Giancarlo Esposito on What It's Like to Play a Person of Color Among Star Wars' Fascist Villains

When we first met the Empire in Star Wars’ original trilogy, their fascist roots in the real world iconography of forces like the Nazis were immediately apparent: not just in their stark uniforms and the dehumanizing armor of the Stormtroopers, but in the whiteness of their officers. But when we see Star Wars’…Read more...
Tags: Star Wars, Science, Race, Disney, Streaming, Lucasfilm, Villains, Giancarlo Esposito, Fascism, The Mandalorian, Disney Plus, Moff Gideon

Elegant split-screen editing as Nike hopes to inspire togetherness.

Details at AdWeek: "Clever Video Editing Portrays a Message of Unity in Nike’s Latest Powerful Spot/Wieden+Kennedy produced the third ad in 'You Can't Stop Us' campaign."Like the other two spots in the campaign, “You Can’t Stop Us,” which has the same name as the overall campaign, draws on the sense of community from being socially isolated during a global pandemic. However, unlike the other two spots, the third 1.5-minute video also touches on the feelings stirred by the resurgence of the Black...
Tags: Law, Minneapolis, Obama, Advertising, Sports, Nike, Brooklyn, United States, Lincoln, Saddam Hussein, Martin Luther King Jr, Baghdad, Louisville, Megan Rapinoe, Lincoln Memorial, Arthur

President Trump's Department of Violent Goons Investigates Tweets of Portland Journalists

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent local police departments in Oregon at least three intelligence reports about the journalism and tweets of reporters in Portland over the past week, according to the Washington Post. The intelligence reports included tweets from journalists at the New York Times and Lawfare…Read more...
Tags: Science, Washington Post, Oregon, Dhs, New York Times, Protests, Portland, CBP, Donald Trump, Department Of Homeland Security, First Amendment, Trump, U S Department of Homeland Security, Fascism, President Trump, Office of Intelligence and Analysis

Trump sending more armed agents to more U.S. cities, Bill Barr winks

Polls got you down? Send in the gestapo. President Donald Trump announced a plan on Wednesday to send more camouflaged and heavily armed federal agents to more U.S. cities to 'crack down on violent crime' (read: terrorize his way to a second term). “Today I’m announcing a surge of federal law enforcement into American communities plagued by violent crime. We’ll work every single day to restore public safety,” Pres. Trump says at news conference on protests. https://t.co/I6Cmz7Ykp1 pic.twi...
Tags: Post, Politics, News, White House, US news, Chicago, Portland, Donald Trump, Justice Department, Trump, Reuters, Albuquerque New Mexico, East Room of the, Fascism, Pres Trump, Uh Oh

In the news — the attack on individualism.

Having created a tag "the attack on individualism" — for reasons stated in the previous post — and gone back to find that subject in my archive, I wanted to look at the present and see how much of this topic was in the current news.Here are a few things I found:1. "Big Data Analytics Shows How America's Individualism Complicates Coronavirus Response" (UVa Today): Painstakingly, and with tremendous amounts of data processed by 97 advanced computers, Jingjing Li, Ting Xu, Natasha Zhang Foutz and B...
Tags: Europe, Law, America, Cnn, Pope Francis, Baseball, Pope, Nuremberg, CBS Sports, University Of Virginia, Donald Trump, Yankees, Hairstyles, Steinbrenner, Li, Nietzsche

For Obvious Reasons, Twitter Reminds Trump ‘S.S.’ Is Bad Shorthand For Secret Service

It started with a tweet on Thursday morning, as many Trump stories do. President Trump referred to the U.S. Secret Service as the “S.S.” in a tweet about recent protests around the White House —  an abbreviation that is historically recognized as the shorthand Adolf Hitler used for the Nazi Party’s paramilitary organization.  The tweet applauded National Guard troops, D.C. police and the U.S. Secret Service for their handling of protesters presumably during the Lafayette Square debacle that ...
Tags: London, News, White House, US, Secret Service, The New York Times, Nazi, Donald Trump, Adolf Hitler, Ali, Trump, Moss, Tulsa Oklahoma, National Guard, Wajahat Ali, Nazi Party

Hamilton County sheriffs replace U.S. flag at justice center with police "thin blue line" flag

