The Trump administration is laying the groundwork for blacklisting and criminalizing all left-wing, progressive, anti-war and anti-imperialist dissent.
Authoritarianism rarely begins by announcing, “We are abolishing dissent now.” It starts by calling lawyers, students, clergy, anti-war groups, and civil-rights organizers part of a foreign network. Then it adds the word “terrorist,” because apparently due process is much easier to misplace once the scary label is attached. A government that treats disagreement as subversion is not protecting democracy. It is building a blacklist with patriotic stationery. The danger is not Cuba secretly controlling every progressive in America. The danger is an administration inventing phantom enemies so it can criminalize the people standing in its way.
You're very welcome, though I'm merely doing my duty as a Liberation-minded human.
THEREFORE, ALSO PLEASE TAKE WARNING: Note that Google may now be embargoing Mr. Hedges, as for the first time, I -- a paid subscriber -- did not receive his work. (I know for a fact Google is embargoing Carrie Kaufman.) Already, ChristoNazism rules the [irreparably] failed former United States, now -- in terminal fulfillment of its founding slavemasters' ultimate purpose -- the world's most infinitely Evil, apocalyptically dangerous shitr-hole country and pariah state.
The rantings of this delusional madman are laughable, until one realizes the extent of the real harm he's doing to peoples' lives from Gaza to Cuba to Minneapolis, and recognizes that he's nuclear armed.
Trump is too cowardly to face up to what we need a leader to do these days: address climate change, endless war, species loss, injustice and rising inequality. So he demonizes those who actually are addressing those issues, and spends all his time and energy aggrandizing personal wealth and power. He's a sad, sick puppy who's trashing everything decent people hold dear.
With respect, if we want to win this war, we damn well have to stop excusing Trump as a "sad, sick puppy." Like his plutocratic puppet-masters and all ChristoNazis -- and for that matter, like capitalism itself -- Trump is the most [intentionally] apocalyptic Evil ever manifest on this planet. Therefore either he and [all] his fellow conspirators are dealt with accordingly -- or our species will be exterminated and our Mother Earth poisoned to everlasting lifelessness.
Agreed. I wasn't excusing the asshole, just pointing out that he is sick -- mentally ill -- and that his behavior is rewarded by our capitalist society is truly sad, for what it says, not only about him, but about us.
I am now convinced that what we are seeing -- the conduct of the ChristoNazi Regime, the cunningly perfected, always plausibly deniable collaboration of the Democrats and the embrace of tyranny implicit in the refusal of the people to (effectively) resist -- is the true face of what its founding slavemasters intended their nation to become.
This would be so laughably ridiculous if it were not so downright terrifying. How many people will read this and believe it? I cannot believe that most people will find this "report" credible, given that most people at this time are , for example, against continuing to supply Israel with money and weapons in spite of the government's support. Maybe this type of thing is a Hail Mary play, just toss it out there and see what sticks. They are probably feeling that momentum is turning against them and are worried about the midterms, as well they should be. I don't think people will buy it, but the fact that the State Department can produce this piece of garbage at all is extremely frightening.
Fascinating how many references they make to events and people from the 1960’s. There must be a very old geezer involved whose 2 cents required 1960’s links be made to show how these “radicals” have persisted. Such pathetic propaganda - and so very dangerous. As Chris points out - this is far worse than McCarthyism.
They would remember it well. Afterall, they put a huge effort into derailing and quashing all those emergent movements at the time, by any means necessary.
Trump's handlers know full well that if they do not strike their enemies when they can, their enemies will surely strike them when they regain power. Both sides will ignore any law, because this is a zero-sum no-holds=barred winner-take-all game. Either you crush your enemies using any means available, or they crush you. The ideology is secondary, it's how you sell it to the rubes.
This tit-for tat escalation is how the Roman Republic ended. What does anyone propose to do about it?
The "No Kings" rallies are the pretense...er, I mean promise, getting rid of Caesar Trump will solve everything. The powerful have given us a choice between the D elite and their 20%er PMC oligarchy or R 1%er and corporate plutocracy. The difference certainly worth sacrificing us nobodies for. All hail Mars/Ares, all hail the Empire! Long live...who is it now?
