reflectivepundit

Hate Speech and Violence are Contagious; Don’t Count on Sudden Civility

By Brigitte L. Nacos

After spending decades studying all aspects of political violence/terrorism, even the most horrific verbal and physical violence does not shock me. When I watched the assassination attempt on Donald Trump on live television, I was not surprised. Just as I was not surprised, when I saw the violent images of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. No, I could not have predicted what would happened to whom at what venue. But when political actors and groups of one persuasion label opponents regularly as illegitimate, enemies, and evil threats, there will be violent consequences sooner or later. There is some evidence that political violence is contagious in that it persuades other actors to carry out similar attacks.

President Joe Biden asked Americans to take down the temperature of divisive discourse in the hope that a less hostile climate would prevent further violence. Don’t count on it. Both sides believe that the stakes in the upcoming elections are the highest in modern times.

This morning, congressman Scott Perry (R-PA) was interviewed on the BBC News Hour on Public Radio. Perry, a close Trump ally, was one of the House members involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 elections. Today, after some lip service to President Biden’s call for tuning  down the temperature of the political rhetoric, he put all the blame for some of Trump’s rhetoric on the other side blaming the government and the weaponized Department of Justice for persecuting Donald Trump since 2015. In response, Trump was just defending himself.

But while it seems difficult for many commentators, especially those who are liberal, to set the record straight after a failed assassination attempt, it needs to be done.

Yes, there have been aggressive rhetoric and hate speech on the far-left that targeted Trump, MAGA, and the GOP. But whereas the far-right and its rhetoric have  gone mainstream and were adopted by one of our two major parties, the far-left has not such a reach. There is no major far-left movement, party, and leader.

That is the difference.

The latest phase of the current political climate in our country began with the election of the first Black U.S. president in 2008. A few weeks after Barack Obama’s inauguration, the Tea Party was established—officially, as an anti-tax movement—even though Obama had not initiated legislation at that early time. Eventually, the libertarian—less government--wing of the movement was overshadowed by social/cultural/religious/white conservatives, many of whom were “birthers.”

Donald Trump made himself the self-appointed propagandist for the anti-Obama rumors that the sitting president was not born in the U.S. and therefore an illegitimate office holder and likely a Muslim, not a Christian. With that role on his resume, Trump won the support of many Tea Partiers, especially religious nationalists, and Birther conspiracy theorists, once he won the GOP presidential nomination in 2016. The extremism on Tea Party and Birther online discussion boards and social media became more pronounced in the MAGA movement and Trumpian GOP.

Their call to action was and remains, Attack, Attack, Attack.

Because President Biden mentioned the Jan 6 insurrection attempt among other violent attacks in his conciliatory speech, he was attacked by Republicans demanding to forget about Jan 6, not mentioning it any more. They defended their leader who has promised that he will pardon the “political prisoner” jailed for their Jan 6 crimes on day one of his second presidency.

It has been reported that Donald Trump rewrote his originally tough speech for the National Nominating Convention at Milwaukee this week and hast tuned it down. This was not exactly what he did yesterday in a post on Truth Social, when he wrote,

• “In this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand United, and show our True Character as Americans, remaining Strong and Determined, and not allowing Evil to Win."

Nothing changed. Just another wording of what he has called repeatedly “the last battle” that his side is fighting and must win against the existential Evil threat.

This reality does not bode well for less hate speech and less violence.

The Supreme Court’s Immunity Ruling—A Warning that among the First Signposts of Vanishing Democracies are Courts Loyal to Authoritarian Populists

By Brigitte L. Nacos

The Supreme Court’s majority of six Justices—half of them appointed by Donald J. Trump—has done the bidding for the American Far-Right and its Dear Leader for years: From the repeal of the Roe v. Wade decision to today’s equally shocking decision that defies the U.S. Constitution and assures Trump that he will not be tried for directing the failed coup d’etat to overturn the legitimate election victory of Joe Biden.

This open Far-Right partisanship and loyalty to an out of control former and would-be president who does not cover his authoritarian/dictatorial ambitions poses an acute threat to American democracy whether Trump wins the November election or not.

