[The ominous path towards fascism is very much a choice during
Tuesdays election.]
[[link removed]]

HISTORY HAS TOLD US WHERE THIS COULD LEAD  
[[link removed]]


 

Chuck Idelson
November 6, 2022
Common Dreams
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ The ominous path towards fascism is very much a choice during
Tuesday's election. _

A photo dated October 22, 1930 shows the 107 national socialist
(Fascist) members of the German Reichstag assembled in a room at the
Reichstag building ,

 

VOTERS THIS TUESDAY WILL pass judgment on an existential emergency
facing the nation. Despite the efforts of some Democrats to normalize
the historic trend favoring the minority party in midterms, the code
blue alarm bells this year have a chillingly different resonance.

Warning signs are everywhere.

* An escalation of violent threats through mass media, social media,
the dark web and internet message boards that culminated in the
attempted kidnapping of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the attempted
murder of her husband, Paul Pelosi. They’re also acting
to “monitor” and intimidate voters
[[link removed]] at
drop boxes and the polls on election day
* The most openly racist campaigns in years funded by corporate and
super rich donors who profited from Trump’s policies. The
blitzkrieg, aided by fear mongering, gerrymandering and voter
suppression, and often feckless Democratic response, is poised to win
control of the House and potentially the Senate, and expand Republican
control in many states.
* A proliferation of federal and state candidates
[[link removed]]—by
60 percent of GOP nominees—who are both 2020 election deniers, and
proponents of overturning any future elections their candidates lose.

_MSNBC_'s Rachel Maddow this week summed up the convergence of
election denial, how prominent Republicans, especially those aligned
with former President Trump, mitigated the attack on Pelosi, and
increased acts of violence by their most fanatic followers.

“You’re telling us what you want your side to be able to do
instead of politics to your political opponents. That is the other
option if we're not going to have elections anymore,” Maddow said
[[link removed]]. “It’s either
elections or it is force and violence.”

A _New York Times_ editorial echoed
[[link removed]] the
warning, citing “the embrace of conspiratorial and violent ideology
and rhetoric by many Republican politicians during and after the Trump
presidency, anti-government anger related to the pandemic,
disinformation, cultural polarization, the ubiquity of guns and
radicalized internet culture, and the insurrection…Taken together,
these factors form a social scaffolding that allows for the kind of
endemic political violence that can undo a democracy.”
The _Times_ undercut the “both sideism” rhetoric cited by the
right as justification, noting 26 of 29 extremist-related homicides
last year were committed by right-wing extremists.

Similarly, President Biden has stepped up
[[link removed]] his
own alert that “we can’t take democracy for granted any longer,”
and “the fate of the nation” is at stake.

At its core, Biden noted, “there is an alarming rise in the number
of our people in this country condoning political violence or simply
remaining silent because silence is complicity.”

National Nurses United was among those warning “the alarming rise of
antisemitic and racist hate speech and attacks on our democratic
system are jeopardizing the safety and security of many Americans, and
ripping apart the social fabric of our nation,” as NNU president
Deborah Burger, RN put it.

Burger cited “dangerous threats that expose political leaders,
election workers, and minority communities—including Jews, people of
color, LGBTQ+ people, and immigrants—to harassment, intimidation,
and violence are a stark warning sign of the erosion of our democracy,
into an atmosphere that puts everyone at risk.”

Anti-Black racism has long been a staple of national Republican attack
ads, dating to Richard Nixon’s 1968 Silent Majority effort to
reverse the gains of the Civil Rights era. But overt racism escalated
with attacks on Barack Obama and severely ratcheted up by Trump during
his 2016 campaign and his four years of encouraging and enabling white
supremacy.

Feeding off what Trump encouraged, campaigns this year have normalized
unconcealed racist language targeting Black Democratic candidates like
Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin and Stacey Abrams in Georgia.

In a rare candidate endorsement on November 2, the _Milwaukee
Journal-Sentinel_ condemned the “racist and disgraceful” ads
against Barnes “hoping to scare voters that the Black man running
for Senate is too ‘different’ and too ‘dangerous’ to serve,”
and “even intentionally darkened Barnes skin.” Such rhetoric and
photo-shop tactics are often used in racist campaigns against Black
candidates.

Republican campaigns also accelerated fear mongering on crime with
implicitly racist overtones including against many white candidates,
often citing "Democrat-run" cities, even though overall crime rates
have been stable, most violent crimes are committed by white people
[[link removed]],
and the highest homicide rates are in Republican dominated states that
have the most lax gun safety laws.

Fueled by fears of the nation’s growing diversity, the white
supremacist conspiracy known as the “great replacement theory”
that posits immigrants and other people of color are supplanting white
voters has also been cited 
[[link removed]]by
Republican candidates including Senate nominees Blake Masters in
Arizona and J.D. Vance in Ohio.

GOP strategists are also seeking to divide communities of color who
have been central to a Democratic voting base with poisonous campaign
tactics.

Trump's anti-immigrant architect Stephen Miller leads a committee that
has flooded battleground states with virulently racist mailers that
claim “Joe Biden and left-wing officials are engaged in widespread
discrimination against White and Asian Americans.”

Mille's committee also sponsored anti-transgender mailers
[[link removed]] in
Spanish sent to Latino voters in Colorado spouting lies and
distortions being channeled to other Democratic leaning voters as
well, such as this ad attack
[[link removed]] in Nevada
targeting Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and Gov. Steve
Sisolek.

Antisemitic public expressions, long a staple of the far right, have
also mushroomed following statements by Trump repeating his canard
that U.S. Jews have dual loyalty to Israel, and a Twitter post by Ye,
the performer formerly known as Kanye West, to his nearly 32 million
followers
[[link removed]] that
said “Go death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.”

Ye's message was quickly exploited by neo-Nazis who dropped banners
over crowded freeways in Los Angeles “Kanye is right about the
Jews." The message
[[link removed]] was
similarly screened across a Jacksonville stadium during a major
college football game, and across another large building in the city's
downtown. The Anti Defamation League (ADL) has reported over 2,700
antisemitic incidents this year, a 34 percent rise over those in 2021,
which itself was the highest on record, they said.

There’s another word that describes where this amalgam of tactics
leads, one with global historic roots. In his 2004 book “The Anatomy
of Fascism,” Robert Paxton defines fascism as “political behavior
marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation
or victimhood… in which a mass based party of committed nationalist
militants, working in uneasy collaboration with traditional elites,
abandons democratic liberties and pursues (it’s repressive
anti-democratic goals) with redemptive violence and without ethical or
legal restraints.”

History has told us where that leads. That ominous path and choice is
what is on the ballot Tuesday.

_CHUCK IDELSON [[link removed]] is
the Communications Senior Strategist for National Nurses United, the
nation's largest union and professional organization of registered
nurses with 175,000 members._

_COMMON DREAMS:  WE'VE HAD ENOUGH. The 1% own and operate the
corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the
status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful.
The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that
matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite
change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent.
Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With
no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of
small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing.
Can you chip in? WE CAN'T DO IT WITHOUT YOU. THANK YOU.  DONATE NOW_

* elections
[[link removed]]
* Fascism
[[link removed]]
* democracy
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]