Sunday, July 16, 2023

Prepare to Fight Fascism: 2017 and Beyond

November 14, 2016

When Donald Trump takes the presidency next year – bringing with him the likes of Rudolph Giuliani and Chris Christie – you’ll need to protect yourself against efforts to turn our oligarchic state into a fascist state.

First, here’s why. And lastly, here’s how.

Why

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines Fascism:

…a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.

Fascism defines Donald Trump

This, of course, also defines Donald Trump, his professed philosophy, actions and where he plans to take us. Voters seem to think they elected (via the electoral college, not the popular vote, which he lost) a populist, garrulous, successful entrepreneur — a powerful corporate leader opposed to the establishment. That’s a media illusion developed through a decade on his “reality” TV show. It’s a corporate media that, first, loved him because of his TV ratings, then, second, began to attack him when they realized they had helped him become a viable candidate.

So, now, he is about to take command of the most powerful, war-aggressive military in world history, massive government spy apparatus and abusive federal legal system.

Trump, in his youth, was weaned by a real-estate father to be a business “killer” (his father’s term), and a winner and not a loser, according to PBS Frontline. In young adulthood, he was trained by the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn. Cohn made his name as a legal henchman for Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the notorious ’50s “Red-Scare” politician. Cohn represented Trump in business for years, pushing him to (1) never admit to anything negative, (2) propagandize every negative into a positive and (3) if anybody sues you, countersue. That’s not what you would call an honest life, but it is a way to help protect yourself legally.

You can get a clear view of Trump’s history, as well as Hillary Clinton’s — the formation of their thinking, philosophy, speech and actions — in the powerful PBS Frontline documentary “The Choice 2016”.

Trump has applied those three Cohn dictums in his aggressive business and political behavior for decades. And he will apply them as president. He’s let no one stand in his way. When he personally made millions off his failed Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City, he sloughed off the millions of dollars stockholders lost, saying they should have monitored their investments better, according to Frontline.

When the Trump Taj Mahal and other Trump-titled assets began to fail in the ‘90s, banks kept from busting him, deciding they’d lose all their loan money if they took his name off the buildings. He’s gone to school on that, no longer starting new hotel projects, but selling his name worldwide while others actually own and develop the businesses. He may say he’s doing the constructing, but he’s not. That, and his illusive TV persona, carry him to this day.

Can’t you just see Trump turning into a Vladimir Putin, secretly making billions off of others’ businesses when he’s president? He’s been groomed for it. And if anyone gets in his way, now he can implement presidential power to overrun them. Look for him to operate with policymakers globally, publicly pushing American nationalism, but in private saying, “Let’s you and I make a deal. What’s in it for me?”

The Constitution

So you’ll have to, first, be prepared to defend your Constitution of the United States and its Bill of Rights.

Think immediately of the First Amendment, and particularly the freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Recall that Trump, during his presidential campaign often ostracized members of the press — refusing to let them into his campaign functions — if he didn’t like their questions or articles about him.

President Barack Obama took great pains to control the press. His Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) tapped the Associated Press’s emails. We included this in our column “None’s Well That’s Orwell”. And Obama’s Justice Department also tried to intimidate all reporters by going after Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter James Risen, threatening him with jail if he didn’t reveal the name of a whistle-blowing source. We wrote about this in detail in our column “National Security Depends on Press Freedom”.

Turkey's president-turned dictator Erdogan — Turkey’s president-turned-dictator Erdogan

Trump will be ready to put all the government power available to him to carry Obama’s press intimidation program even farther. How far will a fascist dictator go? Just research Turkey currently under its democratically-elected president-turned-dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Trump has also shown abusive disdain for minorities, immigrants, women and public protesters. And you can bet he’ll find ways to intimidate and jail them. And if he can’t pass a law to do it, he’ll simply sign a presidential executive order, and it will come into play before the public even realizes it.

Also, Congress has given the president broad emergency powers if he decides to declare a national emergency. These powers allow dictatorial control over the nation when the chief executive declares a national emergency. We wrote about the overwhelming emergency presidential powers in our column “July 4: Our Independence Versus Today’s Emergency Powers”.

Austerity and Police Power

Following the U.S. national midterm elections in 2014, we wrote the column “As U.S. Austerity Deepens, Prepare for Revolution”.

