reflectivepundit

Trump and his Base: Threat of Fascist “Mobilizing Passions”

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Fifteen years ago, in his excellent book “Anatomy of Fascism,” Robert O. Paxton wrote in the last paragraph of the last chapter, “Fascism exist at the level of Stage One within all democratic countries—not excluding the United States.” Today, American democracy may have moved into a higher stage of fascist infection.

I reread Paxton’s book after (1) I saw video clips of Stormtroopers in the streets of Portland, Oregon, grabbing non-violent persons and driving them away in unmarked vehicles; (2) I learned that heavily armed agents of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) were the  “law and order” forces; (3) I read of the acting secretary of homeland security Chad Wolf tweeting that “our men and women in uniform are patriots. We will never surrender to violent extremists on my watch;” and (4) I heard Donald Trump refusing to answer the plain question, whether he would accept the election results in fall in case of his loss.

All of the above is straight out of the horror book of fascism and reminiscent of violence by Mussolini’s Black Shirts and Hitler’s Brown Shirts against political opponents during their respective leaders’ rise to dictatorial powers, and fascist leaders’ success to extend their staying power by all means.

While it seemed strange that the DHS, established after 9/11 to counter terrorism, never dispatched those agents to show their patriotism against violent right-extremists responsible for almost all domestic terrorism in the last several years, the U.S. President himself revealed that the storm trooper deployment was a partisan move to energize his movement in the forefront of the upcoming elections. “I’m going to do something — that, I can tell you,” Mr. Trump told reporters the other day. “Because we’re not going to let New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit and Baltimore and all of these — Oakland is a mess. We’re not going to let this happen in our country. All run by liberal Democrats.”

Just as the more than 140,000 Americans killed by the Trump virus have become our daily normalcy, the federal “law and order” violence in Portland and the promise of more of these storm trooper deployments did not result in massive public or elite outrage and protest. It seemed merely another illegitimate move by a president and his devoted servants.

Instead of providing a succinct definition of fascism Paxton enumerated what he calls “mobilizing passions,” among them the following:

• The belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justified any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;
• The need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary;
• The beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success;
• The right of the chosen people to dominate others without restrain from any kind of human or divine law…

We have not yet arrived at fascism as we know it from history, but we are witnessing in the age of Donald Trump demagogic populism with moves to illiberal democracy and now fascist traits as well.  

The acceptance of the unacceptable is the scariest aspect of the present political crisis. As Paxton notes rightly, fascist movements “could never attain power without the acquiescence or even active assent of the traditional elites…party leaders, high government officials” …”and the help of ordinary people, even conventionally good people.”

He ended the book with a somewhat optimistic chord. “We stand a much better chance of responding wisely, however, if we understand how fascism succeeded in the past,” Paxton wrote.  

I do not share that optimism and fear that most Americans did not learn the lesson of earlier fascism.

 

Joe Biden and the TRUMP VIRUS

By Brigitte L. Nacos

During the 2016 primary season, then candidate Donald Trump got most of the publicity oxygen that the news media produced. At the expense of his Republican GOP and Democratic rivals. Ironically, he accused the news media then and ever since, wrongly, of anti-Trump bias. And worse.

Now, the very news organizations that Trump characterizes collectively as “enemy of the people” fall into the same trap: They report and magnify everything that the president says and tweets—including the daily diet of claims that are false and, yes, big lies.

In contrast, there is little coverage of the presumptive Democratic candidate Joe Biden. To be sure, he follows the stay-home and wear-a-mask advice of public health experts that Mr. Trump openly defies. But if fair and balanced reporting means to actively enlist statements and comments from the other side, Mr. Biden and his campaign leaders are merely a phone call, text message, or email away.

However, the current laying-low tactic will not work for long for a presidential candidate. Not even during a crisis period, when the opponent’s attacks relentlessly. For all the craziness that is coming out of Trump’s mouth and tweet production, he does control the mass-mediated narrative.

