Thread of What Is Fascism And Is Donald Trump A Fascist

damn it’s true; Trump cannot possibly be a fascist because he clearly does not have that funny little moustache

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/05/20/coronavirus-update-us

President Trump threatened Wednesday to “hold up” federal funding to Michigan if the state proceeds with a plan to send absentee ballot applications to all of its 7.7 million voters in a bid to mitigate the risks of in-person voting in the state’s primary and general election this year.

Trump did not specify which funds he might withhold, and he has not always followed through with similar threats.

His message — delivered in a morning tweet — comes as many states grapple with how to safely proceed with elections. Amid the pandemic, Trump has repeatedly railed against mail-in voting, claiming it is subject to fraud and has hurt Republicans in previous elections.

fashy fuck

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/05/28/why-we-need-postal-democracy/

"In fact, there’s little evidence to back Trump’s assertion that voting by mail favors Democrats. Studies of voting by mail in practice reveal no systemic advantage for either party. In the disputed Wisconsin election, The New York Times found that mailed ballots gave a significant advantage to the unexpectedly victorious Democratic candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Jill Karofsky. But some experts believe that may have been because the Democratic Party did a better job in this election of urging its voters to cast ballots by mail. Voting by mail may be especially attractive to rural and older voters who have difficulty getting to polling stations—both demographics that tend to skew Republican. Trump himself votes by mail, and Republicans have long aggressively urged their voters to do so where it is allowed. In Pennsylvania, for example, the Republican National Committee is calling it “easy, convenient, and secure.”"

It's not about whether it favours the Dems though, is it? It's to sow doubt over the validity of the coming election. It's the same game he played in 2016, anticipating his loss.

so tired of all this winning

"It's not about whether it favours the Dems though, is it?"

I reckon it is about that. He can sow doubts on validity all he likes, it won't matter if he loses.

If he loses he finally gets to have his media network and get all the adulation with less of the hassle, don't see why that would be a problem for him.

I sometimes wondered why he didn't just half-ass the rest of his term so he could slide into that network head job he so clearly wants, but I realize the hook of him and his cronies squawking 24-7 about losing an "unfair" election is exactly what he wants to start off with gangbuster ratings.

I've been (slowly) reading "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," and it's really remarkable how many at least surface characteristics and beliefs Asshole shares with Hitler. Fortunately, the differences are dramatic and, in the case of the latter, ultimately much more determinative.

Sorry, bit of a tangent from that, but which books about history in the 20s / 30s would people reccomend? Bearing in mind that I have probably read enough about Hitler already.

a rare conservative critique of the right's embrace of neo-nazis

https://thebulwark.com/is-holocaust-denial-conservative-now/

xpost If you've never read it, "The Great War and Modern Memory" by Paul Fussell might be of particular interest to you, as a writer.

Winner of both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and named by the Modern Library one of the twentieth century's 100 Best Non-Fiction Books, Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory was universally acclaimed on publication in 1970. Today, Fussell's landmark study remains as original and gripping as ever: a literate, literary, and unapologetic account of the Great War, the war that changed a generation, ushered in the modern era, and revolutionized how we see the world.

This brilliant work illuminates the trauma and tragedy of modern warfare in fresh, revelatory ways. Exploring the work of Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, Edmund Blunden, David Jones, Isaac Rosenberg, and Wilfred Owen, Fussell supplies contexts, both actual and literary, for those writers who--with conspicuous imaginative and artistic meaning--most effectively memorialized World War I as an historical experience. Dispensing with literary theory and elevated rhetoric, Fussell grounds literary texts in the mud and trenches of World War I and shows how these poems, diaries, novels, and letters reflected the massive changes--in every area, including language itself--brought about by the cataclysm of the Great War. For generations of readers, this work has represented and embodied a model of accessible scholarship, huge ambition, hard-minded research, and haunting detail.

man those world war guys just can't shut up about sigfried sassoon, OKAY, we GET IT, he was in a WAR and he wrote POEMS jesus

good memoirs and entertaining novels as well.

TS: Sassoon vs. Zazous.

so the senate majority is moving forward with an investigation of the democratic nominee's son

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/20/senate-committee-authorizes-subpoena-in-hunter-biden-probe-270741

“If there’s nothing there, we’ll find out there’s nothing there. But if there’s something there, the American people need to know that.”

Richard Evans’s Third Reich quadrilogy is a very good and readable nuts and bolts history of the Nazis. The first book is all about 1919-1933.

Mona Charon using a pull quote that repudiates Steve King isn’t something I ever expected to see

Yes.

but he's too dumb to be effective at it so no worries!

but he's too dumb to be effective at it so no worries!

yeah, absolutely. it drives me insane

Donald Trump is not a Fascist, a truth so obvious as to be worth the clusterfuck that's about to ensue

― Coombesbat 18 (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, December 23, 2015 6:42 AM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

are we ready to walk this one back yet

It's all about whether he's a fascist in his heart.

dude I fuckin hate to bring this up but I feel like there's a connection between Trump speaking with Putin and declaring martial law on the same day

and by the way bringing up the 2nd Amendment during his speech today really felt like "you can shoot anyone you think is ANTIFA, wink wink"

“He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Bolton writes. “He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”

At the same meeting, Xi also defended China’s construction of camps housing as many as 1 million Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang — and Trump signaled his approval. “According to our interpreter,” Bolton writes, “Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do.”

What Is Fascism And Is Donald Trump A Fascist

https://www.opb.org/news/article/federal-law-enforcement-unmarked-vehicles-portland-protesters/

Federal law enforcement officers have been using unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland and detain protesters since at least July 14. Personal accounts and multiple videos posted online show the officers driving up to people, detaining individuals with no explanation of why they are being arrested, and driving off.

Official White House response to @Fahrenthold’s excellent reporting about the president getting public money spent at his private business: https://t.co/uhD9V8PrDi pic.twitter.com/CkXmD6eogq

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 27, 2020

“‘dossier’”

false David Fahrenthold and others stories

Did False David Fahrenthold pee on anyone or ask to be peed on? If not, I'm not interested.

lol I am reminded of carter page and his attempts to make “dodge dossier” happen

“Dodgy dossier”

pass the cur's dossier

this tom cotton speech is something else. this is the kind of thing that trump enabled. cotton's speech, his language, the entire concept of his speech ( would have been a seismic oddity just 4 years ago

"...his disciplined work ethic" (Guiliani).

this is the first time i've tuned in for more than 5 minutes straight. i'm sure they're ramping it up for the final night, but this is creepy as fuck. the "almighty god" references, god left and right, from multiple speakers in a row, paired with nods to loyalty, to faith, to fighting against those who would destroy it...with god on their side. the speaker just now just yelled "Hallelujah!" while raising her voice and her arms in the air. she is apparently someone who was freed from prison under trump's incarceration reforms, or something. holy shit

and at the same time, the inbetween-speech video they're playing just went out of its way to promote

OPERATION WARP SPEED

looooool? who falls for this? jeeeeezus

I tuned in for like two minutes and dude can barely read. And then he has to do this dramatic swing to get his body to face the other direction to struggle to read from the other prompter.

He looks like shit, too.

He's gripping that podium like he's afraid a gust of wind will blow him over.

looooool? who falls for this? jeeeeezus

― The GOAT Harold Land (Karl Malone), Thursday, August 27, 2020 9:03 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i think you know

if I still drank I’d totally watch this shit

He's still going! It's 11:30 in DC!

maybe he'll catch pneumonia

It is far too warm here for that to happen tonight.