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.

 

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.

Covid-19 Crisis and the Failed Presidency

By Brigitte L. Nacos

As Americans fear for their own and their family members’ physical, mental, and economic survival and look to the President and the White House to manage the existential Covid-19 crisis with competence and empathy, they do not find what they need in Donald Trump and his administration’s disaster response. The President denies any responsibility for his failure to speed up disaster preparedness when he was well aware of this new global killer virus and effective response measures when he could no longer deny the lethal threat of the virus right here in our country.

Instead of using his overlong televised press conferences to unite the polarized nation, Mr. Trump conducts them like campaign rallies full of narcissistic self-aggrandizement and bomb-throwing against reporters asking “nasty” questions and governors pleading for more federal disaster help in order to save the lives of Americans.

In the “Afterword” of the paperback edition of his book “Time to Get Tough” Trump wrote,

“A great leader can bring America together. But unfortunately for us, Barack Obama is not a leader. So who can the country turn to?”

This was published in 2015, the pre-primary time, when he obviously figured he would be the president who would bring unity to this country. Yet, in more than three years at the helm he has not united Americans. Indeed, he has magnified partisan and ideological polarization. That’s why there is no strong rally-‘round-the-president effect at the height of this deadly crisis.

In serious, national emergencies a president is not supposed to “backup” governors of the individual states as the President claimed yesterday in a repeat of similar statement. No, when disasters strike, the President is the one who must lead and become the crisis manager-in-chief.  This is the time when he has to provide consistent and factual information as well as assure and console a scared and suffering nation.

In his book “Presidential Character” James Barber argues that character, the core of personality, determines how “the President orients himself toward life-not for the moment, but enduringly." Obviously, this is not a character trait of this president. In “The Art of the Deal” Trump wrote,

“Most people are surprised by the way I work. I play it very loose. …You can’t be entrepreneurial if you’ve too much structure. I prefer to come to work each day and just see what develops”

This self-described attention to the moment—not the larger context—explains why this attention-challenged president changes his positions again and again and creates confusion. In the same book, he reveals, “I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present.” Exclusively focusing on the present--that’s the problem with this presidency and one of the major reasons for its failure.

There is no interest in the institutional memory and the professional expertise of civil servants—not even when it comes to responding to disaster. Key positions in the executive branch, and especially in agencies charged with emergency preparedness are held by political appointees without expertise in the areas they are supposed to guide. They did carry out their most important mission, namely, to reject and erase what previous presidents and their administrations left behind—including, extensive preparedness protocols for global pandemics that many scientists predicted for years.

During the 2016 Obama-Trump transition, officials from both sides got together for a pandemic table exercise that assumed the possibility or even likelihood of such a global disaster striking within the next few years.

Instead of continuing the work of the previous administration, the Global Health Security Office in the National Security Council was dismantled during John Bolton’s tenure as National Security Advisor. Although Trump claimed in one of his press events that he knew nothing about this, his underlings knew then and know now that he wants everything erased that has a link to his predecessor.

But the President and his White House crew ignored also a warning of lacking preparedness for a killer virus pandemic by their own administration.

The GOP Crowned the First American King

By Brigitte L. Nacos

 “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark!” Nothing characterizes today’s state of affairs in our country better than this sentence from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” that came to mean more generally that things are wrong, troubling, threatening.

If there were any doubts that the liberal democracy that the Founders designed and codified in the U.S. Constitution was trampled by the 45^th U.S. president and the Republican Party in the first three years of his term, such calms were squashed during the impeachment procedures against Donald J. Trump in the U.S. Senate.

What unfolded in the upper chamber of Congress this week was as shameful as it can get in a democracy: In concert with the White House, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell staged a show trial as practiced in totalitarian settings. Witnesses were not allowed to testify, documents not subpoenaed.

In spite of massive evidence in support of the two impeachment articles presented by House managers GOP senators broke their oath of impartiality and sided with their “Great Leader” and his wacky crew of defense attorneys.

