reflectivepundit

Shame on Mainstream Media for Publicizing another Trump for Political Office

By Brigitte L. Nacos

It is well-document that the most influential organizations of the U.S. mainstream media—from CNN to the New York Times and Washington Post—singled out Donald Trump for the bulk of their election-related coverage. This was the case in 2015 before and in 2016 during the Republican primaries. The celebrity candidate, however rude and insulting, received significantly more and more positive coverage than his competitors on the GOP side but also with respect to Hillary Clinton. Only after he had won the presidential nomination, did the same news organizations finally scrutinize the least qualified and the most dangerous of all candidates. It was too late.

While these same newsrooms deserve credit for their watchdog role during the nightmarish years of the Trump administration, they seemed not to have learned from their past mistakes in 2015/16. Again, they help—unwittingly, I assume—to pave the way for another Trump’s political career.

I was shocked this morning, when I first saw on Yahoo’s home page a story on Lara Trump, Donald’s daughter-in-law, under the headline “Lara Trump for North Carolina Senate Seat?” The article originated in the New York Times and was, as the story revealed, teased by Donald Trump’s enabler-in-chief Lindsay Graham, Senator of North Carolina, who told FOX News that the pro-conviction vote by Richard Burr of North Carolina in the Senate’s impeachment trial “made Lara Trump almost the certain nominee for the Senate seat” in that state.

So, the ambitious Trump through marriage, whose political ambitions had already been covered quite generously before, won another plum piece of free media without saying a single word or doing a single thing—just like father-in-law Donald whose ample free news in 2015/16 freed him from pleading for donations or spending his own money.

The news media must not become the former president’s substitute for his no longer available Twitter account but treat him like any former ex-president, better less so, although the FOX News newsrooms and their competitors will be delighted to serve as his bullhorns.

Just as important, the influential mainstream media must refrain from providing free publicity to other members of the Trump Clan: his sons, his daughters, daughters-in-law, and son-in-law.

When it comes to Mr. Trump and his family, journalists, editors, producers—all in the mainstream media must act according to George Santayana’s aphorism, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

I do not expect that they will.

A Likely Blue Print for the Horrific Invasion of the Capitol

By Brigitte L. Nacos

“Despite all the noise and smoke and wreckage caused by our attack on the Capitol, only 61 persons were killed… But the real value of all our attacks today lies in the psychological impact,    not in the immediate casualties…More important, though, is what we taught politicians and the bureaucrats. They learned this afternoon that not one of them is beyond our reach…All the    armed guards and bulletproof limousines in America cannot guarantee their safety…”

The above sentences in “The Turner Diaries” describe the beginning of a catastrophic global race war that American White Supremacists  and their counterparts in Europe fought and won within eleven months by the destruction of democratic systems, non-Whites, and "hostile" Whites in order to establish a pure White empire.  

Written in the late 1970s by William Pierce, founder of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald, the “novel” became a bestseller among militia circles in the 1990s. For Timothy McVeigh the book was a blue print for planning and carrying out the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995 that killed 168 persons and injured many more.

It has been suggested that ISIS may have influenced the playbook of the organized elements that stormed and invaded the Capitol last week. While that might be the case with respect to certain aspects, for example, ISIS’s savvy exploitation of social media platforms, Pierce’s gruesome prescriptions contain more clues for the present state of mind of organized White Supremacy/neo-Nazi groups and their plans for their short- and long-term objectives.

One of the main differences between ISIS and the various White Supremacy and neo-Nazi groups in the United States has been their unwillingness or inability to unite. The “Unite the Right” demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia, in the summer of 2017 were an effort of “alt-right” ideologists to pull the groups together. It failed.

But President Trump whose starring role in the racist anti-Obama birther conspiracy theory years ago and the anti-immigrant policies as president managed to become the idol behind whom White Supremacy groups finally united. The thousands of men and women whose violence shocked the nation as they forced their ways into the halls of the Congress the other day were united in responding to Mr. Trump’s calls to come to Washington and march to the Capitol in order to prevent the “enemy” from taking the non-existing election victory and the presidency away from Trump and them.

