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This broadcast was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: Cementing our analysis of The Trumpenkampfverbande, this program further develops information presented in FTR #921. As noted in that program Trump has gone a long way in mainstreaming the rhetoric and ideology of white supremacism. Handmaidens in that effort are the media, who have been unfairly tough on Hillary Clinton while giving Trump a pass on issues of vital importance.
Former CNN host Soledad O’Brien attacked the cable news business has behaved irresponsibly in this election and presented a Serpent’s Walk-style platform for Nazi/white supremacist views: ” . . . ‘If you look at Hillary Clinton’s speech where she basically pointed out that what Donald Trump has done — actually quite well — has normalized white supremacy,’ O’Brien explained to CNN host Brian Stelter on Sunday. ‘I think she made a very good argument, almost like a lawyer. Here are ways in which he has actually worked to normalize conversations that many people find hateful. I’ve seen on-air, white supremacists being interviewed because they are Trump delegates,’ she noted. ‘And they do a five minute segment, the first minute or so talking about what they believe as white supremacists. So you have normalized that. . . . The former CNN host argued that the question that journalists should be asking is if Trump is ‘softening the ground for people — who are white supremacists, who are white nationalists, who would self-identify that way — to feel comfortable with their views being brought into the national discourse to the point where they can do a five minute interview happily on national television? And the answer is yes, clearly,’ she said. ‘And there is lots of evidence of that.’ . . .”
O’Brien’s observation dovetails with our decades-long discussion of the Nazi tract Serpent’s Walk. The back cover of that book sums up the essence of the tome: ” . . . It assumes that Hitler’s warrior elite — the SS — didn’t give up their struggle for a White world when they lost the Second World War. Instead their survivors went underground and adopted some of their tactics of their enemies: they began building their economic muscle and buying into the opinion-forming media. A century after the war they are ready to challenge the democrats and Jews for the hearts and minds of White Americans, who have begun to have their fill of government-enforced multi-culturalism and ‘equality.’ . . .”
Think about how the media is treating Donald Trump–see the Soledad O’Brien analysis–and the way they are portraying Hillary Clinton is dramatic.
Paul Krugman noted the grotesque media bias against Hillary Clinton and the soft ball treatment to which they are subjecting Trump, comparing media handling of Al Gore versus their kid glove coverage of George W. Bush. We have noted the Hillary Clinton email non-scandal in FTR #906. (CORRECTION: Mr. Emory misspoke, saying that the “0.36 percent of Hillary’s e‑mails constituted 12 e‑mails. The number was 110, contained in a number of chains. That is according to Mitt Romney supporter James Comey.) Now, we are being treated to the Clinton Foundation non-scandal. ” . . . . Meanwhile, we have the presumption that anything Hillary Clinton does must be corrupt, most spectacularly illustrated by the increasingly bizarre coverage of the Clinton Foundation. . . . Raising large sums for a charity that saves the lives of poor children sounds like a pretty reasonable, virtuous course of action. And the Clinton Foundation is, by all accounts, a big force for good in the world. For example, Charity Watch, an independent watchdog, gives it an “A” rating — better than the American Red Cross.
Now, any operation that raises and spends billions of dollars creates the potential for conflicts of interest. You could imagine the Clintons using the foundation as a slush fund to reward their friends, or, alternatively, Mrs. Clinton using her positions in public office to reward donors. So it was right and appropriate to investigate the foundation’s operations to see if there were any improper quid pro quos. As reporters like to say, the sheer size of the foundation “raises questions.”
But nobody seems willing to accept the answers to those questions, which are, very clearly, “no.”
Consider the big Associated Press report suggesting that Mrs. Clinton’s meetings with foundation donors while secretary of state indicate “her possible ethics challenges if elected president.” Given the tone of the report, you might have expected to read about meetings with, say, brutal foreign dictators or corporate fat cats facing indictment, followed by questionable actions on their behalf.
But the prime example The A.P. actually offered was of Mrs. Clinton meeting with Muhammad Yunus, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who also happens to be a longtime personal friend. If that was the best the investigation could come up with, there was nothing there. . . .”
Turning to the economic foundation of Trump’s business dealings–he markets himself politically as a successful businessman–we analyze the role of the remarkable and deadly Bormann group in the corporate and media landscapes. In FTR #152, we highlighted the observation of one banker that the Bormann network is the largest concentration of money power under a single controlling structure in all of history.
In FTR #921, we noted Deutsche Bank and the other main funding sources for Trump’s real estate deals have major connections to the Bormann capital network. The program notes that Deutsche Bank was a major vehicle for Bormann network purchases of stock in major American corporations, a dynamic that gives the Bormann group enormous leverage with those U.S. companies. By extension it gives them major influence in media affairs, through the exercise of advertising and investment policy.
“. . . . When Bormann gave the order for his representatives to resume purchases of American corporate stocks, it was usually done through the neutral countries of Switzerland and Argentina. From foreign exchange funds on deposit in Swiss banks and in Deutsche Sudamerikanishe Bank, the Buenos Aires branch of Deutsche Bank, large demand deposits were placed in the principal money-center banks of New York City; National City (now Citibank), Chase (now Chase Manhattan N.A.), Manufacturers and Hanover (now manufacturers Hanover Trust), Morgan Guaranty, and Irving Trust. Such deposits are interest-free and the banks can invest this money as they wish, thus turning tidy profits for themselves. In return, they provide reasonable services such as the purchase of stocks and transfer or payment of money on demand by customers of Deutsche bank such as representatives of the Bormann business organizations and and Martin Bormann himself, who has demand accounts in three New York City banks. They continue to do so. The German investment in American corporations from these sources exceeded $5 billion and made the Bormann economic structure a web of power and influence. . . .”
In addition, we note that corporate Germany is controlled by the Bormann network. “. . . Atop an organizational pyramid that dominates the industry of West Germany through banks, voting rights enjoyed by majority shareholders in significant cartels, and the professional input of a relatively young leadership group of lawyers, investment specialists, bankers, and industrialists, he [Bormann] is satisfied that he achieved his aim of helping the Fatherland back on its feet. To ensure continuity of purpose and direction, a close watch is maintained on the profit statements and management reports of corporations under its control elsewhere. This leadership group of twenty, which is in fact a board of directors, is chaired by Bormann, but power has shifted to the younger men who will carry on the initiative that grew from that historic meeting in Strasbourg on August 10, 1944. . . What will not pass is the economic influences of the Bormann organization, whose commercial directives are obeyed almost without question by the highest echelons of West German finance and industry. ‘All orders come from the shareholders in South America,’ I have been told by a spokesman for Martin Bormann. . . .”
The granting of advertising contracts to media outlets (print and broadcast) is a major vehicle for Bormann-group-controlled corporate Germany to influence journalism. The politically selective withholding of orders and advertising contracts is a vehicle for political control of journalism exercised by Third Reich business dating to the World War II period. It was articulated in a New York Herald Tribune article from May 31, 1940. “. . . . As far as the United States is concerned, the planners of the World Germanica laugh off the idea of any armed invasion. They say that it will be completely unnecessary to take military action against the United States to force it to play ball with this system. . . . Here, as in every other country, they have established relations with numerous industries and commercial organizations, to whom they will offer advantages in co-operation with Germany. . . .Certain conditions will have to be met. No orders will be taken from or given by personalities unfavorably regarded by the Nazis. No advertising contracts will be placed with newspapers directed by or publishing the work of pro-Ally or anti-Nazi editors or writers. . . .”
The tactic continues to be exercised, as exemplified by the business dealings of the Quandt corporation, manufacturers of the BMW and Audi automobiles, and invested with the operations of Daimler and Volkswagen as well. The firm is controlled by the heirs of Joseph Goebbels. In FTR #155, we noted that major personalities in the Bormann network were the blood descendants of Third Reich luminaries. ” . . . Whenever the books section reviewed something about WWII or The Holocaust (which was often), BMW pulled their ads for that issue. . . . They were just very sensitive about it given their history. I was in the art dept so couldn’t tell you any details, it just became a running joke: ‘Oh, Ben has reviewed another WWII book! Ad sales will be pissed!’ . . . ”
The program concludes with a transitional element to discussion to be presented in FTR #923. In our ongoing analysis of WikiLeaks and “L’Affaire Snowden,” we have noted that the political foundation of these heavily overlapped “ops” is the milieu of “The Paulistinian Libertarian Organization.”
The milieu of the “Alt Right,” Ron and Rand Paul, David Duke, the Ludwig von Mises Institute is the political environment that spawned Donald Trump. ” . . . . Trump’s style and positions — endorsing and consorting with 9/11 truthers, promoting online racists, using fake statistics— draw on a now-obscure political strategy called “paleolibertarianism,” which was once quite popular among some Republicans, especially former presidential candidate Ron Paul. . . . But it was [Murray] Rothbard’s founding of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in 1982 that enabled the fledgling political movement to establish affinity with the neo-Confederate Lost Cause movement. Almost immediately after its creation, the Mises Institute (headquartered in Auburn, Ala.) began publishing criticism of “compulsory integration,” attacks on Abraham Lincoln and apologia for Confederate leaders. Institute scholars have also spoken to racist groups such as the League of the South. Rothbard even published a chapter in his book “The Ethics of Liberty” in which he said that “the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children,” although he didn’t specify the races of the children who might be sold. . . . In the past few years, however, it’s been reborn as the alt-right, as a new generation of libertarians discovered their hidden heritage and began embracing racism and conspiracy theories. Many alt-right writers trace their roots to Rothbard. As one of them, Gregory Hood, put it, paleolibertarian theories about race and democracy “helped lead to the emergence [of the] Alternative Right.” Rothbard’s call for “sovereign nations based on race and ethnicity” is very similar to beliefs Trump’s alt-right supporters express today. . . .”
It should surprise no one that WikiLeaks has emerged as the unofficial online dirty tricks branch of the Trump campaign.
Program Highlights Include:
- Review of the links between UBS of Switzerland, another Trump creditor, and the Bormann network.
- Review of the graduated nature of the Serpent’s Walk template and comparison with what is going on today.
- Review of the growing German corporate control of American media.
