A 2nd #Trump admin could #weaponize existing government agencies to dismantle democracy itself.
This article is part of “Project 2025: The Plot Against #America,” a Nation special issue devoted to unpacking the right’s vast & chilling program for a 2nd Trump term.
managing elections to benefit himself & his #Republican allies; gutting public broadcasting & constraining #press#freedom; & undermining civil society. #Trump, who…demanded that the results of #Georgia’s 2020…[election] be “recalculated” to give him a win, wants the trappings of #democracy w/o the reality of electoral consequences. That’s what #propaganda experts Edward Herman & Frank Brodhead described as “demonstration elections,” in which…wins are assured for the #authoritarians….
“The biggest innovation of 21st-century #authoritarians has been to maintain the facade of democratic #elections while at the same time tilting the rules against their opponents,” the group explains in its report, The Authoritarian Playbook. “They do this by suppressing votes & biasing, distorting, falsifying, or even overturning the results—either through capturing the referees or by manipulating the electoral rules in their favor.”
Greg Sargent interviews Nichoals Grossman to discuss Trump's claim that Putin will release Evan Gershkovich if Trump is electioned:
"This is yet another way Trump is wrecking the guardrails of democracy, this time by openly sabotaging current US foreign policy expressly to help himself politically while aligning himself with the world's autocrats and dictators – in this case Putin."
@BlackAzizAnansi This is how you know fascism is a deliberate choice of late-stage capitalism. It takes decades of working to undermine all the public works that government does so much better than any profiteer just to set the stage for a strongman who can point at it all and claim he can fix it, despite the facts. Those facts being his party broke it by starving it of resources and he's never fixed anything, just helped other evil men. #fascism#authoritarians
Via Ruth Ben-Ghiat @ruthbenghiat
11:01 AM · Jan 18, 2024
"Trump is telling Americans very clearly that he will be jailing and killing Americans. Anyone who votes for him is complicit with these future crimes because of this transparency & these threats. Americans cannot say they did not know ahead of time."
As I always say, authoritarians tell you what they are going to do. We just don't want to hear it — Ruth Ben-Ghiat #quotes#quote#authoritarians#dictators
I was told by a neighbour this morning that I am "the right kind of immigrant".
When asked to explain he said that I work and pay taxes. He didn't also say that I'm ok because I'm white but I wonder how the conversation would have gone if I had a different skin colour.
Am I reassured that because i am "the right kind of immigrant" everything will now be fine in the Netherlands after a quarter of the people who live around me just voted for a fascist, when the new speaker in our parliament is a conspiracy theorist as well as a fascist, and when most of the rest of the country appears to think that this is just fine ? No I am not.
I have more in common with asylum seekers and any other immigrants than I do with fascists or with unthinking voters for fascists. #pvvisfascism #RefugeesAreWelcomeHere
"Elon Musk, David Sacks and their Russophile, Putin-loving friends want Ukraine to surrender. So do most Republicans.
So what does US intelligence say? It says Russia has lost 87% of the troops it started with. No wonder the GOP wants to defund Ukraine! How can it be assured of getting illegal foreign election assistance from the Kremlin for the third presidential election in a row if it doesn’t help Putin secure his genocidal colonial ambitions?
Never forget: Putin endangers the whole world." from-S.A.
Wanted war criminal Putin's destabilization tactics were working well in the US, now fully openly embraced by republicans.
Consequences Continue for Trumpist #Insurrectionists—This Time in Nevada—As Trump Himself, An Active #Seditionist for Some Reason Not Yet in Prison, Promises to Abuse the Powers of the Presidency Starting on “Day 1” If Reelected. #DayOneDictator
The #FBI believes there are at least a thousand more January 6 insurrectionists it needs to arrest in addition to the 1,200 it has already arrested.
A thousand more.
The scope of January 6 still isn’t fully appreciated. The insurrection was a massive operation. And remember that that 1,000 doesn’t include many of the coup plotters in Trump’s inner, intermediate and outer circles.
Could a political party do any more than this to CONFIRM that they support armed rebellion?
This is astounding. Not surprising that #MagaMike Johnson and the rest of his #insurrectionist, fascist cabal thinks this, but astounding that an elected official would actually say this out loud: “We are blurring the faces of people who committed crimes because we don’t want them identified and prosecuted.” Translation - take up arms against the government, MAGA, we’ll protect you from the laws you are breaking.
#Authoritarians or #fascists run a country. For the time being, the US is still a representative democracy, which #Republicans find annoying when they prefer to run a county and represent only their benefactors. There I fixed it for the asshole #Santorum.
"MAGA Republicans bring violence, disorder, chaos & gridlock. The #MAGA wing of the #Republican Party, after all, broke the tradition of a peaceful transfer of power. It actively rooted for a default & then a government shutdown. It brooks #violence against law enforcement, peddles #conspiracy theories...
"Contrary to what critics of #democracy claim, democracies are far more stable, nimbler & more functional than govts dominated by extreme ideologues or those in the thrall of a narcissistic cult leader.
#Strongmen who promise order often are disruptive once in power....
#authoritarians feel threatened by people they identify as "outsiders" and by the possibility of changes to the status quo makeup of their communities
This would help explain why authoritarians seem so prone to reject not just one specific kind of outsider or social change, such as Muslims or same-sex couples or... migrants, but rather to reject all of them
authoritarians experience [the perceived threat to the status quo] as a threat to themselves