They will stoop to any lie, any impossible claim, to continue their joy ride.
They need to be loudly and constantly called out for exactly what they are: an anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional, inhumane and insanely greedy band of criminals pilfering the natural riches of the world and the real wealth created by the laboring classes.
The media are polarized and Balkanized, like so much else in American society, and chained to money. Trumpers and the GOP encourage political fragmentation, have even taken it to the international level, because such seems to enlarge their power. Evil stupid clowns.
The true believers on the right have learned to repeat farleftliberalcommunistdemocrat as if one word. If it weren't so dangerous, it would be hilarious--like the Dem elite aren't center-right defenders of trickle up corporate economics. This name calling nothing new; dates to the '30s when an actual active left kept the New Deal Dems on the side of working people. All way too far left for the big business interests and their right wing religious allies.
Then the '50s Cold War frenzy where that generation of right wing power addicts saw their chance. The "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance isn't from early America--it was added in 1954. I remember because a stubborn 6 year old, I resisted saying it the wrong way. Fortunately, my 1st grade teacher liked me, so my parents weren't hauled in for raising a leftist dissenter. I've been on those lists for a very long time.
The paranoid atmosphere of the era made possible Joe McCarthy's ally, the sleazy and manipulative Roy Cohn, later Trump's mentor. But unlike then, we don't have elected officials in both parties willing to rise as they did to defend Joseph N. Welch. In 1954, he was chief counsel for the U.S. Army, famous for asking Sen. McCarthy: "Until this moment, I never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness... Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
There's an old adage those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. Even worse is to see it happening, cry out in protest, but like Cassandra, never believed. A few people, like Chris Hedges, still do have a sense of decency. Will their example be enough for this country to act on its better traits instead of the fear and hatred whipped up by oligarch and plutocrat wanna-bes? We the masses are bitterly aware our good jobs were outsourced to enrich the few and we have less and less. Will the promise of security and employment be enough to go for fascism or will some alternative party finally convince us they're for us?
And all this time I thought that the most remarkable thing about Cuba over my lifetime was its survival, despite the earnest efforts of the US to destroy its independent governance and return it to the neocolonial status it had since the US wrested it away from Spain in 1898. Now I am to believe that despite its tiny size it has succeeded in subverting every imaginable US institution, ending at the present time with….a completely illegal blockade of the island by a US which eschews the neocolonial model of imperial exploitation and wants to return, and has to an extent already, to the colonial model à la King Leopold of Belgium. But that the subversion has been successful, and has to be undone. Well, you did say early on that this report wasn’t meant to be logical.
I am reminded of a conversation I was a party to about 60 years ago in which one of the participants (drunkenly, if that is an excuse) was very nostalgic about pre-Castro Havana, when the city was home to the most beautiful whores in the world. Just a wonderful place for Americans to holiday. I guess that is again what is in store for the people of Cuba. What is in store for the US? You have told us in a way I will not pretend I can meaningfully make an addition.
Another day, another rant from a deranged administration. Everything they accuse others of doing they are doing. It's classic blaming and demonization. Fascism always needs an enemy, some dire but non-existent threat to justify its abuses. It would be a farce if they didn't have so much power and so much willingness to destroy. "Fascism’s lifeblood is the demonization of the other." –Chris Hedges, https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/becoming-the-stranger
We Westerners are the Third Reich today. We want world domination at any cost. Since we are sociopathic by nature, we will put everything on the line to achieve our goal. Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing should finally realize this.
For every Columbus, Hernán Cortés, or Francisco Pizarro who made it, there are thousands who died on the path to infinite wealth. For us, the “50 Cent” motto applies: “Get rich or die tryin’.”
We are not interested in our human or natural environment; we are not even interested in our own environment. Over the past 35 years, the West has destroyed itself out of sheer greed.
The smart people in Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing need to keep THAT in mind at all times. We are sociopaths. We are the Epstein class. We accept no partners; we accept only submission—or annihilation.