1. Former CNN host Soledad O’Brien attacked the cable news business has behaved irresponsibly in this election and presented a Serpent’s Walk-style platform for Nazi/white supremacist views: ” . . . ‘If you look at Hillary Clinton’s speech where she basically pointed out that what Donald Trump has done — actually quite well — has normalized white supremacy,’ O’Brien explained to CNN host Brian Stelter on Sunday. ‘I think she made a very good argument, almost like a lawyer. Here are ways in which he has actually worked to normalize conversations that many people find hateful. I’ve seen on-air, white supremacists being interviewed because they are Trump delegates,’ she noted. ‘And they do a five minute segment, the first minute or so talking about what they believe as white supremacists. So you have normalized that. . . . The former CNN host argued that the question that journalists should be asking is if Trump is ‘softening the ground for people — who are white supremacists, who are white nationalists, who would self-identify that way — to feel comfortable with their views being brought into the national discourse to the point where they can do a five minute interview happily on national television? And the answer is yes, clearly,’ she said. ‘And there is lots of evidence of that.’ . . .”
Former CNN host Soledad O’Brien blasted the cable news business over the weekend for profiting off the hate speech that has fueled Donald Trump’s political rise.
According to O’Brien, the media had gone through “contortions to make things seem equal all the time” when comparing Trump to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“If you look at Hillary Clinton’s speech where she basically pointed out that what Donald Trump has done — actually quite well — has normalized white supremacy,” O’Brien explained to CNN host Brian Stelter on Sunday. “I think she made a very good argument, almost like a lawyer. Here are ways in which he has actually worked to normalize conversations that many people find hateful.”
“I’ve seen on-air, white supremacists being interviewed because they are Trump delegates,” she noted. “And they do a five minute segment, the first minute or so talking about what they believe as white supremacists. So you have normalized that.”
“And then Donald Trump will say, ‘Hillary Clinton, she’s a bigot.’ And it’s covered, the journalist part comes in, ‘They trade barbs. He said she’s a bigot and she points out that he might be appealing to racists.’ It only becomes ‘he said, she said.’ When in actuality, the fact that Donald Trump said she’s a bigot without the long laundry list of evidence, which if you looked at Hillary Clinton’s speech, she actually did have a lot of really good factual evidence that we would all agree that are things that have happened and do exist. They are treated as if they are equal.”
O’Brien insisted “that’s where journalists are failing: the contortions to try to make it seem fair.”
The former CNN host argued that the question that journalists should be asking is if Trump is “softening the ground for people — who are white supremacists, who are white nationalists, who would self-identify that way — to feel comfortable with their views being brought into the national discourse to the point where they can do a five minute interview happily on national television?”
“And the answer is yes, clearly,” she said. “And there is lots of evidence of that.”
O’Brien observed that cable news outlets were effectively being rewarded for bad behavior.
“So hateful speech brings a really interested, angry audience,” she noted. “This is genius! We should do this more often. What shall we do when this election is over? We’re going to have to think about ways to really rile people up, make them angry and divide them.”
“Because that is something that cable news, frankly, and everybody can cover really well,” O’Brien lamented. “So, I find it very frustrating. I believe he was over-covered at the beginning.”
“Now, it is ‘he said, she said’ all the time. We have lost context. We actually don’t even cover the details of something. We just cover the back and forth of it. It’s funny to watch if it weren’t our own country and our own government actually operating.”
2a. Compare, also, the back cover of Serpent’s Walk with the Trump phenomenon.
It assumes that Hitler’s warrior elite — the SS — didn’t give up their struggle for a White world when they lost the Second World War. Instead their survivors went underground and adopted some of their tactics of their enemies: they began building their economic muscle and buying into the opinion-forming media. A century after the war they are ready to challenge the democrats and Jews for the hearts and minds of White Americans, who have begun to have their fill of government-enforced multi-culturalism and ‘equality.’
2b. The program notes the graduated nature of the takeover of American media by the Underground Reich.
. . . . About ten years ago, we swung a merger, a takeover, and got voting control of a supercorp that runs a small but significant chunk of the American media. Not openly, with bands and trumpets. . . . but quietly, one huge corporation cuddling up to another one and gently munching it up, like a great, gubbing amoeba.. . .. . . we have media psychologists, ad agencies, and behavior modification specialists working on image changes. . . . Hard to get people to love death camps. . . . We don’t try. . . . We play those aspects down and stress the positive ones instead: the efficiency and organization, the dedication, and the heroism. People will buy that. . . .
2c. Media bias in the current election campaign was compared with that of the 2000 election by Paul Krugman.
“Hillary Clinton Gets Gored” by Paul Krugman; The New York Times; 9/5/2016.
Americans of a certain age who follow politics and policy closely still have vivid memories of the 2000 election — bad memories, and not just because the man who lost the popular vote somehow ended up in office. For the campaign leading up to that end game was nightmarish too.
You see, one candidate, George W. Bush, was dishonest in a way that was unprecedented in U.S. politics. Most notably, he proposed big tax cuts for the rich while insisting, in raw denial of arithmetic, that they were targeted for the middle class. These campaign lies presaged what would happen during his administration — an administration that, let us not forget, took America to war on false pretenses.
Yet throughout the campaign most media coverage gave the impression that Mr. Bush was a bluff, straightforward guy, while portraying Al Gore — whose policy proposals added up, and whose critiques of the Bush plan were completely accurate — as slippery and dishonest. Mr. Gore’s mendacity was supposedly demonstrated by trivial anecdotes, none significant, some of them simply false. No, he never claimed to have invented the internet. But the image stuck.
And right now I and many others have the sick, sinking feeling that it’s happening again.
True, there aren’t many efforts to pretend that Donald Trump is a paragon of honesty. But it’s hard to escape the impression that he’s being graded on a curve. If he manages to read from a TelePrompter without going off script, he’s being presidential. If he seems to suggest that he wouldn’t round up all 11 million undocumented immigrants right away, he’s moving into the mainstream. And many of his multiple scandals, like what appear to be clear payoffs to state attorneys general to back off investigating Trump University, get remarkably little attention.
Meanwhile, we have the presumption that anything Hillary Clinton does must be corrupt, most spectacularly illustrated by the increasingly bizarre coverage of the Clinton Foundation.
Step back for a moment, and think about what that foundation is about. When Bill Clinton left office, he was a popular, globally respected figure. What should he have done with that reputation? Raising large sums for a charity that saves the lives of poor children sounds like a pretty reasonable, virtuous course of action. And the Clinton Foundation is, by all accounts, a big force for good in the world. For example, Charity Watch, an independent watchdog, gives it an “A” rating — better than the American Red Cross.
Now, any operation that raises and spends billions of dollars creates the potential for conflicts of interest. You could imagine the Clintons using the foundation as a slush fund to reward their friends, or, alternatively, Mrs. Clinton using her positions in public office to reward donors. So it was right and appropriate to investigate the foundation’s operations to see if there were any improper quid pro quos. As reporters like to say, the sheer size of the foundation “raises questions.”
But nobody seems willing to accept the answers to those questions, which are, very clearly, “no.”
Consider the big Associated Press report suggesting that Mrs. Clinton’s meetings with foundation donors while secretary of state indicate “her possible ethics challenges if elected president.” Given the tone of the report, you might have expected to read about meetings with, say, brutal foreign dictators or corporate fat cats facing indictment, followed by questionable actions on their behalf.
But the prime example The A.P. actually offered was of Mrs. Clinton meeting with Muhammad Yunus, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who also happens to be a longtime personal friend. If that was the best the investigation could come up with, there was nothing there. So I would urge journalists to ask whether they are reporting facts or simply engaging in innuendo, and urge the public to read with a critical eye. If reports about a candidate talk about how something “raises questions,” creates “shadows,” or anything similar, be aware that these are all too often weasel words used to create the impression of wrongdoing out of thin air.
And here’s a pro tip: the best ways to judge a candidate’s character are to look at what he or she has actually done, and what policies he or she is proposing. Mr. Trump’s record of bilking students, stiffing contractors and more is a good indicator of how he’d act as president; Mrs. Clinton’s speaking style and body language aren’t. George W. Bush’s policy lies gave me a much better handle on who he was than all the up-close-and-personal reporting of 2000, and the contrast between Mr. Trump’s policy incoherence and Mrs. Clinton’s carefulness speaks volumes today.
In other words, focus on the facts. America and the world can’t afford another election tipped by innuendo.
3a. We review the profound relationship of the Bormann capital network and Deutsche Bank:
. . . . When Bormann gave the order for his representatives to resume purchases of American corporate stocks, it was usually done through the neutral countries of Switzerland and Argentina. From foreign exchange funds on deposit in Swiss banks and in Deutsche Sudamerikanishe Bank, the Buenos Aires branch of Deutsche Bank, large demand deposits were placed in the principal money-center banks of New York City; National City (now Citibank), Chase (now Chase Manhattan N.A.), Manufacturers and Hanover (now manufacturers Hanover Trust), Morgan Guaranty, and Irving Trust. Such deposits are interest-free and the banks can invest this money as they wish, thus turning tidy profits for themselves. In return, they provide reasonable services such as the purchase of stocks and transfer or payment of money on demand by customers of Deutsche bank such as representatives of the Bormann business organizations and and Martin Bormann himself, who has demand accounts in three New York City banks. They continue to do so. The German investment in American corporations from these sources exceeded $5 billion and made the Bormann economic structure a web of power and influence. The two German-owned banks of Spain, Banco Aleman Transatlantico (now named Banco Comercial Transatlantico), and Banco Germanico de la America del Sur, S.A., a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank served to channel German money from Spain to South America, where further investments were made. . . .
. . . . The [FBI] file revealed that he had been banking under his own name from his office in Germany in Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires since 1941; that he held one joint account with the Argentinian dictator Juan Peron, and on August 4, 5 and 14, 1967, had written checks on demand accounts in first National City Bank (Overseas Division) of New York, The Chase Manhattan Bank, and Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co., all cleared through Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires. . . .
3b. In FTR #‘s 919 and 921, we noted the participation of UBS in Trump real estate deals.
The program reviews the relationship between Union Bank of Switzerland, the Nazi I.G. Farben chemical cartel and the Bormann capital network, economic component of a Third Reich gone underground and perpetuated Mafia-like through its connections to decisively powerful economic and political interests.
Note that UBS has helped capitalize the Thyssen industrial group with profound historical, political and commercial links to the Bush family, as well as the Underground Reich.
