Another key component in the rise of colonial fascism is the weakness and fecklessness, and sometimes outright complicity, of the political opposition.
Although it does seem to be finally shifting, we are still stuck in a position where the US 'opposition party' has largely supported the connection between colonialism and genocide that Trump has fully embraced, while occasionally masking that with tepid 'concern'.
The bipartisan support for Israel's genocide in Gaza and colonial assault on the West Bank is the obvious example. As recently as this summer, Schumer and several other Democratic Senators took a smiling photo with the indicted war criminal Netanyahu at the same moment Israel was starving children and massacring those trying to get aid, while these same Senators and many others voted against resolutions to stop US arms shipment to Israel only weeks after.
The fact that majority of Democratic Senators voted in support of these resolutions was exceptional, and the fact that this was so exceptional in itself is telling.
Even in the NYC mayoral race, Mamdani's opposition to genocide as been a major reason, maybe the main reasons, why NYC Democrats and stalwart supporters of Israel Hakeem Jeffries, Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand have refused to endorse him. HIs opponent Andrew Cuomo defended Netanyahu against the ICC war crimes charges.
As Ta-Nehisi Coates recently said, “We are at a moment right now where people are asking themselves why can’t the Democratic Party defend this assault on democracy . . . and I would submit to you that if you can’t draw the line at genocide, you probably can’t draw the line at democracy.”
While I agree this current administration in Israel is BAD, and American politics towards Israel has always been 'too' supportive, the situation around Israel and in general in the middle east has ALWAYS been seriously messed up with few if any true innocents. The entire region (including Israel) is perpetually stuck into multiple simultaneous forever wars, where the concept of peace seems to be 'against their religion' (yes, I said all sides). I know what their religions SAY, but just as we have Christians rooting for the 'end of days' while following a 'stand in' for the antichrist, they similarly are not typically following their religions teachings either. Both sides have done horrible things and with these forever wars and cultural mandate to seek revenge for past wrongs, I can understand how all the sides see genocide as the only path to survival and peace, because NONE of them can forgive past wrongs and forge a new peace based on mutual respect and needs.
So please forgive me when I hear another rant that sounds like one side is full of saints and the other full of devil worshipers, but I have heard it all before, from both sides. They can both always find reasons to hate and kill until there are none left. Oh sure, if one side is 'losing' the other side is clearly in the wrong, I will agree to that, but simply losing does not make on a saint. Rather both sides are wrong and until they admit that and want to find a better solution, they will continue their work.
You know what a massive terrorist attack is? It is fundraising and recruitment. Peace is the enemy of terrorists and currently Israel is the terrorist, reacting to a terrorist attack... and so it goes round and round, just another forever war.
Corporations are complicit in the regime's internal colonization. An example:
Chicagoans have begun using whistles as a tactic of resistance and self-protection. When ICE goons are seen in a neighborhood, passersby use their whistles to draw attention to the operation and to warn vulnerable people to stay away. Hearing about this, my household went online to buy whistles so we would be prepared. Tried to purchase from Amazon and got through the ordering process up to the "delivery" screen. Then the transaction was canceled with this message: CANNOT DELIVER TO YOUR ZIP CODE. Next, we tried Dick's Sporting Goods, same result.
We finally bought our whistles at an Army-Navy surplus store. Ironic, doncha think?
The connections you're making here, between foreign and domestic policy, are so crucial. I've been an amateur student of the Arab world all my adult life, with a focus on the period from World War I to the present, and this rings very true. And the common denominator between foreign and domestic policies is white people suppressing people of color.
We keep being so afraid to be violent, but that is because we are afraid of giving him a 'valid excuse' to impose martial law.
However, what Trump is doing is deliberately provoking and if we continue to just let him do it, relying on the courts to rein him in, remember what this current SCOTUS is letting him do. It is allowing Trump to use racial profiling by ICE, it is allowing Trump to fire people that the LAW says he cannot. At what point do we say SCOTUS has gone too far... Trump has gone too far, and just say NO with all of our police and all of our National Guard - warned about the consequences of following illegal orders and utilizing the large resources of our larger states to stand up and just obstruct or even arrest criminal actions by federalized agents.