Thanks for posting this. I guess that this is evidence that we need to view any reports from this administration as propaganda. Is there anyone in this administration that we can trust? I think the answer has to be a resounding no. The branches of our government have been co-opted and the firewalls have been breached. I’m afraid that you are right about what’s coming.
It's crazy how MAGA world learned nothing from Biden labeling them terrorists. Instead of using that as a teaching point, they just want the power flipped on the left. I winced when Rubio announced a global war on "radical left terror" and then pushed this propaganda about Cuba infiltrating the U.S. It reeks of the propaganda circulated to justify abducting Maduro - they linked him to a cartel that never existed, then backpedaled on the claim later.
None of their pronouncements declaring leftists as "anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-Christian, etc.," and they will be prosecuted, will pass muster in any court (except perhaps in Texas.). There is no anti-domestic terrorism statute on the books...yet. That said, if they can bankrupt people, disrupt their organizing, upend their lives in any way, they will do it. Any court orders to cease and desist will be ignored or avoided. It's going to be a rough couple of years.
God help us all. The tech bros, AI, the data centers, there is now only one purpose for it all - to identify all lefties, real or surposed and remove their digital presence. Phone and PC stops working, cant access yr bank accounts, evidence of yr driver licence and anything u own disappears. You become a non-person unable to buy anything, go anywhere, do anything. Billions will simple expire. There is enough hate in Millers little finger to press that button. God help us all.
Authoritarianism rarely begins by announcing, “We are abolishing dissent now.” It starts by calling lawyers, students, clergy, anti-war groups, and civil-rights organizers part of a foreign network. Then it adds the word “terrorist,” because apparently due process is much easier to misplace once the scary label is attached. A government that treats disagreement as subversion is not protecting democracy. It is building a blacklist with patriotic stationery. The danger is not Cuba secretly controlling every progressive in America. The danger is an administration inventing phantom enemies so it can criminalize the people standing in its way.
Well said: “A government that treats disagreement as subversion is not protecting democracy. It is building a blacklist with patriotic stationery.”
All here should view this: https://carriekaufman.substack.com/p/miller-and-rubio-go-full-mein-kampf?embedding_publication_id=20533 What Miller and Rubio say are the most terrifying USian speeches I've ever heard., as if Hitler won the war and they were here to manage the subjugation.
Thanks for the link.
You're very welcome, though I'm merely doing my duty as a Liberation-minded human.
THEREFORE, ALSO PLEASE TAKE WARNING: Note that Google may now be embargoing Mr. Hedges, as for the first time, I -- a paid subscriber -- did not receive his work. (I know for a fact Google is embargoing Carrie Kaufman.) Already, ChristoNazism rules the [irreparably] failed former United States, now -- in terminal fulfillment of its founding slavemasters' ultimate purpose -- the world's most infinitely Evil, apocalyptically dangerous shitr-hole country and pariah state.
The rantings of this delusional madman are laughable, until one realizes the extent of the real harm he's doing to peoples' lives from Gaza to Cuba to Minneapolis, and recognizes that he's nuclear armed.
Trump is too cowardly to face up to what we need a leader to do these days: address climate change, endless war, species loss, injustice and rising inequality. So he demonizes those who actually are addressing those issues, and spends all his time and energy aggrandizing personal wealth and power. He's a sad, sick puppy who's trashing everything decent people hold dear.
With respect, if we want to win this war, we damn well have to stop excusing Trump as a "sad, sick puppy." Like his plutocratic puppet-masters and all ChristoNazis -- and for that matter, like capitalism itself -- Trump is the most [intentionally] apocalyptic Evil ever manifest on this planet. Therefore either he and [all] his fellow conspirators are dealt with accordingly -- or our species will be exterminated and our Mother Earth poisoned to everlasting lifelessness.
Agreed. I wasn't excusing the asshole, just pointing out that he is sick -- mentally ill -- and that his behavior is rewarded by our capitalist society is truly sad, for what it says, not only about him, but about us.