And today’s opinion concerning former president Trump’s claim of immunity for his actions related to the January 6 insurgency is further proof that the current Supreme Court is not an independent institution of our government. Indeed, two of the justices in the majority, Thomas and Alito along with their respective wives have shown their support for far-right donors and for Trump’s efforts to overthrow our democracy in order to stay in power.

Every American should read this extraordinary majority opinion and the dissents, a strong warning signal that democracy dies in bright daylight.

While Chief Justice John Roberts claims in the majority opinion that “no man is above the law,” he and the rest of the far-right majority that distinguished between official and private  acts  deem conversations between the president and his vice-president and officials in the Department of Justice part of his official business—even though in Trump’s case the communication were part of efforts to overturning his lost election.

As Justice Sonia Sotomayor writes in her dissent, “Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop.”

She ends her opinion with the warning, “With fear for our democracy, I dissent.”

Sotomayor is right. For the Supreme Court “the president is now a king above the law” as long as his criminal actions are deemed official ones by the highest Court.  

Scholars of democracy found that when populist authoritarian leaders come to power in liberal democracies, among their first efforts to gain full control is undermining the independence of courts by forcing sitting judges to retire and appointing loyalists.

If Donald Trump returns to the White House, this is a job he did in his first term. But there are plenty of other changes for which supporters of “illiberal democracy” are planning for the last several years.

Contrary to the News, Far-Right Parties Are Not Dominating the EU

By Brigitte L. Nacos

If one looks for a case to demonstrate the problem of jazzed up breaking news accompanied by incomplete information and wrong conclusions, last night and today’s reporting on the elections for the European Parliament make for a perfect example. After watching the BBC, Euro News, and CNN, I was sure that far-right parties had won a landslide victory in the EU parliament. One commentator considered the far-right showing so strong that he saw it also as a good omen for Donald Trump and bad news for Joe Biden. A historic shift.

The reality is this: After this election, the EU parliament in Strasbourg has a total of 720 seats. The two far-right parties combined won 131 of those seats, 13 seats more than they had before. Because the two right-extreme factions do not see eye to eye, there is no unified far-right bloc on policy issues. The biggest party remains the center-right European People’s Party made up of deputies belonging to Germany’s Christian Democrats, the second largest bloc form Socialist Democrats with 185 seats.

Add to this that EU elections have lower turnouts than elections in individual countries. The turnout for this latest EU election was slightly over 50%. In past EU elections, too, extreme parties fared better than in their respective country’s contests.

No doubt, news claims that the far-right was the big winner in the EU elections were wrong; the actual gains were very modest.

How could that happen? Based on what I heard and read, most reporting did not focus on what the results meant for the EU parliament but for the political landscape in individual member states.

And, yes, there were notable changes but, again, not as mind-blogging as reported.

In France, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National won 32% of the vote—more than any other party, but far from an absolute majority. It will be interesting to see, how Rassemblement National will do in the soon to be held parliamentary elections that President Macron called in a surprising move in reaction to the election results.

In Italy, Georgia Meloni’s Fratelli Italia remained the strongest party and increased its vote percentage to 28%--not exactly a smashing majority or plurality. No wonder that Meloni’s actual policy was and will probably remain pro-EU and supportive of the Transatlantic Alliance.

In Austria, the far-right Freiheitliche Partei became with 26% of the vote the leading party before the center-right Volkspartei with 25% and will have trouble to form a coalition government.  

In Germany, the far-right Alternative fuer Deutschland won 16% of the vote and became second strongest party behind the CDU/CSU with 30% of the vote. In Eastern Germany, once part of the Soviet bloc, the AfD is the majority party. But in the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, no other party will work with the neo-Nazi party in a governing coalition.

Most importantly, in the individual countries, the EU elections resembled surveys that provided a measurement of contemporary voter sentiments causing no immediate governmental changes except for Belgium, where the Prime Minister resigned because of the poor showing of his party in the EU election. 

The real and good news is that the Far-Right will not control the EU parliament nor the vast majority of its 27 member states in the foreseeable future.    