ICE who do not present valid identification should be arrested for impersonating an officer. If ICE grabs someone, without due process and without proper identification, they should be arrested for kidnapping and placed in jail. Our state courts should demand proper paperwork and identification, and not just some federal officials word for it. This Federal Government has proven it does not have any legal credibility anymore. Let it be the police who enforce the laws of the state and stand guard over our cities. Let Trump prove FIRST in court his claims that such intervention is necessary (good luck with that) because there is no clear 'emergency' requiring immediate intervention, such as after a natural disaster.
Until we stand up with our official response to an illegal action by the Federal government we are simply inviting Trump to keep taking step after step and either relying on the courts reluctance to force it's will on this criminal Executive branch, or SCOTUS actively enabling clearly criminal acts.
Trump is a classic bully, and a coward as such are, but he is discovering there really is no limit on what he can do, until we show him otherwise.
With an official state response with a clear legal foundation and enforcement of it's laws (even if it has to pass new laws to do it) it will not look like 'riots in the street'. Conservative media will of course paint it like secession, but with no violence and business as usual that will be hard to keep selling. Especially if the violence comes from ICE or other federal agents.
I don't disagree that the crime rate is too high. Really my beef is with the gun industry and Republican policies that keep guns in the hands of people and courts that override Illinois choosing to have gun control.
Governor Pritzker and Mayor Johnson have said they would welcome real help from Trump, like funding programs that we know work to make crime rates go down. Also, social policies that are less likely to drive people to crime. Think if Trump were to actually do some of the populist things that he pretended to stand for. Perhaps we would lower our homelessness, and hunger rates. That would be great! But he is doing the opposite, and does it with relish. He does not like anyone except in a transactional way, is a rabid White Supremacist and pedophile, and does not have one likable quality at all.
A call to the Supreme Court of the United States of America:
Come out and explain yourselves and your rulings!
The only calls accepted are Trump’s.
I studied fascism in grad school. This is SPOT ON.
Thanks for one of your best posts ever. Great explication.
Does that chickenshit draft-dodger know who won the War in Viet nam?
Trump: “The Mets?”
Another key component in the rise of colonial fascism is the weakness and fecklessness, and sometimes outright complicity, of the political opposition.
Although it does seem to be finally shifting, we are still stuck in a position where the US 'opposition party' has largely supported the connection between colonialism and genocide that Trump has fully embraced, while occasionally masking that with tepid 'concern'.
The bipartisan support for Israel's genocide in Gaza and colonial assault on the West Bank is the obvious example. As recently as this summer, Schumer and several other Democratic Senators took a smiling photo with the indicted war criminal Netanyahu at the same moment Israel was starving children and massacring those trying to get aid, while these same Senators and many others voted against resolutions to stop US arms shipment to Israel only weeks after.
The fact that majority of Democratic Senators voted in support of these resolutions was exceptional, and the fact that this was so exceptional in itself is telling.
Even in the NYC mayoral race, Mamdani's opposition to genocide as been a major reason, maybe the main reasons, why NYC Democrats and stalwart supporters of Israel Hakeem Jeffries, Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand have refused to endorse him. HIs opponent Andrew Cuomo defended Netanyahu against the ICC war crimes charges.
As Ta-Nehisi Coates recently said, “We are at a moment right now where people are asking themselves why can’t the Democratic Party defend this assault on democracy . . . and I would submit to you that if you can’t draw the line at genocide, you probably can’t draw the line at democracy.”
While I agree this current administration in Israel is BAD, and American politics towards Israel has always been 'too' supportive, the situation around Israel and in general in the middle east has ALWAYS been seriously messed up with few if any true innocents. The entire region (including Israel) is perpetually stuck into multiple simultaneous forever wars, where the concept of peace seems to be 'against their religion' (yes, I said all sides). I know what their religions SAY, but just as we have Christians rooting for the 'end of days' while following a 'stand in' for the antichrist, they similarly are not typically following their religions teachings either. Both sides have done horrible things and with these forever wars and cultural mandate to seek revenge for past wrongs, I can understand how all the sides see genocide as the only path to survival and peace, because NONE of them can forgive past wrongs and forge a new peace based on mutual respect and needs.