I am now convinced that what we are seeing -- the conduct of the ChristoNazi Regime, the cunningly perfected, always plausibly deniable collaboration of the Democrats and the embrace of tyranny implicit in the refusal of the people to (effectively) resist -- is the true face of what its founding slavemasters intended their nation to become.
This would be so laughably ridiculous if it were not so downright terrifying. How many people will read this and believe it? I cannot believe that most people will find this "report" credible, given that most people at this time are , for example, against continuing to supply Israel with money and weapons in spite of the government's support. Maybe this type of thing is a Hail Mary play, just toss it out there and see what sticks. They are probably feeling that momentum is turning against them and are worried about the midterms, as well they should be. I don't think people will buy it, but the fact that the State Department can produce this piece of garbage at all is extremely frightening.
The report is a pretext. It doesn't need to have any demonstrable factual or even be believable.
If you ever have seen a barroom bully looking for any excuse to start a fight with his chosen victim, you'll know the dynamic.
Fascinating how many references they make to events and people from the 1960’s. There must be a very old geezer involved whose 2 cents required 1960’s links be made to show how these “radicals” have persisted. Such pathetic propaganda - and so very dangerous. As Chris points out - this is far worse than McCarthyism.
They would remember it well. Afterall, they put a huge effort into derailing and quashing all those emergent movements at the time, by any means necessary.
Trump's handlers know full well that if they do not strike their enemies when they can, their enemies will surely strike them when they regain power. Both sides will ignore any law, because this is a zero-sum no-holds=barred winner-take-all game. Either you crush your enemies using any means available, or they crush you. The ideology is secondary, it's how you sell it to the rubes.
This tit-for tat escalation is how the Roman Republic ended. What does anyone propose to do about it?
The "No Kings" rallies are the pretense...er, I mean promise, getting rid of Caesar Trump will solve everything. The powerful have given us a choice between the D elite and their 20%er PMC oligarchy or R 1%er and corporate plutocracy. The difference certainly worth sacrificing us nobodies for. All hail Mars/Ares, all hail the Empire! Long live...who is it now?
The Trump administration is an evil clown car.
They will stoop to any lie, any impossible claim, to continue their joy ride.
They need to be loudly and constantly called out for exactly what they are: an anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional, inhumane and insanely greedy band of criminals pilfering the natural riches of the world and the real wealth created by the laboring classes.
And the "calling out" would work if there were a mainstream media independent and rational - not cowed and Trump-serving.
The media are polarized and Balkanized, like so much else in American society, and chained to money. Trumpers and the GOP encourage political fragmentation, have even taken it to the international level, because such seems to enlarge their power. Evil stupid clowns.
"Israel has a far more insidious influence on U.S. politics and foreign policy than Cuba, Russia and China combined."
I would amend that to read "Israel has a far more insidious influence on U.S. politics and foreign policy than all other nations on earth combined".
The true believers on the right have learned to repeat farleftliberalcommunistdemocrat as if one word. If it weren't so dangerous, it would be hilarious--like the Dem elite aren't center-right defenders of trickle up corporate economics. This name calling nothing new; dates to the '30s when an actual active left kept the New Deal Dems on the side of working people. All way too far left for the big business interests and their right wing religious allies.
Then the '50s Cold War frenzy where that generation of right wing power addicts saw their chance. The "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance isn't from early America--it was added in 1954. I remember because a stubborn 6 year old, I resisted saying it the wrong way. Fortunately, my 1st grade teacher liked me, so my parents weren't hauled in for raising a leftist dissenter. I've been on those lists for a very long time.
The paranoid atmosphere of the era made possible Joe McCarthy's ally, the sleazy and manipulative Roy Cohn, later Trump's mentor. But unlike then, we don't have elected officials in both parties willing to rise as they did to defend Joseph N. Welch. In 1954, he was chief counsel for the U.S. Army, famous for asking Sen. McCarthy: "Until this moment, I never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness... Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"
There's an old adage those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. Even worse is to see it happening, cry out in protest, but like Cassandra, never believed. A few people, like Chris Hedges, still do have a sense of decency. Will their example be enough for this country to act on its better traits instead of the fear and hatred whipped up by oligarch and plutocrat wanna-bes? We the masses are bitterly aware our good jobs were outsourced to enrich the few and we have less and less. Will the promise of security and employment be enough to go for fascism or will some alternative party finally convince us they're for us?
