This is what a President sounds like:
And note what he says. He explicitly does not condemn protest. And rightly so. I just hope many heed his call to vote as well.
And this it's what a dejected former General who was also Trump's defence secretary sounds like. These are the words of James Mattis:
Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people–does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.
We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln's “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite.
Why post both of these, when I have my differences with both these people on many political issues? Because they are speaking across political divides to issues that are fundamental, and most especially the equal rights of all that have to be respected and are not being so by Trump.
This is a moment to realise that Trump is very different.
As too, I should say, is Johnson.
And that we are not seeing normal political events. We are witnessing right-wing insurgency. And I welcome those who stand against it. We need to make broad alliances at times like this to preserve the essential qualities of society. We can argue the detail - and there is much to argue about - afterwards.
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Ummmmmmmmmm.
A president with the blood of thousands of people on his hands, women and children around the world. He conspired with the rest of the Democrat party to install Biden, a senile, racist man who is personally responsible for the current state of US policing and brutal prison system. Biden is directly connected to the circumstances leading to the unrest in the US today.
The lives of Black people didn’t get better under Obama. The US empire’s violence around the world didn’t change. Look at what he did to Libya and Syria. The banking system was bailed out instead of punished for the financial crash and the president invited the head honchos of that system to participate in government. Obama continued the process of immiserating Americans and his dishonesty contributed to the cynicism that attracted people to Trump.
Whatever kind of monster Trump is, it’s the same monster. This incarnation just can’t be bothered to pretend it’s something else.
I think it’s hard to accept this because it makes things feel a lot more hopeless and scary. I’m hopeless and scared already so I am past thinking there’s a difference 😀
I agree with your last paragraph. I’m interested in finding out about ways to contribute to the evolution of the political landscape towards something more positive. I am pretty clueless at the moment.
Oh come on
I made clear my differences with Obama – and they are real, as were his failings – but if you want to carry on positing here please do not be ridiculous
And this comment is ridiculous
I think you are hard in your dismissive criticism. People voted for Trump because of what came before. So Trump is a real bad guy but that doesn’t mean that Obama was faultless. I could dismiss Johnson and want Blair back but Blair started with a majority of 179 and could have thrown out the neoliberal rule book. He didn’t, he reinforced neoliberalism and continued what Callaghan started and Johnson is finishing. The rot started a while back and when I hear Obama speak I cringe.
I don’t
I see a democrat- small D
I said I do nit agree with all he did
But he’s not a fascist
I’m sorry, but it’s just crass to pretend there is a similarity
Neoliberalism is profoundly flawed. But to pretend it’s fascist is absurd
Trump won because of reaction to Obama’s failings? I suspect a rather more important reason for many people to vote for Trump was that they didn’t want Hillary Clinton (which admittedly included her period as Obama’s US Secretary of State, but for other reasons too).
And yet she still received almost 3 million more votes than Trump (65.85 million, versus 62.98 million). But you have to win 270 votes in the Electoral College, and she only got 227. (A little like our current government winning an substantial parliamentary majority on 43.6% of the votes.)
They are all politicians, not saints. You have to take them as you find them. None of them is perfect, but if I had a vote, I’d have preferred Obama over Hilary Clinton. And almost anyone over Trump, who, yes, is behaving like a fascist. (I’m not sure if the pejorative label helps too much, but his behaviour is entirely unacceptable and needs to be called out, as it is being.)
Absolutely agree, Obama paved the way for Trump. But for me it’s not really about how different both mens personalities are it’s about how centralized power turns those engaged in it into monsters. The system is monstrous because centralized power can only exist by disempowering communities and that has to involve oppression either done brutally or subtly. The trajectory of the increasing centralised economic exploitation promoted by Obama or Blair was always going to require the sort of corporate media divide and conquer propaganda that would eventually lead to full blown fascism and those willing to exploit it like Trump or Johnson/Cummings.
The antidote is community empowerment – start a street project maybe learning to build windturbines to power your homes – the state will have legislation to crush this sort of communal entrepreneurial behaviour not help it and that’s how to get people to see it’s injustice and to see past the lies of state and corporate media. Centralised power is clearly a dead end.
Richard I would be interested to hear which phrases you find ridiculous in Joe’s first 2 paras. I disagree that Obama and Trump are the same kind of monster. They are 2 different kinds of monsters. One a smart man sugar coated who knew how to speak nicely and say the words people wanted to hear while putting in the knife quietly letting others take the blame for his monstrous acts. And the other one about whom nothing good can be said.