We saw the Millionaire Congress begin implementing its austerity, fighting health care, limiting unemployment compensation, caring little about hundreds of thousands returning military veterans from our endless wars with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD), leading to daily suicides.

As the new Millionaire Congress (Republicans and Democrats) further ramp up austerity, and Trump supports it, look for the nation to move even closer to revolution. Hopefully peaceful revolution, but probably not.

During his campaign, Trump preached for more police control of the public, not less. Fear of revolution prompted the federal government under Obama to supply military hardware to local police forces. He reluctantly claimed to stop it late in his second term due to the public outcry. But expect Trump, flashing his mantle as Commander in Chief, to encourage greater militarizing of police nationwide.

Privatization

Internationally, American and European oligarchs have looked for chances to move into debt-torn countries and swallow up their public assets and natural resources at dirt-cheap prices, turning public services into private corporate operations. Washington has colluded with private corporations to do that, particularly in South America, as we wrote about in our column “Why Ecuador REALLY Gave Assange Asylum”.

That would be right up Trump’s alley. His top priority has always been “making a deal”, i.e. making money. And as president he’ll have national and global opportunities to secretly do that.

Cohorts will encourage it. Giuliani as mayor of New York pushed to both censor and privatize the arts, and keep the public from investigating budgets, but was stalled by federal court rulings. After his mayoral effort, he tried to privately control millions in a fund for families of 9/11 victims — until a group of police widows threatened to file suit. Christie, as governor of New Jersey, has moved water supply services from public control to the private sector.

These are the first issues to consider and respond to as Trump works to consolidate his power. We’ll be looking more at these and other issues — ranging from domestic to foreign affairs — as we move forward.

How

How can you defend yourself and your fellow citizens from the coming fascist onslaught? Peculiar Progressive for years has encouraged you to get organized (you can’t do it alone), get educated to each issue’s specifics and get active in bringing about change. It’s now going to take a massive effort to defend yourself, your children and your Constitution. It’s doubtful you’ll get much help from the Millionaire Congress — who could refuse to fund Trump efforts, but won’t — or from a conservative U.S. Supreme Court he’s about to make more conservative by appointing a ninth judge.

History shows that dictators move into power unexpectedly during economic downturns, coups d’etat, revolutions or states of emergency.

So, to your marks, get set, go.

Originally published in The Clyde Fitch Report, now in my book The Vital Realities for 2020 and Beyond:

The Vital Realities for 2020 and Beyond: Writings on Water Wars, Nuclear Devastation, Endless War, Economic Revolution, and Surveillance Versus Freedom - Kindle edition by Armbrust, Roger. Politics & Social Sciences Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

Why Fascists Fear the Arts…and You

Roger Armbrust

March 20, 2017

Let’s start with the basics.

First, let’s go to the Oxford English Dictionary for two definitions:

Art: “Works produced by human creative skill and imagination.”

The Arts: “The various branches of creative activity, such as painting, music, literature, and dance.”

Now let’s go to the definition of Fascism which we used in our November column about the election of Donald Trump, “Prepare to Fight Fascism: 2017 and Beyond”. It’s from Merriam-Webster’s dictionary:

…a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.

Honestly comparing and contrasting these definitions should provide us a pretty clear view of why Fascists fear The Arts…and you:

The Arts encourage human creativity and imagination, the free and limitless pursuit of expression in order to expand the body, mind, and spirit, and conceive of the universe’s endless connections. Fascism demands a loyalty to a single nation, often a single race, and an authoritarian repression of freedom of thought and expression. Simply stated: The Arts teach us how to think. Fascism teaches us what to think.

So it’s logical why Fascists find the Arts terrifying. A population left free to think and act will begin to understand their suffering from repression, and eventually get organized, educated and active in revolting against it — either peacefully or violently.

Dictators must corral free thinking

This is why, throughout history, when dictators come to power, they immediately go after and corral the free thinkers, primarily the artists, writers, and teachers. Hitler did it. Stalin did it. Today, Turkey’s democratically elected president-turned-dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan is doing it.

