US Presidential Election 2020

[Spiro C. Thiery]

I would say that at least it looks like an intriguing confluence of perspectives that only diverge on where to lay blame. The police enabling the breach is the confluence. The divergence would be that the police are either sympathetic to the maga crowd, which I don't think would surprise anyone around here, or that they are antifa coppers allowing the singularly bad antifa instigators to tarnish the good name of the maga crowd.

[Belligerent Savant]

.

I mentioned, in passing, that any reference to a "coup" is ironic because it implies the System hasn't already been infiltrated (and certainly not by the Plebes) many years ago... assuming, of course, it was ever a genuine 'democracy' to begin with.

Theatrics, largely. Though as we've observed, there are/have been/will continue to be real-world consequences as a result of what we all, collectively, choose to accept.

But I've nothing further to add here -- will leave y'all to ruminate.

[DrEvil]

If it wasn't from the Coup d'Etat region of France, it's technically a sparkling insurrection.

- Some internet commentator.

[JackRiddler]

.

I don't care what term every last corporate media provider or Twitterthumbs puts out, and it is not relevant.

Don't switch the subject. There are facts that cannot be described away with euphemisms or cant.

Trump called his people to this rally, repeatedly.

He was building for it for a week. He called it the last hope to save America and promised it would be "wild."

It was a rally of fascist groups, organized by Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, etc. I don't care what these violent morons think they are, what they are calling themselves today.

The gathering was organized by such groups and drew a crowd above all thanks to the promise of Trump's appearance and the public promotion led by Trump personally.

They assembled to meet their leader and execute his commands, and that is what they did.

You don't get to distract from that with false nuance or environmental factors. Sure, some of the latter may apply, but they don't change a thing about the corpus delicti. The crime scene was public.

You definitely don't get to distract from that by telling us all the evils and crimes and corruptions of the U.S. government. That's not an excuse for fascists taking over.

These are the same serial-murdering gangs of which Trump assumed the leadership on live TV back in October, when he took on the role of issuing explicit commands to them: "Proud Boys, Stand Back, Stand By." We saw this. You don't get to disguise it or forget it or spin it or pretend it doesn't matter.

He did this, using his office and platform. He made his speech yeserday and I saw it live. He ginned them up like a Hitler, playing the role all the way. He told them the big lie, he told them to go to the Capitol and show their strength to help stop the count. He told them that only a show of strength would work.

They marched from there to the Capitol and broke in, rioted, set off tear gas, took selfies of themselves looting Congressional offices and posing in fascist cowboy cosplay outfits on the floor of the Congress, and uploaded the pictures. Themselves. These cannot be unseen.

The armed rioters, the members of organizations that espouse and have committed mayhem and murder. Given the opportunity by a lax police response such as is only ever accorded to right-wing, majority white crowds.

This cannot be camouflaged as anything other than a planned fascist riot, a putsch, a coup rehearsal. And really it's a rehearsal only because they were only a few thousand, rather than the hundreds of thousands for which they'd hoped.

This was incited directly and explicitly by Trump immediately before the act IN FRONT OF YOU LIVE ON TV. No matter what you want to speculate about motives or scripting or preparation, nothing changes that. No confusionism is sustainable.

This was not an anti-lockdown protest! How can you even want to make that association? They fucking knew why they were there, to "contest" the election. Are these the people whom you wish to ally to the millions of critics of the lockdown, who are not movement fascists, who are not loyal followers of Trump's direct commands to go forth and riot to help install him in power? Did you ask any lockdown critics if they desire this association? Are these the people for whom you're going to make excuses?

.

[JackRiddler]

.

YES, obviously, to the headline question. I'd agree that this is fascism in an experimental phase, if that means that they are performing, rehearsing, reconnoitering to build a movement and in the hope of later gaining power. It's not really inchoate. The layers of sophistry that are supposed to obscure the desire for a fascist regime as the solution to the shrinking of the white Christian conservative demographic are thin and transparent.

Is it still fascism if it's incompetent?

JAN 6, 2021 AT 4:55 PM
https://www.patreon.com/posts/is-it-still-if-45896691

The fact that today's desperate effort to subvert liberal constitutional law will probably fizzle out, largely reflects the inchoate state of this phase of fascism's development.

