I applaud your report, especially your clarification regarding President Biden's post-election remark that "giving up is unforgivable." As you rightly point out, "giving up on the Democratic Party, the US political system, and capitalism-imperialism is quite forgivable....indeed, it's necessary and much to be applauded! Not giving up on those things at this stage is a problem, actually."
interesting typo in a very challenging piece: "For f#*k’s sage, fascism has just taken hold of the US national political structure like no time ever." A sage comment, but I think you meant "sake." Thanks Paul.
yeah and g and k are three letters apart on the keyboard. That's autocorrect making a word after a fat finger type. I almost want to leave it; it has a nice ring.
A good read as usual. I’m close to upgrading to paid. The DP is dismal, but good at friendly fascism until the present. The overtly fascist RP held sway this time.
A good understanding of the post election grief cycles. I suspect most people are in the denial stage including Trump voters who have been in this stage for some time.
When any organism is seriously threatened it goes into flight or fight mode. I think many get paralyzed and do nothing. This is an existential threat on many levels. There is going to be so much chaos coming. If change and resistance doesn't come about in the coming chaos this country is fucked.
well, I get a lot of that but good God we better pull out en masse because the Trump-Vance regime is aiming to push humanity past the point of no return.
Paul how do you expect to turn this dispare into hopeful change when the people have spoken: they wanted this so they sure as hell won't be wanting to change the direction they chose.
The tsunami shit wave is about to hit the fan. Its gonna be very stinky for a very long time.
Ah you see, this is part of why I tried to counsel you against diving into the toxic pool of US electoral politics....it creates the grand illusion of "the people have spoken," fueling hopelessness and depression among masses who invested childish democratic hope in the totally F'd up US electoral process /system. Trump's vote was 29% of the voting age populace in the US.
Paul, this assumes that the other 71% are ready to drop everything and man the barracades if...., if what? Part of acceptance, in the true meaning you point out is
relevant here, is an acknowledgement of reality-ALL of reality. Which also means
for those concerned for the future to come to the understanding that, the existential
threats notwithstanding, we cannot rely on a coalescing revolution to spring up NOW.
Never mind decent folks who do not presently share that conclusion. That revolution will come when enough people "look at the time and score" and realize the bleak odds.
Doesn't mean your admonitions are not relevant and it doesn't mean there can't be an
incremental shift away from the corrupt system as constituted, it just means, as many
have said before, that we fight the fight not because we expect victory, but because it is the right thing to do. Now, if you would indulge your readers, just where do you suggest we start?
Revolutionary or before that real resistance movements do NOT require 71% of the citizenry to participate. I recommend joining a socialist or better communist organization. Now when I went looking for people rising up against Trumpism-fascism in Chicago in 2018, it was a total vacuum except for a group called Refuse Fascism (RF, formed in the aftermath of the first Trump election, which had big overlap with but was not simply a "front" for the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA/Revcoms). They had a dead on analysis of what was happening and a principled call for removing the Trump-Pence regime through mass action in the streets. The relation between theory and practice was unmatched on the lame left. I've been talking about what just happened and how to think about it on two recent RF Zooms and with Revcoms in the Loop in Chicago. I'll be down at a leading university with revolutionaries today. The dynamic is very different now than in 2016. There were huge demos right away in 2016 all over the country. The Chicago Loop was jammed. Right now people are in shock. But I think as the fascist agenda is implemented -- mass deportations first and foremost -- you are gong to see significant resistance and we need to be on the radical side of that, pushing things beyond "let's return to Weimar." The goal is to repolarize from red v blue to the people v red, white and blue capitlaism-imperialism-fascism. For me the language and epistemology -- the very core way of thinking -- of all the socialist and communist groups other than RF (not currently in the streets but perhaps they will be again) and the Revcoms (currently in the streets and with hqs in Chicago, NYC, LA, and the Bay area) are just fundamentally flawed/outmoded/reductionist/revisionist/identitarian/localist/reformist. I've been explaining how and why this is so over the Trump and Biden years. That said, anti-fascism requires a united front and I want to ally and dialogue with people who aren't yet ready to "go for the whole thing" -- a socialist revolution --- in the course of rising up against this new monstrous trifecta.