How Trump Attacks and Violates the Rule of Law and Gets Away with it

By Brigitte L. Nacos

The year before coming to power in Germany the Nazis claimed falsely that Hitler had defeated President Hindenburg in the German parliament’s presidential election. As Sebastian Haffner, then a young German, wrote later, “Summoned as a witness before the highest German court, Adolf Hitler bellowed at the judges that he would one day come to power by strictly constitutional means and then heads would roll.” Hitler repeated his retribution threat at a following court session. But he was not charged with contempt and gone to jail as any other German would have at that time. Perhaps, the highest court feared Hitler’s heavily armed private army of storm troopers.

In the last several weeks, former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked the Manhattan prosecutor responsible for Trump’s criminal indictment, the judge who presides during his current trial, and the jury that will come up with the verdict. When Trump violated the judge’s gag order repeatedly, he was held in contempt and threatened with jail. But while any other defendant attacking, as the judge said, the rule of law would have spent some time in jail, Mr. Trump did not. The former president does not have storm troopers like Hitler, but he and his sycophants are loose with references to violence. The latest came from Matt Gaetz whose online battle cry “Stand Back and Stand By” was a repeat of Trump’s 2020 command to the Proud Boys who—along with the Oath Keepers—were instrumental in the violent breach of the capitol on January 6, 2021. Trump’s promise that he would pardon on day one of his next presidency all imprisoned January 6 “hostages," among them the leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keeper groups--domestic terrorists-- is another attack on the rule of law.

Trump and his MAGA followers are relentlessly attacking the Department of Justice, prosecutors, and judges. They must be thrilled about the support they receive from members of the US Supreme Court, whose ethics violations in the context and in support of illegal actions by Trump and leading GOP officials become ever more scandalous.

Not enough that Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, the two calling themselves “best friends,” was an active supporter of the coup attempt to deny Joe Biden the electoral college votes he legitimately won. We now learn that shortly after January 6 and merely days before Biden’s inauguration an up-side-down US flag—a symbol for “Stop the Steal” MAGA activists--was flown outside Justice Alito’s house.

That much for the once highly regarded Supreme Court that soon will decide whether former president Donald Trump enjoys unlimited immunity for criminal actions during and after his presidency.

Columbia University Must Not Hand the GOP Woke Police President Shafik’s Scalp

By Brigitte L. Nacos

After teaching for more than three decades at Columbia University, I have followed the protests on and around the campus from afar. To say that I am troubled by the deep divisions among students, faculty, and administration is an understatement. Lately, I have been asked by several people about my take on the Morningside Heights situation. I do not have a quick and simple answer. In confrontations like those at Columbia and many universities today, the conclusion what side or sides are right or wrong cannot easily be made. Especially not, when media reality does not fully reflect factual reality on the ground.

On one point, however, I do have a categorical position: Columbia’s faculty, students, and ultimately the board must ignore all calls for the university’s president, Minouche Shafik, to resign. If she is forced out, it will be a total victory for Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who first trapped the presidents of Harvard University, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania during a congressional hearing with hostile questions, none of the witnesses seemed prepared for. It cost two of them their jobs.

After Liz Magill, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, was forced to resign, Stefanik posted on social media, “One down. Two to go.” That was her goal from the outset. Behead the leader of ivy league universities, the long-time targets of the far-right. Shortly thereafter, Harvard’s Claudine Gay resigned. MIT president Sally Kornbluth has so far survived the Stefanik-led far-right attack.

Recently, Dr. Shafik and two members of Columbia University’s board appeared before the same committee and seemingly tried to appease Stefanik and other woke hunters. That did not please part of the Columbia faculty and student body. And it certainly did not appease Stefanik. The onetime moderate Republican from up-state New York, who became a MAGA militant on a fast track to power in Washington, wants to add Dr. Shafik’s scalp to her trophy collection.

On Monday, Elise Stefanik, and the other members of New York’s GOP delegation in the House, sent Dr. Shafik a letter urging her “to step down immediately so that someone who will take action against this mob can step up...”