What we've been seeing over the last few years are speculative attempts, experimental forays, laying the cultural and organisational preliminaries for the mainstreaming of a violent, extra-parliamentary right. There is, for instance, no Modi without Gujarat, and no Gujarat without Ayodhya. It takes time to develop the coalitions of forces, in and beyond the state, to mainstream cultures of cruelty and violence, to erode the commitment of the liberal bourgeoisie to liberalism, to demoralise the Left, and terrorise minorities. I'm not suggesting that the inchoate energies of Trumpism, which the last election demonstrated are expanding significantly, are equivalent to the BJP/RSS in their ideological coherence, organisational clarity and social depth. They are not. I'm drawing the analogy to indicate that we are not even close to the end point of this phenomenon.

This armed breach of the US capitol, incited by Trump, and supplementary to efforts by pro-Trump Republican senators to overturn the election result, could not have happened without the connivance of DC police, with some role played by the Department of Defence. Had it been any other protest movement, they would have been repelled - and brutally so, with maximally disproportionate violence. This is the state which bombed the MOVE headquarters, and fired shells into the Waco compound. Instead, DC police opened the gates and allowed the armed far right to break into the capitol, and stood watching as they walked around looking for elected politicians to confront - and then what? They allowed it to spiral to an actual shoot-out, in which they eventually shot a woman in the neck. They called for back-up from the National Guard, in response to which the Department of Defence stalled for time by saying they were 'considering' it. Only after nearly lethal violence was the Guard despatched. The Pentagon, of course, is under acting secretary Christopher Miller after his predecessor, Mark Esper, was removed on 9th November for opposing Trump. Esper was among the ex-Pentagon officials who warned about a coup. My speculation is obviously that the Pentagon stalled under pressure from Trump, in order to give his guys the full beer hall putsch experience.

The alliance between the far right, the police, and a faction in the executive branch has been repeatedly consolidated through violent street campaigns under Trump: in anti-lockdown protests, in anti-BLM vigilantism, and in the Oregon wildfires. The dialectic between street violence and authoritarian state crackdown on the right's enemies has been a visible part of Trump's strategy. And that dialectic of mutual radicalisation - so critical to fascism in its mature phase - dignified by anticommunist hysteria, played a critical role in expanding his base in the November elections. Had the results been even closer than they were, mark you, these protests would be much bigger and more dangerous. A crucial reason why these protests are thousands-strong, and not tens of thousands-strong, is that the outcome was conclusive enough to be demoralising. Had that not been the case, the legal challenges, supplemented by minatory phone calls from Trump, and armed flash mobs, would have made the Brooks Brothers riot look like a picnic.

This desperado putsch will be as easily contained as Trump's numerous vexatious legal and political challenges to the electoral outcome. The Republican defeat in Georgia, probably hastened by the same ideological intransigence that cost them the national election, will add to the demoralisation of the Right. Demoralisation is demobilising. However, the undercurrent of anger, the betrayal myth ('our vote was stolen'), and the alternative Trump reality that is widely shared by Republican voters, is going to be stoked in the coming years by an elaborate, skilful far right disinfotainment industry. The main growth industry, coming out of that, will be two forces: lone wolf shooters, and conspiracist vigilantism. The latter - from pizzagate to the QAnon supporter who shot a mobster, from the Nashville 5G bomber to the pharmacist who deliberately sabotaged vaccines and then supplied them to customers on the basis of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories, from the Infowars hoax bomber to the Oregon vigilantes and anti-BLM militias - is rooted in American tradition.

This is inchoate fascism, fascism in its experimental, speculative phase, in which is forming a coalition of minoritarian popular forces with elements in the executive and the repressive wing of the state. It would be devastatingly stupid, complacent beyond belief, to expect US democracy to remain sufficiently stable in the coming years to deny this incipient fascism more opportunities to congeal, and grow. Don't tell me that the US bourgeoisie will never support fascism because liberal democracy is working well enough. Don't tell me that fascism won't gain a foothold in a society where the Left has been weak for decades, and much of the labour movement barely has a pulse. These points are beside the point. Fascism never grows in the first instance because the capitalist class rallies behind it. It grows because it draws around its nucleus those whom Clara Zetkin described as "the politically homeless, the socially uprooted, the destitute and disillusioned". And incipient fascism has shown, from India to the Philippines, that it does not need a strong communism to react against: Ernst Nolte's hypothesis was incorrect. There is an urgent need for an anti-fascist movement in the United States.