In recent years, the US has been caught up in a creeping form of this repression, seen particularly in our handling of higher education. Government and corporations have touted a STEM education. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math — vital pursuits on their own to help make a society sustainable. But without the “A,” The Arts, turning STEM to STEAM, you won’t have a sustainable society. Because The Arts lead humans’ creative thinking to demand free expression, true democracy and respect for human rights.

Fascism can’t afford that, including in its recent American form of Oligarchic Capitalism. Here we send money to a few and force slave labor on the many.

In higher education, we’ve created the racket of more highly paid administrators and fewer adequately paid professors, depending more and more on part-time teachers who’ve received their advanced degrees but can’t find a full-time job with salary and benefits. And when administrations decide to cut college budgets, the first programs to go are in the arts, in the “A,” not in the STEM, which they consider big moneymakers. And that’s what American higher ed is about today, big money.

This has led teachers, like most other American workers, to try to live on credit, with government allowing Wall Street to seep subprime lending into home loans, credit cards, auto loans and small businesses.

Banks and government have also colluded in placing a generation of college-educated students into long-term debt, with college-loan debt now over $1.3 trillion, larger even than the $779 billion Americans owe for credit cards.

Government, industry and media tout America as the world’s exceptional economic leader, but insightful economists are constantly preaching that global private and public debt are the highest in history, and that the unhealthy debt will lead to another global economic meltdown.

All this is the result of government and corporations, especially the major media, encouraging the population to be herded unthinking into debt with delusional promises of future prosperity.

And now we’ve moved from decades of industrial production and profits for the few to a world experiencing a dangerous climate change that Fascists can’t afford to acknowledge. To do so would be admission that the Oligarchic Capitalism is failing not only the people, but the planet.

All this is at the basis of the Trump administration’s new budget, introduced last week. It includes eliminating the chief federal agencies involved in encouraging humans HOW to think: a variety of education-grant programs, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The proposed budget slashes funding for the Environmental Protection Agency; in fact Trump had already erased from the White House website any mention of climate change. And the budget greatly increases the Department of Defense monies, more for Homeland Security, and encourages the development of fossil fuels.

It is a budget which even conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks, an avid espouser of free markets, condemned:

They’re investing in everything that’s hard power…threat and fear. And disinvesting in everything that has to do with compassion, care, thinking and innovation.

That pretty well summarizes both Fascism and the Trump budget. It will take you getting organized, educated, and active in demanding that the Millionaire Congress oppose both of those destructive forces, which unfortunately the Millionaire Congress is a part of. Some observers believe Congress will oppose such deep budget cuts. But if you want to rely on politicians supporting you without hearing from you, then as legendary broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow used to say: “Good night, and good luck.”

Originally published in The Clyde Fitch Report. Now in my book The Vital Realities for 2020 and Beyond

Tuesday, July 4, 2023

None’s Well That’s Orwell

Roger Armbrust

June 9, 2013

It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself–anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face…was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime…

George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 5

In America now, there is one surveillance camera for every 10 people. With Congress’s approval of drones on the U.S. mainland, the Federal Aviation Administration estimates 10,000 drones will be filling America’s skies within five years. A recent example of law enforcement’s growing use of facial recognition technology: Slate magazine reports that the Statue of Liberty is being geared with software called FaceVACS, made by German firm Cognitec:

FaceVACS, Cognitec boasts in marketing materials, can guess ethnicity based on a person’s skin color, flag suspects on watch lists, estimate the age of a person, detect gender, “track” faces in real time, and help identify suspects if they have tried to evade detection by putting on glasses, growing a beard, or changing their hairstyle.

Last year, Peculiar Progressive in CFR outlined when our country’s president, with Congress’s concurrence, could become a tyrant, based on the abuse of liberties. You can read that here: July 4: Our Independence Versus Today’s Emergency Powers.

And now in recent weeks we’ve seen a rash of reports of Big Brother activity:

London’s The Guardian newspaper revealed last week that the Obama administration convinced a secret court to order phone giant Verizon to turn over location, length, duration and phone numbers for every call on its system for its millions of customers-a major affront to individual liberty. This is based on the philosophy of guilty until proven innocent, in direct opposition to the U.S. Constitution.

The Washington Post reported last week that “the National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document.” But the program, code-name PRISM, can also track your information.

In mid-May, The Associated Press reported that the Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of AP’s reporters and editors “in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a ‘massive and unprecedented intrusion’ into how news organizations gather the news.” This is a blatant attack on the Constitution and freedom of the press.