Today, House Speaker Mike Johnson, perhaps fearful to be outflanked by Stefanik, called for Dr. Shafik’s ouster as well before he visited the Columbia campus to speak with Jewish students.

So far, the Columbia senate, in which faculty, students, and board members are represented, consideres censoring president Shafik, especially, for calling in the police to arrest protesters who refused to leave their camp site amidst the Morningside campus. There seem no calls, up to now, for her resignation from within the Columbia community.

A major point of those who oppose the forceful removal of protesters is that these students were not violent. What they and most people mean, when they think of or say violence, is causing physical harm. But just as serious, or even greater mental and even physical harm can be caused by hate speech, vocal attacks, and visuals (such as burning crosses, displaying swastikas, or waving Hamas flags).

I will write more about my thoughts on the current campus protests in future posts.

Trump Accomplice is Now a Political Analyst for NBC/MSNBC: A New Low for Legacy Press

By Brigitte L. Nacos

A free press is supposed to be a check on the institutions and officials of government by scrutinizing everyone involved in the political power play and informing citizens and voters fully. That’s why the press in democracies is understood as extra check on government in case the institutional system of checks-and-balances does not work. Moreover, a free press should reflect the whole range of political views among governing elites and governed constituents.

To discharge these responsibilities, political opinions voiced in the responsible press should not be one-sided but rather an amalgam of different viewpoints. In the American setting, this should mean that news consumers are presented with the ideological and policy positions of the two major parties and relevant additional views. When the views of political leaders and their followers threaten the democratic fabric of body politic, the press’s commentators must warn and alarm.  

Like in the past, mainstream news organizations, such as TV and radio networks and the large print/online presses, have today political commentators across the partisan spectrum.

Why, then, is the hiring of Ronna McDaniel as a paid political analyst for NBC/MSNBC News disconcerting and an insult to journalistic ethics?

McDaniel served from 2017 to recently as chair of the Republican National Committee. During Trump’s presidency and thereafter, she was a loyal supporter of the Trump. She became his accomplice, when he tried to overturn the 2020 election results by convincing fake state electors to nullify Biden’s victory. She backed Trumps and the MAGA/GOPs Big Lie, claimed consistently that the 2020 election was rigged, and refused to criticize the storming of the US Capitol that her boss incited.

In other words, as influential chair of the RNC McDaniel was for six years a pathological liar in support of the whims of one illiberal leader—not of the conservative roots of the Republican Party. She seconded her boss’s relentless attacks on journalists and thereby contributed to the hostility of MAGA crowds toward reporters at mass rallies.

In her appearance on Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” McDaniel tried to distance herself from her past lies in the service of Trump. She seemed to accept that Biden won the 2020 election and claimed to oppose Trump’s plan to pardon the January 6 insurrectionists if he returns to the White House. But even as she reversed former statements during her NBC appearance, she claimed that she had not changed her positions.

She tried hard to protect her contract with NBC.

In doing so, she had the gall to tell other members of the “Meet the Press” panel, “I think you should trust me!” But many NBC journalists, along with colleagues across the media landscape, remained critical of her hiring. Thankfully, so.

A chronic liar cannot be trusted. Not by serious journalists and not by serious news consumers.

Trump warns of “a bloodbath” in case he does not win this year’s election. And the news media yawns

By Brigitte L. Nacos

On Saturday (3/16), Donald Trump warned during a campaign stop in Ohio that there will be “a bloodbath” if he is not elected later this year. When I checked the front pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and a bunch of well-regarded regional newspapers this morning, none of them carried the shocking warning on page one. The websites of Times and News, too, did not treat the former and perhaps next president’s outrageous threat as number one breaking news.

Instead, they paid more attention to the presidential candidates’ campaign donations, Trump supporters’ successful spread of disinformation, the election in Russia, arms smuggling to Yemen, and the Schumer-Netanyahu feud.