Before the ultimate “not guilty” verdict was in, the outcome was clear. Even those GOP Senators who believed that Trump was guilty of “Abuse of Power” and “Obstruction of Congress” supported acquittal.    

The party of Trump—once known as the Republican Grand Old Party—completely accepted and excused this president’s (1) well-documented efforts to bribe the president of Ukraine to smear a potential political opponent in the upcoming presidential campaign by withholding congress-approved military aid urgently needed to fight Russian invaders; and (2) his refusal to allow White House officials testify in the impeachment procedures in the House and provide relevant administration documents to House committees.

In short, Mitch McConnell and GOP senators crowned the first American King, the monarch that the Founding Father’s wanted to abolish forever through a system of checks and balances and shared powers.

Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his respect and admiration for the most authoritarian leaders of our time, from Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan, China’s Xi Jinping to North Korea’s Kim Jong Um, Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, and others. He loves these men because they are “strong” and wield their power widely.  Now he has increased his own power.

Even before the final roll call next week, President Trump knows that there will be not be congressional checks on any misuse of power  nor on obstruction of congressional oversight as long as the GOP has the majority in the Senate.

With a toothless majority in Congresses upper chamber, and Attorney-General at the President’s service, two Trump appointed members on the Supreme Court, and intimidated civil servants fearful to stick to fact and truth, American democracy as envisioned by the Framers and we know from the past is rotten.

No, we do not have an authoritarian system yet, but we are moving towards what Hungary’s Viktor Orban and other European populists call blatantly “illiberal democracy.” It is not difficult to imagine what would happen in a second Trump term.

The elections on November 3 can stop this downward slide!

Why did Trump order the Assassination of the Iranian General? The President’s Twitter Archive provides the Best Answer

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Since 2011, Donald Trump mentioned Iran 380 times in tweets that revealed his obsession with and hostility towards the Islamic Republic. In many of these Twitter messages he attacked President Obama for not being tough enough.

But in the most revealing tweets are the following:

Nov.  14, 2011: @BarackObama will attack Iran in the not too distant future because it will help him to win the election.

Nov. 29, 2011: In order to get elected @BarackObama will start a war with Iran.

April 4, 2012: Remember what I said about @BarackObama attacking Iran before the election...

Oct. 22, 2013: Don’t let Obama play the Iran card in order to start a war in order to get elected—be aware Republicans!

As we know, President Obama did not attack Iran to trigger a rally-‘round-the-flag effect in support of his reelection chances as Trump predicted wrongly.

However, according to the Pentagon, it was Trump who ordered the deadly drone strikes that killed Qassim Soleimani, the Iranian general in charge of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force. While not shedding tears over Soleimani’s demise, one wonders about the overall strategic concept behind the assassination. While an all-out war is unlikely, Iran will strike back sometime, somewhere.  And the explosive Middle East will become even more dangerous and destabilized.

But that obviously does not concern Trump.

Replace “@BarackObama” and “Obama” with @realDonaldTrump in the four tweets above and you get a good idea why the Commander-in-Chief gave the green light for the assassination of the Iranian general on the territory of the sovereign state of Iraq.  

The President obviously believes that the conflict with Iran will raise his public approval and help his reelection along with his fight against the impeachment process.

So far, so good, for Trump: The breaking news now is all about the U.S.-Iran conflict—not about impeachment and likely Democrats running against the president in the general election campaign.  

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.

ISIS and the Terrorist Threat after the Death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Kudos to the our country’s intelligence community, our Special and Conventional Forces, and the Syrian Kurds for locating and taking out ISIS’s founder and spiritual leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a daring raid. After the earlier demise of the physical “caliphate” this weekend’s death of Baghdadi is a welcome victory for the United States and all other targets of the ruthless and cult-like doctrine of the Islamic State and its fanatic jihadists.