Although indicating that he would march with them, the President retreated to the White House. In that he followed the script of other violent movements’ leaders. Hitler and Mussolini never fought along their parties’ brown and black shirts in the streets; bin Laden and al-Baghdadi did not carry out acts of violence they propagated.

Even after four years of the Trumpian war against the intelligence, law enforcement, and homeland security communities some institutional memory still exists in the FBI and other security agencies. Some FBI agents, for sure, remember that “The Turner Diaries” motivated McVeigh and guided his logistical planning. For them and their colleagues it might be worthwhile to read or reread the “novel” as blue print for further violence.

Trump and the Madman Theory: A Madman Without a Theory

 By Brigitte L. Nacos

In his book “The Madman Theory: Trump Takes on the World” Jim Sciutto applies President Nixon’s so-called “Madman Theory” to President Trump. But whereas Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser/Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had some, however crazy plan as they tried to convince adversaries of a president mad enough to resort to weapons of mass destruction to get concessions, Trump and his advisers never had a plan.

Now, after four crazy years, there is still a madman, a would-be tyrant and his hardcore followers trying to overthrow America’s more than 200-year-old democracy. What we have witnessed during the last four years and especially since Trump’s electoral defeat two months ago has been a huge step away from democratic principles—most of all the acceptance of election results by winners and losers in the pluralist system of governing.

As I watched FOX New last night at a time when Georgia’s election returns indicated a possible double win for the Democratic Party in the run-off for seats in the U.S. Senate, I heard hysterical outcries about those two “communists” ahead of their patriotic opponents. Given the long-used labels “communists” and “socialists” attached to “extreme liberals” by Trump and his propagandists, the time has come to call the Trumpian fascist movement no longer benignly “conservative” or “the conservative right,” they are in reality autocrats and, yes, they are fascists trampling on the rule of law.

At the end of his book “The Anatomy of Fascism” Robert O. Paxton details what he calls the “mobilizing passions” of fascism, among them,

• the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without any legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;

• the need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s historical destiny;

• the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success.

We see these fascist mobilizing passions at play right now at work in Washington, D.C. and around the country with the President of the United States Donald Trump in the starring role. We see these fascist mobilizing passions in the two chambers of Congress where too many GOP Senators and Representatives violate the oaths they swear to the U.S. Constitution. And we see these fascist mobilizing passions in the social media posts of online fascists who are devoted to and courted by their Dear Leader.

In two weeks, there will be a changing of the guards in Washington. Joe Biden will become U.S. President, and Kamala Harris will become U.S. Vice-President.

But to assume that the fascist passions will evaporate once Biden and Harris move into the White House would be naïve. The Madman without Theory will not go quietly into a post-presidential life.

                                                                                                              ***

I wrote the above post a few hours before Trump's fanatic followers unleashed terror in the halls of the U.S. Congress. While the violence did not surprise me at all, I watched in amazement the thin or non-existent law enforcement presence in and around Capitol Hill. Assuming that the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and other agencies kept track of violent online extremist communities, law enforcement was fully aware that many fanatic Trump followers heard their idol's call to come to Washington and fight for his second term. Whereas overwhelming military and police might threatened peaceful "Black Lives Matter" demonstrators in the capital last year, the White Supremacists, typically insisting on their right to wear arms, met no serious resistance as they entered through doors and windows into congressional buildings.

After inciting and watching the seditious horror show for hours Donald Trump finally asked his terrorist followers to "go home" assuring them that he loved them...

 

 

The President Who Stole Christmas

By Brigitte L. Nacos

There will not be a Merry Christmas this year. Not in the United States of America.

Every day is now more deadly than were the horrific attacks of 9/11. Every day now, more than 3,000 Americans die as result of the Covid-19 pandemic. So far, more than 311,000 have succumbed to the illness. To put it differently, America has suffered the equivalent of 104 deadly 9/11 attacks!

Every day now, public health experts tell us that grimmer times are still to come. This morning’s heart-wrenching projection was a likely death toll of more 560,000 coronavirus victims in the U.S. by April 1, 2021.