[JackRiddler]

https://www.democracynow.org/2021/1/7/us_foreign_election_interference_allan_nairn

“Americans Are Now Getting a Mild Taste of Their Own Medicine” of Disrupting Democracy Elsewhere

AMY GOODMAN: World leaders reacted in horror over the storming of the U.S. Capitol. The U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called on U.S. political leaders to demand their followers refrain from violence. Leaders of the U.K., New Zealand, Australia, Canada, India, Japan, France, Germany, NATO and the European Council called for a peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden.

In a statement, Venezuela’s government condemned political polarization and the spiral of violence, adding, quote, “With this unfortunate episode, the United States is experiencing what it has generated in other countries with its policies of aggression.”

For more, we’re joined by award-winning journalist Allan Nairn, activist, investigative journalist.

Allan, as we watched what happened unfold yesterday in the U.S. Congress, and the difference between what happened with this mob of white supremacists, of what many are calling domestic terrorists — the difference in how the Capitol Police, some of them taking selfies with them, dealt with them versus what we saw in Lafayette Park, what happens with Black Lives Matter activists, or just African Americans in general, your response?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, Trump, I think, lost his chance to actually seize full power on election night when he failed to stop the vote count. But yesterday he proved that he does have a street mob and that many in law enforcement are ready to stand back and let them rampage, I think, in part, because many in law enforcement see themselves as being on the same team.

The Capitol was under siege from the outside, from the crowd, but at the same time, it was also under siege intellectually from the inside. You had about a third of the Congress that was toying with the idea of abolishing presidential elections.

And Biden said, “This isn’t who we are.” But, in fact, this is consistent with a lot of deep traditions of the U.S. rulers, restricting the franchise, which the Founders always sought to do and which the U.S. right today sees as their only hope for political survival, and also the basic bipartisan U.S. principle of the current establishment that no election is sacrosanct.

Any election can be overturned, as long as it’s a foreign election. The U.S. has supported coups consistently, nonstop, through every administration. Obama and John Kerry — after the Egyptian Army staged a coup and overthrew the elected president, Kerry said they were acting to restore democracy. Trump, when he was president, along with General Kelly, his chief of staff, supported the stealing of an election in Honduras, where the candidate, Nasralla, was winning the vote count, and where, just shortly before, the U.S. had supported a coup to overthrow the elected president of Honduras, Zelaya. That was under Obama.

More recently, Trump supported a coup in Bolivia to overthrow the president, Evo Morales. And after that, Elon Musk, the second-richest man in the world, worth $184 billion, he tweeted this just on July 24th. He said, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” And I think that’s a pretty good statement of U.S. foreign policy. But now Trump, in a sense, is bringing that foreign policy home.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Allan, could you talk about the response from — I mean, the widespread condemnation of what happened from leaders around the world? And, in particular, one comment that stands out is the German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, on Twitter, writing, “From inflammatory words come violent actions – on the steps of the Reichstag and now in the Capitol,” in reference to the 1933 Reichstag fire that the Nazi Party used as a pretext to seize power.

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, it’s always been the case that the U.S. establishment was willing to use terror and kill civilians overseas, either to do things like seize oil, seize political power, or basically on whim. The presidency of George W. Bush was a prime example of that.

But Trump brought a unique aspect. He had this — he has this unique ability to unleash the beast in white America, to reach into people’s souls and bring out the worst aspects. And he also has the ability to create a fascistic atmosphere. He’s a product of the American elite. He’s an oligarch himself. But he takes a different approach from the respectable presidents, who have been the soft, friendly face of ruthless American power. And in a way, I think, he is kind of exposing the American system for what it is, in many respects, through his behavior and through the way he talks. But the movement that he has incited is a unique threat. And it has to be stopped.

But at the same time, I think it would be a huge mistake for people who are anti-fascist to respond to that by embracing the establishment, embracing authoritarian measures. You know, imagine how the laws are going to be rewritten now. Imagine how security procedures are going to be rewritten now. It’s almost a guarantee that it’s going to be much harder now to hold demonstrations in Washington, D.C., and in the vicinity of the Capitol. It’s going to be harder for movements legally, for movements like the Black Lives movement, for example, to go out on the streets again. There are sure to be more restrictions. And there are sure to be more restrictions on speech, through the newly empowered corporate censors, like Facebook and Twitter and so on, and perhaps through the government itself.