It was hardly surprising that Donald Trump during his rhetorical victory lap resorted to superlatives as he compared the end of al-Baghdadi to the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden during Barack Obama’s presidency. During his Q & A session with the press President Trump boasted in the style that dominates his political rallies, “This is the biggest one perhaps that we’ve ever captured...This is the biggest there is. This is the worst ever. Osama bin Laden was big, but Osama bin Laden became big with the World Trade Center. This is a man who built a whole, as he would like to call it, a country." Trump tried to bolster his own achievement and minimize that of his predecessor by characterizing al-Baghdadi as bigger than bin Laden; he also diminished and dehumanized the ISIS leader as dying “like a coward” and “like a dog.”

Trumpian lingo, not the tone normal presidents used in similar situations!

By declaring that “the world is a much safer place,” the president raised a very important question, namely, whether the death of the leader of a dangerous terrorist organization will likely weaken that group or even signals the beginning of its end.

Unfortunately, the answer is a clear NO. Remember that al-Qaeda did not go away after bin Laden’s violent death but gained in strength in various regions of the world—including Syria. And ISIS, an off-shoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq, became a deadly factor after bin Laden was gone.

As President Trump allowed, indeed encouraged Turkish President Erdogan’s troops to force Syrian Kurds, our staunchest allies in the fight against ISIS, out of their homeland as U.S. forces left the area hastily, the many thousands of ISIS fighters in hiding and a growing threat of their brethren escaping from prisons guarded by Syrian Kurds are major factors in ISIS’s likely revival. Moreover, even after the caliphate was defeated, ISIS expanded elsewhere, including in Afghanistan and several African regions.

In his statement and exchanges with the press yesterday Mr. Trump’s first and most profoundly thanked Russia (and his idol Putin), Turkey (and his strongman friend Erdogan), and Syria (and human rights violator supreme Assad) for their assistance. Those parties merely allowed the U.S. military to fly over their controlled parts of Syria. Although the Kurds were crucial in providing human intelligence to pinpoint al-Baghdadi’s hiding place, the President minimized their role. And he once again attacked our Western allies, democracies, for their lack of cooperation.

America’s posture in the fight against ISIS, al-Qaeda and their many affiliates relied for years on relative small footprints of the American military and major fighting roles for local allied forces.

But Trump's betrayal of the Syrian Kurds does not bode well for present and future alliances of this kind nor for America's crucial alliances in Europe and Asia.

 

The Orwellian Truth and Big Brother Trump

By Brigitte L. Nacos

We have heard it all from the White House before. There are no objective facts, there are alternative facts. Think of Donald Trump’s claim that the crowd size at his inauguration was   unprecedented although aerial photos showed clearly far more people at Barack Obama’s first inauguration.

Facts do not matter for Trump and his staffers who deal a lot in alternative facts and post-truth.

What unfolded in the face of Hurricane Dorian deserves mentioning even though nothing coming out of the White House defying fact and reality is terribly surprising.  

It began with the President tweeting that Alabama was among the states threatened by Dorian--perhaps an unwitting mistake. After weather experts assured the public that there was no threat whatsoever for Alabama, Trump could have easily acknowledged he made a mistake. Instead, he continued to insist that Alabama could be affected.Yesterday, from the Oval Office, he displayed a map issued by the National Hurricane Center that was obviously falsified to show Alabama could have been affected by Dorian.

Challenged by news reports, the President issued yet another tweet this morning insisting,  “What I said was accurate! All Fake News in order to demean!”

This all is so similar to totalitarian alternative reality, fact, and truth as described in George Orwell’s “1984;” it is so strikingly similar to what Big Brother’s voice O’Brien tells Winston who has not yet surrendered to the totalitarian dictate:

“Winston, you believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right...But I tell you, Winston, reality is not external...

Whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth.”

In a moment of dissent Winston wrote in his diary, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two and two make four.”

Big Brother knew.

Following a torturous process overseen by O’Brien, Winston does no longer question Big Brother’s complete control over fact, reality, and truth.

When Big Brother says two plus two equals three—or five—or anything, it is the truth.

As the U.S. President continued to claim that Alabama was threatened by Hurricane Dorian against all facts, his message was clear: Whatever Big Brother Trump holds to be truth is truth.

Thankfully, America’s 2019 is not Orwell’s 1984...

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.