. . . .In 1948 a suit was to be filed by certain minority stockholders of Interhandel against the attorney general of the United States, as successor to the wartime Alien Property Custodian, and the U.S. Treasury, for the return of 89 percent of GAF (the American branch of I.G. Farben), of a value of $100 million plus $1.8 million seized in cash in 1942. Interhandel, through its American attorneys, first filed an administrative claim, which was denied. The suit then went to the District Court for the District of Columbia, then to the Supreme Court, and back to District Court. The Swiss claim was based on the argument that Interhandel was a Swiss corporation, that it was not nor had it ever been an enemy of the United States, and that it owned the shares in question. The American government rebuttal was that Interhandel was the result of a conspiracy between the private bank of H. Sturzenegger, formerly E.Greutert & Cie., and I.G. Farbenindustrie of Germany and others “to conceal, camouflage, and cloak the ownership, control, and combination by I.G. Farben of properties and interests in many countries of the world, including the U.S.”
As the case dragged through the U.S. courts, Schmitz would have Interhandel cosmeticized even more. Charles de Loes, past president of the Swiss Bankers Association, would be elected chairman, and the general manager of each of the Big Three banks would be appointed to the board. They would agree to this because the honor of Swiss banking and its principle of banking secrecy would be at stake. In addition, 25 percent of Interhandel stock would be registered in the name of Union Bank, whose manager, Dr. Alfred Schaefer, was of known integrity. The Swiss believed the association of such a man of high banking repute at Interhandel would impress American government authorities. But the German connection would still be there. Not only Hermann Schmitz, but also the banking connection of Union Bank of Switzerland, Dr. Schaefer’s bank, and Deutsche Bank, which acted in concert on so many deals involving not only I.G. Farben but also big Ruhr industrialists such as Thyssen A.G., the largest steelmaker in Germany. In January 1978 these two lead banks, acting through the UBS-DBCorporation, an American firm of the Union Bank of Switzerland and the Deutsche Bank of Germany, would be the financial advisors for Thyssen A.G. in its $275 million cash takeover of the Budd Company of Troy, Michigan, a leading U.S. manufacturer of auto components, truck trailers, and rail cars. UBSDB Corporation would also say that the West German companies it represented were showing a “very substantial interest in all sorts of American ventures, including mergers and acquisition.” . . . .
4. In connection both with Trump’s real estate holdings and John P. Schmitz’s corporate work, we review the control of German industry and finance by the Bormann network.
. . . Atop an organizational pyramid that dominates the industry of West Germany through banks, voting rights enjoyed by majority shareholders in significant cartels, and the professional input of a relatively young leadership group of lawyers, investment specialists, bankers, and industrialists, he [Bormann] is satisfied that he achieved his aim of helping the Fatherland back on its feet. To ensure continuity of purpose and direction, a close watch is maintained on the profit statements and management reports of corporations under its control elsewhere. This leadership group of twenty, which is in fact a board of directors, is chaired by Bormann, but power has shifted to the younger men who will carry on the initiative that grew from that historic meeting in Strasbourg on August 10, 1944. Old Heinrich Mueller, chief of security for the NSDAP in South America, is the most feared of all, having the power of life and death over those deemed not to be acting in the best interests of the organization. Some still envision a Fourth Reich. . . What will not pass is the economic influences of the Bormann organization, whose commercial directives are obeyed almost without question by the highest echelons of West German finance and industry. ‘All orders come from the shareholders in South America,’ I have been told by a spokesman for Martin Bormann. . . .
5a. Again, a major element of discussion on this blog has been the spawning of the Bormann capital network from the political and economic forces underpinning Nazi Germany. Controlling the German core corporations as well as powerful interests around the world, the Bormann group is preeminent on the world economic landscape.
Noting that BMW and Audi are controlled by the heirs of Joseph Goebbels (whose stepchild inherited the Quandt industrial empire), A Bloomberg story notes that Mercedes-Benz also has significant capital participation by the Quandts.
In a series of comments on a blog, there was an exchange about BMW withholding ads when Atlantic reviewed a book about the Holocaust or WWII. BMW is owned by the Quandt firm, headed for years by Joseph Goebbels’ son-in-law.
To gain perspective on the brilliant, far-sighted, thorough and altogether cynical policy realized by corporate Germany and the remarkable, deadly Bormann capital network that controls it, we recap Dorothy Thompson’s analysis of Germany’s plans for world dominance by a centralized European economic union. (In this, we can see the plans of pan-German theoretician Friedrich List, as realized by the European Monetary Union.) Ms. Thompson was writing in The New York Herald Tribune on May 31, 1940! Her comments are reproduced by Tetens on pages 92–93 .
“The Germans have a clear plan of what they intend to do in case of victory. I believe that I know the essential details of that plan. I have heard it from a sufficient number of important Germans to credit its authenticity . . . Germany’s plan is to make a customs union of Europe, with complete financial and economic control centered in Berlin. This will create at once the largest free trade area and the largest planned economy in the world. In Western Europe alone . . . there will be an economic unity of 400 million persons . . . To these will be added the resources of the British, French, Dutch and Belgian empires. These will be pooled in the name of Europa Germanica . . .”
“The Germans count upon political power following economic power, and not vice versa. Territorial changes do not concern them, because there will be no ‘France’ or ‘England,’ except as language groups. Little immediate concern is felt regarding political organizations . . . . No nation will have the control of its own financial or economic system or of its customs. The Nazification of all countries will be accomplished by economic pressure. In all countries, contacts have been established long ago with sympathetic businessmen and industrialists . . . . As far as the United States is concerned, the planners of the World Germanica laugh off the idea of any armed invasion. They say that it will be completely unnecessary to take military action against the United States to force it to play ball with this system. . . . Here, as in every other country, they have established relations with numerous industries and commercial organizations, to whom they will offer advantages in co-operation with Germany.
Certain conditions will have to be met. No orders will be taken from or given by personalities unfavorably regarded by the Nazis. No advertising contracts will be placed with newspapers directed by or publishing the work of pro-Ally or anti-Nazi editors or writers.…
The German planners predict a stampede of the South to collaborate with this system. This stampede will be fostered and directed by their agents.”…
. . .”
LondonLee (922)
I worked at The Atlantic when Wallace wrote a (terrific) feature for them about talk radio. According to our managing editor he was a sweetheart to deal with.True: Whenever the books section reviewed something about WWII or The Holocaust (which was often), BMW pulled their ads for that issue. . . .
. . . They were just very sensitive about it given their history. I was in the art dept so couldn’t tell you any details, it just became a running joke: “Oh, Ben has reviewed another WWII book! Ad sales will be pissed!”
5v. About the Quandt corporation and its control by the heirs of Goebbels:
In the spring of 1945, Harald Quandt, a 23-year-old officer in the German Luftwaffe, was being held as a prisoner of war by Allied forces in the Libyan port city of Benghazi when he received a farewell letter from his mother, Magda Goebbels — the wife of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
The hand-written note confirmed the devastating news he had heard weeks earlier: His mother had committed suicide with her husband on May 1, after slipping their six children cyanide capsules in Adolf Hitler’s underground bunker in Berlin. . . .
. . . Quandt was released from captivity in 1947. Seven years later, he and his half-brother Herbert — Harald was the only remaining child from Magda Goebbels’ first marriage — would inherit the industrial empire built by their father, Guenther Quandt, which had produced Mauser firearms and anti-aircraft missiles for the Third Reich’s war machine. Among their most valuable assets at the time was a stake in car manufacturer Daimler AG. (DAI) They bought a part of Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) a few years later.
While the half-brothers passed away decades ago, their legacy has endured. Herbert’s widow, Johanna Quandt, 86, and their children Susanne Klatten and Stefan Quandt, have remained in the public eye as BMW’s dominant shareholders. The billionaire daughters of Harald Quandt — Katarina Geller-Herr, 61, Gabriele Quandt, 60, Anette-Angelika May-Thies, 58, and 50-year-old Colleen-Bettina Rosenblat-Mo — have kept a lower profile.
The four sisters inherited about 1.5 billion deutsche marks ($760 million) after the death of their mother, Inge, in 1978, according to the family’s sanctioned biography, “Die Quandts.” They manage their wealth through the Harald Quandt Holding GmbH, a Bad Homburg, Germany-based family investment company and trust named after their father. Fritz Becker, the chief executive officer of the family entities, said the siblings realized average annual returns above 7 percent from its founding in 1981 through 1996. Since then, the returns have averaged 7.6 percent.
“The family wants to stay private and that is an acceptable situation for me,” said Becker in an interview at his Bad Homburg office. “We invest our money globally and if it’s $1 billion, $500 million or $3 billion, who cares?” (Italics added.) . . .
8. In a transitional element to the next program–dealing with Snowden, WikiLeaks and the high-profile hacks–we note that Donald Trump’s ideology and rhetoric are a development and amplification of what we termed “The Paulistinian Libertarian Organization.” In FTR #‘s 755, 758 and 759, we have further developed the relationship between the Ron Paul milieu and WikiLeaks/Team Snowden.
The intersection of white nationalism, the alt-right and Ron Paul
Hillary Clinton and her campaign have been going out of their way to make a surprising argument about Donald Trump: He’s not really a Republican.
At the Democratic convention, several speakers said Trump represented a complete break from the conservative traditions of the GOP. Last month, Clinton delivered a similar message in a speech linking Trump to the white-nationalist political movement known as the “alt-right.” “This is not conservatism as we have known it,” she asserted.
According to Clinton — and many conservative intellectuals who oppose Trump — the conspiratorial, winking-at-racists campaign he has been running represents a novel departure from Republican politics.
That’s not quite true, though. Trump’s style and positions — endorsing and consorting with 9/11 truthers, promoting online racists, using fake statistics— draw on a now-obscure political strategy called “paleolibertarianism,” which was once quite popular among some Republicans, especially former presidential candidate Ron Paul.
Formally, Sen. Rand Paul (R‑Ky.) may be his father’s political heir. But there’s no question that the paranoid and semi-racialist mien frequently favored by Trump originates in the fevered swamps that the elder Paul dwelled in for decades. Most people who back Trump don’t do so for racist reasons, but it’s incredible how many of the same white nationalists and conspiracy theorists to whom Ron Paul once catered are now ardent Trump supporters. It’s because Trump and Paul speak the same language.