The Times headline “Trump Says Some Migrants are ‘Not People’ and Predicts a ‘Blood Bath’ if He loses,” rated Trump’s old insult of “illegals”—he called them repeatedly “animals,” “rapist,” “criminals” and the likes—higher than his unprecedented “bloodbath” threat. And the story itself cited Trump’s new rhetorical low only in the third paragraph. Note, that the story was updated on Sunday morning.

Everybody should read and remember this explicit Trump warning issued this weekend: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a blood bath for the country.”

The Washington Post headlined its report, "Trump says some undocumented immigrants are 'not people' and relegated the bloodbath warning to the subtitle. It is only in the sixth paragraph that the reporters get to Trump's most outrageous remark and cited it: "Later in the rally, Trump warned it will be a bloodbath for the country, if he is not elected. The comment came as he was promising to hike tariffs on foreign-made cars, and it was not clear exactly what Trump was referring to with his admonition." 

What could not be clear, when a presidential candidate predicts a bloodbath for the country, if he is not elected? And why would the news report call Trump’s warning of something horrific to happen to America an admonition? It sounded more like a threat of civil war or a terrorism threat that goes and in hand with his frequent warning that this election year will be “the last battle.”

When I grew up in Germany and was an aspiring young journalist, I looked at American journalists and the high standards in their professional ethics rules with tremendous admiration. And I was not an exception. Many of my colleagues felt the same at the time, when German journalism found a new beginning after the dark years of the Nazi regime and looked to the Anglo-American press model.

Yes, technology has changed the whole media industry. But if the news organizations that are perceived to be the best in the country and the world cannot or do not want to recognize and priorities truly extraordinary news, the old press model that I once admired greatly is on its way out.

Trump Spoke of “Cutting” Entitlements, the News Media Paid Little or No Attention

By Brigitte L. Nacos

This morning, shortly after 7:30 a.m., I was watching CNBC, when the co-host of “Squawk Box” Joe Kernen began his interview with Donald Trump. Before long, Kernen asked the former president and presumptive GOP nominee for this year’s presidential race,

“Have you changed your, your outlook on how to handle entitlements Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Mr. President? Seems like something has to be done, or else we’re going to be stuck at 120% of debt to GDP forever.”

Trump answered according to the transcript,

“So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements, tremendous bad management of entitlements. There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do. So I don’t necessarily agree with the statement…”

Trump was crystal clear as he touched the third rail of politics and spoke of “cutting” entitlements. While he did not go into any details of what, how deep and whom he would cut, the mere fact that he mentioned the “c” word for cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid was a complete reversal of his previous campaign assurances that he would protect those programs.

A few news organizations mentioned Trump’s statement. But there were no “breaking news” highlights.

Around 3:00 p.m., some seven hours after the live interview, I wondered how the New York Times and Washington Post covered what I thought to be a news blockbuster. Instead, I found that the Times posted a lengthy story about the interview but it was solely devoted to Trump’s backtracking of his former demand to ban TikTok. I found no headline about Trump’s remarks on potential Social Security cuts. I looked carefully through the headlines on the Post’s website and found none on Trump’s words on entitlements in the morning.

Given that many millions of Americans depend on the so-called entitlements, I have no idea, why those two influential media entities failed to report on this promptly and prominently.

To be sure, Trump makes lots of controversial and shocking statements so that editors have to make choices on what to report. But for two of the most influential media to ignore for hours (and perhaps for good?) the very newsworthy statement of one of the two leading presidential candidates that will likely become a major issue in the presidential campaign is more shocking than Trump’s turn-around words on entitlements.

Democrats Must Magnify the Unholy Agenda of Trump’s Congressional Proxies

By Brigitte L. Nacos

President Biden, the White House, and the Democratic Party have received ample criticism for their lack of effective and around-the-clock public communication promoting their considerable policy achievements and countering the hell-bent Trumpian propaganda of lies, most of all, that he and his coterie are the protectors of the American people against their evil enemies within the country.

I have been asked frequently, how Biden and Democrats could counter their opposition's positions and promote their own. Here I provide a very small but, I believe, workable example.

