Far Right

By Lawrence Weschler | – The news that President Trump is planning to stage a “massive fireworks display” before a sizeable crowd on Independence Day eve at the Mount Rushmore National Memorial (notwithstanding the prospect of both wildfires in the tinder-dry surroundings and the further spread of Covid-19) has left me mulling over once again […]

Authoritarianism

What Will It Take to Defeat Trumpism? Learning Lessons from the End of the Confederacy, Nazi Germany, and Saddam’s Iraq

John Feffer

( Tomdispatch.com) – Let’s assume that Donald Trump loses the election in November. Yes, that’s a mighty big assumption, despite all the polls currently favoring the Democrats. If the economy begins to recover and the first wave of Covid-19 subsides (without a second wave striking), Donald Trump’s reelection prospects could improve greatly. The Republican Party […]

African-Americans

Trump’s ‘When the looting starts, the shooting starts’ is Classic Fascism, Classic Racism

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – “Between 18 and 20 December 1922 Turin Fascism unleashed a 3 day terror campaign on a recalcitrant anti-Fascist labour movement.” So informs us Antonio Sonnessa.* Turin (Torino) was a site of resistance to Fascism. It had a powerful labor union, dissident newspapers, a Communist Party (Antonio Gramsci was there and […]

Far Right

From Jones’s Kool-Aid to Trump’s Clorox– Can we Finally leave the Death Cults Behind Us?

Waging Nonviolence

By Michael Nagler | – ( Waging Nonviolence) – When I compared the president and his followers to Jim Jones and the “Peoples Temple” cult two years ago I didn’t expect many would go that far. In fact, I hoped events would prove me wrong. Unfortunately, the comparison has become inescapable, and other writers have […]

Cults

The Church of QAnon: Will Trumpian conspiracy theories form the basis of a dangerous new religious movement?

The Conversation

By Marc-André Argentino | – Followers of the QAnon movement believe in wild and dangerous conspiracy theories about U.S. President Donald Trump. Now a faction within the movement has been interpreting the Bible through QAnon conspiracies. I have been studying the growth of the QAnon movement as part of my research into how extremist religious […]

Donald Trump

Male Face Masks have been the Height of Masculinity for Centuries: Why see Coronavirus Masks as Wimpy?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A recent study of the way Americans are adapting to the coronavirus found that “Men more than women agree that wearing a face covering is shameful, not cool, a sign of weakness, and a stigma”. The study indicated that American men resist wearing face masks more than do women, partly […]

African-Americans

The Killing of Ahmaud Arbery highlights again the Fatal Danger of Jogging while Black

The Conversation

By Rashawn Ray | – Unsteady cellphone footage follows a jogger – an apparently young, black man – as he approaches and attempts to run around a white pickup truck parked in the middle of a suburban road. Moments later he lies dead on the ground. The killing of Ahmaud Arbery took place on Feb. […]

Donald Trump

From WW II Victory to Trump’s ‘America First’: Is our anti-Nazi Resolve Foundering?

Andrew J. Bacevich

( Tomdispatch.com ) – The 75th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s surrender in May 1945 ought to prompt thoughtful reflection. For Americans, V-E Day, as it was then commonly called, marked the beginning of “our times.” The Covid-19 pandemic may signal that our times are now coming to an end. Tom Engelhardt, editor and proprietor of […]

Donald Trump

Neo-Nazi “Reopeners” would Kill nearly as many Americans as died in All US Wars

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Roughly 1,264,000 US soldiers have died in all the wars this country has ever fought. A new simulation by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School predicts that if all the states completely reopened today and all Americans ceased all social distancing measures, a million people would die in this country […]