Mainstream libertarians have been agonizing over this legacy among themselves for some time, hoping that either the elder or younger Paul would definitively denounce the movement’s racialist past, but no such speech has ever come. Instead, the paleolibertarian strategy concocted decades ago as a way to push for minimal government threatens to replace right-wing libertarianism with white nationalism.
* * *
The figure whose ideas unify Pauline libertarians and today’s Trumpists is the late Murray Rothbard, an economist who co-founded the Cato Institute and is widely regarded as the creator of libertarianism.
Nowadays, many libertarians like to portray their ideology as one that somehow transcends the left-right divide, but to Rothbard, this was nonsense. Libertarianism, he argued, was nothing more than a restatement of the beliefs of the “Old Right,” which resolutely opposed the New Deal and any sort of foreign intervention in the early 20th century. Many of its adherents, such as essayist H.L. Mencken, espoused racist viewpoints, as well.
As moderate Republicans such as Dwight Eisenhower and “New Right” Christian conservatives such as William F. Buckley became more influential within the Republican Party in the 1950s and ’60s, the future creators of libertarianism gravitated instead toward the work of secular anti-communist thinkers such as economist Ludwig von Mises and novelist Ayn Rand.
There had always been some sympathy for racism and anti-Semitism among libertarians — the movement’s house magazine, Reason, dedicated an entire issue in 1976 to “historical revisionism,” including Holocaust revisionism. It also repeatedly ran articles in defense of South Africa’s then-segregationist government (though by 2016, the magazine was running articles like “Donald Trump Enables Racism”). But it was Rothbard’s founding of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in 1982 that enabled the fledgling political movement to establish affinity with the neo-Confederate Lost Cause movement.
Almost immediately after its creation, the Mises Institute (headquartered in Auburn, Ala.) began publishing criticism of “compulsory integration,” attacks on Abraham Lincoln and apologia for Confederate leaders. Institute scholars have also spoken to racist groups such as the League of the South. Rothbard even published a chapter in his book “The Ethics of Liberty” in which he said that “the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children,” although he didn’t specify the races of the children who might be sold.
These and many other controversial views advocated by Mises writers make sense from a fanatical libertarian viewpoint. But they also originate in a political calculation Rothbard revealed in a 1992 essay lamenting the defeat of Republican white nationalist and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke in the 1991 Louisiana governor’s race by a bipartisan coalition.
Expanding on themes raised two years earlier by his longtime partner and friend Llewellyn “Lew” Rockwell, an editor and fundraiser for libertarian causes, Rothbard argued that Duke’s candidacy was vitally important because it made clear that the “old America” had been overthrown by “an updated, twentieth-century coalition of Throne and Altar” and its “State Church” of government officials, journalists and social scientists.
Besides commending Duke as an exemplar of the kind of candidate he was looking to support, Rothbard also invoked the “exciting” former senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin — not because of his economic views but because he was a brash populist prone to doing erratic things. Rothbard’s description of McCarthy seems eerily similar to the campaign that Trump has been running:
“The fascinating, the exciting, thing about Joe McCarthy was precisely his ‘means’ — his right-wing populism: his willingness and ability to reach out, to short-circuit the power elite: liberals, centrists, the media, the intellectuals, the Pentagon, Rockefeller Republicans, and reach out and whip up the masses directly. … With Joe McCarthy there was a sense of dynamism, of fearlessness, and of open-endedness, as if, whom would he subpoena next?”
To solve the problem that few Americans are interested in small government, Rothbard argued that libertarians needed to align themselves with people they might not like much in order to expand their numbers. “Outreach to the Rednecks” was needed to make common cause with far-right Christian conservatives who hated the federal government, disliked drugs and wanted to crack down on crime.
All of these paleolibertarian positions were offered in Duke’s 1990 Senate campaign and 1991 gubernatorial campaign. But they were also offered by another politician Rothbard admired: Ron Paul, the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate in 1988.
Rothbard and Paul had known and worked with each other in the 1970s, when they came to know Rockwell. Rockwell would work closely with both men, serving as Paul’s congressional chief of staff until he left to found the Mises Institute with Rothbard.
Rockwell also was the editor of a series of printed newsletters for both men in the ensuing decades. Paul’s publications became famous during his Republican presidential campaigns. Their controversial nature is no surprise, given that Paul had coyly endorsed the paleolibertarian strategy shortly after it was devised.
Sold under various titles, the highly lucrative newsletters frequently stoked racial fears, similar to what Trump has been doing this year, though they went further — one even gave advice on using an unregistered gun to shoot “urban youth.” Another issue mocked black Americans by proposing alternative names for New York City such as “Zooville” and “Rapetown,” while urging black political demonstrators to hold their protests “at a food stamp bureau or a crack house.”
The publications also repeatedly promoted the work of Jared Taylor, a white nationalist writer and editor who is today one of Trump’s most prominent alt-right backers. Articles also featured anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and frequent rants against gay men.
Paul later said he didn’t write the newsletters. But regardless of their authorship, the image they created made him attractive to white nationalists. Those supporters weren’t numerous enough to get Paul the GOP presidential nomination, however, and paleolibertarianism began fizzling out.
In the past few years, however, it’s been reborn as the alt-right, as a new generation of libertarians discovered their hidden heritage and began embracing racism and conspiracy theories. Many alt-right writers trace their roots to Rothbard. As one of them, Gregory Hood, put it, paleolibertarian theories about race and democracy “helped lead to the emergence [of the] Alternative Right.” Rothbard’s call for “sovereign nations based on race and ethnicity” is very similar to beliefs Trump’s alt-right supporters express today.
In 2016, many, if not most, of the extremists who formerly supported Paul have rallied to Trump’s side. In 2007, Paul won an endorsement and a $500 campaign contribution from Don Black, the owner of Stormfront, a self-described “white pride” Web forum. Despite a torrent of criticism, Paul refused to return the money. This March, Black encouraged his radio listeners to vote for Trump, even if he wasn’t perfect.
…
After Rand Paul came to the Senate in 2011, and as he eventually began planning his own presidential campaign, there was some speculation that conservatives might be entering a “libertarian moment.” Things didn’t turn out that way. Instead, the American right seems to have entered a paleolibertarian moment.
Banking with Bin Laden
Regarding the movements and individuals that have paved the way for the rise of Donald Trump, Vice has a recent interview of Ann Coulter, the conservative pundit who has been openly calling for the GOP to ‘stop sucking up to Hispanics’ and stop trying to appeal to non-white voters in general and just focus on turning out the white vote by promoting what is essentially a white nationalist platform and worldview. Not surprisingly, she’s quite excited about Donald Trump. Especially since it sounds like Trump basically conceived of his entire campaign strategy, like starting off his campaign shouting about Mexican rapists, after reading Ann’s book about how Mexicans are destroying America:
“As Trump continues to embrace her anti-immigrant positions, Coulter has in turn become an ardent evangelizer for the Republican presidential candidate. “I have been in heaven since June 16—[the] Mexican rapist speech,” she told me.”
Yeah, Ann really, really likes it when people call Mexicans rapists. Even if she thought you were a boorish vulgarian before, all you need to do is characterize Mexicans as rapists and, voila, she’ll write a book about how awesome you are. She really likes people who talk about Mexican rapists:
“I probably thought of him – until that magnificent Mexican rapist speech – in the way a lot of the Never Trumpers do”
And just think, the entire Trump campaign might never have taken off to become the future-destroying force that it is today if Donald Trump hadn’t read Adios, America and turned it into his campaign theme.
It’s unclear what news lessons we can take from this other than the fact that the Trumpian takeover of the GOP is simultaneously a stealth-Coulter takeover of the party too. Also, Donald Trump apparently loves reading horrible books. That’s seems like an increasingly important lesson to keep in mind.
Excellent series on Trump and insightful comment above.
I’ve long thought that windbags like Coulter, Limbaugh, et al served as kind of bellweathers for fascist (I’m sorry — “conservative”) thinktanks and policy research groups. For years, Limbaugh talked about modifying health coverage to mirror auto insurance policies. Lo and behold: the high-deductible plans of today.
Several years ago, Coulter wrote an article in which she yearned for the days when political candidates were crowned in back rooms by men smoking cigars. Citizens United gave her what she wanted.
There’s probably a hundred more examples of these loudmouths testing the waters for other policies that have been or will be rammed down Joe Sixpack’s throat. Hard for me to read/listen to these folks anymore, but it can be fruitful in this regard.
Is Peter Thiel heading to the Supreme Court? According to two anonymous sources, it’s definitely something the Trump campaign is considering given Trump’s “deep love” for Thiel:
“Trump “deeply loves Peter Thiel,” and people in the real estate mogul’s inner circle are talking about Thiel as a Supreme Court nominee, a separate source close to Trump told The Huffington Post. That source, who has not spoken to Trump directly about Thiel being nominated to the Court, cautioned that Trump’s offers often fail to materialize in real life.”
Is this a real story? The sources claim that Trump “deeply loves” Thiel, which would suggest Trump is capable of deeply loving anyone who isn’t himself which certainly raises questions about the whole story. At the same time, embracing Thiel would be an extremely Trumpian in spirit. They are quite similar after all:
Yep, another quirky billionaire narcissist who doesn’t always follow the strict social conservatism of most of the GOP but is otherwise a far-right nut job. That certainly sounds like Trump!
So when you consider how much Peter Thiel probably reminds Donald Trump of Donald Trump, who knows, maybe he really does love Thiel. Deeply.
Instead of retweeting a neo-Nazis tweet — the Trump campaign’s method of choice for dog whistling to the far-right — Donald Trump Jr. just blurted out a ‘they’d send Trump to the gas chambers if he did what Hillary did’ neo-Nazi dog whistle himself during an interview. It must be a slow day on Twitter for the neo-Nazis or something:
“Trump Jr. told NBC News’ Katy Tur that he stood by his point, but that he meant to refer to executions rather than the Holocaust. He said he normally uses the phrase “electric chair” to make the same point.”
He “normally” uses the phrase “electric chair” to make the same point? Ok, so the alibi for why this wasn’t a neo-Nazi dog whistle is that Donald Trump Jr. has actually been talking about how Hillary lies to much she should be executed and he’s been talking about that a lot. He just normally doesn’t normally refer to gas chambers to make that point. And while it’s true that Trump campaign surrogates have indeed been pushing the ‘Hillary should be executed’ meme, there haven’t actually been any reports of Donald Trump Jr. making that argument. But he apparently makes this argument behind the scenes enough to have established a “normal” way of phrasing it and just accidentally used the term “gas chamber” while he was being interviewed.
