Trumpism-Fascism Keeps on Ticking

at Home as Gaza Burns Abroad

Pardon me while I take another short break from the genocide-normalizing media coverage of Israel’s US-backed  war on Gaza to take another quick look at domestic Amerikaner Trumpism-fascism, which could well reclaim the most powerful office on Earth, the US presidency, in early 2025.

“We’ll Work on that Neck”

Last Monday, the fascist leader Donald “Take Down the Metal Detectors” Trump gave two speeches in the politically important first (Republican) caucus state of Iowa. His frothing fans roared their approval as he advocated the deportation of people who don’t “love our country.”  Trump’s fascistic Iowa base applauded and cheered as said this:

“You know, Dwight Eisenhower…he was actually a very good president. Good general, very good general. But he became president and he was a very big person on deportation. He deported more than anybody else [under a program actually called ‘Operation Wetback’ – PS] . He said they cannot be here. You have to come into our country legally. That’s what I say. You have to come into our country legally and you have to love our country. You can’t hate our country. (Loud Applause and Cheers). If you empathize with radical Islamic terrorists and extremists, you’re disqualified. You’re just disqualified. If you want to abolish the state of Israel, you’re disqualified. If you support Hamas or any idea, ideology that’s having to do with that, or any of the other really sick thoughts that go through people’s minds, very dangerous thoughts. You’re disqualified. If you’re a communist, a marxist or a fascist — other than the people that are already here, of which many are in the Biden administration, you’re disqualified. Like to get them out too, maybe we’ll work on that neck. (Frothing Cheers). ).”

Wow. So let’s dig into this madness from the orange-hued malignancy who currently faces 91 felony indictments, who tried to overthrow previously normative US bourgeois democracy and rule of law, and who is the runaway Republican presidential candidate. This fascist sociopath doesn’t just want to ban entry to and remove all immigrants and foreign visitors with jihadist or anti-Israel views, he wants to deport US citizens (“people that are already here”) who happen to be communists and Marxists.  That’s the meaning of the last two sentences of the passage I just quoted. 

You can forget about him adding “fascist” to the list of people he wants to kick out of the country.  That would mean deporting himself and millions of his backers at this point.  He just throws in the F-word to confuse folks and to render invisible his own political orientation.  (I suppose it’s possible that he doesn’t know the difference between a Marxist/communist and a fascist – many liberal intellectuals seem to have that problem – but I doubt it.)

Consistent with a recurrent theme in fascist thought,  Trump absurdly accuses the thoroughly bourgeois and imperialist Biden administration of including “many” Marxists and communists.

(He has also repeatedly and absurdly accused American colleges and universities of being under the control of Marxists, socialists, communists, and “the Radical Left.” I wish!  Perhaps Iowa college towns like Ames [home to Iowa State University], Grinnell [Grinnell College], Iowa City [University of Iowa], Cedar Falls [University of Northern Iowa], and Mount Vernon [Cornell College] need to beef up their security in light of Dear Leader Donald’s neo-McCarthyism.)

Judicial Shock Collars for a Rabid Fascist

Four days ago, the federal judge overseeing Trump’s January 6 trial had to impose a gag order on the former and potential future president, barring him from attacking prosecutors, court staff and witnesses on social media, the campaign trail or anywhere else. The judge overseeing Trump’s business fraud damages trial has also been compelled to apply a shock collar on the rabid orange dog, the “law and order” candidate who can’t stop menacing legal officials trying to make him accountable to the rule of law.

UnSpeakerble

Speaking of rabid fascists, the demented Republikaner Jim Jordan (Rf-OH) received 200 votes from US House of Representatives members, just 17 shy of what he needed to become Speaker of the House, third in line of succession from the US presidency. Jordan is a far-right maniac who failed as a college wrestling coach to stop his team’s doctor from sexually molesting his players. He went on to help form the House’s neofaascist “Freedom Caucus” and became a critical Trump ally heavily involved in the attempted subversion and overthrow of the 2020 election.