So please forgive me when I hear another rant that sounds like one side is full of saints and the other full of devil worshipers, but I have heard it all before, from both sides. They can both always find reasons to hate and kill until there are none left. Oh sure, if one side is 'losing' the other side is clearly in the wrong, I will agree to that, but simply losing does not make on a saint. Rather both sides are wrong and until they admit that and want to find a better solution, they will continue their work.
You know what a massive terrorist attack is? It is fundraising and recruitment. Peace is the enemy of terrorists and currently Israel is the terrorist, reacting to a terrorist attack... and so it goes round and round, just another forever war.
Corporations are complicit in the regime's internal colonization. An example:
Chicagoans have begun using whistles as a tactic of resistance and self-protection. When ICE goons are seen in a neighborhood, passersby use their whistles to draw attention to the operation and to warn vulnerable people to stay away. Hearing about this, my household went online to buy whistles so we would be prepared. Tried to purchase from Amazon and got through the ordering process up to the "delivery" screen. Then the transaction was canceled with this message: CANNOT DELIVER TO YOUR ZIP CODE. Next, we tried Dick's Sporting Goods, same result.
We finally bought our whistles at an Army-Navy surplus store. Ironic, doncha think?
The connections you're making here, between foreign and domestic policy, are so crucial. I've been an amateur student of the Arab world all my adult life, with a focus on the period from World War I to the present, and this rings very true. And the common denominator between foreign and domestic policies is white people suppressing people of color.
Trump: “Negroes and libs and wimmins, oh my!”
Dangerously deranged, but nothing is being done about it.
We keep being so afraid to be violent, but that is because we are afraid of giving him a 'valid excuse' to impose martial law.
However, what Trump is doing is deliberately provoking and if we continue to just let him do it, relying on the courts to rein him in, remember what this current SCOTUS is letting him do. It is allowing Trump to use racial profiling by ICE, it is allowing Trump to fire people that the LAW says he cannot. At what point do we say SCOTUS has gone too far... Trump has gone too far, and just say NO with all of our police and all of our National Guard - warned about the consequences of following illegal orders and utilizing the large resources of our larger states to stand up and just obstruct or even arrest criminal actions by federalized agents.
ICE who do not present valid identification should be arrested for impersonating an officer. If ICE grabs someone, without due process and without proper identification, they should be arrested for kidnapping and placed in jail. Our state courts should demand proper paperwork and identification, and not just some federal officials word for it. This Federal Government has proven it does not have any legal credibility anymore. Let it be the police who enforce the laws of the state and stand guard over our cities. Let Trump prove FIRST in court his claims that such intervention is necessary (good luck with that) because there is no clear 'emergency' requiring immediate intervention, such as after a natural disaster.
Until we stand up with our official response to an illegal action by the Federal government we are simply inviting Trump to keep taking step after step and either relying on the courts reluctance to force it's will on this criminal Executive branch, or SCOTUS actively enabling clearly criminal acts.
Trump is a classic bully, and a coward as such are, but he is discovering there really is no limit on what he can do, until we show him otherwise.
With an official state response with a clear legal foundation and enforcement of it's laws (even if it has to pass new laws to do it) it will not look like 'riots in the street'. Conservative media will of course paint it like secession, but with no violence and business as usual that will be hard to keep selling. Especially if the violence comes from ICE or other federal agents.
I am in Chicago right now. I wrote this piece two days ago, about Trump threatening my home town.
https://lindaweide.substack.com/p/live-from-chicago?r=f0qfn
I don't disagree that the crime rate is too high. Really my beef is with the gun industry and Republican policies that keep guns in the hands of people and courts that override Illinois choosing to have gun control.
Governor Pritzker and Mayor Johnson have said they would welcome real help from Trump, like funding programs that we know work to make crime rates go down. Also, social policies that are less likely to drive people to crime. Think if Trump were to actually do some of the populist things that he pretended to stand for. Perhaps we would lower our homelessness, and hunger rates. That would be great! But he is doing the opposite, and does it with relish. He does not like anyone except in a transactional way, is a rabid White Supremacist and pedophile, and does not have one likable quality at all.