That must change, if the Democrats’ ticket has a winning chance in November. Biden and his campaign should take its cue from the Never Trump Group’s Lincoln Project. Most of all, from their compelling documentary-like videos.  

Biden’s campaign needs slogans that can compete and beat the catch words of the Trump campaign.

Here is the thing: Trump’s politics of denial was responsible for the long delay in preparing and instructing the health care sector and the American public for the most devastating crisis since WWII. Yes, the virus originated in China. But Covid-19 deserves the name Trump VIRUS because this president’s alternative reality and alternative facts lulled adequate preparedness. As research shows, he is responsible for thousands of deaths.

In his book “Time to Get Tough” Trump wrote that “a president doesn’t ‘create’ jobs, only businesses can do that.” But as President he has credited himself with creating the best economy, the best stock market, and the lowest unemployment rate in American history. Well, then, Joe Biden. Why not talking now of a Trump Recession and Trump’s Record Unemployment? Besides the Trump Virus, of course.

And one more thing: Time to Get Tough!

Donald Trump and the Big-Lie Theory

By Brigitte L. Nacos

When parents tell their children to tell the truth, they may cite the proverb that lies have short legs. The lesson is that you do not get away with lies.

I thought of this, when I reread an article on Donald Trump by Marie Brenner that Vanity Fair published in 1990 and republished in 2015, right after he declared his presidential candidacy.

Brenner wrote that one of Trump’s lawyers told her, “Donald is a believer in the big-lie theory.  “If you say something again and again, people will believe you.”

Obviously, the Big-Lie theory has served Donald Trump well before and after he moved into the White House. According to the fact checkers of the Washington Post, President Trump made 16,241 “false or misleading” claims during the first three years in office. In other words, more than an average of 14 lies per day.

And, yet, with TV, radio, and online Trumpian propagandists at his service, Trump disproved the saying that lies have short legs.

During his ascent to and rule as liar-in-chief he has relentlessly attacked the mainstream media as “fake” and “enemy of the American people.”

Anyone who calls himself a “very stable genius” does not allow disagreement when he muddles fact and fiction. Thus, after the premier public health scientist Dr. Anthony Fauci corrected Trump statements during press conferences in the White House, he all but disappeared from that stage. One appearance in the last seven events.   

Dr. Deborah Birx, also a recognized public health expert, seems lately being sucked into the Trumpian circle of benevolent servants. In an appearance on “Watter’s World” last Saturday she told the FOX NEWS host that the President “looks at every bit of data” praising his “strong foundation on data” and that he is asking the right questions. When she explained Trump’s insane notion about the internal use of heat and disinfectants in the treatment of Covid-19 as his habit “to talk it through out loud” new information, she must have scored brownie points. Same, when she went after the news media.

Asked whether the media had been fair in reporting the pandemic, Dr. Birx answered forcefully,

I think the media is very slicey and dicey about how they put sentences together in order to create headlines. …I think often the reporting may be accurate in paragraph three, four, and five. But I’m not sure how many people get to paragraph three, four, and five…And I think the responsibility the press has is to really ensure that the headlines reflect science and data that is in the piece itself.”

No criticism of the Big-Lie theorist and his dismal relationship to truth and fact even during the current health emergency. Instead, an admonition of the mainstream media that records his falsities and misleading statements day-in and day-out.

This morning, President Trump threw another tweet bomb in the direction of the mainstream media.  “FAKE NEWS, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” he wrote. “There has never been, in the history of our Country, a more vicious or hostile Lamestream Media than there is right now, even in the midst of a National Emergency, the Invisible Enemy!”

The White House then informed reporters that the previously scheduled afternoon press briefing would not be held. Another signal that these press conferences are not about informing the public about the health crisis but rather about the president’s vanities.

