Tag: Fascism

Son, You Have a Future in the Republican Party

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Homophobic politico Jozsef Szajer, former MEP and an ally of Hungary’s Viktor Orban and a member of his neofascist Fidesz party, has resigned following being caught breaking Covid restrictions at a gay orgy in Brussels.

Sir, you have a future in the Republican party in the United States, and possibly a gig as a Fox News pundit:

A member of the European Parliament representing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party has resigned from his position in Brussels after he was caught leaving what reports described as a 25-man orgy on Friday.

Jozsef Szajer resigned on Sunday after he admitted to breaching Belgium’s strict lockdown rules to attend a sex party, Politico reported on Tuesday. The police found 25 naked men at the gathering, including Szajer and some diplomats, the Belgian newspaper La Dernière Heure reported. The newspaper quoted a local police source as saying, “We interrupted a gang bang.”

Orban’s Hungarian government has curtailed LGBTQ rights since he was elected prime minister in 2010. Szajer, who fronted Fidesz in the European Parliament, helped rewrite Hungary’s constitution to “protect the institution of marriage as the union of a man and a woman,” The Times of London reported.

Szajer, a right-wing politician and ally of Orban, climbed out a first-floor window and was spotted “fleeing along the gutter,” the public prosecutor’s office said. A source close to the investigation told Politico that officers were called after a complaint about a “night-time disturbance.”

Authorities said narcotics were found in Szajer’s bag. Szajer insisted that he had not taken drugs.

Brush up on your English elocution, and you could be the next Rush Limbaugh, spewing hate over our airways.

DeNazification Plan?

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The author of this tweet wonders whether or not Biden will have a DeNazification plan followign the election.

Marcel Marceau answered this question in the film Silent Movie,a nd Joe Biden has repeatedly, and explicitly said that he will not take any actions against the most egregious malefactors of the past 4 years.

There will be no deNasification, period.

In the words of Marcel Marceau, “No”.https://t.co/J5sT53zKLU

— Jack Dorsey Is Objectively Pro-Nazi (M.G. Saroff) (@40_Years) November 2, 2020

Sorry for subtweeting @EclecticRadical.

Police are the Same Everywhere

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And by that, I mean, as Yanis Varoufakis notes, that they are objectively pro-Fascist.

He is talking about Greece, but the same thing happens in the US, France, Germany, the UK, former Soviet Republics, etc.

Perhaps the only police force that MIGHT not tilt toward Nazis is the Saint Petersburg constabulary, but that is an accident of history, specifically the 872 day Siege of Leningrad.

I rather imagine that even in the former Leningrad, the police are still reactionary:

October 7 was a good day for democrats. The Greek Court of Appeals upheld the convictions of the leaders of Golden Dawn, the only openly Nazi party to have won seats in any parliament since the 1940s, on charges of murder, grievous bodily harm, and directing a criminal organization. A crowd of 20,000 Athenians celebrated outside the court.

Our celebration lasted precisely 40 seconds, before the police dispersed us with teargas. Gasping for air, my wife and I tried to join hundreds of others struggling to escape via a narrow street leading to the safety of nearby Mount Lycabettus. A dozen riot police were there, firing gas canisters into the fleeing crowd. I pleaded with their commanding officer to stop. “There is no purpose in gassing people trying to go home,” I told him calmly. He swore at me. When I produced my parliamentary ID card, his response startled me: “Yet another reason to fuck you.”

The conviction of Greece’s Nazi leaders is a decisive victory against the revival of far-right extremism in Europe. But while they were being sent to prison, their ideas, manners, and hatred of parliamentary democracy were in police uniform, terrorizing the streets.

A week later, a police internal affairs officer interviewed me as part of an investigation triggered by my testimony. I could not recognize the riot policeman’s face, because I was unable to breathe or see properly at the time of the incident. But I did recognize one thing: the look of calm loathing in his eyes – a look that reminded me of Kapnias, once a trained Gestapo interrogator.

………

When I met him in 1991, I had assumed that figures like Kapnias were relics that would disappear one funeral at a time. I was wrong. A sense of permanent defeat, hopelessness, and widespread humiliation create an environment in which Nazism’s dormant DNA reawakens. Once Greek society was immersed in wholesale indignity, following our state’s bankruptcy in 2010, a new generation of Nazis, with Kapnias’s look in their eyes, took their seats in Parliament. Now, most of them are in prison for heinous crimes. But that look remains in the eyes of too many, not all of them in uniform.