Yep, that’s his alibi, which means this is probably a good time to remind ourselves that laughable alibis for neo-Nazi dog whistles are, themselves, neo-Nazi dog whistles. So, of course that was his alibi. The Trump campaign just got a neo-Nazi dog whistle twofer.
Donald Trump just addressed the ‘Birther’ disinformation campaign he led for years that suddenly became a campaign issue after Trump refused to say whether or not he believed Barack Obama was born in the US during an interview yesterday. For some unexplained reason Trump’s status as the King of the Birthers wasn’t an issue before. But it is now. So Trump held a big press conference with a bunch of veterans and retired generals where he clarified his ‘Birther’ stance. For about 30 seconds, during which he patted himself on the back for his good work confirming that President Obama was indeed born in the US and then proceeded to blame the whole Birther thing on Hillary:
“So no, birtherism doesn’t have Hillary Clinton’s name on its birth certificate. And no, Trump didn’t “finish it” either. To the contrary, he nurtured it and pushed it until President Barack Obama himself finished it by releasing his birth certificate. And even after Obama put out said certificate, Trump continued to question whether it was real for years.”
Another day, another wildly success Trump trolling operation.
Now we get to see if the media really does engage in ‘on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand press coverage duly noting that while yes Trump was a birther he says Hillary was too and her campaign denies it really who knows where the truth lies’ antics. After all, the more the press protects Trump, the likelier Trump wins and the more fun press conferences like this the press can have in the future. And if there’s one this the press loves, it’s a Trump press conference. Usually. Although not quite this time. Why? Well, the press obviously loves to being a Trumpian co-troll and letting him get away with telling the American public almost anything unchallenged. But when the press itself is the target of the trolling? That’s totally unacceptable:
“What they did was tease us that he was going to say something, then as John said, played us by making sure that everybody who has an ability to show Donald Trump actually took 20 minutes, or got 20 minutes, of very important decorated veterans praising somebody who they think should be the next commander-in-chief, which would not have been live on cable news otherwise”
Well, at least now we have a general model for how to get the press outraged at Trump’s outrageousness:
If Trump lies to and trolls the public non-stop, that’s totally cool. The media will be more than happy to assist with that kind of trolling as long as it’s the type of trolling that gets good ratings.
But if Trump teases the press about a big event that they’re expecting to be a Classic Troll Trump stream of consciousness ratings bonanza, and instead it’s a different kind of trolling — a lame form of trolling targeting the press where Trump basically uses the event to promote his new hotel and trots out a bunch of veterans operating as trolling co-actors and unlikely to get great ratings — that’s just beyond the pale. Especially if the entire press corp doesn’t get to tag along during Trump’s hotel tour.
Ok, it’s good to know where the line is with the press: The press is happy to be used in spreading Trump’s lies unchallenged. Just don’t lie to the press about the nature of the upcoming trolling they’re anticipating participating in. And definitely don’t exclude the press from the troll. Because at that point Trump will have a press problem. It’s a sad line, but it’s good to know where it kind of exists.
So at least the press is kind of pissed at Trump for playing them for chumps. Let’s see how many note the fact that one of the veterans who introduced Trump was a birther:
“McInerney wrote the affidavit in support of Army Lieutenant Colonel Terrence Lakin, who was refusing to deploy to Afghanistan because he did not believe Obama was a legitimate president, citing birtherism.”
That’s right, a retired general who appeared to back Birther-based sedition within the military. That’s one of the guys who introduced Trump today. It’s a pretty obvious act of trolling. But it’s also an act of trolling that’s really targeting the public, a class Trump troll that the media normally facilitate, so it’s presumably not newsworthy.
It looks like we’ve hit that phase in the ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’-esque Trumpian news cycle that helps explain why the Trump campaign has been so enthusiastic about promoting the “Hillary Clinton has [insert mental health issue of choice]” memes that the right-wing media and allies like Alex Jones have been pushing for years, long before Hillary’s pneumonia scare. And yes, that would the “just how mentally ill is The Donald because he doesn’t seem to be in control of himself” phase in the ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’-esque Trumpian news cycle:
“Taking on Twitter early Saturday, Trump explained his latest comment in terms of the right to bear arms: “Crooked Hillary wants to take your 2nd Amendment rights away. Will guns be taken from her heavily armed Secret Service detail? Maybe not!””
Yep, Trump doubled-down on his Friday-evening “Hillary’s secret service should be disarmed because she supports greater gun control”-meme the next morning. It’s clearly something he’s sticking to, at least when he’s in Mr. Hyde mode.
So is this a permanent new GOP meme? That politicians who propose gun control legislation should haven’t any sort of armed personal security, at which point the “2nd amendment people” would presumably do their “2nd amendment” thing. There doesn’t appear to be any sort of GOP push back so it sounds like that’s the GOP’s general position on this which suggests that talk they strongly suggests that Democratic politicians deserve to be shot is now a feature in our political landscape. It’s not like it would be surprising if the GOP promoted this meme in its pre-Trump era, since, you know, they’ve been pushing that meme for years. Just not their presidential nominees.
Still, it’s possible Dr. Jekyll Trump will change his mind at a later phase in the Trumpian news cycle and walk it all back. Although, if the above observation by the analyst above, Eric Schiffer, is accurate, we aren’t going to see Dr. Jekyll Trump reemerge until he starts slipping in the polls. Because when Trump thinks he’s ‘winning’, Mr. Hyde Trump reemerges:
“Something happens, and he seems to lose the discipline that has helped him.”
That’s our Trump! The better he’s doing in the polls, the more unhinged and authoritarian he gets. Isn’t a Trump presidency going to be fun?
Interestingly, Josh Marshall also made the same observation about Trump, but upon reflection Josh thinks it might not actually be Trump’s recent surge in the polls that brought out Mr. Hyde Trump. Instead, after looking at the timeline of events over the past few days, Josh comes to a different conclusion: On Wednesday, hours before Trump gave his interview to Washington Post reporter Robert Costa that brought the whole ‘birther’ issue into the spotlight after Trump refused to say whether or not he thought President Obama was born in the US, Trump appears to have suffered a psychic wound of sorts when he was put in his place by an African American female minister at a church in Flint, Michigan, Trump. As Marshall notes, Trump was clearly seething from the incident and the emergence of Mr. Hyde Trump took place just a few outs later. So, if Marshall’s theory is correct, it’s not necessarily ‘winning’ that brings out Mr. Hyde. It’s the losses that bring Mr. Hyde Trump out, even minor losses for Dr. Jekyll Trump’s ego:
“Trump is injured by attacks and slights as we all are. But for Trump they create an inner turbulence which forces an almost peristaltic response. The inner equilibrium must be reestablished. The salient fact about Trump isn’t his cruelty or penchant for aggression and violence. It’s his inability to control urges and drives most people gain control over very early in life. There are plenty of sadists and sociopaths in the world. They’re not remarkable. The scariest have a high degree of impulse control (iciness) which allows them to inflict pain on others when no one is looking or when they will pay no price for doing so. What is true with Trump is what every critic has been saying for a year: the most obvious and contrived provocation can goad this thin skinned charlatan into a wild outburst. He’s a seventy year old man with children and grandchildren and he has no self-control.”
That’s pretty clear at this point: Either Trump has a sever inability to control is urges and ego. At least that’s how he behaves, although maybe he’s actually remarkably disciplined in acting like an unhinged person, which is possibly more disturbing since it would suggest he’s one of those ‘icy’ sociopaths with a high degree of discipline but a complete willingness to act like an unhinged authoritarian for political purposes. What exactly triggers the emergence of Mr. Hyde Trump is indeed a mystery:
So was it Trump’s surging polls that brought out Mr. Hyde Trump or a public rebuke by an African American woman? Based on everything we know about the guy either seems plausible. Or how about both? Maybe he felt like he was winning, then he got publicly slighted, and the combination of the two factors created a situation where he couldn’t help but but revert to form and start dog whistling political violence again.
Theses are the kinds of psychological mysteries that the American public, and the world, get to collectively explore should Trump get elected. If ‘winning’ brings out Mr. Hyde Trump, clearly the best way to make Trump act “presidential” (relatively speaking) is to have him lose the race to become president. If, on the other hand, minor wounds to Trump’s ego are the Mr. Hyde trigger, the obvious solution to keeping Trump in Dr. Jekyll mode is for the entire world to show him complete deference at all times. Otherwise My. Hyde comes out to extract vengeance for the damage done to Dr. Jekyll’s damaged ego. Good to know!
It looks like we have another Pokemon Go. The one of more of a precautionary tale since it’s about the public plans of the Alt-Right neo-Nazis and it’s unclear if they’ve carried through on those plans. But it’s also the kind of plan that sort of works simply by talking about the plan because it’s simply a plan to spread really bad ideas, as is typical with so much of what the “Alt-Right” does these days (it’s a much milder phase than the phase that comes after their bad ideas lead them to higher office). So it’s more of a cautionary precautionary tale that we probably shouldn’t talk about but need to know about anyway:
“The flier features run-of-the-mill neo-Nazi propaganda—it rails on Jews, African-Americans, and claims a “white genocide” is happening and white people need to stand up and prepare for the impending race war. The first step, the flier explains, is electing Donald Trump president. Step two is to “get active in the Nazi movement” because the “alt-right Nazis are the only ones who can save this country from the kikes.””
A neo-Nazi flier for kids with a two-step process for preparing for the impending race war: Step 1. elect Donald Trump. Step 2. Get active in the Alt-Right Nazi movement.
And then there’s the instructions for the adult neo-Nazis: Go to these “Pokemon Gyms” — random real-world locations that players go to in order to capture the Pokemon living there — and hand out these flier to kids. Specifically to kids since their minds are much more vulnerable and impressionable:
Did you hear that, parents? One of the American neo-Nazi leaders just encouraged his followers to congregate at Pokemon Go “gyms” to give your kids fliers about to prepare for a race war by electing Donald Trump and then joining the Alt-Right. Even if there haven’t been any reports yet of people actually handing out these fliers it seems like this would be more of a news story. Maybe it’s not considered topical.
Another day, another neo-Nazi dog whistle from Donald Trump Jr.:
“But the poisoned candy analogy goes back even further, to an anti-Semitic children’s book published by Julius Streicher, the publisher of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer who was executed in 1946 as a war criminal.”