P.S.  A few hours after announcing that the day's press briefing was canceled the White House let it be known that the President would “brief the nation” at a news conference in the afternoon. The stable genius needs the stage and always the starring role.

Trump’s Virus of Alternative Facts Spreads at Home and Abroad

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Drawing on his experience as Hitler’s propagandist-in-chief Joseph Goebbels revealed, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” What once was the centerpiece of Nazi propaganda has become commonplace in contemporary America. The virus of alternative facts—in common language: lies propagated as truth--has spread from Donald Trump’s campaign and White House to his supporting cast in the administration, in Congress, and throughout the onetime Great Old Party.

Whether in his tweets, staged press encounters, or mass rallies the president himself tells and repeats again and again the same alternative facts. Just as important for these lies to spread is that

(1) the right-wing media report Trump’s whopper lies with excitement and breaking news prominence as true revelations; and

(2) the mainstream media, although day-in and day-out attacked by Trump, cover the President’s tweet output constantly and thereby, unwittingly, magnify them.  

Today, the wide gap between alternative fact and actual fact, between truth and lie, has increased the ideological and partisan polarization. Roughly half of the American public believes whatever alternative facts the President and his enablers in politics, FOX News, and others in his media propaganda arm say or write, while the other half of the nation form their views based on demonstrable facts.

Take this example: After the President met yesterday with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office (ironically, the same day congressional Democrats publicized the text of the two impeachment articles!), U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that President Trump had “warned against any Russian attempts to interfere in United States elections.” Lavrov, however, told the press during a news conference in the Russian Embassy that he and Trump did not discuss elections at all.

Sad but true, the Russian’s version is credible, Pompeo’s is not. After all, President Trump has all along denied any Russian interference in the 2016 election—why, then, would he warn of any interference by Moscow in next year’s presidential race?

The virus of alternative facts has not merely dire consequences at home but also abroad. Trump’s constant attacks on ”fake news” and “fake media”—a  reprise of the term “Luegenpresse” (lying press) used by Nazi leaders in their assaults on not yet completely controlled news organizations—have become part of the propaganda schemes of  leaders around the world, including those in  Russia, China, Turkey, Venezuela, and Israel.

Most disconcertingly, even when followers recognize fully that their leader is a chronic liar they may not withdraw their support. Indeed, the other day, a voter in the United Kingdom revealed “she was voting for Mr. [Boris] Johnson precisely because he is a proven liar. It shows, she said, that he is ‘human’.”

Preferring serial liars as leaders! That’s the very sad state of affairs here, in the UK, and elsewhere.

The Mainstream Media and Trump’s Second Presidential Campaign

By Brigitte L. Nacos

In 2015, during the pre-primary season, Donald Trump laid the groundwork for his domination of the mainstream media’s news coverage that continued through his nomination as GOP presidential candidate. Research by communication scholars documented not only Trump’s complete dominance of the news but also the fact that he received more positive coverage than his GOP rivals. Now, four years later, the President repeats his news dominance by blasting crazy, inconsistent, and contradictory statements via Twitter or “informal” encounters with the White House press. What Trump and a compliant mainstream media managed then seems to be repeated now: Then, Trump’s GOP rivals received little media attention; now Democrats competing for their party’s nomination receive little prominent coverage in comparison to the president.

I just took a look at the online headers signaling lead stories in the New York Times and Washington Post. Of the 7 top news headlines of the Times, not counting the opinion pieces, three mentioned “Trump,” one had “White House” in the header. On the Post site, above the opinion pieces, 13 of 20 headlines mentioned “Trump.” In both cases one or more additional   headers signaled Trump administration policies without mentioning the president’s name.

Of course, these headers change constantly. But what does not change is the dominance of stories that Trump triggers with his constant flow of statements. Indeed, certain of these items get often special attention as breaking news—such as the banner on top of the Washington Post site that earlier today advertised that Trump, again, changed his mind about lowering payroll taxes.