Ok
I do not think Obama was a monster
He did not deliver as I wanted – and was neoliberal. He also made foreign policy mistakes
But to pretend that they are even remotely alike is in my opinion utterly ridiculous – and contemptuous of the democratic process which Trump threatens
If you want to pretend Obama was a fascist you have lost touch with political reality
Well I for one question what kind of democracy we and Americans live in when our leaders directly themselves or or support other fascists in making drone attacks and bombing of innocent women and children in Ukraine, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen. I do not believe they have a democratic mandate from their people to do this. Obama was going to close Guantanamo, it is still open. I personally do not see that despite his well chosen words Obama was any different in his foreign policy actions to Trump
Then you are not looking
I agree with all the faults
But I am sorry – but I am beginning to delete this type of nonsense as readily as I delete the nonsense from the right because it is as crass and has no place here
To be pedantic, Joe’s post did not call Obama fascist. I agree that Obama is not as bad as Donald or Hillary, but that’s a pretty low bar.
I didn’t call Obama a fascist. I certainly don’t think he was the glowing president that others seem to remember. He seemed pretty keen on launching missiles and expelling foreigners and he was sour faced before the referendum telling the UK we would be at the back of the queue. He may have had good reasons but he never disguised his dislike of Britain. Our own likes and dislikes are irrelevant here but I’m afraid I never warmed to the man then again the last US president I liked was Jimmy Carter and nobody else seemed to think much of him.
We can argue about personalities, their flaws, mistakes, their warmongering till…and not get anywhere. But the essence of Obama’s & Mattis message is what matters, just as Karajan’s musicality is undoubted regardless of his equivocation over the Nazis.
The second last sentence about “broad alliances” is important. What I fear, regarding the UK, is that Johnson/Cummings will make changes which will be irreversible for decades, if people don’t act, just as Thatcher’s legacy of destruction is still with us, 40 years later: financialisation, privatisation, emasculation of the Unions etc etc, otherwise “the essential qualities of society” will be unrecognisable.
I share that fear
And arguing about Corbyn will not change anything or address that fear now
In empathy with Joe and Rod, I sense frustration here – because as I see it we have 2 choices – the ”killing them softly’ approach of neo-liberalism (Tory and Blue Labour variants) versus the more direct, couldn’t give a damn and in plain sight Trump and Johnson methods.
And those 2 choices are bad choices. I mean what are we supposed to do – cower at Johnson and Trump and gratefully run into the arms of the neo-liberals? What choice is that? At least Johnson and Trump are in some perverse way, more honest about what their intentions are (having used of course underhand methods to get where they are).
I would rather have another 5 years of Johnson than vote for some tosser who pretended to care about me (Hi Tony! Hi Alistair!). I’m serious.
It’s obvious to me that there needs to be a third choice – the courageous choice – in both the UK and US. My understanding is that the Democrats got more of the popular vote in 2016 but the electoral college system meant that Trump won. I understand that when Atlee was voted out, he too had more of the popular vote than the Tories but changes to electoral boundaries changed things.
I mean, what is going on? Democracy itself is pretty faulty. It should be one person, one vote and that is it.
And we also need more representation in our democracy, more choice through PR in my view.
And who will hold that progress up?
Why both Labour and the Tories of course because they will both think how it affects their grip on potential power.
Who else tries to run a county so exclusively? Why, fascists of course. Whilst not out and out fascists, fascist method can still exist in so-called democratic parties (Thatcher’s ‘Not one of us’ mantra for example is redolent of fascism to me, but Labour’s inability to share its aims and objectives with other progressive parties remains a sore point and maybe has a fascist tendency all of its own? Discuss?).
I’m sick of relying on these two monolithic parties in the UK who both in their own ways are thick and stupid as well uncaring about the lives of real people. And the same can be said I think of the Republicans and Democrats in the US.
Politics is really fucked up I’m afraid and we need courageous leaders of existing parties to break the mould. The things is that they just do no exist. And if they do they are forced out or bought off – Saunders yet again has been thwarted in the US and Clive Lewis of Labour hardly got a look in despite being a damn site more courageous than the other candidates. As for those bright young female BAME Democrat representatives who have come on the scene in the US – their own party is the biggest threat to their efficacy.
I say again, fascism exists throughout our politics and in the parties themselves. There is a lot of inherent anti-democracy at work in our democracies in the UK and US. The major parties need to be broken up and the voting opened up to new entrants with politicians being made to work together. Now that is something novel!!
Yes – that’s right – its the bloody central party political monopolies that need to be broken up once and for all. Lets have some real competition for ideas and a better world, and all equally funded too (another stupid part of the system that needs looking at both here and abroad). And then lets see what happens ‘when the people speak’.
And finally, don’t you think it is a bit weird that we are told that people just aren’t into politics anymore when you consider what is happening now about the shooting in Minnesota? The Occupy movement? The anti-Iraq marches? The anti-BREXIT marches? The marches that are held every time a school in a America gets shot up?
