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I don’t know much about US politics but the people who have to vote these ghouls in, is it just a straightforward I like/don’t like this person? What is the process?
 
I don’t know much about US politics but the people who have to vote these ghouls in, is it just a straightforward I like/don’t like this person? What is the process?
Good article on it here. The Senate (which is majority Republican atm) can theoretically block any of these appointments, but in practice this is rare.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/14/politics/cabinet-confirmation-recess-what-matters/index.html

President appoints 1,200 people in total! All theoretically need to be approved by the Senate.
 
Is not the case that the Syrian state became pro-US back in 1990-91, when it supported the US-led war on Iraq?
* sigh * The US has never actually wanted the complete overthrow of the Assad regime, during the Arab spring preferring to sidestep the 'red lines' that Obama stated would be the point at which there would be intervention. Remember that the US was quite happy to use the regime for 'black sites' in extraordinary rendition. The issue with Gabbard is that she has openly shown support for the regime despite their obvious war crimes and alliance/dependence on Russia.. I suppose really it's all of a piece with the ongoing war crimes of Israel....
 
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Wasn’t it the case that the dems used to be the party of the working class? Almost a definitive split, with a side helping of intelligencia and a smattering of urban elites? I.e that it was in your labour/union interests to vote them if you were a wage earner. But now it seems to have moved to the republican having thr momentum of the party of the working class (whilst selling them down the river of course). Similar patterns can be spotted here but less you’d like to think up North. I guess when you outsource so much to china etc then “class conciousness” is weakened in itself. So much has changed over the past 40 years in terms of understanding class-political affiliation, just as so much has changed in regards mass industrialised work forces. Neoliberalism and its constant urge toward atomisation and individualism. Trump I wouldn’t say (yet) is outright fascism but it’s certainly mask-off neoliberalism. Neoliberalism without the “well being spaces” and Converses. Simplistic twaddle I know but it does seem to me that the majority of working class voices I hear from America are all on the trump side of things.
 
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That fucking freak Argentinian President Javier Milei meeting with Musk and Trump.

View attachment 451188
Incredibly significant gesture that this is the first national leader Trump is meeting...a self declared anarchocapitalist fascist sympathiser state dismantler in control of a country...this is a paradigm shift, a new political philosophy in power....

The first Trump term is irrelevant in terms of expectations for what's to come
 
Incredibly significant gesture that this is the first national leader Trump is meeting...a self declared anarchocapitalist fascist sympathiser state dismantler in control of a country...this is a paradigm shift, a new political philosophy in power....

The first Trump term is irrelevant in terms of expectations for what's to come
Yes, it’s pretty (potentially) revolutionary in what is unfolding.
 
It’s been perilous for years. You will always get the “you’ve never had it so good!” Or “this kind of madness has always been around!”. Hmmmmm I’m not so sure. There seems to be breaks and tares in the fabric in the west everywhere I look.
 
But where does that take you? What does it do to challenge fascism in America? What does it build?
To be fair it isn't like people here are the Democratic Party leadership any more than they are Trump voters so blaming the Democratic Party strategy isnt any more consequential than blaming American voters / US culture in general.

Yes the Democratic Party should have gone more pro-labour and less identity politics and should have taken a principled stand on Gaza. But they won't. A break with Israel is possible but unlikely, going pro-Labour is basically impossible without some kind of dramatic upheaval in the Party, as it would upset corporate donors.
 
IMO the best way to think of fascism is as a checklist. You might not fulfil every criterion, but if you fufil enough, you're fascist.

Cultivation of a cult of personality around the leader is essential. That leader is transactional. He (doesn't have to be a he - extreme mysogyny and promotion at least superficially of traditional values is characteristic but not essential) surrounds himself with those whom he has done favours and who have done him favours, but he is brutal with them - they compete with each other to do his bidding, and he encourages this process.

The vision of the state is corporatist, denying class as a legitimate concept, while at the same time, the leader is the champion of the worker and the common man (more rarely the common woman as well, but in most fascist conceptions, a woman is an extension of, and secondary to, a man). His vision of society, such as it is, is corporatist. It is likely based heavily around the family unit.

The leader is disdainful of the democratic processes that he may have used to gain power, and subverts them wherever he can. Dissenters are pursued. To disagree with him is to be his enemy. The fascist also has a keen interest in control over the dissemination of information and seeks to be the final arbiter of truth. He is vengeful and may be capricious, and to speak against him in any way is to lose favour immediately.

Fascism is aggressively nationalist. It looks backwards to an invented history to justify its nationalism. It is an aggressive xenophobic nationalism. It defines its in-group and persecutes its out-group.

The fascist may or may not lean on religion. If he does so, the primary purpose of this is to enforce the in-group identity. He scapegoats aggressively and blames his own failings and failures on the outgroup, hatred of which he cultivates assiduously (and that out-group can and will include various 'enemies within'). Cultivating hatred is characteristic of fascism. You love your own and you hate the other.

At the very least, Trump is a wannabe fascist dictator. That would be his ultimate dream. He ticks more than enough of the boxes.

TBH the one thing I don't quite see him as is the ultimate expression of neoliberalism. His fascist aims go counter to the interests of capital in many instances. His obsession with tariffs is a case in point. Didn't stop the stock market from going up with his election, mind.
 
It’s been perilous for years. You will always get the “you’ve never had it so good!” Or “this kind of madness has always been around!”. Hmmmmm I’m not so sure. There seems to be breaks and tares in the fabric in the west everywhere I look.
Yeah we are really in uncharted territory, 1930s is the go-to analogy but there are a lot of differences.

Unprecedented things always happen in history, that's the continuity.
 
Yeah we are really in uncharted territory, 1930s is the go-to analogy but there are a lot of differences.

Unprecedented things always happen in history, that's the continuity.
The dialectic init. But even that seems broken at times. “The conversation” now seems to me so complex, alien, and fragmented. Ah well! I guess you can never predict what will come out of anything even changes like that which are unfolding.
 
You wonder where the checks and balances are going to come in. Domestically the other is the migrant and the leftist.

Say the police become more politicised, they are already militarised.

The media is either pro-Trump or 'fake news/leftist'. Excuses can be found to suppress or dominate and restrict it.

Things go bad (events, economically), it's the 'left's' fault.
 
And so it begins. Here you go, welcome to the fascist states of America. Decent countries would have these bastards behind bars so fast. The orange fucker has enabled the morons.

 
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