Officers with Hamilton County Sheriff's Office replaced the U.S. flag with their own "thin blue line" flag Sunday, hoisting the desecrated version over the Justice Center in Cincinnati. ABC News reports that sheriff Jim Neil said the U.S. flag was stolen be protestors. Neil does not convincingly explain why he replaced the U.S. flag with a different one. “Should have been replaced with American flag immediately,” fellow Democrat Chris Seelbach tweeted back. “Not replaced with a politically charg...
Tags: Post, News, Police, Protests, Abc News, Cincinnati, Neil, Justice Center, Hamilton County, Hamilton County Sheriff s Office, Fascism, Jim Neil, Chris Seelbach, BlackLivesMatter Sheriff Neil

"Contact tracing has helped Asian countries like South Korea and Singapore contain the spread of the virus, but their systems rely heavily on digital surveillance..."

"... using patients’ digital footprints to automatically alert their contacts, an intrusion that many Americans would not accept Massachusetts is opting for an old-school, labor-intensive method: people.... The idea of training a corps of contact tracers is emerging in many places at the same time, as leaders think ahead to the point when social distancing constraints will be lifted.... It is built around one-on-one telephone interviews of newly diagnosed patients and their contacts, so that sub...
Tags: South Korea, Japan, Privacy, Law, Massachusetts, Singapore, US, America, Taiwan, Korea, The Times, Army, Times, Imperial, Ann Althouse, Fascism

Nazism Repackaged? A Closer Look at the "Fascist Subtext" of 'Attack on Titan'

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Tags: Comics, Music, Animation, Philosophy, Manga, Shingeki no Kyojin, Attack on Titan, Fascism, Hajime Isayama, Television feature

It Does Happen Here in HBO's 'The Plot Against America'

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Tags: Music, Hbo, America, Philip Roth, David Simon, Fascism, The Plot Against America, Television feature

The 43 Group and the Moral Imperative to Fight Fascists

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Tags: Music, Politics, History, Britain, Wwii, Anti-semitism, Verso Books, Fascism, Anti-fascism, We fight fascists, 43 Group, Daniel sonabend

The Nightmare Climate Scenario That Keeps Scientists Up at Night

Imagine a world fractured into rival factions, countries distrustful of one another and unwilling to cooperate. Nationalism is on the rise with authoritarianism on the horizon. Inequality is also climbing, and the resource curse is alive and well. Rich countries plunder poorer ones, leaving behind a wave of…Read more...
Tags: Science, Iran, War, Trump, Fascism, Climate Models, Weeeeeeeeeeee, Ssps

"The 20th-century German philosopher (and victim of the Nazis) Walter Benjamin warned how fascism engages an 'aestheticization of politics'..."

"... where spectacle and transcendence provide a type of ecstasy for its adherents. Watch clips of fevered crowds, from today or the past, chanting against 'enemies of the people'; they are malignant scenes, but ones that in no small part mimic religious revivals. Critics of democracy often claim that it offers no similar sense of transcendence. The 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche castigated democracy as a system of 'quarantine mechanisms' for human desires, and as 'such they...
Tags: Law, Democracy, Boredom, Freeman, WaPo, Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Walt Whitman, Walter Benjamin, Ann Althouse, Emotional Politics, Fascism, Ed Simon, I'm for Boring, Freeman Hunt, Walt -RSB- Whitman

"Joseph Goebbels didn’t die. He just got a job at Hallmark."

Joseph Goebbels didn’t die. He just got a job at Hallmark. https://t.co/oKKOyYxXa6 — Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) December 26, 2019 ADDED: The linked article at Salon is "Hallmark movies are fascist propaganda/Forget 'Triumph of the Will' — the most insidious authoritarian propaganda comes in the form of schmaltz" by Amanda Marcotte. Isn't this like what Jonah Goldberg did — from the right — in his book "Liberal Fascism"? Goldberg wrote:For generations our primary vision of a dystopian fu...
Tags: Law, Germany, America, Nazi, Propaganda, Donald Trump, Orwell, Mcgrath, Goebbels, Soviet Union, Goldberg, Leni Riefenstahl, Jonah Goldberg, Joseph Goebbels, Amanda Marcotte, Aldous Huxley