The problem to me is not ‘the people’ – its the politics and the politicians that fail to deal with the real concerns that people have. It’s got to stop. Politics is not working. That is why I have empathy with the views expressed in this particular blog.
There are moments when I feel like giving up
Please keep going. Your intelligence, insight and integrity are inspiring at a time when ‘we are not witnessing normal political events’. Your courage and diligence are reassuring.
A year ago, Observer journalist, Carole Cadwalladr called out the “gods of Silicon Valley” for being on the wrong side of history and asked: ‘Are free and fair elections a thing of the past?’
In her a 15-minute YouTube presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSMr-3GGvQ : “Facebook’s role in Brexit – and the threat to democracy” she digs into the UK’s super-close 2016 vote to leave the European Union. She tracked the result to a barrage of misleading Facebook ads targeted at vulnerable Brexit swing voters — and linked the same players and tactics to the 2016 US presidential election.
In 2017 and 2018, Cadwalladr had exposed Cambridge Analytica, https://www.theguardian.com/membership/2018/sep/29/cambridge-analytica-cadwalladr-observer-facebook-zuckerberg-wylie the firm at the centre of a data breach and shamed Facebook. Her research also exposed foul play in the EU referendum campaign and US presidential election.
Were similar methods were used in the recent general election? We can only guess.
She ends this article with “I think it’s inevitable that foreign actors and rich individuals will try to manipulate social media platforms. Their methods are only going to get more sophisticated. And while Facebook and Google remain private companies, behind closed doors, beyond the reach of lawmakers, we won’t know how.”
Carole is a real symbol of both courage and integrity
That’s just what ‘they’ want you – and other progressive thinkers/activists – to do: Give up. I don’t think you really mean it but I can understand the mounting frustration. I just wish I was younger and able to play an active subversive role. It’s war, by any other name. And I can’t see a peaceful outcome. The current riots, aggravated by the regressive socio-economic effects of the pandemic, are just one more step closer to a much more widespread confrontation – that has been fermenting for a very long time.
In this interview today with Jimmy Dore, Chris Hedges spells out unequivocally the precarious state of American society, which goes largely unreported in the msm: “The Ruling Elite Has Lost All Legitimacy” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F94MMb0w6o.
It seems his solution requires a third political party, which isn’t going to happen any time soon. While the situation here is not as dire or as threatening (yet) I do believe we’re travelling in roughly the same neo-fascist direction, as you explained earlier. UK governments are lucky that our discontents are generally less volatile than their US equivalent. And since the demise of the trades unions have no effective banner under which to rally. However society is always in a state of flux – even if it’s not apparent on the surface. In the past 40 years debt peonage has kept the pitchforks at bay. But, if the economy tanks badly as a result of Covid & Brexit, then who knows how people will react.
Thankfully the LP isn’t as closely integrated with global capitalism as are the Dems; so over the next 4 years could provide more effective opposition and offer an alternative narrative that appeals beyond its core support base. Like you, I’m prepared at this stage to give Starmer the benefit of doubt. early days but thus far he seems to be adopting a sensible strategy by not putting his head too far above the parapet. Time will tell. However, as we’re witnessing in the US, until radical root & branch reforms are implemented, anything else is simply a better form of Band-Aid. As Krishnamurti said: “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
Of course, if Trump is re-elected then all bets are off. Biden is a terrible candidate but probably more so domestically than internationally, at least from a UK perspective. For the sake of people and planet, somehow or other – whatever it takes – the right-wing insurgency you describe MUST be stopped in its tracks. Much too late to nip it in the bud as it’s already in bloom. To eradicate it will require political glyphosate. It’s too late for an organic solution.
Hope I’ve not meandered too far off topic. It’s late, when a dysfunctional form of fuzzy logic sets in.
Anyhow, don’t ever give up. When you’re starting to feel it’s no longer worth the effort, try adding a couple of extra shots to the Americano, interspersed with an occasional caffè corretto!
I won’t give up
I promise
But we have to deliver what is possible
Not on my account you won’t. C’mon now, who hell am I?
As yet, I do not think we have created the language to explain politics as it is at the moment – although the language of State investment seems to be developing nicely which is great, helped no doubt by your hard work. However, if politics does not catch up, it will all be in vain. Seriously now.
I have begun reading ‘Hiding in Plain Sight’ by Sarah Kendizor – it’s about Trump and the America that he managed to end up being the President of.
Like a previous book I read by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco ‘Days of Destruction; Days of Revolt’ there is palpable anger in the writing – a stridency that you would not at first associate with Americans at all – something more in line with what you might get at an extreme left meeting here in the UK. Yet these are well educated middle class Americans writing in such an uncompromising way. Why? Because what has been done to their country is bad, that’s why. And all the parties there are in on it.
I see this writing as a warning to us in the UK and Europe as to what is coming our way. Indeed it is already here.