Below you see the closing lines of a New York Times article by Catie Edmondson about current efforts in the House of Representatives to prevent the shut-down of the government later this week:  

"Among the measures that Republicans have sought are one that would restrict access to abortion medication and another to restrict the Department of Veterans Affairs from flagging veterans deemed mentally incompetent in a federal background check needed to buy a gun. They also have tried to block an effort by Democrats to increase funding for nutrition programs for low-income women and children."

There are no better facts than those described above for Biden and his communication experts to highlight as three of many outlandish measures which are typical for the Republican Party’s extreme, inhumane, and violent agenda.

First, Republican House leaders are not content with the conservative U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. Now they try to further limit American women’s decision-making right over their reproductive health by adopting federal restrictions to access abortion medication.

Second, Republicans in the House want to give mentally challenged veterans the right to buy guns by removing their health information from background checks. If they succeed, they will make another dangerous gift to the gun industry in return for generous campaign donations. And that at a time, when mass shootings and the number of innocent victims are on the rise.

Third, in another scandalous move, Republicans in the House want to withhold food from children who live in low-income households by blocking efforts by House Democrats to increase funding for this basic nutrition program. Another heartless move by House Speaker Mike Johnson who claims to be a Christian but does not act like a real Christian.

I, like others, have long been disappointed by the Biden White House’s and more recently by the Biden campaign’s lack of old-fashioned spoken and written public relation tactics that use the opposition’s own measures and demands to explain and amplify the threat that the MAGA/GOP and its Dear Leader pose for all Americans and the democratic fabric of the 250-year old American governmental system.  

Donald Trump is a Clear and Present Danger at Home and Abroad

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Just like other dictators before him (think of Germany’s Adolf Hitler or, more recently, the Philippine’s Rodrigo Duterte), Donald Trump, too, has spelled out his strong preference for authoritarian rule, even if it violates the U.S. Constitution and longstanding pacts with European and other allies. According to his own words, he is not only eager to end America’s two-and-a-half century old model of democracy but also the post-WWII transatlantic bulwark against military aggression, originally by the Soviet Union and more recently by Putin’s Russia.

At home, Trump claims in his social media posts and during his campaign appearances that he and his MAGA movement are fighting “our final battle” to “demolish the Deep State…expel warmongers from our government…cast out Communists, Marxists, and Fascists [ he must not know the meaning of that word] …rout the Fake News Media…and liberate our country from these tyrants and villains once and for all.”

Last weekend, he promised that as president he will immediately order a “door-to-door hunt” for migrants and put them into huge camps.

Trump’s admirers abroad embrace his inhumane plans. In Germany, for example, the far-right party AfD (Alternative for Germany) wants to deport all non-Germanic persons residing in the country, even those who are naturalized citizens.      

During Trump’s first presidency he left no doubt about his disregard for NATO and its European members and leaders. In large part, because his NATO peers treated him as an equal and not superior colleague, the narcissistic Trump threatened them with the American withdrawal unless they paid their “fair” dues to the military alliance.

Although European leaders were shocked by President Trump’s repeated threats and appalling behavior during meetings, the U.S. did not leave NATO. Thankfully, during those years, there were serious defense and national security experts in the White House and the Department of Defense who knew the value of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Last weekend, Trump gave his idol Vladimir Putin another gift, when he said he would encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to a NATO country that does not follow the financial guidelines of the organization. He also made clear that he would not abide by NATO’s provision that a military attack on one member must be countered by all members.

The guardrails that existed in the first Trump administration in form of responsible officials will not be in place if he wins a second term. In a second Trump administration, he and his equally power-hungry advisers would not select the most knowledgeable and experienced men and women to serve their country—instead, the litmus test would be absolute loyalty to Mr. Trump and his fascist agenda. There would not be a single official in the administration trying to stop the president from undemocratic and illegal measures.

When Trump claims that he and his supporters are fighting their final battle, he surely does not do so for the benefit of the country but solely to install himself as a lawless leader.

Despite the unthinkable threat of a fascist regime coming to power in the foreseeable future, there is no pro-democracy movement here to counter Trump and prevent him from implementing what sounds and looks like an Orwellian blueprint.