I think we have to be clear-eyed, and don’t let this Trumpist movement coopt the idea of rebellion. Rebellion against injustice is a good thing. The problem is that they — and the U.S. system is indeed unjust and murderous. But they are rebelling against the aspects of the U.S. system that happen to be good: the democracy, the tolerance, the chance for a democratic space in organizing. That’s what they’re rebelling against, on behalf of evils, like racism, like madness, like blind obedience to the leader, Trump. But we have to be careful and stand against both that, but also the establishment, which is still the main power in the United States and that is now in the middle of gutting the American poor, the American working class. That has to be rebelled against, just as we resist these fascistic forces. And it’s not easy to do both at the same time, but it’s necessary.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Allan, I mean, barring the successful invocation of the 25th Amendment, Trump is still in power for the next almost two weeks. Could you talk about some of the concerns you have about what might happen, what he might do in these 13 days?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, one deep tradition of the American establishment, and especially the corporate press, is to rally around the flag whenever an American president launches a new war. So, if Trump wanted to and if he could get the military to go along, he could do something like bomb Iran, for example. And he, in fact, recently sent a U.S. warship toward Iran, just to be prepared for that possibility, if his whim pulls him in that direction. He had previously been calling for his law enforcement authorities to do things like arresting Biden, arresting Hillary Clinton. He wasn’t able to pull that off, but, clearly, you know, there’s still a lot — there’s still a lot he could do.

But even after Trump is gone, Elon Musk will still be there. He’ll still have his money. The American oligarchs will still be there. The U.S. security establishment will still be there, ready to do to capitols around the world what Trump’s mob just did to the U.S. Capitol.

Although I have to say, what has shaken the U.S. population so badly, this assault on the Capitol yesterday, is really nothing by comparison to what U.S. operations have done in Latin America, in Asia, in Africa, in the Middle East, to other democratic movements and elected governments over the years. You know, just days before this, remember, the U.S. Congress, by an overwhelming margin, passed the defense authorization bill to pump more money toward the Pentagon and overseas special operations, and, through other measures, is backing those operations of the CIA, basically dedicated to, whenever the order comes down, being ready to go in and overthrow democracy. So, Americans are now getting a mild taste of their own medicine, in a sense.

AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.

ALLAN NAIRN: And we have to recognize that and fight against it, stop it.

AMY GOODMAN: Allan Nairn, activist and award-winning journalist, thanks so much for joining us.

[JackRiddler]

I would say that at least it looks like an intriguing confluence of perspectives that only diverge on where to lay blame. The police enabling the breach is the confluence. The divergence would be that the police are either sympathetic to the maga crowd, which I don't think would surprise anyone around here, or that they are antifa coppers allowing the singularly bad antifa instigators to tarnish the good name of the maga crowd.

So in the latter scenario, what's Trump? Since he was literally the one who called the demonstration, promoted it, spoke before it, and ordered the crowd to go to the Capitol and "show their strength"?

[stickdog99]

I never insinuated that this was anything but a staged Trumped up cuckcoup.

However, the response to all of this sound and fury signifying inanity will be a "liberal" cheering section for authoritarian crackdowns on legitimate protests of millions pf upcoming evictions.

We can't just it by idly when the lackeys of our oligioplies still have to fear retribution of any sort from the riff-raff, now can we?

"You have to show strength and you have to be strong." = Trump foretelling how his masters will respond to this staged event in order to forestall any legitimate future protests of economic injustice, imperialism and/or authoritarian overreach

I don't know how to react to anybody who can't sense that Trump is a puppet at this point.

[stickdog99]

[dada]

"Given the opportunity by a lax police response such as is only ever accorded to right-wing, majority white crowds."

It's the most logical explanation, I think. Also the most difficult to accept, or even acknowledge. Easier to retreat into the various puppet-master narratives.

*

"it implies the System hasn't already been infiltrated (and certainly not by the Plebes)"

I'd argue that "the System" consists mostly of people who consider themselves plebes. Quoting a book from memory, " the 'leaders' are but plebes dreaming about legalizing their family businesses."

Your real-world and mine are obviously two different worlds. So I doubt there is anything for us to "collectively accept." The intelligentsia accept nothing.

[JackRiddler]

Yeah, stickdog, your master narrative is entirely possible but plausibility is an insufficient standard of proof.

We have what's in front of us. There's no way of denying it. A fascist mob, organized by fascist groups and invited to Washington by the president, then incited and dispatched by him to seize the Capitol so as to stop the procedure by which he is to be removed from power. That's what you know. Denying or trivializing that is a different kind of patsydom. Also, it pisses people off because we can all see it.