Surfing early afternoon today for half an hour or so through the all-news cable channels except for Trump’s favorite FOX News I found that the hosts at CNN, MSNBC and even CNBC were talking about Trump all the time--often with visuals of the president in the background and Trump-related news items on the crawl bar.

At minimum Trump sets the news agenda day-in and day-out by an endless flow of outrageous statements that are most of the time not at all related to the reality of governing. His expressed positions are reported as lead stories as are the complete reversals that come often within hours or days.

The news organizations that Trump accuses of publicizing “fake” news are full what he says, full of his alternative facts and post-truths that he knows will be magnified not only by FOX but by his press “enemies” as well.

Yes, every president has to be covered. The question is: what is covered and how prominently and extensively.

This is a question that the newsrooms need to ponder now and answer better than four years ago. Otherwise, even the best of our news organizations become, again, unwittingly, Trump’s bedfellows in a marriage of convenience before next year’s election.

Publicity is the Oxygen of the Trumpian Propaganda Show; the Mainstream Media Can Deny It

Brigitte L. Nacos

During many years of terrorism research I found ample evidence that publicity is central to the terrorist scheme. Terrorism is a communicative act designed to get attention and dominate the media, elite, and public agenda. I am not suggesting here that President Trump is a terrorist comparable to those who carried out 9/11, the Oklahoma City Bombing, or the recent attacks against innocents in a supermarket, synagogues, and churches--although his rhetorical twitter bombs are quite similar to those thrown by contemporary online jihadists and white supremacists that incite violence.

I suggest that just as publicity is the oxygen or lifeblood of terrorism, publicity is the oxygen or lifeblood of Mr. Trump’s destructive and disruptive propaganda show. During his 31 months in office Trump’s solo propaganda stream has been extremely successful. Even the best mainstream news organizations report on television, radio, in print or online instantly and seemingly breathlessly every crazy tweeted or spoken word this man utters.

Normally, when the president speaks, the press listens, and the public will be informed. But Donald Trump is not a normal president. In a rare moment of truthfulness, he said the other day that there was never a president like President Trump. Indeed! He and his cronies have cut normal routines between press and White House officials. There are no longer regular press briefings or new conferences. The transparency that Trump’s minions claim does not exist in this White House and Administration.

For Trump and his crew the news media serves conveniently as megaphone for the president’s mostly nonsensical and self-aggrandizing propaganda: insults, attacks, warnings, threats—with occasional assurances of love addressed to his truth-loving counterparts in North Korea and Russia and his friends at FOX News.

Nothing of this is newsworthy; nothing provides important public affairs information for the American people. Instead, this non-substantial news crowds out coverage of important news on immigration, health care, the environment, foreign affairs.

Most of the media unwittingly and some of the media wittingly magnify Donald Trump’s propaganda.

His unwitting accomplices in the mainstream media must stop this practice, must deny this president the oxygen that keeps his crazy rhetoric center stage 7/24.  

News organizations should declare a moratorium on covering non substantial Trump messages, whether tweeted or screamed at another campaign rally. It might not temper or cut down on Trump’s bully rhetoric, but it might reduce the frustrations and anxieties of many Americans who are exhausted from the never-ending coverage of this president’s unpresidential words.

Why not give it a try?

America’s Liberal Democracy under Attack

 

By Brigitte L. Nacos

With the news media already in weekend mode, the US Supreme Court announced on Friday its ruling that President Trump can use $2.5 billion to build his controversial Wall at the Southern border –although the Congress had earmarked this money for the Defense Department. Ignoring that the US Constitutions reserves the power of the purse to the legislative branch, the Court’s decision allows Trump to spend billions to fulfill his number one campaign promise in 2016. Not Mexico as he promised then but American taxpayers at the expense of the military will pay for the wall.

