Just a quick thought this morning.
Suppose you ran a newspaper.
Suppose your country faced the very real prospect of a fascist president.
Suppose there was an alternative candidate who might be far from ideal but was a very long way from being a fascist.
And suppose you had endorsed candidates in Presidential elections for decades.
But this time, you decide you really can't endorse either candidate. It's impossible, you say, to decide between them. So this time, you say you are going to sit it out.
That is what the Washington Post - the paper that delivered the Watergate investigation - is doing for this presidential election campaign. Apparently, it can't decide whether a fascist is such a bad thing, after all.
Really?
What to conclude? It is that the US is not sleepwalking into fascism. It is being led there by the willing, who are the powerful who see every advantage from having a fascist in office.
That happened in Germany. It is happening in the US. It could definitely happen here.
On which thought, I am heading out for a walk to enjoy a glorious autumn morning, not to escape this issue, but to wonder what we have to do to prevent this.
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You ascribe too much intellectual weight here to the problem, maybe?
This is not about Facism per se, this is a by-product, an unfortunate indirect dynamic that comes into play that helps Fascism.
This is about newspaper sales.
Advertising sales.
The need to be see as on the right side of history because of one’s reputation.
Shareholder influence?
Thinking about what might happen if you know who gets in.
In other words, this is about Fascism’s ugly twin – Neo-liberalism.
Enjoy your walk.
You may well have seen it on Twitter but it seems that Republicans have registered something like 140000 Amish voters in Lancaster County Pennsylvania, which given that the Amish population there is only about 40000 AND they dont vote in National elections is how might I put it interesting
Given Amish values such as family, honesty, respect for the land, and hard work, it is somewhat disappointing to find that the majority are supporting Trump (apparently in large part because ‘Biden’s’ health inspectors shut down an Amish business which killed someone with a listeria infection).
If you look at the numbers you will see John’s point – of an estimated population of 40k, the Republicans claim 140K support them… the comment that Amish don’t vote in national elections further highlights their lies
Badenoch is on air right now and wants to prevent Scotgov having an immigration policy that allows us to fill essential vacancies and she wants to suppress devolved government.
She waddles like a fascist, and quacks l;ike a fascist.
It is happening here.
These people are no more fit for political careers than Trump.
No nation has adequate constitutional protections against sociopaths and fascists.
That includes the UK, probably in a weaker position than most, given our history.
Suppose all of us have the capability and inclination to be biased and irrational or flat out clueless. By default.
Suppose there are situations, where individual (perceived) rationality leads to collective irrationality, if not insanity.
Suppose you structure society in away that makes a significant part of any given population live in fear of something or another, consciously and subconsciously.
Suppose the majority of the ruling class does not have the proverbial skin in the game or at the very least is totally oblivious of the fact they do.
Suppose all of us suffer from baseline shift in terms of what we take for granted.
Suppose extreme political regimes serve as a kind of baseline to touch with every once in a while.
You get the gist.
Paul Jay believes that only grassroots, door to door and personal activism will have a fighting chance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILegp-aSSO8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z6QUXd5WBo
I hope the preconditions for this to succeed have been met already.
Your conclusion is spot on although I would argue no society ever sleepwalked into major shifts like that. They have been sleepwalked into it but it takes two to tango.
Oh yeah I hope you deeply enjoyed your walk!
I did
There may be pictures later
“That is what the Washington Post – the paper that delivered the Watergate investigation – is doing for this presidential election campaign.”
Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post and Amazon. seems to fear Donald Trump. Why someone like Bezos, who is very successful, would fear someone like Trump, who ran every company he touched into bankruptcy and lost ever lawsuit he ever fought, just blows my mind.
It’s not difficult to envisage a spiteful and jealous Trump breaking up Amazon just for the sake of it. Perhaps the likes of Thiel and Fink fear him too, and with reason. They fear the Trumpening – there can be only one!
Trump wishes he would ever have enough power to break-up Amazon.
Does Amazon needs to be broken-up??? This is another question entirely.
Trump is the dictionary-definition of a useful-idiot and he doesn’t even realise the extent to which he’s being used.
I despair thoroughly of what the USA has become. The only option is a velvet-revolution: let the eastern and western seaboards secede and leave the festering mess in the middle drown in its own cesspit.
I guess Chicago and Colorado could get associate membership of the new nation!
We have no reason for smugness.
The UK is as vulnerable to represssive forces as any other nation state.
If you want to see the thin end of a fascist wedge, very much promoted and endorsed by big business.
We already have environmental protestors in jail with sentences of between 2-5 yrs for non violent protest.
We also have widespread suppression of environmental protests in support of climate change actions under recently passed laws, and a presumption of ‘pour encourager les autres’ by such as Judge Hehir.
Now doctors are being targeted and suspended by the GMC for making protests against government fossil fuel policies, in secondary punishment.
Don’t expect Labour to support civil liberties.