You had me, then dismissed the knowledge that back when Gore won over HangingShadScamBush, amidst faulty machines, less voting stations, short hrs. ( too many things to list etc., who got 2 terms lol sounds like DonnyBoy and appoints 2 SCOTUS ). You dismiss in those saying it was a fishy election lol . Granted definitely one can dismiss lame duck Biden actually doing something, especially now lol, yes even Harris! ! Unless you are just saying it is to damn redundant to be speaking of it being a “fishy” outcome, concerning a free election ( agree lol) here in the USA!
So men like yourself, I have also noticed Gavin Newsom, Mr. Buttigieg, good decent men. I beg, that a real resistance steps up, organized, like as in a people’s solidarity movement, to replace an obvious fascist traitor ship masquerading as a government( the dead, if ever GOP was ever good since Lincoln) as well dismantle the on life support Democratic party. So that we all can get a tangible banner to go under …yes we need a leader! Pretend for a moment what you would do , if you could lead us or what one you could list, please , could do? I will also say Stacy Abram’s, Jasmine Crochett, yes the voice of good strong women . Let me have my fantasy lol. That would be a real stretch :this time and place, getting behind a woman, yet a black woman! lllol! Maybe a leader is out there …
You have evidence that Trump's 2024 election is stolen/fishy? Do share. Bush's 2000-01 election was a steal stamped by the Supremes in Bush v Gore. Greg Palast wrote brilliantly about that and also BTW about 2004. But sorry the fascist Trump appears to have won this flat out cleanly insofar as anything can be seen as clean in this slaveowners' system. - the worst possible outcome, to be sure. That doesn't make the coming Trump-Vance regime legit. Not at all, Please pay attention to my writing: there is no such thing as a legitimate fascist, not matter how it rose to power. I have said that as clear as day. I know very little abut Newsom except that he's another dismal Dem and potus contender for 2028 but please do not call Pete B decent...he's a veteran of the notorious vile Mckinsey Corp and the American Empire. Spare me this nonsense and have a good day! ;)
Ok I really don’t claim superior knowledge on Pete and of course you are right about anyone belonging to Dems ( still the F’n government )since they are only good at defeating themselves and giving power to what ought never been given power. I am not harking on the “oh wait for the primaries” lol. You never really lay out a plan for revolution. I fantasized about it and posted lol the words in 2016. Kamala could not bear to say hell, any Dems for that matter! Yes “fascists”, “rogue regime”, my favorite- “ revolution” ; now being from Iowa THAT was a feat, as Sr. Shamus would have early on predicted my downfall ( now at 75 I am a survivor ) not so much my two sons, in the meat grinding machine! Doomsday is here for me and mine, so I’d appreciate a working plan for revolution! With no workable plan, let me say outside of what I CAN tell: that people, those comfortable ones, who still refuse to rock the boat as it lays on the bottom of the waters. Not until THEY suffer, enough, will they risk, especially with the monster’s complete takeover, now a much higher risk to meet in the streets. Of course a very long time ago they stopped the poor, of those not dead but lying in gutters from rising. Funny how now trump can bring it …their suffering is dawning, so soon when they have nothing to lose- then…take it to the streets ? Too fucking late, since DonnyBoy can’t wait to prove who’s your daddy. So maybe I am new to your writing. You never really say anyway exactly how you see it happening outside of it all being… funny that the great numbers are needed, and will now be the crowd DonnyBoy can really relish… as he turns his military on them.
Fascism is the merger of corporate and government power, therefore America has been increasingly Fascist since Eisenhower and clearly attained that august status with the passage of the Patriot Act in 2001. An act that was supported by an overwhelming majority of Democrats, BTW.
You need to get his through your head--the Democrats ARE Fascist. All they do is project their own ugliness onto whatever Republican opposition there is. Republicans like Rubio and others Trump is said to be considering appointing are every bit as Fascist as they, but the popular force that elected Trump is not. Neither is Trump because he doesn't even understand what Fascism is.
This election was a backlash AGAINST the Fascism promoted by the Democrats, a Fascism decorated with ID politics frippery, but still Fascism by definition. It's not the voters' fault the choices were so terrible--that lies with the entire system.
There are powerful historical forces in motion now. Trump can't stop them anymore than Biden could. Get ready for a wild ride.
By your reckoning, based on a stale and standard Trumpenleft narrative (among those with intellectual pretenses who typically cite Mussolini when they say that), the US was a fascist state under Wilson and every president since. So you would have the US as just another fascist state fighting other fascist states 1941-1945.