At this I’m inclined to believe that law enforcement is INHERENTLY pro-Fascist, and pro-Nazi.  It just comes with the job.

Yes, Fascism

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This is literally subordinating the entire machinery of justice to the personal service of Donald Trump:

Attorney General William P. Barr told federal prosecutors in a call last week that they should consider charging rioters and others who had committed violent crimes at protests in recent months with sedition, according to two people familiar with the call.

The highly unusual suggestion to charge people with insurrection against lawful authority alarmed some on the call, which included U.S. attorneys around the country, said the people, who described Mr. Barr’s comments on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

The attorney general has also asked prosecutors in the Justice Department’s civil rights division to explore whether they could bring criminal charges against Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle for allowing some residents to establish a police-free protest zone near the city’s downtown for weeks this summer, according to two people briefed on those discussions.

………

During a speech on Wednesday night, Mr. Barr noted that the Supreme Court had determined that the executive branch had “virtually unchecked discretion” in deciding whether to prosecute cases. He did not mention Ms. Durkan or the sedition statute.

“The power to execute and enforce the law is an executive function altogether,” Mr. Barr said in remarks at an event in suburban Washington celebrating the Constitution. “That means discretion is invested in the executive to determine when to exercise the prosecutorial power.”

The disclosures came as Mr. Barr directly inserted himself into the presidential race in recent days to warn that the United States would be on the brink of destruction if Mr. Trump lost. He told a Chicago Tribune columnist that the nation could find itself “irrevocably committed to the socialist path” if Mr. Trump lost and that the country faced “a clear fork in the road.”

………

The attorney general’s question about whether Ms. Durkan, the former U.S. attorney in Seattle, had violated any federal statutes by allowing the protest zone was highly unusual, former law enforcement officials said.

“The attorney general seems personally, deeply offended by the autonomous zone and wants someone to pay for it,” said Chuck Rosenberg, the former U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. “If the people of Seattle are personally offended, they have political recourse. There is no reason to try to stretch a criminal statute to cover the conduct.”

………

Mr. Barr mentioned sedition as part of a list of possible federal statutes that prosecutors could use to bring charges, including assaulting a federal officer, rioting, use of explosives and racketeering, according to the people familiar with the call. Justice Department officials included sedition on a list of such charges in a follow-up email.

………

The most extreme form of the federal sedition law, which is rarely invoked, criminalizes conspiracies to overthrow the government of the United States — an extraordinary situation that does not seem to fit the circumstances of the protests and unrest in places like Portland, Ore., and elsewhere in response to police killings of Black men.

………

Congress has stipulated that a conviction on a charge of seditious conspiracy can carry up to 20 years in prison.

He is also excoriating professional staff for resisting the politicization of the Department of Justice, ignoring the obvious, even the most junior associate at a law firm is required to speak out if they think that what is proposed is illegal or unethical.

If Barr has his law license a year after he leaves office, they system will have failed:

Attorney General William P. Barr delivered a scathing critique of his own Justice Department on Wednesday night, insisting on his absolute authority to overrule career staffers, who he said too often injected themselves into politics and went “headhunting” for high-profile targets.

Speaking at an event hosted by Hillsdale College, a school with deep ties to conservative politics, Barr directly addressed the criticism that has been building for months inside the department toward his heavy hand in politically sensitive cases, particularly those involving associates of President Trump.

“What exactly am I interfering with?” he asked. “Under the law, all prosecutorial power is invested in the attorney general.”

………

Barr said that argument, in essence, means “the will of the most junior member of the organization” would determine decisions, but he insisted he would not “blindly” defer to “whatever those subordinates want to do.”

“Letting the most junior members set the agenda might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool, but it is no way to run a federal agency,” he said.

The attorney general, the nation’s top law enforcement official, spent much of the speech eviscerating the idea of the Justice Department as a place where nonpolitical career prosecutors should be left to decide how sensitive cases are resolved.

BTW, what he is describing is why most state forbid corporate owned law firms, because the non-lawyer managers ordering their employees to file unlawful motions.

Andrey Vyshinsky wishes that he was William Barr.