And, yet, there is no public outcry, no public mourning. The most visible public activism is displayed by those who falsely claim to act in defense of their individual liberty and fight against mitigating health measures.

104times 9/11 in terms of lost souls seems less of a national nightmare than 9/11, when a divided nation united behind a crisis-managing president and consoler-in-chief, George W. Bush. Most embraced the notion, “Now, we are not Democrats or Republicans—we all are all Americans.”

There is no such spirit of unity and togetherness now. Just the opposite.

Unlike previous presidents, Donald Trump has not even tried to unite the country and discharge his most important duty: protecting the lives of Americans.

Instead, he denied, minimized, and completely ignored the most serious health crisis in a century at various stages. He called Covid-19 a political hoax, discredited and acted personally contrary to health experts’ mitigating guidelines, and cued his supporters to follow his dangerous words and deeds. Instead of listening to the best public health experts in the White House Covid-19 Advisory Board, Trump and his coterie sided the quackery of unqualified voices that advocated the debunked herd-immunity thesis.

As the first vaccine became available, the cheer leaders of one-term President suggested to name it “Trump Vaccine” in honor to all the good their hero has done to defeat Covid-19.

Instead, this catastrophic health saga will be remembered as the “Trump Virus” because the 45^th president knew early on how deadly this virus was and is but refused to take any mitigating actions to minimize the spread of the coronavirus.

To be sure, even if strict measures were implemented early on, Covid-19 would have taken many lives here as it did in other countries.

But this president’s complete failure of acting decisively in concert with sound scientific advice cost according to public health experts many, many more lives—probably hundreds of thousands! And many more will die in the weeks and months ahead.

No, there will not be Christmas as we know it in America. The man who stole it is President Donald Trump.

He stole it from those more than 310, 000 dead fellow-Americans and those close to them.

He stole it from those who lost their jobs and their small businesses.

He stole it from those who stand in long lines at food banks and soup kitchens.

He stole it from those children whose families face eviction from their apartments.

He stole it from Americans who seem strangely fatalistic in the face of an unspeakable crisis.

And, unlike the Grinch who stole Christmas in the famous cartoon, the man who stole this upcoming holiday in our real lives will not change his heart and mind.

Trump’s Hateful Rhetoric and Political Violence

By Brigitte L. Nacos, Robert Y. Shapiro, and Yaeli Bloch-Elkon

On September 29, 2019, with his impeachment looming, President Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump) retweeted a warning by the Evangelical Pastor Robert Jeffress, “If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.” Two days later, U.S. Representative Louie Gohmert, a Republican of Texas, warned Democrats that their “coup” was “pushing America into a civil war.”[1] On far-right websites Trump supporters suggested drastic and even violent actions against the “enemy” within. Some warned that they may need to exercise their Second Amendment rights—in other words, take up arms against the traitors. Responding to one of Trump’s daily Twitter attacks on Adam Schiff, the leading U.S. Representative in the impeachment inquiry, his followers seconded the President’s rhetorical assaults. One male commenter attacked Schiff as “a co-conspiratory [sic] in a coup attempt. This is treason.” That same day, a 52-year old man in Tucson, Arizona, left a death threat on Schiff ’s voice mail. “I’m gonna f_ing blow your brains out,” he warned.[2] The would-be attacker told police officers that “he watches Fox News and likely was upset at something that he saw on the news.” He also stated that “he strongly dislikes the Democrats, and feels they are to blame for the country’s political issues.”[3] In his residence, the police found an AR-15 assault rifle, two pistols, and 700 rounds of ammunition.[4] Although these examples of hate speech and threats of violence seemed shocking, they were merely iterations of Trumpian rhetoric and signposts for significant increases in right-extreme violence and school bullying in the United States. Our research found that Trump’s online and off-line hate speech corresponded with his followers’ aggressive rhetoric, violent threats, and actual violence against Trump’s declared “enemies,” most of all, minorities, the news media, and oppositional politicians.

For the comprehensive research report on the links between Trump's aggressive words and the growth of right-extreme violence read our just published article in the online journal Perspectives on Terrorism.