Readers Comments: Key Characteristics of Fascism; National Guard, Marines, 3000 Seized by ICE Each Day - Nuremberg Laws Went into Effect in 1935; No Kings Day - This Saturday in More Than 2000 Communities and Cities; Resources; Shorts; Cartoons; more
Tidbits - Reader Comments, Resources, Announcements, Shorts, AND cartoons - June 12, 2025, xxxxxx
Fascism rejects democratic principles and favors a strong, centralized government led by a dictatorial leader. Check
Ultranaionalism:
It emphasizes the importance of the nation and national identity, often with a focus on racial purity or superiority. This is obvious to anybody following the news.
Militarism:
Fascism typically promotes military strength and expansionism, viewing war as a means to achieve national greatness. Trump is going to have a parade on his birthday and has overused the military in California.
Dictatorial Leadership:
Fascist regimes often have a charismatic leader who exerts absolute control over the government and the people. This is obvious also.
Suppression of Opposition:
Fascism uses force and propaganda to silence dissent and maintain power. Trump has threatened to arrest Gavin Newsom
Cult of Personality:
The leader is often portrayed as a divine or heroic figure, with a strong emphasis on loyalty and obedience. I don’t understand why people look up to Trump, but the Republican Party is nothing but a cult.
Economic Control:
Fascist states often exert significant control over the economy, prioritizing national self-sufficiency and military preparedness. Again, this is obvious.
"Activist government" is a neat set-up. To some its just a way to get around calling for socialism. But I see more to it. If social movements take on the concerns of working people, they become the arena of class struggle. But they're only social movements -- until they see an interest in politics. MAGA government is forcing activists to think about political power beyond defensive activism.
This was laid out most sensitively to resonate, to understand complacency at each halting step. Today it is accepted by one nation as the mindset to vigilantly guard against, while another struggles to understand how half its fellow citizens were lulled to sleep by the vapid words of an emerging dictator. The so called "woke" remain awake, but are bewildered by the slumbering souls who literally bought and paid for a mad billionaire's dream.
Democrats tried to warn those lulled to sleep by empty promises. Had Harris more time to campaign, she would have taken the presidential office. Regrettably, she never contradicted Biden on Gaza. Just once would have been enough, and, unfortunately for the nation, she too succumbed to complacency while failing to look up.
I hope that America can rise to protect her Constitution. Perhaps on June 14th, by deflating a dictator's own vainglorious complacency, or at another "love fest" at the Capital, should Republican Senators prepare to pass the billionaires' budget bill. Whatever it takes to overwhelm the current corrupt administration and run them out of office, the vise of tyranny is closing.
If I believed in evil or the Devil, I would readily see both manifest in what we too often experience on earth, in deed and human form. It seems impossible to know such minds exist in modern times -- not unlike knowing that the sibling you so loved has somehow transformed into the "evil" twin you long to restore to sanity. That twin is our other self, for whom we nonetheless grieve. At a most fundamental level, we are all connected, and the schism feels wrong. Obsessing about our earthly devils takes its toll on us. A ubiquitous consciousness has been affected by what we must admit is a collective depression. Now that it's recognized, it must be overcome. Again.
Many thanks to FocaalBlog for reposting my Barn Raiser column on the upcoming No Kings Day, June 14, in the USA. The piece seems to have touched some kind of a nerve: ZNet, Common Dreams, xxxxxx, Newsbreak, and the Bucks County Beacon also reposted it.
This is just the kind of writing that has undermined the progressive movement. Instead of focusing on what progressives can and should do to fight Trumpism -- Organizing neighborhoods, the focus is on an in-house cat fight, as though that really serves our interests. Shame!!
Strange article https://xxxxxx.org/2025-06-04/global-left-midweek-june-4-2025#1945 on commemorating the victory over Nazism. What about the destruction of memorials to the Soviet soldiers (not just Russians) in Ukraine, the Baltic states and Poland, and the glorification of genocidal collaborators in those countries?
Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks at a news conference at the Justice Department, Feb. 12, 2025, in Washington. Inset: Brad Bondi is shown. (Photo: Associated Press/Paul Hastings LLP // Newsweek)
Members of the D.C. Bar Association have overwhelmingly rejected the efforts of Brad Bondi, brother of Attorney General Pam Bondi, to lead one of the largest and most influential bar associations in the country.
Brad Bondi's blowout loss comes as the Trump administration continues its crackdown on the legal system.
On Monday, the group announced its members had chosen attorney Diane Seltzer as its next president. Seltzer secured 90.9% of the vote to Brad Bondi’s 9.1%. This year’s elections marked a record voter turnout, according to the organization, with almost 37,000 members casting their ballots as of June 3 — more than 41% of all eligible voters. That’s a significant jump from last year, which boasted just more than 8% turnout.