The Reinoehl Death Looks Increasingly Like a Hit

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It now appears that Michael Reinoehl’s death at hands of police appears to have been a deliberate execution, with the police opening fire without warning:

Officers who first confronted Michael Forest Reinoehl outside an apartment complex in Washington last week yelled no warnings or commands before firing and killing the Oregon man wanted on a murder warrant in the death of a right-wing demonstrator in Portland, according to a witness now represented by a lawyer.

Nathaniel Dingess, 39, lives in the apartment complex near Lacey, Washington, where Reinoehl apparently was hiding.

Dingess said he saw Reinoehl walk toward his car holding a cellphone in his hand when two unmarked law enforcement vehicles converged outside the complex in the 7600 block of Third Way Southeast last Thursday night. Officers began firing at Reinoehl, according to a statement issued by Dingess’ lawyer, Luke Laughlin, on his behalf.

Reinoehl ducked for cover near his car, but it was blocked by police cars and he never got into it, according to Dingess.

“Officers shot multiple rapid-fire rounds at Reinoehl before issuing a brief ‘stop’ command, quickly followed by more rapid-fire shooting by additional officers,” according to the statement.

Dingess said he never saw a handgun on Reinoehl or saw him reach for anything.

………

Dingess, an ordained minister of 19 years, fears for his and his family’s safety for speaking out in what has become a flashpoint in the political swirl around Portland’s ongoing protests, according to his lawyers.

Laughlin and other lawyers are calling for an independent authority to investigate the shooting of Reinoehl, arguing that the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office is not an uninvolved party.

………

The night of the shooting, the U.S. Marshals Service issued a statement that said, “Initial reports indicate the suspect produced a firearm, threatening the lives of law enforcement officers. Task force members responded to the threat and struck the suspect who was pronounced dead at the scene.”

Normally, I would be inclined to wait for an investigation, and perhaps some more information before coming to that conclusion, but given that both Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr gave their official imprimatur to this as an extrajudicial killing, I have to believe that orders were given that Reinoehl was not to be taken alive:

President Donald Trump seemed to endorse the extrajudicial killing of suspects while discussing the fatal shooting of the antifascist activist Michael Reinoehl by U.S. Marshals in early September.

………

“The U.S. Marshals went in to get [Reinoehl], and, in a short period of time, they ended up in a gunfight. This guy was a violent criminal, and the U.S. Marshals killed him. And I will tell you something, that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution when you have crime like this,” Trump said.

Trump’s comments seemed to line-up with Attorney General William Barr’s official statement following the killing of Reinoehl, calling the officers’ actions “a significant accomplishment in the ongoing effort to restore law and order.”

Given the eyewitness account, I’m not inclined to believe that Trump and Barr both gave tacit, if not explicit, approval to a shoot on sight order.

Certainly, given the pro-fascist proclivities of both the US and local state security apparatus, I don’t think that you would need a smoking gun type order to do this, just vague language about how no risks being taken.

If you are not worried, note that, if the allegations are true, this is only one step away drone strikes against US citizens on US soil.

History Rhyming

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Considering Germany’s current state of European hegemon, this is particularly concerning:

Güstrow, Germany — The plan sounded frighteningly concrete. The group would round up political enemies and those defending migrants and refugees, put them on trucks and drive them to a secret location.

Then they would kill them.

One member had already bought 30 body bags. More body bags were on an order list, investigators say, along with quicklime, used to decompose organic material.

On the surface, those discussing the plan seemed reputable. One was a lawyer and local politician, but with a special hatred of immigrants. Two were active army reservists. Two others were police officers, including Marko Gross, a police sniper and former parachutist who acted as their unofficial leader.

The group grew out of a nationwide chat network for soldiers and others with far-right sympathies set up by a member of Germany’s elite special forces, the KSK. Over time, under Mr. Gross’s supervision, they formed a parallel group of their own. Members included a doctor, an engineer, a decorator, a gym owner, even a local fisherman.

They called themselves Nordkreuz, or Northern Cross.

………

They denied they had plotted to kill anyone. But investigators and prosecutors, as well an account one member gave to the police — transcripts of which were seen by The New York Times — indicate their planning took a more sinister turn.