Something for you to get through YOUR head: RF's definition of fascism, far superior to your reductionist political-economic one, which applies to every capitalist state since the capitalist system went from proprietary to corporate: 'Adapted from The Call To Action: DRIVE OUT THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME! issued shortly after the Trump/Pence regime took power:
Fascism is not just a gross combination of horrific reactionary policies. It is a qualitative change in how society is governed. Fascism foments and relies on xenophobic nationalism, racism, misogyny, and the aggressive re-institution of oppressive “traditional values.” Fascist mobs and threats of violence are unleashed to build the movement and consolidate power. What is crucial to understand is that once in power fascism essentially eliminates traditional democratic rights.
Fascism has direction and momentum. Dissent is piece by piece criminalized. The truth is bludgeoned. Group after group is demonized and targeted along a trajectory that leads to real horrors...'
The dismal imperialist Weimar Dems are currently handing power over peacefully. They accept bourgeois elections they did not win. Kind of a difference. Do you expect to see Blue armed and frothing mobs attacking the US Capitol flying Nazi flags on January 6, 2025? Of course they are participatory in the fascisation of the country. Of course they are imperialist butchers and capitalist and objectively white supremacist and patriarchal and nativist and ecocidal generally awful but they cling to bourgeois rule of law and electoral democracy, such as they are. Upton Sinclair put it quite well in the original Appeal to Reason edition of The Jungle: "two wings of the same bird of prey." Not identical wings but two capitalist-imperialist wings of the same killer bird, one of which has now crossed over into fascist territory and one of which clings to the bourgeois constitutional order, however weakly and inconsistently. And to repeat: by your very toothless analysis, every capitalist state in the world has been fascist since capitalism reconstructed along corporate lines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Which is absurd.
I applaud your report, especially your clarification regarding President Biden's post-election remark that "giving up is unforgivable." As you rightly point out, "giving up on the Democratic Party, the US political system, and capitalism-imperialism is quite forgivable....indeed, it's necessary and much to be applauded! Not giving up on those things at this stage is a problem, actually."
interesting typo in a very challenging piece: "For f#*k’s sage, fascism has just taken hold of the US national political structure like no time ever." A sage comment, but I think you meant "sake." Thanks Paul.
yeah and g and k are three letters apart on the keyboard. That's autocorrect making a word after a fat finger type. I almost want to leave it; it has a nice ring.
A good read as usual. I’m close to upgrading to paid. The DP is dismal, but good at friendly fascism until the present. The overtly fascist RP held sway this time.
A good understanding of the post election grief cycles. I suspect most people are in the denial stage including Trump voters who have been in this stage for some time.
When any organism is seriously threatened it goes into flight or fight mode. I think many get paralyzed and do nothing. This is an existential threat on many levels. There is going to be so much chaos coming. If change and resistance doesn't come about in the coming chaos this country is fucked.
well, I get a lot of that but good God we better pull out en masse because the Trump-Vance regime is aiming to push humanity past the point of no return.
I might just add, included in with fight and flight, the freeze mode.
yeah
What an interesting and prophetic take on our present reality
Paul how do you expect to turn this dispare into hopeful change when the people have spoken: they wanted this so they sure as hell won't be wanting to change the direction they chose.
The tsunami shit wave is about to hit the fan. Its gonna be very stinky for a very long time.
Ah you see, this is part of why I tried to counsel you against diving into the toxic pool of US electoral politics....it creates the grand illusion of "the people have spoken," fueling hopelessness and depression among masses who invested childish democratic hope in the totally F'd up US electoral process /system. Trump's vote was 29% of the voting age populace in the US.
Paul, this assumes that the other 71% are ready to drop everything and man the barracades if...., if what? Part of acceptance, in the true meaning you point out is
relevant here, is an acknowledgement of reality-ALL of reality. Which also means
for those concerned for the future to come to the understanding that, the existential
threats notwithstanding, we cannot rely on a coalescing revolution to spring up NOW.
Never mind decent folks who do not presently share that conclusion. That revolution will come when enough people "look at the time and score" and realize the bleak odds.