Reports about the ruling were momentarily “breaking news” on cable TV and mostly forgotten, when Trump threw another of his tweet bombs insulting Congressman Elijah Cummings and his Black constituents in Baltimore. Just as the President had early characterized countries with Black populations s-holes, his latest tweet insult called Cummings “a brutal bully” and his congressional district “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and “the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States.”  Cummings is one of the most soft-spoken members of the House. Given that Trump has a long history of attacking, insulting, and stereotyping African-Americans, Latinos, and other minorities of color, he added to the list of outrageously racist statements.

The attack on the African-American Congressman and African-Americans residing in his district, about half of his constituents, came shortly after similar content in his beloved Fox & Friends program on FOX News. This is typically how it works—the President sees and hears what he likes on FOX, tweets it as his own and thereby triggers massive mainstream news coverage.

In this case as in many similar tweet bombs before, his core supporters received another assurance from their Dear Leader that he is a White Nationalist defending their hateful, divisive ideology. Building the Wall, putting racial and religious minorities in their place along with Democrats and everyone else who does not support him is the Song of the King for the coming election campaign.

America’s liberal democracy is under attack and shows already some cracks. Just like power-hungry leaders abroad, such as Erdogan in Turkey or Viktor Orban in Hungary break institutions or hand them over to loyal supporters, Trump, too, has partners in Courts, the Department of Justice, and most of all in the Republican majority caucus in the US Senate.

Media, Corporations, and Gender Bias in America’s Sports

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Yesterday afternoon (Sunday, July 14) was not unusual for television’s treatment of male and female golf professionals: CBS aired the men’s John Deere Classic; NBC covered the Scottish Open; ABC showed the “American Century Championship” with golfing celebrities—when I looked for a moment, “Larry the Cable Guy” was hitting a ball; the Golf Channel covered the 2019 Bridgestone Senior Players Championship. Finally, at 6:00 p.m. the Golf Channel got to the LPGA Marathon Classic.

If you consulted the weekend’s Sports Calendar of TV highlights in the New York Times you did not even know that there was an LPGA tournament—merely the domestic professional men’s tournaments, John Deere Classic and the Senior Players Championship, were listed. Ignoring LPGA events in the calendar of the Times was not an unusual oversight but is quite common as I know since I am a frequent watcher of LPGA and PGA golf tournaments on TV.

For all the coverage surrounding the exceptional performance and win of America’s marvelous women’s national soccer team at the World Cup tournament in France, I doubt that this will result in more attention to the games of the women’s soccer league once the hype of the Cup victory has subsided. Nor will it improve the volume of reports about other female sports.

To be sure, some personalities like Michelle Wie in golf, Serena Williams in tennis, and, now, Megan Rapinoe get special media attention.

And when controversies or confrontations arise, reporters will be there to cover it. Think about the pay inequality between male and female members of the national soccer teams. When the spectators at the World Cup’s final in Lyon screamed “Equal Pay” after the U.S. team’s victory, there was massive coverage. When complains are expressed over the lack of females in coaching positions, whether concerning teams or individuals, the press is interested in reporting. But when it comes to day-to-day coverage, media organizations display their gender bias openly. Just one example: Have you ever seen two female broadcasters calling the plays of PGA tournaments? I have not. These roles are reserved exclusively for males. Women, yes, can report from one or the other hole or interview players after they have finished their rounds. At LPGA tournaments it is not unusual to see and hear two male broadcaster calling the plays or one female and one male.

God Help America!

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Instead of singing “God bless America” this July Fourth holiday, we must rather wish and sing, “God help America!”

We do not need blessings for the dismal state of affairs but rather help to prevent further damage to our democracy.

To be sure, the great ideals of America were never fully realized—but there has been progress, sometimes more rapidly and sometimes more slowly.

Since Donald Trump took the highest office in the land, the president himself, his advisers, his incompetent department heads, the blindly following GOP in Congress, and his media propagandists led by FOX news have violated or supported the violation of laws and democratic rules of the game. Instead of moving Americans forward to a more promising future, they united to usher in a reactionary regime presided over a demagogue in bed with despicable dictators around the world.

