Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Just to link a couple to your "You do not have to dress like a brown shirt to look like a fascist. "

Hiding in plain sight: how the 'alt-right' is weaponizing irony to spread fascism
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P - Violating the standards of political correctness and the rules of polite interactions “also functions as an act of rebellion” in spaces drenched in adolescent masculinity.
P - This was played up by Milo Yiannopoulos in an infamous Breitbart explainer .. http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/an-establishment-conservatives-guide-to-the-alt-right/ .. last year, in which he insisted that the “alt-right” movement’s circulation of antisemitic imagery was really nothing more than transgressive fun.
P - “Are they actually bigots?” Yiannopoulos asked rhetorically. “No more than death metal devotees in the 1980s were actually satanists. For them, it’s simply a means to fluster their grandparents.”
P - What Yiannopoulos left out, according to Marwick, is that these spaces increasingly became attractive to sincere white supremacists. They offered them venues for recruitment, and new methods for popularising their ideas.
[...]
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" Fascism is more or less a social taboo. Humour is one of the ways
that they can put forward their positions
Alexander Reid Ross, author
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“A lot of the people propagating the Pizzagate conspiracy were doing it winkingly. But in the moment that somebody walked into that shop with a gun, then that playful buzzing participation around that conspiracy turned into real consequences,” Milner says.
P - More generally, every “ironic” repetition of far-right ideals contributes to a climate in which racism, misogyny, or Islamophobia is normalised.
P - “Every time you see a viral video of somebody shouting down a person of Muslim descent in a supermarket line, what you’re seeing are the effects of an environment where it’s increasingly normal, increasingly accepted and expected to speak in this register, whether or not that started out as a joke,” Milner says.
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Trump's useful thugs: how the Republican party offered a home to the Proud Boys
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=169727286

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Father of Fascism Studies: Donald Trump Shows Alarming Willingness to Use Fascist Terms & Styles
2018 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143725977
.. and ..
Is Donald Trump a Fascist? Part 2 of Interview with Robert Paxton, Father of Fascism Studies
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143725987
.. and ..
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder – review
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=138372963
.. and ..
Mainstream GOP fascism
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=168906671
.. with many more ..
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=169714606

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What if Trump's conspiracy was way bigger than we know?
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There was, it increasingly appears, a conspiracy involving some in the most senior levels of the Trump administration to end American
representative democracy and replace it with a strongman oligarchy along the lines of Putin’s Russia or Orbán’s Hungary.
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The day before, CBS and The Intercept quoted .. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-saudi-crown-prince-says-kusher-was-in-his-pocket/ .. MBS as gloating that Kushner was “in his pocket.”
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“Recently ousted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster expressed early concern that Kushner was freelancing U.S. foreign policy and might make naive mistakes, according to ­people familiar with their ­reactions.
P -“… [National Security Advisor] McMaster was concerned there were no official records kept of what was said on the calls.
P - “Tillerson was even more aggrieved, they said, once remarking to staff: ‘Who is secretary of state here?’”
P - Meanwhile, throughout his presidency, Donald Trump was having secret phone conversations with Russia’s President Putin (over 20 .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/10/04/trump-has-spoken-privately-with-putin-least-times-heres-what-we-know-about-conversations/ .. have been identified, including one .. https://news.yahoo.com/trump-made-secret-call-vladimir-122945737.html .. just days before the 2020 election).
P - The Moscow Project from the American Progress Action Fund documents .. https://themoscowproject.org/ .. more than 270 known contacts between Russia-linked operatives and members of the Trump Campaign and transition team, as well as at least 38 known meetings just leading up to the 2016 election.
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As the Mueller Report noted:
P - “The President launched public attacks on the investigation and individuals involved in it who would could possess evidence adverse to the President, while in private the President engaged in a series of targeted efforts to control the investigation.
P - “For instance, the President attempted to remove the Attorney General; he sought to have Attorney General Sessions un-recuse himself and limit the investigation; he sought to prevent public disclosure of information about the June 9, 2016 meeting between Russians and campaign officials; and he used public forums to attack potential witnesses who might offer adverse information and to praise witnesses who declined to cooperate with the government.”
P - It adds, detailing Trump’s specific obstruction of justice crimes:
P - “These actions ranged from efforts to remove the Special Counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General’s recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony.
P - “Viewing the acts collectively can help to illuminate their significance. For example, the President’s direction to McGahn to have the Special Counsel removed was followed almost immediately by his direction to Lewandowski to tell the Attorney General to limit the scope of the Russia investigation to prospective election-interference only—a temporal connection that suggests that both acts were taken with a related purpose with respect to the investigation.”
P - There are, after all, credible assertions .. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia-asset-claims-former-kgb-spy-new-book .. that when Trump was elected, members of Russian intelligence and Putin’s inner circle were literally partying in Moscow, explicitly celebrating a victory they truly believed they helped make happen.
P - In his first months in office, Trump outed an Israeli spy...
[...]
On July 31, Trump had another private conversation with Putin. The White House told Congress and the press that they discussed “wildfires” and “trade between the nations.” No droids in this car…
The following week, on August 2nd, The Daily Beast’s Betsy Swan reported .. https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-house-asks-for-list-of-top-intel-officials-amid-intelligence-shakeup .. that Trump had just asked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for a list of all its employees (including all our “spies”) who had worked there more than 90 days, and the request had intelligence officials experiencing “disquiet.”
Within a year, The New York Times ran a story .. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/us/politics/cia-informants-killed-captured.html .. with the headline: “Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants.” The CIA then alerted spies around the world that their identities had probably been compromised, apparently by Donald Trump himself.
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