Fascism is rolling forward ever faster in the USA.
The Guardian has reported this:
The Trump administration has said it is halting Harvard University's ability to enroll international students and has ordered existing international students at the university to transfer or lose their legal status.
They added:
On Thursday, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration notified Harvard about its decision following ongoing correspondence regarding the “legality of a sprawling records request”, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The implication of the 'records request' is that Harvard students represent a homeland security threat to the USA, which I think we can safely assume is a complete fabrication. Fascists can't even make up good excuses for their abuse anymore.
As the Guardian notes, the reasons given are ridiculous. The Trump regime said:
The revocation of your Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification means that Harvard is prohibited from having any aliens on F- or J-nonimmigrant status for the 2025-2026 academic school year. This decertification also means that existing aliens on F- or J- non-immigrant status must transfer to another university in order to maintain their nonimmigrant status.
It justified the decision by saying:
This action should not surprise you and is the unfortunate result of Harvard's failure to comply with simple reporting requirements … Consequences must follow to send a clear signal to Harvard and all universities that want to enjoy the privilege of enrolling foreign students, that the Trump administration will enforce the law and root out the evils of anti-Americanism and antisemitism in society and campuses.
So, what is the real reason for this? There are at least three.
First, fascists hate intellectuals, and Harvard undoubtedly has one or two of them. Intellectuals refuse to be put in boxes. They refuse to be silenced. Worse still, they question what people are doing. They seek to hold people to account. They tend not to like fascists. Of course, fascists don't like intellectuals.
Second, fascists hate education. Education opens people's minds to the possibility of change and betterment. That is the last thing that a fascist wants.
Third, dedication frees people to do what they want. Again, that is the last thing a fascist wants.
Of course, Trump is attacking Harvard as the symbol of elite education in the USA. I do not like everything Harvard does, or what it teaches. It can, in many ways, be compared to Oxford. But to oppress it is straightforwardly fascist. And that is the agenda Trumpo is pursuing.
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What times we live in.
I’d be happy to have a lot universities scrutinised and made accountable for some of the ideas they have promulgated and taken to task and brought down a peg or two. Thomas Hobbes saw this issue many moons a go.
Instead, we have a corrupt individual with immense power bringing them down to earth over something much more personal and self interested.
It is like Netanyahu’s tirade last night – as Timothy Snyder has pointed out, the fascist always get’s their attack in first, often accusing the accused of what they themselves are doing in order to cover up what they are doing.
They learned from Goebbels
Goebbels = the propaganda ministry – and then il m’accuse s’accuse – as PSR states above ‘the fascist always get’s their attack in first’.
The Trump administration’s full frontal attack on Harvard purports to be because they claim Harvard has taken insufficient steps to combat anti-semitism on campus.Last year the Harvard president commissioned a detailed study of anti-semitism on the Harvard campus and associated facilities in Cambridge, Mass, Harvard’s home city. The report ran to well over 200 pages and detailed several disturbing incidents of antisemitism garnered from extensive interviews.
But what the Trump Administration has not mentioned is the chairperson of the antisemitism inquiry widened its remit to look into anti Muslim and anti-Palestinian sentiment and action at Harvard. In the parallel report, also running to more than 200 pages, it is clear the anti-Muslim and anti Palestinian sentiment and action is considerably bigger than any anti-semitism at the university.
So why is the Federal administration-?the Trump presidency-acting in a draconian way on one problem, but totally ignoring the other?
I would suggest looking which community has the greatest lobby impact in Washington DC.
I agree, it feels we are staring at fascism…….I was trying to reflect as to why we are where we are ? Are the neoliberal policies over the decades resulted in creating a fertile ground for the rise of fascism? Is it inevitable considering the declining growth in western economies?
It is a complex setting and unclear how west is going to respond / adapt to four years of Trump.
The rise of fascism across Western postwar democracies is a kneejerk response by a new lower caste created in the wake of political neo liberal capitalist inter-nationalism. A two tier mass society has been created with the most intellectually and economically mobile benefitting at the cost of the rooted and culturally specific. The latter often having to transform their ways of life into a rarey show for the wealthy mobile in order to survive in place or become placeless perpetual exiles. Understandably this new neo liberal’s hierarchy, creates a tragic disconnect between a ‘superior’ global capital and an ‘inferior’ local culture resulting in rising politically homeless grief and rage. It is a reiteration in new clothes of the tensions created with the creation of the nation state as a political control mechanism for a new mass society as capitalist industrialist’s profiteering destroyed local communities.
A judge has halted the move, so once again the judiciary and the executive battle it out (without the One Big Beautiful Bill interfering yet).
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/may/23/harvard-university-sues-trump-administration-ban-foreign-students
And tariffs are back, the Trump trolley is careering around again.
It is a real puzzle to me how any Chancellor (or Chancellor’s McTeam minder) can carry on with “cast iron fiscal rules” in such a volatile global enviroment. Politics or neoliberalism notwithstanding, cast-iron ANYTHING (except integrity) is simply not appropriate.
Straight out of Project 2025
“Prioritize national security in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP). ICE should end its current cozy deference to educational institutions and remove security risks from the program. This requires working with the Department of State to eliminate or significantly reduce the number of visas issued to foreign students from enemy nations.”
[That will be enemy in the mind of Russell Vought, Paul Dans et al, of course]
It’s all planned.
Just read a book about the Nazi Mind. The author (Lawrence Rees) lists 12 things that the Nazis did.
1. Spread conspiracy theories and outright lies
2. Created a Them and Us
3. Leader as Hero
4. Connived with the elite
5. Corrupted Youth (see various articles on Trump appealing to young men and targeting them at election time)
6. Attacked human rights
7. Exploiting faith
8. Valued Enemies (in Germany’s view, Russia. In Trump’s China)
9. Eliminating Resistance
10. Escalating Racism
11.Killing at a Distance (meaning developing methods of mass killing). Seems to me Netanyahu is Trump’s proxy to see what can be got away with
12. Stoking Fear (people stopped openly protesting fearful of the consequences)
This is Trump’s copy book.
Tariffs are Trump’s other means of testing the waters, creating a climate of uncertainty in which ‘strong men’ supposedly thrive
Thanks
One or two new to me.