You talk of what is possible and wish to be pragmatic. Sure – nothing wrong with that. But consider the role of pragmatism when dealing with extremists – people who want more, even though they already have everything.
There is a huge unmet need for better politics out in the UK and elsewhere. New Labour compromised a lot of its long held beliefs and effectively set up much of the infrastructure the Tories are now using to further dismantle the country to be sold off. Blair thought he could control or placate Neo-liberalism if he just turned a blind eye to this and that. And what did he and Brown get? 2008 – that’s what they got. And then 2010.
Whatever comes next from Labour (or whoever) has to be as decisive in pushing forward the State and the condition of the British people as the Tories have been in pushing it back. There is a lot riding on this.
We need something authentic and uncompromising in the political sphere – if only to realise courageous new ideas. All I was doing was acknowledging those frustrations created by political cowardice, complacency and bad ideology that is still rampant. That’s all.
Thanks!
Exactly right. Well said.
Did anyone mention Corbyn here?
But … I was of the understanding that no government could tie the hands of a successor government so Johnson could do all sorts of stupid things and if they turn out badly the opposition could seek a mandate to reverse certain things. If successful they would be the will of the people. That is democracy. If foreign governments threaten to take us courts that we have voted not to recognise what could they do? Nothing has to be forever and if any elected government allowed foreign governments to overrule their own judgements somebody needs to do a little straight talking.
Contracts are very hard to reverse
Contracts with corporations that come pleading with a begging bowl when the going gets tough are easy to reverse. You’ve written a book on it – courage. You want to do business in our country, just remember one thing, we make the rules and you pay your taxes. I can’t see the problem. As Michael Heseltine said about Amazon – he would go after them – how many battleships have they got? Bill Mitchell has it right over the bond markets, we’ve allowed them to tell us that they are in charge.
You’ve also said it yourself about Sunak fishing out dosh to the corporate sector, there should have been strings attached.
But that’s not true, I am afraid
Contracts are hard to reverse
Mattis sounds to me like someone suggesting the American people prepare for a society in which, since it’s so dishonest and incompetent, they’ll have to learn to do without central authority and work things out for themselves. I’ve seen signs a similar attitude is already being adopted here. I’m not sure how one should label such a society.
“Big Society”???
Heehee
Dishing not fishing!
Noam Chomsky said it best: In the US, there is basically one party – the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population.
Richard – you say – contracts are hard to reverse.
We will have to do it if we want to change things. No reforms have ever been achieved by allowing the bullies to win. Sooner or later we have to choose between slavery or freedom. Allowing them to always make the rules means we lose.
You are very strong on telling us what needs to be done but you don’t seem to want to fight to get it. Before the election you suddenly changed your mind about nationalisation. A few months later it’s back on your agenda.
Please read what I say and stop trying to reduce it to slogans
Each comment was within a context
The contexts were not the same
It’s tedious to have to point it out
As it us to be told I have no fight
What have you changed? I have….
Dear Rod
I can sense your frustration and have acknowledged it myself but taking it out on Richard is not on. Please read more about Richard’s work. He is and has been prime mover for a lot of new ideas and thinking about a wide range of different but interrelated issues. He has been ‘fighting’ and has been officially acknowledged as an effective campaigner.
Come on now – check his work out, and then come back here, man up and apologise. By all accounts he works bloody hard.
Here’s a radical idea…
I’d like to see private donations to political parties outlawed. I’d have serious rules and regulations to describe what is accepted as a political party and have them funded by the Treasury on the basis of the size of membership. Donations from any source other than that would be illegal and should carry serious penalties, both for the recipient and the donor.
Since there’s an undeniable correlation between the amount spent in an election and the result, I think there’s a solid argument for such a policy -it prevents our democracy being subverted by rich individuals and organisations. Surely that’s enough to justify the “cost”? I’d say so.
Imagine what political parties would be able to achieve if they were freed from the yokes imposed by those holding their purse strings? It would take a lot of the power away from lobby groups too, many of whom press their agenda with the promise of donations.
Private cash to influence public policy should be anathema. Central, regulated funding of political parties would create the most level of playing fields.
I commend the motion to the house.
I suggest joining the Electoral Reform Society
I am a member
I understand that there is an argument that neoliberalism leads to fascism.
And that there is an argument that neoliberalism and fascism are fundamentally different.
Both arguments can be maintained next to each other. They are not in contradiction.
There is also an argument that fascism is on the rise and we need to fight against it.
Taking all of this together, I come to the conclusion that it is not the time to blame neoliberalism for fascism. It is rather the time to unite in the fight against fascism and to welcome neoliberals if they want to join. We can debate the fine points once the fight is won.
I don’t want to speak for Richard, but that is what I make of his blog and the position I support.
I don’t agree with neoliberals
But many are democrats and that is important