And all this time I thought that the most remarkable thing about Cuba over my lifetime was its survival, despite the earnest efforts of the US to destroy its independent governance and return it to the neocolonial status it had since the US wrested it away from Spain in 1898. Now I am to believe that despite its tiny size it has succeeded in subverting every imaginable US institution, ending at the present time with….a completely illegal blockade of the island by a US which eschews the neocolonial model of imperial exploitation and wants to return, and has to an extent already, to the colonial model à la King Leopold of Belgium. But that the subversion has been successful, and has to be undone. Well, you did say early on that this report wasn’t meant to be logical.
I am reminded of a conversation I was a party to about 60 years ago in which one of the participants (drunkenly, if that is an excuse) was very nostalgic about pre-Castro Havana, when the city was home to the most beautiful whores in the world. Just a wonderful place for Americans to holiday. I guess that is again what is in store for the people of Cuba. What is in store for the US? You have told us in a way I will not pretend I can meaningfully make an addition.
As always, thank you.
Another day, another rant from a deranged administration. Everything they accuse others of doing they are doing. It's classic blaming and demonization. Fascism always needs an enemy, some dire but non-existent threat to justify its abuses. It would be a farce if they didn't have so much power and so much willingness to destroy. "Fascism’s lifeblood is the demonization of the other." –Chris Hedges, https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/becoming-the-stranger
Found on internet:
We Westerners are the Third Reich today. We want world domination at any cost. Since we are sociopathic by nature, we will put everything on the line to achieve our goal. Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing should finally realize this.
For every Columbus, Hernán Cortés, or Francisco Pizarro who made it, there are thousands who died on the path to infinite wealth. For us, the “50 Cent” motto applies: “Get rich or die tryin’.”
We are not interested in our human or natural environment; we are not even interested in our own environment. Over the past 35 years, the West has destroyed itself out of sheer greed.
The smart people in Tehran, Moscow, and Beijing need to keep THAT in mind at all times. We are sociopaths. We are the Epstein class. We accept no partners; we accept only submission—or annihilation.
Are we all rise up to "be Spartacus" or are we going to stay silent in fear and protecting only ourselves?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9FN1LMdhic
Thanks for posting this. I guess that this is evidence that we need to view any reports from this administration as propaganda. Is there anyone in this administration that we can trust? I think the answer has to be a resounding no. The branches of our government have been co-opted and the firewalls have been breached. I’m afraid that you are right about what’s coming.
It's crazy how MAGA world learned nothing from Biden labeling them terrorists. Instead of using that as a teaching point, they just want the power flipped on the left. I winced when Rubio announced a global war on "radical left terror" and then pushed this propaganda about Cuba infiltrating the U.S. It reeks of the propaganda circulated to justify abducting Maduro - they linked him to a cartel that never existed, then backpedaled on the claim later.
Oh they learned. Either use every weapon at your disposal or that weapon will be used on you.
None of their pronouncements declaring leftists as "anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-Christian, etc.," and they will be prosecuted, will pass muster in any court (except perhaps in Texas.). There is no anti-domestic terrorism statute on the books...yet. That said, if they can bankrupt people, disrupt their organizing, upend their lives in any way, they will do it. Any court orders to cease and desist will be ignored or avoided. It's going to be a rough couple of years.
God help us all. The tech bros, AI, the data centers, there is now only one purpose for it all - to identify all lefties, real or surposed and remove their digital presence. Phone and PC stops working, cant access yr bank accounts, evidence of yr driver licence and anything u own disappears. You become a non-person unable to buy anything, go anywhere, do anything. Billions will simple expire. There is enough hate in Millers little finger to press that button. God help us all.