We also know the predictable response by the old and new stewards of the state. You're not going to connect that to Trump as an actor playing a role in a larger kayfabe script, as plausible as it is. It is not going to be proven. It is not going to be an effective argument for fighting against the predictable moves by the state to turn this into the new enabling act for repression.

[Spiro C. Thiery]

I would say that at least it looks like an intriguing confluence of perspectives that only diverge on where to lay blame. The police enabling the breach is the confluence. The divergence would be that the police are either sympathetic to the maga crowd, which I don't think would surprise anyone around here, or that they are antifa coppers allowing the singularly bad antifa instigators to tarnish the good name of the maga crowd.

So in the latter scenario, what's Trump? Since he was literally the one who called the demonstration, promoted it, spoke before it, and ordered the crowd to go to the Capitol and "show their strength"?

Either way, I view Trump as the would be autocrat at the apex of the fascist regime. As to your question about the latter scenario, I assume you mean, how can those who are positing that scenario square Trump's role in it. To that, I would answer, seriously? His vocal advocates have shown little problem squaring any and all of this circularity.

On edit, for the record: You should add that he explicitly said just before the storming of the gates that he would be going with them.

[brainpanhandler]

.I'd agree that this is fascism in an experimental phase, if that means that they are performing, rehearsing, reconnoitering to build a movement and in the hope of later gaining power. It's not really inchoate.

I agree that it all seems like a test run. Lots of information to be gleaned. It's all seems somewhat self assembling though. Orchestrated chaos or somesuch.

Certainly it seems to me one of the chief dangers in such a moment, and history can be a guide here, is to assume the disposable baffoons assembled to enact this keyfabe coup represent the true threat that can be easily dispersed, a handful made examples of and the rest cowed back into submission. Nothing to see here.

If you find the time I'd be interested to hear your take on the Hedges piece at the link:
https://scheerpost.com/2020/08/10/chris ... ath-march/

I agree that these people are unmoored. They are drawn to the cult of Trump in order to fill a gaping hole in their identities. I can almost have some pity for them they are so irrevocably lost. But it's that lumbering, moronic, anxiety filled anomie looking for some target for it's projected hatred and wrath that is so mindlessly threatening. And so not much pity at all.

Watching these crowds of nitwits yesterday I was struck by the apparent average age of the crowd. This is not a youth movement. And yet they looked for all the world like drunken frat boys egging each other on to greater and greater acts of destruction and violence. These people have been serially infantilized. They are intellectual midgets that have had their brains so stunted they will never be able to find their way out of the fog of misinformation and propaganda.

[stickdog99]

"Given the opportunity by a lax police response such as is only ever accorded to right-wing, majority white crowds."

It's the most logical explanation, I think. Also the most difficult to accept, or even acknowledge. Easier to retreat into the various puppet-master narratives.

*

"it implies the System hasn't already been infiltrated (and certainly not by the Plebes)"

I'd argue that "the System" consists mostly of people who consider themselves plebes. Quoting a book from memory, " the 'leaders' are but plebes dreaming about legalizing their family businesses."

Your real-world and mine are obviously two different worlds. So I doubt there is anything for us to "collectively accept." The intelligentsia accept nothing.

I completely agree that right-wing. majority white demonstrators are afforded far more latitude by the police (who tend to to be right-wing. majority white as well). But do you believe that the police would open the gates for armed protestors to break windows and occupy Capitol buildings had they been instructed by their superiors that they would be fired from their jobs if they did not stop these protestors from destroying government property?

Do you really believe that the police were disobeying direct orders from their superiors when they opened the gates for those yahoos yesterday? If so, do you think these police officers will be fired for their (in)actions?

https://twitter.com/cevansavenger/statu ... 4310867968

https://twitter.com/EyesLeftPod/status/ ... 8160831490

"People like you are still living in what we call the reality-based community. You believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you are studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." Karl Rove, 2004

[dada]

"My speculation is obviously that the Pentagon stalled under pressure from Trump, in order to give his guys the full beer hall putsch experience."

Seymour has me thinking that I was a bit hasty in saying the power-struggle between factions in the Pentagon is clearly over. (Just after hitting post, I had considered adding "for the moment," but let it go. Given the context, it felt like it was demanding a digression that I didn't feel like getting sidetracked on.)

Still it doesn't distract, or shouldn't distract from the larger point, that of the sympathies that allow something like this to occur, that can be found within every layer of the 'power vertical.' It doesn't have to lead to analyses of power that must naturally drift into abstraction.