Mary Creagh, the junior minister for nature has stated there was “no right to civil disobedience”, adding that UK laws allow for “legitimate environmental protest and public engagement”. Aye, right.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6pygw71w3go#:~:text=Dr%20Benn%2C%20who%20had%20already,fitness%20to%20practise%20was%20impaired.
The UK needs a healthy dose of secession in my humble one.
Scotland to go their own way and NornIron reunited with the rest of my island!
Mr Bezos, who owns the Washington Post will argue that he is only reverting what used to be policy for this paper some 50 years ago.
Of course it has nothing to do with the fact that Amazon Web Services has a US government contract for Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability.
Robert Reich had an item a couple of days ago calling out 3 billionaires for staying quiet – Gates, Dimon and Buffet. They have spoken about everything except Trump. Political Cowardice he calls it, afraid of upsetting the demagogue and what he might do.
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/political-cowardice-in-the-c-suites
I think the Tim Snyder link posted earlier says whatb this is all about. They are already obeying….
What goes aroundf comes around. Blast from the past.
ex-wife’s family lived in Neuss (Germany) – opposite the Thyssens – their house big, fine, etc.
RAF air raid – Thyssens house goes up in flames – ex’s does not (built of clay as it happens). ex’s family shelter the Thyssens.
Sort of a variation on the 3 little piggies.
Trump, if he gets in, will come for the idiots that stayed silent.
(& it’s worth noting that Thyssen etc recovered – post WW2 – funny that).
I agree
but I saw this on CNN
Nika Soon-Shiong, a 31-year-old activist who has no official role at the newspaper but has previously been accused of meddling in its coverage, told The New York Times that she and her father made the decision not to endorse Harris.
“Our family made the joint decision not to endorse a Presidential candidate. This was the first and only time I have been involved in the process,” she said. “As a citizen of a country openly financing genocide, and as a family that experienced South African Apartheid, the endorsement was an opportunity to repudiate justifications for the widespread targeting of journalists and ongoing war on children.”
Trump is no alternative. I saw several Muslim leaders appearing with him because Trump would bring ‘peace’. He calls ICC indicted Netanyahu ‘Bibi’ and assures them he has Israel’s back. He will Israel whatever they demand. Israel will agree to a cease fire when they have done enough damage. Then Trump will hint he should have the Nobel Peace Prize.
Once again it shows the price for allowing a lobby group to capture the foreign policy agenda over national interests.
Her father, Patrick, is South African of Chinese origin and was a surgeon at Soweto’s Bharagwanath hospital during the 1976 uprising, the revolt made famous by the photo of teenager Hector Peterson carrying the body of a younger dead girl away from the shooting.
Without his range or depth of scholarship, I’ve spent quite a few chunks of my professional life studying and teaching in the history of this area and I find it impossible to improve on Timothy Snyder’s warning cum commentary on these events. Find it at –
https://snyder.substack.com/p/obeying-in-advance?utm_campaign – and, please, do whatever you can.
Thanks
He is right
Unfortunately, Tim Snyder sounds rather pessimistic-surely things can’t be so bad? Also just been watching Jeffrey Sachs interview re the BRICS recent meeting, so there are other players in the world? Eventually, numbers do count?
They can be that bad, I think
Tim Snyder is perhaps the most capable witness to what is happening in our times. He has learnt other languages to delve into the horrors of Eastern Europe and Nazi Germany and is deserving of his Hannah Arendt prize (another learned person who studied how easily people can be co-opted into unthinkable depravity).
If he is calling it bad, then it I think you should pay attention.
We should all pay attention actually.
Agreed
Ann Owen,
Time Snyder’s observations were for all of us; that includes you.
Don’t obey in advance.
Act as if you are free.
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.” (Martin Niemöller, 1892–1984)
In the silences between the first and the last, I think Niemöller placed the comforting thought: “surely things can’t be so bad?”.
Actually it seems to be even worse than Timothy Snyder warned. The Guardian’s new report of interactions between Trump and Bezos’s men would seem to suggest that the droping of the Post’s enorsement of Harris may have been directly transactional. The story is at https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/oct/27/bezos-washington-post-non-endorsement-election – and the vital quote is from Washington Post editor-at-large and longtime columnist Robert Kagan, who resigned on Friday who – ‘ argued that the meeting Blue Origin executives ‘ (Bezos’s company) ‘ had with Trump would not have taken place if the Post had endorsed the Democratic vice-president as it planned.
“Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do – and then met with the Blue Origin people,” Kagan told the Daily Beast on Saturday. “Which tells us that there was an actual deal made, meaning that Bezos communicated, or through his people, communicated directly with Trump, and they set up this quid pro quo.” ‘
Bought and sold?
This is grim
This is exactly what an right wing oligopoly looks like.
When I saw this story I wondered if (well actually, assumed) that the billionaire owners of the Washington Post and the LA Times had been subject to Mafia-style threats to their business interests. It doesn’t look good for the USA.