Doesn't mean your admonitions are not relevant and it doesn't mean there can't be an
incremental shift away from the corrupt system as constituted, it just means, as many
have said before, that we fight the fight not because we expect victory, but because it is the right thing to do. Now, if you would indulge your readers, just where do you suggest we start?
Revolutionary or before that real resistance movements do NOT require 71% of the citizenry to participate. I recommend joining a socialist or better communist organization. Now when I went looking for people rising up against Trumpism-fascism in Chicago in 2018, it was a total vacuum except for a group called Refuse Fascism (RF, formed in the aftermath of the first Trump election, which had big overlap with but was not simply a "front" for the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA/Revcoms). They had a dead on analysis of what was happening and a principled call for removing the Trump-Pence regime through mass action in the streets. The relation between theory and practice was unmatched on the lame left. I've been talking about what just happened and how to think about it on two recent RF Zooms and with Revcoms in the Loop in Chicago. I'll be down at a leading university with revolutionaries today. The dynamic is very different now than in 2016. There were huge demos right away in 2016 all over the country. The Chicago Loop was jammed. Right now people are in shock. But I think as the fascist agenda is implemented -- mass deportations first and foremost -- you are gong to see significant resistance and we need to be on the radical side of that, pushing things beyond "let's return to Weimar." The goal is to repolarize from red v blue to the people v red, white and blue capitlaism-imperialism-fascism. For me the language and epistemology -- the very core way of thinking -- of all the socialist and communist groups other than RF (not currently in the streets but perhaps they will be again) and the Revcoms (currently in the streets and with hqs in Chicago, NYC, LA, and the Bay area) are just fundamentally flawed/outmoded/reductionist/revisionist/identitarian/localist/reformist. I've been explaining how and why this is so over the Trump and Biden years. That said, anti-fascism requires a united front and I want to ally and dialogue with people who aren't yet ready to "go for the whole thing" -- a socialist revolution --- in the course of rising up against this new monstrous trifecta.
LOL, what a great article. Keep the cope coming, Paul!
You had me, then dismissed the knowledge that back when Gore won over HangingShadScamBush, amidst faulty machines, less voting stations, short hrs. ( too many things to list etc., who got 2 terms lol sounds like DonnyBoy and appoints 2 SCOTUS ). You dismiss in those saying it was a fishy election lol . Granted definitely one can dismiss lame duck Biden actually doing something, especially now lol, yes even Harris! ! Unless you are just saying it is to damn redundant to be speaking of it being a “fishy” outcome, concerning a free election ( agree lol) here in the USA!
So men like yourself, I have also noticed Gavin Newsom, Mr. Buttigieg, good decent men. I beg, that a real resistance steps up, organized, like as in a people’s solidarity movement, to replace an obvious fascist traitor ship masquerading as a government( the dead, if ever GOP was ever good since Lincoln) as well dismantle the on life support Democratic party. So that we all can get a tangible banner to go under …yes we need a leader! Pretend for a moment what you would do , if you could lead us or what one you could list, please , could do? I will also say Stacy Abram’s, Jasmine Crochett, yes the voice of good strong women . Let me have my fantasy lol. That would be a real stretch :this time and place, getting behind a woman, yet a black woman! lllol! Maybe a leader is out there …
You have evidence that Trump's 2024 election is stolen/fishy? Do share. Bush's 2000-01 election was a steal stamped by the Supremes in Bush v Gore. Greg Palast wrote brilliantly about that and also BTW about 2004. But sorry the fascist Trump appears to have won this flat out cleanly insofar as anything can be seen as clean in this slaveowners' system. - the worst possible outcome, to be sure. That doesn't make the coming Trump-Vance regime legit. Not at all, Please pay attention to my writing: there is no such thing as a legitimate fascist, not matter how it rose to power. I have said that as clear as day. I know very little abut Newsom except that he's another dismal Dem and potus contender for 2028 but please do not call Pete B decent...he's a veteran of the notorious vile Mckinsey Corp and the American Empire. Spare me this nonsense and have a good day! ;)
Ok I really don’t claim superior knowledge on Pete and of course you are right about anyone belonging to Dems ( still the F’n government )since they are only good at defeating themselves and giving power to what ought never been given power. I am not harking on the “oh wait for the primaries” lol. You never really lay out a plan for revolution. I fantasized about it and posted lol the words in 2016. Kamala could not bear to say hell, any Dems for that matter! Yes “fascists”, “rogue regime”, my favorite- “ revolution” ; now being from Iowa THAT was a feat, as Sr. Shamus would have early on predicted my downfall ( now at 75 I am a survivor ) not so much my two sons, in the meat grinding machine! Doomsday is here for me and mine, so I’d appreciate a working plan for revolution! With no workable plan, let me say outside of what I CAN tell: that people, those comfortable ones, who still refuse to rock the boat as it lays on the bottom of the waters. Not until THEY suffer, enough, will they risk, especially with the monster’s complete takeover, now a much higher risk to meet in the streets. Of course a very long time ago they stopped the poor, of those not dead but lying in gutters from rising. Funny how now trump can bring it …their suffering is dawning, so soon when they have nothing to lose- then…take it to the streets ? Too fucking late, since DonnyBoy can’t wait to prove who’s your daddy. So maybe I am new to your writing. You never really say anyway exactly how you see it happening outside of it all being… funny that the great numbers are needed, and will now be the crowd DonnyBoy can really relish… as he turns his military on them.