Brad Bondi, a partner at the white-collar criminal defense firm Paul Hastings, had previously represented the Trump Media & Technology Group and one-time Trump advisor Elon Musk.
The race became the subject of national attention after Brad Bondi threw his hat into the ring in March. While he pledged to protect the D.C. Bar from being politicized, some critics feared his close ties to Trump could transform the nonpartisan body into a tool of retribution for the administration.
While the general public may not pay much attention to bar associations, lawyers do. The nongovernmental groups decide who gets to be a lawyer — and who gets to stay a lawyer when misconduct allegations are involved. The D.C. Bar ... has more than 120,000 members, and, by virtue of its location, it is where a significant number of federal attorneys are licensed.
In a statement, Seltzer said her election means “we have a Bar full of lawyers who care about making sure their leadership reflects their values, which are maintaining the rule of law, being able to practice law without fear of retaliation, and having a leader who is experienced and has the qualifications to be in that position.”
Seltzer’s term will begin July 1.
Brad Bondi wasn’t the only Trump ally to prove unsuccessful Monday. Alicia Long, who worked closely with Ed Martin, former interim U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., lost her bid for treasurer to Amanda Molina.
“Rhythms of Resistance and Resilience: How Black Washingtonians Used Music and Sports in the Fight for Equality” is the latest book by Georgetown historian Maurice Jackson (Photo: Tyrone Turner / WAMU)
In 1937, when folklorist Alan Lomax brought the storied blues and folk musician Huddie William Ledbetter – better known as Lead Belly – to record for the Library of Congress, the doorman at Lomax’s apartment building stopped him from bringing Ledbetter into his building.
“He was told a Black man couldn’t come in the building: he certainly couldn’t stay there,” Georgetown history professor Maurice Jackson explained to WAMU’s All Things Considered host Tamika Smith.
“And then, Lead Belly went to some other places and found it very difficult, because he saw the racism was so vibrant, so hate filled. But he also saw that he could no got to places where elite Black people went – that caste lines existed.”
The song plays an early, illustrative role in describing the pre-Civil Rights landscape of Washington – and the protests to it – in Jackson’s new bookRhythms of Resistance and Resilience: How Black Washingtonians Used Music and Sports in the Fight for Equality.
Instructor: Mary Reynolds Dates: Alt. Mondays, 7–9pm • July 14, July 28, August 11, and August 25, 2025 Location: TBA (Course is in-person only) Course cost: $35 DSA members / $45 nonmembers
Course Description:
In our moment of desire and need for a ‘united front’ to fight authoritarianism and fascism, the American Popular Front’s history and legacy has a renewed resonance for the Left.
This course will go beyond the common understanding of the Popular Front as a short-lived, top-down Communist International policy of the mid-1930s. Instead, participants will explore it as an indigenous form and style of American revolutionary politics that took living shape within local grassroots campaigns for race, gender, and economic justice in the Depression decade, but survived far beyond it. Materials for the course will focus on radicals who developed their organizing methods and theoretical frameworks in anti-racist, feminist and transnational Popular Front politics, and whose legacies affected social movements into the twenty-first century, despite continuous anti-leftist repression.
The basis for class discussions will be case studies detailing the lives and labors of four working-class women whose lifelong commitments to grassroots organizing and radical politics emerged from the Popular Front’s coalitions, collective actions, and political theories. Each session will focus on one of these “Popular Fronters” and an example of their multi-racial and cross-class organizing campaigns as entry points into the broader legacy of what we could call “Popular Frontism”: Dorothy Healey and the People’s Front in California; Claudia Jones and the youth movement in New York; Emma Tenayuca and the unemployed campaigns in Texas; and Ah Quon McElrath and the labor movement in Hawaii.
Participants will discuss questions including: What organizing models, tactics and strategies did these 'Popular Fronters' embrace? What political theories shaped their writings and actions? How did they respond to divisions and debates among and between national leaders and grassroot organizers? How did they survive the constant onslaught of reactionary, anti-radical suppression? And how might their organizing strategies and political theories apply to our own moment?
Materials will include book and article excerpts, primary sources, and video clips.
Instructor Biography Mary Reynolds is a historian of twentieth-century American radicalism. After organizing alongside academic and hospitality workers in UNITE HERE local unions for fifteen years, she is now a research strategist for the Gender and Authoritarianism Research Collective and the Reflective Democracy Campaign. She has taught at Yale and Sarah Lawrence College, and is currently writing a book on women in the long Popular Front.
About the NYC DSA Academy for Socialist Education
Education, broadly defined, is and always has been a vital function of revolutionary socialist movements. The NYC DSA Academy aims to enhance the ongoing political education efforts of the New York chapter of DSA. Designed to connect the history and theory of socialist struggles with the work of today’s activists, the Academy aims to offer a rigorous but accessible curriculum for working adults to develop their understanding and strategy.