So that was how the Trump campaign met Monday’s neo-Nazi dog whistle quota. And then, of course, the campaign officially praised Donald Jr. for just ‘speaking the truth’:
“Donald Trump’s campaign released a statement Tuesday afternoon defending his son Donald Trump Jr. as “a tremendous asset” amid backlash to him posting a tweet comparing Syrian refugees to poisoned candy.”
Well, it is true that Donald Jr. has been “a tremendous asset” for the Trump campaign since no one, other than perhaps Trump himself, has been as aggressively reaching out to the white nationalist voter base as Donald Jr. He’s like the energizer-bunny of neo-Nazi dog whistles.
It almost raises the question of where Donald Jr. learned to be such an efficient promoter of hate memes. He could have picked up the general approach from his dear old dad, but a lot of this dog whistling requires an awareness of the online neo-Nazi meme-osphere that’s constantly changing and getting updated. Keeping up with that is like a daily mission, which might help explain the daily dog whistles...Donald Jr. is sort of showing the world what new neo-Nazi meme he learned about that day.
But it’s worth keeping in mind that the Trump campaign’s daily dog whistles aren’t just demonstrating to the world its growing mastery of white supremacist code words and symbolism. The campaign is also demonstrating to the world how to troll. It’s teaching by example. As opposed to folks over at The Daily Stormer, who are now simply writing neo-Nazi troll instructions:
“4) And this is crucial – Leave breadcrumbs back to the real Alt-Right. Links or videos that people can follow and learn for themselves.”
Wow, after reading that list of tips, and comparing it to the Trump campaign’s overall strategy for over a year now you have to wonder: Did the Trump campaign first learn how to troll the world by studying the Alt-Right, or is the Alt-Right learning how to troll better after watching the Trump campaign and that’s why their techniques are so similar? Either way, the synergy is undeniable.
That’s a summary of Monday’s neo-Nazi dog whistle. We’ll see how Tuesday’s neo-Nazi dog whistle plays out.
One of the many grim questions raised by the 2016 election cycle is whether or not the Trump campaign’s daily dish of multiple barely hidden neo-Nazi dog whistle trolling is...
A. Primarily intended to maximize his appeal to an electorate that rewards outrageous behavior.
B. Primarily intended to maximize his appeal to an electorate that gravitates towards “F*$# the System” candidates because they are sick and tired of the status quo by completely obscuring from the daily news cycle the daily hints, signs and outright policy proposals that would make it clear that his presidency’s policies would be like Bush on steroids, i.e. The crypto-Nazi candidate.
C. Both A and B about about equally.
It seems like the answer is probably “C”. There’s just so much synergy between the crytpo-Nazi vibe and the GOPs endless need to obscure its policies.
And assuming the answer is “A” or “B”, we should probably expect the Trump campaign to actually increase its usage of barely-crypto-neo-Nazi antics. Why? Because Mike Pence may have just spilled the beans about the kind of ‘populist reform’ the Trump administration would bring by making it clear that it would be the kind of populist reform we would have gotten during George W. Bush’s term in office if Dick Cheney actually had the powers of the presidency:
“If Trump’s Republican ticket succeeds, Pence is likely to be “very active,” indeed. In May, a leading Trump surrogate reportedly reached out to a senior adviser to Ohio Gov. John Kasich ® about possibly serving as running mate. At the time, Kasich was told Trump’s vice president “would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.””
Yes, the Trump campaign isn’t simply a barely-crypto-Nazi campaign. With Mike Pence declaration that Dick Cheney is his role model and Trump’s previous offers to let his VP “be in charge of domestic and foreign policy”, it’s also a barely-crypto-Dick Cheney for President campaign. Or, perhaps more accurately, a barely-crypto-Even Worse Than Dick Cheney for President campaign of doom:
“Let’s put this another way: during his congressional career, Pence wasn’t just more conservative than Paul Ryan. His voting record also put him to the right of Michele Bachmann, Todd Akin, Steve King, and even Louie Gohmert. That’s not an exaggeration. Bachmann, Akin, King, and Gohmert all had voting records less extreme than Mike Pence.”
Uh oh. It’s going to take a lot of barely-crypto-neo-Nazi dog whistle trolling to ensure the media is too distracted to cover the ‘worse than Cheney’ issue the Trump campaign has on its hands. Unfortunately, the kind of trolling required to distract from a story this big that shouldn’t be a problem.
Since it doesn’t appear that Donald Trump Jr. has generated a new neo-Nazi dog whistle controversy yet today (he merely defending more of his more recent dog whistles today), perhaps it would be useful to have a quick review of Trump Jr’s Year of Alt-Rightness. Fortunately, Digby provides with just such a review. It’s the kind of review that’s going to be particularly important for a figure like Donald Trump Jr. since, as Digby’s review reminds us, America’s long national Trumpian nightmare probably isn’t going to end with Trump Sr.:
“You hear pundits and commentators saying that Donald Trump is sui generis and his phenomenon won’t be recreated. They’re probably right. But perhaps they are not aware that his son also has political ambitions and he is simply a younger, better looking version of his father with much more hair. If alt-right white nationalism is going to be an ongoing feature of American political life, they have their leader. He is one of them.”
Well, that was a helpful summary. And, given the actual content of the summary, horribly ominous too:
“The 38-year-old New Yorker said that “maybe when the kids get out of school I would consider it.” The father of five explained that he’d “love to be able to do it, as a patriot.””
Yes, Donald Trump Jr. is clearly so enamored with the work he’s doing as the Trump campaign’s white nationalist outreach specialist that he could end up being one of the permanent political fixtures in US politics. It’s a reminder that Donald Jr. isn’t just dog whistling neo-Nazis on a near daily basis to help his dad’s current political ambitions. He’s helping his own future political ambitions too...assuming neo-Nazi dog whistles remains politically helpful in the future when Donald Jr. plans on running “as a patriot”. That, in turns, depends a lot on how successful the Trump campaign is this year at popularizing the “Alt-Right”. Uh oh.
So as we can see, Donald Trump Jr.‘s neo-Nazi dog whistles aren’t just horribly repackaged echoes of horrible ideas from the past. They’re echoes back in time from our possibly horrible future ideas too.
On the same day that Donald Trump lamented the lack of a “spirit of togetherness” between black and white communities (during a speech in which he blamed President Obama for those racial tensions), it’s worth noting that we may have seen a kind of accidental high point in the Trump campaign’s African American outreach. No, the high point obviously wasn’t that speech. The high point actually happened in response to a new low and is an appallingly low high point by high point standards. But still, a high point may have just happened.
First, let’s take a look at that new low point we also saw today:
“Miller added: “I don’t think there was any racism until Obama got elected. We never had problems like this ... Now, with the people with the guns, and shooting up neighborhoods, and not being responsible citizens, that’s a big change, and I think that’s the philosophy that Obama has perpetuated on America.””
So that was a nice preview of what American History textbooks are going to look like in a few decades after our Trumpian revolution. But we aren’t there yet. No, believe it or not, after giving that rather eye-opening interview, the chair of the Republican nominee’s campaign in Mahoning County — one of the Ohio counties most impacted by electronic voting machine ‘mysteries’ in 2004 — did the unthinkable. She resigned!
Yes, a Trump campaign official said something mind-numbingly racist and actually resigned as a result. Isn’t this a Trump campaign first? And, no, the mass resignation of the Trump Latino advisors who resigned in protest after that Trump surrogate warned about Taco Trucks on every corner doesn’t count.
So isn’t Miller’s resignation a first for the Trump campaign? If so, it sure looks like we’ve hit some sort of Trumpian race relations high point simply by discovering that there really is a line that can be crossed that will actually lead to a resignation. Granted, it might be a resignation that has more to do with the bad press that interview generated as opposed to any profound disagreement between Miller and the Trump campaign. Still, even discovering there’s a line at all is kind of significant. Behold our high point! We did it, America! Together.
And who knows, maybe this is just the first in what will a long string of resignations as the Trump campaign decides to purge itself of aggressively racist surrogates. Or, you know, maybe not.
With the big first Clinton/Trump debate just around the corner and Trump and Clinton in a virtual dead heat in national polls, some preemptive wincing at the media’s inevitable attempts to spin Trump into the White House — so we can have extra high ratings for the next four years while the world burns — is probably in order. So here goes! *wince*:
“A lot depends on whether the same behavior continues for the final stretch. If the media report on the debates the way they did in 2000 – if substance is replaced by descriptions of Clinton’s facial expressions, her sighs, or how she “comes across,” while downplaying Trump’s raw lies, say hello to the Trump White House. And history will not forgive the people who made it possible.”
Yes, history might not forgive the people who did what they could to make it possible for a Trump administration to irreversibly damage the course of history and destroy the hopes and dreams of future generations. But keep in mind that history might not actually be all that relevant in a post-fact/post-history Trumpian future. Destroying the future doesn’t have to have future repercussions if you destroy the future so thoroughly the future can’t remember the past.
So get ready for an abundance of media spin about how Donald “what good are nukes if we can’t use them” Trump won the debate because he didn’t murder someone on stage. As long as he wins, those who helped him win don’t have to worry about their history legacy because the future will already be lost. And just imagine the ratings President Trump will generate in the process. Hooray! *wince*:
“In a Sunday interview with CNN’s Brian Stelter, the commission’s executive director, Janet Brown, said that she was not in favor of fact-checking by NBC anchor Lester Holt, who will moderate the debate Monday.”
Yes, not only are most of the networks avoiding live fact-checking — because that’s apparently not something news networks are good at — but the executive director of the Commissions on Presidential Debates doesn’t want the moderator to do any fact-checking either. The Powers that Be clearly hate the world today. And the future. That’s too bad but it is what it is. Get ready America! *wince*
Given the ongoing debate in the US how the nation found itself in a Trumpian existential crisis — which is much like the standard existential crisis the US faces every presidential election from the very real possibility of election a Republican president, but more orange and somehow more absurd than normal election year — and given how many of those questions relate to the role the US media has played, or not played, in fueling the rise of Trump, here’s an article that’s worth noting in that debate: American journalism, as a profession, is still collapsing, and with the plateauing of online journalism job growth now underway and no longer able to offset the collapse in print journalism, the collapse of US journalism appears to be accelerating:
“Based on my analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) program, the number of journalists at digital native publishers has more than tripled in the past decade. This growth, however, pales in comparison to the number of journalists laid off in the newspaper industry. And in recent years, the number of journalists at digital-only publishers seems to have actually plateaued. With fewer journalists working today, reporters are becoming increasingly concentrated in coastal cities, investigative journalism and local statehouse reporting is declining, and the ratio of journalists to public relations specialists is widening.”