A secret court. A top-secret document. Secretly confiscating a newspaper’s phone records. Those are the latest concrete examples of growing totalitarianism in America. On a broader and deeper scale, here are the four major factors of totalitarianism present in Orwell’s novel which show that 1984 is alive and ill in America.

And while, in America, the problem is not just government control over the people-but Wall Street and multinational corporations’ control over government and the people-the four major factors in 1984 remain at the basis of our dilemma:

Nationalism and Endless War

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines “nationalism”:

loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially : a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups.

Encyclopedia Britannica clarifies nationalism’s place in our society:

Nationalism is a modern movement. Throughout history people have been attached to their native soil, to the traditions of their parents, and to established territorial authorities; but it was not until the end of the 18th century that nationalism began to be a generally recognized sentiment molding public and private life and one of the great, if not the greatest, single determining factors of modern history. Because of its dynamic vitality and its all-pervading character, nationalism is often thought to be very old; sometimes it is mistakenly regarded as a permanent factor in political behaviour.

In 1984, the powerful assure nationalism through the societal structure: Big Brother, the Inner Party, Outer Party, and the Proles. Big Brother is the enigmatic leader only seen on the TV screen and posters. The Inner Party consists of the iron-hand top 2% of the population. The Outer Party is the submissive middle class, 13% of the population. The Proles are the massive poor: the remaining 85%.

Where is the U.S. going? Last summer, Pew Research, in its report “The Lost Decade of the Middle Class: Fewer, Poorer, Gloomier,” stated:

Since 2000, the middle class has shrunk in size, fallen backward in income and wealth, and shed some-but by no means all-of its characteristic faith in the future…
…Fully 85% of self-described middle-class adults say it is more difficult now than it was a decade ago for middle-class people to maintain their standard of living. Of those who feel this way, 62% say “a lot” of the blame lies with Congress, while 54% say the same about banks and financial institutions, 47% about large corporations, 44% about the Bush administration, 39% about foreign competition and 34% about the Obama administration. Just 8% blame the middle class itself a lot.

In 1984, the powerful assure continued control by instilling fear in the people, and conducting “perpetual war”-a lasting state of global conflict with no clear end in sight.

Today, the United States sees the decaying effects of a decade of invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, drone invasions into Pakistan, and looking to spread its military aggression possibly into Iran, Syria, Africa, and beyond. All for the sake of an endless war on terror.

Doublethink

In 1984, Doublethink is accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct:

The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them…To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just as long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary…

George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 3

In America today, we tell ourselves we’re living in a free society while we’re seeing our incomes shrivel, credit card debt expand, our young saddled with lifelong college-loan debt, the Federal Reserve print endless money going to banks and not homeowners or consumers, and we continue to pollute our air, water, and earth in the name of industrial progress. Doublethink.

We noticed on TV recently that Coca Cola airs a commercial of citizens photographed in caring situations by public security cameras, e.g., a young couple kissing on a park bench. The catch line: public security cameras record good things, too. Doublethink.

Censorship and Media

In 1984, the Ministry of Truth controls information dissemination in all areas: news, entertainment, education, and the arts. Winston Smith, the novel’s protagonist, works for the Ministry of Truth. His job: to edit and revise history to fit the party line according to Big Brother and the Inner Party-the 2%.

Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.

– George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 3

In America today, the majority of news, book publishing and entertainment-once shared by a multitude of independent newspapers, book publishers, radio and TV stations, record companies, film production houses, and the Internet-are financially controlled by five major media conglomerates: the Walt Disney Company, News Corporation, Time Warner, CBS Corporation, and Viacom.

They determine what you’re told and not told about your world, and their major concern is making profits, not a more informed public.

Surveillance, Fear of Expression, and Newspeak

We gave you a concrete view of the current surveillance situation, at least a part of the growing surveillance, at this column’s beginning.

What do you do about taking back your freedoms in a surveillance society? Peculiar Progressive constantly urges you to get organized, get educated and get active. Some lawmakers are beginning to respond to the recent public upheaval caused by government wiretapping and Internet control. But that will be for show, unless you hold their feet to the fire, or replace them if they don’t protect you. Don’t be afraid to express yourself.