Trump’s role at the G-20 meeting in Japan and his self-organized unreal reality show meeting with North Korea’s supreme human rights violator Kim Jong-Un was another embarrassing horror show on the international stage. After sharply criticizing Japan and Germany just before the meeting began, Trump’s jovial get-togethers with Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabia’s de-facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman( MBS), bolstered the international standing of ruthless rulers that violate civil liberties, human rights, and international law.

Trump continues to believe Putin’s denials of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election campaigns in order to help candidate Trump rather than believing his own intelligence agencies that found ample proof of Russian malfeasance.  He believes MSB’s implausible denials that he ordered brutal murder of a Saudi journalist and U.S. resident in spite of contrary findings by the CIA and the United Nations.

The Donald’s latest meeting with North Korea’s Kim, with whom he fell in love thanks to the North Korean’s lovely letters, was not only celebrated by the President but by the American mainstream media as “historical.” Obviously, the very press that Trump has labeled again and again “enemy of the American people,” is falling again for his pre-campaign antics as they did before and during his 2016 campaign.

While Trump assured Kim and the world that he was “honored” by the joined crossing of the border between the two Koreas and lauded the Chairman Kim’s “powerful voice,” North-Korean security guards and state press used physical force against American journalists in the official press pool who pushed for access—bruising the new White House press secretary in the process.

Trump and his crew, including daughter and son-in-law, ignored these signs of Kim Jong-un’s horror show—probably happy  to draw the attention of Americans away from potential Trump opponents in the 2020 electoral race.

That brings me to the second point why God needs to help America this July Fourth: Unless Democrats competing to challenge the President next week get their act together, they will hand Trump his reelection on a platter. While it is fine to point to Trump’s promises made and promised broken record, Democrats need to offer voters a precise program for a brighter future in both domestic and foreign affairs.

What Donald Trump Can Learn from George Washington’s and John Adam’s Problems with the Press

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Donald Trump, as candidate and far more as the 45^th US President, has relentlessly attacked news media and individuals therein for reporting critically on his and his administration’s politics and policies.

Reporting that the president does not like becomes “fake” news in White House jargon.

Trump has threatened to change the libel laws, presumably having the Supreme Court overturn the New York Times vs. Sullivan ruling that makes it next to impossible for public figures to prevail in libel actions against news organizations.

Trump should read a history book to get some sense of previous presidents’ experiences with the press. He would first of all learn that some earlier presidents had a much harder time with the press than he ever could imagine.

A good time to look at would be the 1790s and the presidencies of George Washington and John Adams, both Federalists who were vilified constantly by the Republican presses of their times.

The most influential Republican (Anti-Federalist) paper was the Aurora in Philadelphia published and edited by Benjamin Bache, grandson of Benjamin Franklin, who hired writers like William Duane and James Callender.

Bache and his newspaper, more than any other Republican newsman and press, were constant thorns in both presidents’ hide.

Bache described President George Washington’s “comportment as ‘that of a monarch,’ his governance as the ‘apish mimickry of kingship,’ his ‘pompous carriages, splendid feasts, and tawdry gowns’ and his encouragement of the public celebration of his birthday.”

Since Bache’s Aurora was very influential in that it informed the content of many other Republican newspapers around the country, Washington war quite upset—but instead of publicly venting his feeling, he did so in conversations with and letters to friends.

In one letter, Washington wrote,  “If you read the Aurora of this city…you cannot but have perceived with what malignant industry, and persevering falsehoods I am assailed, in order to weaken, if not destroy, the confidence of the Public.”  

After George Washington died, the Aurora commented,

“If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation has been debauched by Washington.

If ever a nation has suffered from the improper influence of a man, the American nation has suffered from the influence of Washington.

If ever a nation has been deceived by a man, the American nation has been deceived by Washington.”