Yes, journalism is dying and getting replaced by public relations specialists. Oh, and don’t forget that being a journalist is considered one of the worst jobs in America and has been for years.
So might this all have something to do with the rise of Trump or are Trump’s surge and the collapse of journalism as a viable profession both symptoms of some underlying collective dysfunction that was going to happen with or without the decline of journalism? It’s one of those ‘chicken and egg’ situations: If the public actually valued valuable journalism, journalism presumably wouldn’t have declined and we could have had a media environment that actual cultivates in its audience a desire for quality analysis and the kind of meaningful discourse that actually leads to solutions and improves lives in a way that prevents the rise of someone like Trump. But the decline in the public’s appetite for quality journalism didn’t happen in a vacuum. Fox News, right-wing talk radio, and the general the right-wing/pro-corporate junk media reality-bubble media has been gathering steam for decades too. It’s as if we collectively slit our intellectual wrists, just to get a taste, and then decided it tasted really good and asked for more. You do that long enough and you’re inevitably going to get so lightheaded that electing Orange Hitler suddenly doesn’t seem like an existential crisis. It’s kind of hard to sustain high-quality journalism in that kind of environment.
But regardless of the role the decline of the journalism industry has played in the rise of Trump, it’s pretty clear that the decline of the industry and the decline of America’s political culture and general knowledge base isn’t stopping any time soon, President Trump or not. Considering the incredible messes these twin dynamics inevitably create for a nation at least there’s inevitably going to be lots of really important stories that need covering. So at least the abundance of disasters that could have been avoided with a well-informed public that but aren’t avoided should hopefully turn things around for the industry. Disasters, even avoidable disasters like a Trump presidency, are generally good news for the news industry. Of course, if that’s how things worked we would already be in the middle of journalistic golden age. So, yeah, maybe that’s not going to happen.
Given the rise of Trumpian politicians around the globe, here’s a look at how the Phillipines is dealing with its own Trump: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, a politician often seen as the Donald Trump of the Philippines, just likened himself to Hitler and said he would be happy to slaughter the country’s 3 million drug users:
“Hitler massacred 3 million Jews ... there’s 3 million drug addicts. There are. I’d be happy to slaughter them.”
Ok, so the Philippines’ new president is basically the Hitler for drug users. And he’s overwhelmingly popular. Although, given the parallels between Duterte’s declaration of open season on drug users and the violent drug crackdown that took place last decade in Thailand, it’s worth keeping in mind that Duterte actually declared open season on drug users and basically anyone else since that the nature of the extrajudicial killings he’s unleashed...except for actual drug lords who will be fine:
“According to an official investigation launched after the 2006 military coup that wrenched power from Thaksin, 1,400 people out of the 2,500 killed as part of the war on drugs had nothing to do with drugs. And profitable drug routes from Myanmar reportedly remained intact, protected by the Myanmar and Thai government bureaucracy and business elites.”
Yes, over half of Thailand’s war on drugs deaths had nothing to do with drugs and the drug lords were largely fine, which is probably what we should expect for the Hitler of the Philippines’ extrajudicial mass murder program. Will the public care? It’s hard to see why. After all, given the incredibly vile and almost casual dehumanization of illegal drug users already embraced by the populace, why would they care about the killing of additional innocent people? Don’t forget that Duterte joking lamented about not getting invited to a gang rape in his home town as he was campaign for President and won! The Philippines is clearly in the thrall of some sort of blood lust and addicted to violence and murder as a means of ‘solution’ for dealing with its illegal drug using population (as opposed to, you know, humanizing them and maybe recognizing it as a public health issue). One might even say the Filippino society today, like so many other societies, is addicted to violence and murder as the problem-solving solution of choice. Except unlike a drug addict who at least knows what they’re addicted to, when a society gets addicted to violence and mass murder it’s generally not aware of it and unwilling to do anything about it. Yikes. That’s one scary addiction/public health issue.
The parallels grew today between Donald Trump and the ‘Trump of the Philippines’ President Rodrigo Duterte. So here’s a pair of stories that, while not directly related, both follow a theme which is, of course, a disturbing theme:
First, video of a testimony Donald Trump made for his lawsuit against a celebrity chef who withdrew from a planned restaurant at one of Trump’s new hotels in the wake of Trump’s characterization of Mexican undocumented immigrants as including a large number of rapists during the opening speech of his presidential campaign.
As one might expect, the question of whether or not Trump had actually thought about the kind of damage his ‘Mexican rapist’ comments might do to the planned business was brought up in the testimony. So did Trump plan on calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” before he gave his speech? According to the video, yes. And did Trump think his comments might actually hurt his planned business? No, he did not think about how his comments might affect business deals. Beyond that, he didn’t actually think they were offensive at all, citing the fact that he won the GOP primary as evidence. He also felt the media was actually distorting his statement. And since Trump is confident that most people agreed with his comments, he felt that, if anything, his ‘Mexican rapist ‘comments should help the restaurant, although he conceded that he didn’t really know if those comments would be negatively received by Hispanics (or anyone who doesn’t like to hear hate speech from putative presidents).
So the guy who could easily become the next President of the United States didn’t really think that strongly suggesting a large number of Mexican undocumented immigrants are rapists in his opening campaign speech might be negatively received, even by Hispanics, and to this day still doesn’t feel it’s been negatively received. If anything, they’ve helped the Trump ‘brand’. Also, the media has totally distorted what he said so any negative sentiments generated his comments (which have become an overarching campaign theme at this point) are basically unfair.
So it doesn’t sound like Donald Trump doesn’t plan on saying the deplorable things he says. He plans on it. It’s just that those plans don’t include the possibility that everyone won’t love what he says. It’s something to keep in mind if you’re planning on going into business with Donald Trump, especially now that he’s a high profile celebrity businessman. It’s also, of course, something to keep in mind if you’re planning on voting for him:
“It is always possible...I just don’t know. I mean, I don’t know how to answer that question. It’s possible.”
Yes, it’s possible that his comments that strongly associated Latinos with rape could have dissuaded Hispanics from patronizing Trump establishments. It’s possible but he’s not really sure. He just doesn’t know how to even begin thinking about it. But if you’re in business with him and distance yourself after he makes those comments he’ll sue you. Still, he’s pretty what he said was actually helpful and well received. It’s bold leadership, folks! If you can’t see that it’s the media’s fault.
So that was the Trump-end of our pair of parallel stories. Now let’s take a look at the latest spin from Rodrigo Duterte’s administration over what exactly he meant when he compared himself to Hitler and said would be glad to “slaughter” 3 million drug users as part of some sort national purification scheme to “save the next generation from perdition”. Well, according to Duterte’s spokesperson, Durterte was actually rejecting the Hitler label that critiques were already using. Also, he still totally supports his mass murder program, including the extrajudicial killings but plans to kill three million illegal drug users (alcohol apparently doesn’t lead to perdition) is not at all comparable to the slaughter of millions of Jews because the Holocaust was intended to kill off the Jews while killing millions of drug users is actually intended to save the next generation from going to hell. See, it’s not like the Holocaust...even though he made that direct comparison which is what triggered the latest outcry in the first place. It’s the opposite!
““He likewise draws an oblique conclusion that while the holocaust was an attempt to exterminate the future generation of Jews, the so-called extrajudicial killings, roundly attributed to him, will nevertheless result in the salvation of the next generation of Filipinos,” said Abella.”
Yes, in Duterte’s mind, the justifications for the Holocaust apparently didn’t include killing intense propaganda about how the Jews threatened future generations. And when he compared himself to Hitler and justified his mass murder campaign as some sort of salvation for the nation he was actually drawing a direct contrast the Holocaust. Sure, that’s super believable.
So that a glimpse at “oops, I didn’t mean to say that horrible thing (or implement that horrible policy)) that’s not actually horrible and totally misunderstood” trend in global leadership. While Duterte is obviously much more horrible than Trump at this point since he’s actually in power already and actually administering a mass murder campaign, it’s still hard to ignore the parallels
Guess which presidential candidate has a history of dropping hints that they are a closet eugenicist. Just take one tiny little guess. Better yet, take a YUUGE guess:
“At a rally in Washington, D.C. in September 2015, Mr Trump claimed that, if he became president, “we’ll win so much, you’ll get bored with winning”.”
Yes, if Donald Trump, a self-declared genius, becomes president there will indeed be an abundance of winning. Sure, it will be the oligarchs (you know, fellow ‘winners’ like Trump) who will be doing the actual winning. And, of course, open eugenicists. There’s going to be no shortage of winning for them.
But that doesn’t mean the nation as a whole won’t be winning too. It might not be the kind of prize any society actually wants to win, but if the US actually elects this barely-crypto-Nazi to the highest office of the land there will be winning for America.
The Trump campaign was denied its request to use the use International Civil Rights Museum as a campaign photo-op that would have shut the museum down for half a day. Big surprise that the folks behind the International Civil Rights museum wouldn’t be super psyched to have the Alt Right’s champion use the museum as some sort of minority outreach prop, right? Well, there are a number of Trump supporters who, if not surprised, were pretty enraged by it. Or maybe they just hated the museum and wanted an excuse to threaten to shoot it up and burn it down. Either way, a bunch of Trump supporters are now threatening to shoot up and burn down the International Civil Rights Museum:
““The callers were threatening to come over and burn down the building and to shoot up the building,” he said. “They’ve lessened in frequency this week, but they’re still coming in.””
Well, at least it sounds like the museum is recording all these threatening phone calls. It should make for a great exhibit someday.
And in other Trumpian civil rights news...
With the Trump campaign in a new phase of its seemingly endless meltdown that started after the first Presidential debate and never seemed to stop, a mass GOP defection phase, one of the questions we unfortunately need to ask ourselves is what kind of impact a month-long Trump implosion that might have on the psyche of his most fervent supports. Supporters who have fully accepted the notion that the only way Trump could lose the election is through some sort of rigging and fraud. The best case scenario would be some sort of actual soul searching and reflection and abundant asking of questions like “how did we become so deluded?”
That’s the best case scenario. And then there are the other scenarios:
“If Trump goes down in November, he’s taking Clinton, the Republican party, and the electoral process with him. On Tuesday, the GOP nominee went after House Speaker Paul Ryan on Twitter calling him “weak and ineffective,” and slamming members of the Republican party who have dropped their support for him as “disloyal.””
It sure looks like Trump is aiming for a worst case scenario response on the part of his supporters if Trump experiences what, to him, is the worst thing possible for a winner like Donald Trump: losing and losing big. If that happens, goading the Trump base into burning the country down is pretty much the only ‘win’ he’ll have left and it’s pretty clear that he’s at least very tempted to go down that route if he does indeed lose. Especially since, as we saw above, he’s already trying to burn the GOP down and basically succeeding. Winning!:
““Disloyal R’s are far more difficult than Crooked Hillary,” he wrote for his more than 12 million followers on Twitter, his preferred platform for picking fights. “They come at you from all sides. They don’t know how to win — I will teach them!””
Uh oh! “Disloyal R’s” just got put on notice: support Trump or he’ll teach you lesson. A lesson about winning. And since this is Trump, it’s going to be a form of winning that probably involves destroying all those “Disloyal R’s”. The Trumpster is losing and he pissed!
So Donald Trump has added “Disloyal R’s” to his official sh#t list. And there’s still a month left in this campaign which doesn’t even include the possible post-election period that could emerge if Trump refuses to actually concede defeat, which means that sh#t list could grow considerably. Especially if Trump declares the election rigged and invalid and the rest of the GOP doesn’t immediately get behind him and try to create some sort of constitutional crisis that makes the 2000 election look like a fond memory. Don’t forget there could be a tied Supreme Court since the GOP won’t allow Obama’s nominee to get a vote and replace Antonin Scalia. So if the GOP tries to challenge the election in a way that comes down to the Supreme Court decision, it really could be tied at 4–4. That could be quite a crisis.
Given the growing reality that Trump is going to adopt a full scale scorched-Earth policy that characterizes not just the Democrats but ‘Establishment’ Republicans too as enemies of the American people (and that’s basically his message at this point), one of the extremely unfortunate questions we need to also ask is what exactly that kind of scenario will do to the all those Trump supporters that may not be ready to ask Mike Pence about “revolution” backup plans if Trump loses, but might be willing to considering it. A scenario where ‘Establishment’ GOPers like Paul Ryan might not have much sway with the Trumpian base. What happens to all those supporters if Trump makes a call to arms or whatever? We just might find out. And we just might find out that Trump’s white nationalist ‘Alt-right’ base have been planning on supplanting the ‘Establishment’ all along:
“We need to get the word out. We are the new GOP!”
That’s the Alt-Right rallying cry: We are the new GOP! And, to some extent at least, they’re correct. They’re the Trump wing of the GOP and if Trump wins this civil war the Alt-Right really is the new GOP. And if Trump loses the election and doesn’t manage to create some sort of constitutional crisis of “revolution” by refusing to concede defeat, at that point winning that intra-party civil war might be the only “winning” option Trump has left.
Might the Trumpian Alt-Right succeed and do to the GOP what the Tea Party did not too long ago in the post-election period after suffering a bruising loss? It seems possible. Perhaps even precedented.
With the election less than a month away and the Trump campaign in a seemingly unstoppable downward spiral of self-inflicted injuries, it might be tempting to breath a sigh of relief. But as Josh Marshall reminds us below, it’s not just election day that we need to be concerned about. It’s the day after election day that should be keeping you up at night:
“It is a very, very dangerous step when a presidential nominee openly threatens to jail his opponent if he wins. It’s no less dangerous when a candidate pushes the idea that an election will be stolen and lays the groundwork for resisting the result. That’s happening. It is difficult to overstate the societal benefit of being able to take it almost as an absolute given and assumption that no matter how intense and close-fought an election gets, virtually everyone will accept the result the day after. Undermining that assumption is of a piece with introducing into the political arena the idea that people who lose election might lose more than the election: loss of money, freedom, or worse etc”
And that’s a big part of what makes Trump’s “I’m going to lose because they’re going to rig the election” talk so dangerous: it’s not just an unprecedented attempt to undermine one of the most important social contracts that keep democracy functioning — that we accept the results of the vote barring some sort of actual evidence of massive fraud — but it’s also “a piece with introducing into the political arena the idea that people who lose election might lose more than the election: loss of money, freedom, or worse etc.” If Hillary wins, you’re going to lose everything. That’s the larger right-wing meme behind the Trumps “I can only lose if Hillary cheats” meme.
And as the article below also reminds us, it’s not just the Trump campaign and Trump supporters pushing these memes. For instance, take conservative columnist Kurt Schlichter, a Ted Cruz backer who still really doesn’t appear to like Trump much at all and who previously fretted over the fact that Trump didn’t even know about the nuclear triad. Well, while Schlichter may not be the biggest fan of Donald Trump, and while Schlichter is predicting that a Trump loss will primarily be due to Trump’s own failings and not election rigging, he’s also calling for conservatives to stop recognizing the validity of a Democratic president and wage a peaceful ‘Conservative Insurgency’. And if that doesn’t work they’ll be forced to go with the non-peaceful version:
“We refuse to give them our respect or obedience. Let’s get our minds right here – the key to liberal success is our consent and acquiescence, and they will demand it based upon the lie that 2016 is a mandate for their petty tyranny. It’s not. It’s a rejection of a creepy buffoon who got where he is simply by being the only one who would stand up to the lies and the cronyism. They can’t make us do anything, unless they send people with guns. And don’t count on femboy hipsters in skinny jeans to be those guys.”
So basically, if Hillary wins, Schlichter wants to the right-wing to just say “no, we won’t be following laws coming from liberal elected officials anymore”, and try to create a Bundy-style armed showdown situation. Except it won’t be a showdown on a ranch in Nevada or a wildlife reserve in Oregon. It will be conservatives everywhere just refusing to recognize the validity of the government. And not because Trump loses to rigging of the election but just because liberals have no moral authority. That’s Schlichter’s message:
Yes, Schlichter doesn’t want a violent insurrection (LOL!), he just sees no other option. Because that’s how bad Hillary is. And not just Hillary but modern America in general (he recently wrote that a “Fall of Rome” scenario would be the best for America).
But at least Schlichter is just a right-wing columnist and now, say, and elected official. Like, for instance, the governor of Maine:
“I called him autocratic yesterday, but let me be very clear,” LePage said, winding up. “I believe the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, is a dictator.”
Yes, during a press conference where Governor LePage was clarifying what he meant when he previously said, “We need a Donald Trump to show some authoritarian power in our country and bring back the rule of law,” Governor LePage assured us that he actually meant to say “authoritative power”. Also, Obama is a dictator. So while LePage ran scared from his own words for some reason he wasn’t scared about insulting a man he claims to think is a dictator. Imagine that.
So that’s all part of why November 8th, election day, might just be a prelude to the BIG contest this election season: what do we do if Donald Trump and the rest of the far-right just decide to not only declare the election invalid but declare Democrats and liberal policies in general as somehow invalid too and something people MUST oppose at all costs. In other words, remember that infamous meeting that took place in 2009 on the night Barack Obama was sworn into office where a number of GOP elected officials agreed to run a legislative ‘insurgency’ modeled after the Taliban? What do we do if the GOP has that same meeting after this election, but invite the rest of the public to follow them in their ‘insurgency’? It’s a pretty big question.
It’s also a reminder that there’s no law guaranteeing that A Handmaid’s Tale remains a tale.
It looks like Donald Trump has his rebuttal ready for not just the current maelstrom of sexual assault charges against him but all other charges that might come out in the future: It turns out there’s a global conspiracy of power elites, not just a US elites but a global elites, who are all conspiring against Donald Trump and the American people. Along with the media. And they really hate Trump because he represents an existential threat to their global conspiracy. Therefore, all of these sexual assault allegations you’re hearing about Donald Trump (and anything else about him that might come out going forward) are part of the global conspiracy so just ignore them because they’re all lies:
“This is a conspiracy against you, the American people, and we cannot let this happen or continue”
Well, that settles that. Trump’s campaign meltdown is the result of a global conspiracy and not a well-documented legacy of predatory lecherousness that was going to predictably come out sooner or later.
So it looks like we can add “global elite conspiracy” to the list of reasons Trump is going to give when he refuses to concede defeat after the election and tries to start some sort of Trumpian insurrection. And since “global elite conspiracy” has become synonymous with “Jewish bankers”, and since Donald Trump is the Alt-Right candidate and the “Jewish bankers” meme is one of their favorites, we now have to ask ourselves if the final stretch of this campaign season is going to go full StormFront, with Trump declaring war on Illuminati Jewish bankers or something, or if Trump keeps the “global conspiracy” rhetoric as a very loud StormFront dog-whistle left to the audience to interpret. Either way, the Alt-Right/StormFront crowd is going to have no problem deciphering want Trump is trying to say:
“It’s possible these are simply the tropes and storylines of international Jewish conspiracies repurposed with the Jews removed from the picture. But it hardly matters. The substrate of traditional anti-Semitism is just as toxic as what grows from it. These are the kinds of conspiratorial, revanchist fantasies that spur violence and attacks on the mundane ordinariness of democracy itself.”
And now we get to see where he takes this meme next. Was this speech an introduction to the new campaign slogan or just a one off Trumpian rant? We’ll find out, but keep in mind that whether or not Trump himself pushes the “global elites are conspiracy against you and me” meme over the next few weeks, a huge chunk of Trump’s base already follow Trump’s lose media ally Alex Jones and therefore this audience has already heard those memes before and will continue hearing them for the foreseeable future. And you can be pretty sure they’re going to the Trump campaign is going to be directing as much traffic as possible to sites like InfoWars given the trajectory of Trump’s campaign. So if your very conservative Trump supporting friend informs you that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are possessed by demons and that’s why we shouldn’t recognize the outcome of the election, feel free to be profoundly saddened, but don’t be super surprised.
The dates on Schlichter’s book “Conservative Insurgency” read 2009–2041.
Why 2041? Perhaps this is to call to mind the date of 1941. That was a dark and bloody year in Nazi-occupied Germany.