Fascism is the merger of corporate and government power, therefore America has been increasingly Fascist since Eisenhower and clearly attained that august status with the passage of the Patriot Act in 2001. An act that was supported by an overwhelming majority of Democrats, BTW.
You need to get his through your head--the Democrats ARE Fascist. All they do is project their own ugliness onto whatever Republican opposition there is. Republicans like Rubio and others Trump is said to be considering appointing are every bit as Fascist as they, but the popular force that elected Trump is not. Neither is Trump because he doesn't even understand what Fascism is.
This election was a backlash AGAINST the Fascism promoted by the Democrats, a Fascism decorated with ID politics frippery, but still Fascism by definition. It's not the voters' fault the choices were so terrible--that lies with the entire system.
There are powerful historical forces in motion now. Trump can't stop them anymore than Biden could. Get ready for a wild ride.
The corporate reconstruction of American capitalism, creating a merger of corporate and state power took place in law and policy between 1890 and 1916. The brilliant Marxian historian Marty Sklar wrote a book about this: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Corporate_Reconstruction_of_American/IKSJVerD4WoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover
By your reckoning, based on a stale and standard Trumpenleft narrative (among those with intellectual pretenses who typically cite Mussolini when they say that), the US was a fascist state under Wilson and every president since. So you would have the US as just another fascist state fighting other fascist states 1941-1945.
Something for you to get through YOUR head: RF's definition of fascism, far superior to your reductionist political-economic one, which applies to every capitalist state since the capitalist system went from proprietary to corporate: 'Adapted from The Call To Action: DRIVE OUT THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME! issued shortly after the Trump/Pence regime took power:
Fascism is not just a gross combination of horrific reactionary policies. It is a qualitative change in how society is governed. Fascism foments and relies on xenophobic nationalism, racism, misogyny, and the aggressive re-institution of oppressive “traditional values.” Fascist mobs and threats of violence are unleashed to build the movement and consolidate power. What is crucial to understand is that once in power fascism essentially eliminates traditional democratic rights.
Fascism has direction and momentum. Dissent is piece by piece criminalized. The truth is bludgeoned. Group after group is demonized and targeted along a trajectory that leads to real horrors...'
The dismal imperialist Weimar Dems are currently handing power over peacefully. They accept bourgeois elections they did not win. Kind of a difference. Do you expect to see Blue armed and frothing mobs attacking the US Capitol flying Nazi flags on January 6, 2025? Of course they are participatory in the fascisation of the country. Of course they are imperialist butchers and capitalist and objectively white supremacist and patriarchal and nativist and ecocidal generally awful but they cling to bourgeois rule of law and electoral democracy, such as they are. Upton Sinclair put it quite well in the original Appeal to Reason edition of The Jungle: "two wings of the same bird of prey." Not identical wings but two capitalist-imperialist wings of the same killer bird, one of which has now crossed over into fascist territory and one of which clings to the bourgeois constitutional order, however weakly and inconsistently. And to repeat: by your very toothless analysis, every capitalist state in the world has been fascist since capitalism reconstructed along corporate lines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Which is absurd.
I just found time to edit the above paragraph and make it at least somewhat coherent.
Finally, have you ever read Hitler's Mein Kampf? It's not about the merger of the corporation and the state! :)