Most of all, pay attention to language: Challenge government and business, and yourself, to be specific, not deal in vague generalities…not deal in Newspeak.

In 1984, Doublethink is a mainstay of Newspeak:

Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?… Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?… The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking-not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 5

This column is now in my book The Vital Realities for 2020 and Beyond:

Forming America: John Adams’ Thoughts on Government

By
Roger Armbrust

May 4, 2012

In the sweltering Philadelphia spring of 1776 — before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and after Massachusetts’ John Adams had established himself as a leader in the Second Continental Congress — he wrote down his letter/essay Thoughts on Government: Applicable to the Present State of the American Colonies.

Delegates from other colonies had approached Adams requesting these thoughts. They were responding to efforts back home to form state constitutions.

Adams wrote just under 3,000 words, a powerful philosophy which would lead the forming of several state documents and the Constitution of the United States. Within those words, he actually profiles and analyzes America’s federal government today-first, what it should be, and second, what it really is.

First, Adams stresses:

…the form of government which communicates ease, comfort, security, or, in one word, happiness, to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best.

Happiness. It’s a keyword his friend Thomas Jefferson also used in finalizing the Declaration of Independence, the Congress’s announcement to the world of an American Revolution that had already begun: “…endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Adams notes that, to provide Happiness for its people, a government must possess “virtue”: “All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue,” says Adams in his letter/essay.

But when Adams quickly contrasts those requirements for good government to what existed at the time, and certainly flagrantly exists in our government today:

Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.

But we Americans today have approved it, primarily by not educating ourselves to the basics of good government and a solid economy. And therefore we have let our federal government envelop us with such fear for our security and welfare, we seem helpless and prostrate before a military-industrial complex engaged in endless war, oligarchy, and media conglomerates that corroborate in dictatorial population control and crimes against humanity. We have a federal government that would rather invade foreign countries with aggressive war and build corporate empire than assure its own citizens’ economic and personal health, education, and individual freedom.

Just look at America, from the last six years’ lowest public opinion polls for presidents and Congress, to the state of the depressed economy, to the breedings for revolution rising in the Occupy Wall Street movement nationwide, to the growing police state’s response to it.

The degrading of America has been caused by men and women we have admitted to the presidency, Congress, and the laws they’ve approved allowing massive corporate, police, and military control. If you don’t believe this, look at the causes of the economic meltdown; the over-aggressive police response to the Occupy movement; the massive proliferation of security cameras throughout the nation; spread of a nationwide federal surveillance operation through Homeland Security; the president’s recent signing of a defense appropriations bill which includes authority for the military to arrest and hold American citizens without trial; and a new law allowing for populating our country’s skies with unmanned drone planes designed for surveillance, war and killing.

Adams emphasizes in his Thoughts:

The principal difficulty lies, and the greatest care should be employed, in constituting this representative assembly. It should be in miniature an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them.

Does that sound like your Congress, made up of a majority of millionaires? Does that sound like your presidents who talk a good game of democracy but continue to move forward in effort to unravel individual rights and build empire? Does that sound like your banks and corporations which continue to merge to control markets, increase profits while holding down wages and attempting to limit or end employee benefits? These are not imaginations. Just read and heed, but you’d best be paying attention to writings and voices not under the major media’s control. You can start with the links below.

And you’d best follow John Adams’ and his cohorts’ lead in pressing for a free America, if not for your own good, at least for the happiness of your children and future generations.

In other words, get organized, get educated, and get active.

John Adams’ Thoughts on Government: http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=592&chapter=76854&layout=html&Itemid=27

The economic meltdown: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/money-power-wall-street/

The Occupy Movement: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/o/occupy_wall_street/index.html

Security cameras, drones, surveillance: http://voices.yahoo.com/cameras-phone-taps-drones-oh-my-10374303.html

Drones in the U.S.: http://www.texasobserver.org/cover-story/send-in-the-drones

Homeland Security and top-secret America: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/

Military indefinite detention of Americans: http://www.salon.com/2011/12/16/three_myths_about_the_detention_bill/

The Millionaire Congress: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/11/47-of-congress-members-millionaires-a-status-shared-by-only-1-of-americans/

Now available in my book The Vital Realities for 2020 and Beyond: