Trump's Second, Third, and Fourth Terms

I am having a hard time dealing with the post-truth environment tonight. The Russian military is at it again, hacking the 2020 election, the same actors that hacked 2016. The president tweets that he is protecting people with pre-existing conditions even as he is in court to eliminate these protections. Tonight, the constant barrage of lies and propaganda intensifies through new media outlets that outFox Fox (OAN). How easily we have adapted - no outrage, no people in the streets, everyone at home watching their six hours of repetitive hypnotic advertising, binge eating and binge watching. Honestly, I thought we would put up more of a fight. I was wrong. Welcome to Weimar.

NAZISM IN A NUTSHELL

Nazi theorists followed by Bannon and Miller advocate creating a feudal state - literally. The "deep state" they wish to destroy is education, social services, envionmental protections, anything that impedes the ruling class's amassing of wealth and power. Race wars keep people preoccupied, divided, and disempowered. Believe these people when they tell you who they are.

STRUDEL AND MOVIES

In Nazi Germany there were brilliant movies and groundbreaking art, not to mention delicious strudel and heartstopping sports. And there was money to enjoy them all. Yes, somewhere Jewish families were being separated and sent to camps, and the chancellor became the Fuhrer and attacked the press and controlled the judiciary, but this all seemed like it would pass any day and the opposition would soon rise . . And how bad could things be with such delicious strudel and movies?

RULES OF PROPAGANDA

Do not underestimate Trump. He has effectively followed Hitler's racist and rapist playbook for power and has divided our nation to the point of civil war. We are surrounded by disinformation and propaganda and the press and freedom of assembly are in grave danger. 
Remember the rules of propaganda, of which Trump is a master, and teach others to resist.
1. Make the lie big.
2. Make it simple so that your least intelligent follower can grasp it.
3. Repeat it often.
And . . .
4. Accuse your opponents of what they accuse you, to confuse and undermine. If your followers are an angry mob, call Democrats an angry mob; if you are extreme and dangerous, call Democrats extreme and dangerous. Etc.
Watch for these tactics, and educate others, and resist, resist, ,#resist.

When Poets Get Shot

Orange: the color of emergency: Trump’s Mein Kampf has successfully launched. Here come the Nazis, the pedophiles, the “benevolent white supremacists,” the wife rapists, men who like their women bruised, the gay bashers who are secret homosexuals. Yes, Nazism has always had to do with violent and non-consensual sex.

Orange prison uniforms for asylum seekers kept hungry and in cramped dirty quarters. Little babies ripped from their mothers (Reference: see Sophie’s Choice). One thousand five hundred border babies lost, no one knows where they are, probably in human trafficking (see paragraph 1).

For you and me, orange uniforms? There is no surety that says no, even if you support the Nazis. One day, a Nazi pal will turn you in as gay or part black or disloyal, and there you go to the camps, to the beautiful BASF or DOW or Monsanto chemical gas (Reference: see This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski).

Here will be the reliable cadres of orange prisoners: mentally ill people, all disabled people for that matter, gays and trans, commies (and who’s to say that you are not), latinxs, blacks, and uppity women (whom we will keep in the Frauenblock for fun). And you, if you slip up. Or if somebody wants your job. Or just for fun. Oh, and Jews, perhaps after a reprieve, but always, ultimately Jews. (Reference: See Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz).

Examples:

In 1921, a poet dreaming of his wife and Addis Ababa
is brought before the firing squad and shot.

During World War II in Stalingrad, a clownish writer accused of espionage dies of starvation trying to eat his prison mattress.

Poets who died in the camps:
Anica Černej
Grażyna Chrostowska
Robert Desnos
Benjamin Fondane
Pavel Friedmann
Peter Hammerschlag
Jakob van Hoddis
Noor Inayat Khan
Max Jacob
Itzhak Katzenelson
Peter Kien
Gertrud Kolmar
Igor S. Korntayer
Henryka Łazowertówna
Yechiel Lerer
Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger
Erich Mühsam
Arno Nadel
Sarah Powell
Moriz Seeler
Augustyn Suski
David Vogel
Ilse Weber

Here in the U.S., it will be me – I will be called a Democrat and hauled to a dark site to be waterboarded, not because I have any information (I don’t), just for stupid sadistic fun. There will be a picture of Ivanka Trump on the wall and my torturers will force me to genuflect and pray to her. I mumble lines from my poetry, proud that they have burned me, proud that I have told the truth. Then come the rats . . . .

25 Tell-Tale Signs That Trump Is a Nazi

1. He has his doctor brag about his genes.
2. He mocks a reporter with ankylosing spondylitis (ableism).
3. He lies and repeats his simple, outrageous lies until, like advertising, they seem true (see Joseph Goebbels).
4. He approves of Nazis and white supremacists.
5. He cultivates Nazis and white supremacists for his base.
6. He hates immigrants.
7. He thinks African nations are “shit holes.”
8. He spoke of “my African American” on the campaign trail.
9. He calls Mexicans rapists, as Hitler called Jews.
10. His wife Ivana said he enjoyed reading Mein Kampf.
11. He enjoys the company of dictators.
12. He emulates dictators.
13. He wants to shut down the free press.
14. He calls for the arrest and imprisonment of political opponents.
15. He wants to replace the FBI and CIA with agents loyal to him (see also Stalin).
16. Members of his own party fear him.
17. Loyalty to Trump, rather than agreement on policy, is the criterion for Republican candidate election today.
18. He encourages police brutality.
19. He reduces women to objects for male use.
20. Like a true fascist, he has consolidated his alliance with business and the oligarchy through tax breaks and other financial incentives.
21. He sets up concentration camps.
22. He separates families and puts them in concentration camps.
23. He hires Nazis.
24. He wants you to “sit up and pay attention” when he speaks.
25. He will likely succeed if you do not act now (see history).

Trump Is Winning and We Are Wimps

Trump is winning and we are wimps. He owns the Internet now, will control 72 percent of television now that DOJ has approved Sinclair's acquisition of Tribune (not counting FOX), owns the courts, has taught local police to be brutal, has listed Black Lives Matter and other black organizations as terrorist groups, has successfully incited Nazis, KKK, and other gun-toters to violence, and has triumphantly dominated the Republican Party. And like any good fascist, he has cemented his relationship with business with his tax bill. He's right - he and his generals really have done more than any other dictators in one year. We have been outmaneuvered, and better wake up to that fact going forward.

This Is Different

The lip service to democratic values is gone, the judiciary is a tool of the executive, the media as watchdog is vastly undermined, propaganda is rife (Sinclair with the merger will reach 72 percent of TV households), the government is a white supremacist one, fascist governments are our models, right wing evangelicals are successfully taking evolution out of our schools and now, with the tax bill, can wage political campaigns without losing nonprofit status, climatology and other sciences are under attack, so much more. This is not business as usual; this is fascism and we have to fight with all our might now, literally all our might all the time, or else.

Trump and his strongman friends

Donald Trump has no interest in being president; he wants to be dictator. His favorite leaders are Putin, Duterte, Erdogan - he even called Kim Jong Un a "smart cookie" for killing his uncle. He is addicted to public acclaim and to belittling people. Do you really think he will give up power legally, peaceably? Don't you think Bannon has planned the coup already? Putin will happily pay for it. #neverTrump

The fascists are winning

The fascists are winning because I am losing my sense of humor. They are here to stay, past the election in November, which Trump will claim was rigged. Trump will say he won by a landslide and call for revolution, as he did when Romney lost. All the armed militia, Klan, Nazi, and the 72% of Republicans who doubt Obama was born in the United States will answer his call. But until then, I can imagine Trump and Sarah Palin having a discussion about geopolitics, and smile, a little

Rage: The Dominant Affect of Fascism

RAGE: the dominant affect of the Trump campaign. What intoxicated followers of Hitler was der Fuehrer's anger, which he empowered them to express by example. Trump has taken a page from that book. Fury and targets to vent it on: it's an exhilarating combination for those whose anger has been stuffed in the subterranean depths of their souls for so long. Not to mention a party for those who wear their hate on their sleeves. ‪#‎rageaholism‬ ‪#‎neverTrump‬ ‪#‎racismandrage‬