Jordan is a leading proponent of Trump’s multiply and legally disproven Stolen Election Lie. He appeared at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Pennsylvania two days after the 2020 election and collaborated with Trump’s effort to overturn the results. The defunct US House Jan. 6 Committee found that Jordan was among several lawmakers who had "materially relevant communications with Donald Trump or others in the White House" before and during the Trump putsch attempt – a literal physical attack on Congress meant to block the peaceful transfer of presidential power. "Representative Jordan,” the committee reported, “was a significant player in President Trump’s efforts. He participated in numerous post-election meetings in which senior White House officials, Rudolph Giuliani, and others, discussed strategies for challenging the election, chief among them [thoroughly false] claims that the election had been tainted by fraud.” On January 2,  2021, Jordan ran a conference call in which he and other Congressional coup-plotters discussed with Trump ways to obstruct the January 6^th joint session to certify Biden’s electoral victory.  Jordan spoke to his tangerine-tinted cult leader "at least twice" on Jan. 6 and gave the committee “inconsistent statements” about how many times they spoke and what they discussed.

Like the vote of most House Republicans against certifying Biden’s victory even after a fascist mob had  swarmed and invaded the US legislative chamber on January 6, the fact that this revanchist zealot actually got 200 House Republican votes for Speaker is a reminder that the fascist presence in the House is much bigger than a handful of lunatics around the deranged Republi-Nazi Matt Gaetz.

Jordan was the Speaker candidate backed by Trump, whose supporters have shown their rabid fascist proclivities by barraging Jordan’s 10-20 “moderate” Republican opponents with harassing messages and even death threats. The wife of one of Jordan’s opponents recently felt it necessary to sleep with a loaded gun on her bedside table. (Jordan gave up his Speaker quest as I finished this essay on Friday afternoon).

“They All Love Killing Jews”

Of course there’s intersection between Republi-fascism and the Israel war on Gaza. Republi-fascists pounced on the October 7 Hamas attack to blame Biden and the Democrats for supposedly being soft on Iran, which supports Hamas. The Christian white nationalist presidential candidate “Ron DeFascist”  (as Ron DeSantis is properly known by many liberals and progressive in his home state of Florida) falsely claims there never was a Palestinian state, and that the US shouldn’t take in any Palestinian refugees from judeo-fascist Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza because “they are all anti-Semitic.” 

A Fatherland (FOX) News host claims that there’s no real difference between the Islamo-fascist group Hamas and the Palestinian masses. “I don’t like how people try to differentiate between the Palestinians and Hamas,” FOX’s Jesse Waters said, adding this: “To me, I see people with guns. That’s Hamas. The people without the guns are the Palestinians. They believe the same thing…They all love killing Jews.”

Watters went on his racist, anti-Palestinian rant on the same day that a Chicago-area Palestinian family buried their 6-year-old son Wadea, after the family’s 71-year-old landlord stabbed him 26 times while screaming “You Palestinians don’t deserve to live.”  The murderer’s wife explained that her honocidal maniac of a husband is influenced by right-wing US media.

Violence in the Air

Right wing social media is abuzz with talk of fascist retribution and civil war. The Justice Department and FBI and state and local authorities are on high alert for Amerikaner violence against prosecutors, judges, witness, court staff, and jury members. Fascistic death threats are now rife against these folks and also against Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim Americans.  An Islamic day school in the heavily Palestinian Chicago suburb of Bridgeview closed today in response to a menacing hate letter.

No Love for the Dems (Sad That I Need to Add this Caveat)

I hope nobody views today’s essay as support for the capitalist-imperialist Democratic Party and its leader Joe Biden. It’s pathetic that I sometimes feel compelled to add that proviso given my long track record and word count against the dismal, dollar-drenched Weimar Dems, but the knuckle-dragging idiocy of the online white-bro Trumpenleft (which absurdly sees alignment with the Dems in every honest and accurate acknowledgement of the Republican Party’s fascism and wants a medal for making the elementary discovery  that the Democrats are a capitalist and imperialist party) require this on occasion. Please see my point-by-point take down of “Empire Joe’s” recent genocide-supporting war speech in Tel Aviv on CounterPunch today.

I disavow the “liberal” authoritarianism on display at Harvard University, where capitalist trustees have demanded the public release of the names of pro-Palestinian undergraduate students who signed a letter that denounced Israeli occupation, apartheid, blockade, bombardment, and siege warfare and that absolved Hamas of any moral responsibility for the current mess in Israel-Palestine. As Harvard alum Timothy Noah writes at The New Republic: “That’s what conservatives call ‘cancel culture,’ a phenomenon that many on the left pretend doesn’t exist. But it does exist, and it’s being deployed right now with a vengeance against [a] portion of the left…”