Germany has belatedly begun dealing with far-right networks that officials now say are far more extensive than they ever understood. The reach of far-right extremists into its armed forces is particularly alarming in a country that has worked to cleanse itself of its Nazi past and the horrors of the Holocaust. In July the government disbanded an entire company infiltrated by extremists in the nation’s special forces.

………

Far-right extremism penetrated multiple layers of German society in the years when the authorities underestimated the threat or were reluctant to countenance it fully, officials and lawmakers acknowledge. Now they are struggling to uproot it.

………

Neo-Nazi groups and other extremists call it Day X — a mythical moment when Germany’s social order collapses, requiring committed far-right extremists, in their telling, to save themselves and rescue the nation.

………

“I fear we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg,” said Dirk Friedriszik, a lawmaker in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where Nordkreuz was founded. “It isn’t just the KSK. The real worry is: These cells are everywhere. In the army, in the police, in reservist units.”

German imposition of sado-monetarism on the rest of the EU has led to a resurgence of right wing nationalism in both Europe and the EU, and now we know that Germany is not immune to the toxic reaction to its misguided ideology.

And the Award for the Most Transparent Covid Excuse Goes To………

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The Fascist and racist regime in Bolivia which is using Covid-19 as an excuse to put off elections that it will almost certainly lose:

Bolivia has postponed its presidential election for a second time due to coronavirus, which will leave its unelected president Jeanine Añez in power through to the end of the year.

The vote was due to take place on September 6. But with Covid-19 cases still rising in what is one of the poorest countries in Latin America, the top electoral court set a new date of October 18, with a second round, if needed, on November 29. The new government would take office in December.

The court said that “there is a consensus that the [coronavirus] peak [in Bolivia] will come sometime between the end of July and the first days of September”.

The decision is good news for Ms Añez, who had argued that Bolivians should not go to the polls until the worst had passed, and a blow to her main rival, Luis Arce, leader of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party that held power under longtime president Evo Morales until last year. He has accused Ms Añez of using the pandemic to cling to power.

………

It seemed she would be in the job for a matter of weeks — just long enough to organise fresh elections and oversee a transition. But after repeatedly saying she had no intention of running for the presidency, she did a U-turn in January and threw her hat into the ring.

The election was first scheduled for May but then pushed back due to the pandemic.

………

The last key poll before the pandemic suggested Ms Añez was third in voter intentions, behind Mr Arce and Carlos Mesa, a former president and the more centrist of the three candidates. Some polls since then have suggested Ms Añez had regained ground, but they have all been conducted online because of the lockdown.

Earlier this month, the Bolivian right moved to block Mr Arce’s participation in the election, saying he had breached electoral rules by publishing an opinion poll during the campaign period. The case is before a court.

Bolivia’s right, and its center-right, believe that it is illegitimate (literally an affront to God) for the indigenous majority in the country to hold political power, so I would expect further lawfare, and further violence, against the MAS and the poor.

Common Sense Rule of Foreign Policy: Don’t Ally Yourselves with Nazis

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A Ukrainian lobbying group located in Washington, DC has invited a Neo-Nazi convicted of hate crimes to speak at on of their events:

The influential Washington-based U.S.-Ukraine Foundation (USUF) hosted a webinar on July 15 about a documentary about Vasyl Slipak, a famed Ukrainian opera singer who died in 2016 fighting alongside the ultranationalist Right Sector’s “Volunteer Ukrainian Corps” (DUK) in eastern Ukraine.

 The webinar featured an appearance by Diana Vynohradova (Kamlyuk), a sieg-heiling neo-Nazi decorated with white supremacist tattoos. Vynohradova was convicted of participating in a notorious racist murder and has incited hatred against Jews, denigrating them as “kikes.”

………

Zaborona reported that Vynohradova was convicted in the early 2000s for her participation in the racist murder of a Nigerian citizen. “I don’t like Negroes,” her friend replied when asked why he stabbed the Nigerian to death.

While in prison, Vynohradova wrote poems for the notorious neo-Nazi band Sokyra Peruna. During the 2013-14 “Revolution of Dignity,” she advised protesters from the main stage on Kyiv’s Independence Square “not to give in to supplications from the kikes.”

In the past, Vynohradova wore a neo-Nazi “1488” tattoo on her right arm, but she has since covered it up. She has not bothered to hide the white supremacist Celtic Cross above it, however, and continues to sport a kolovrat necklace — a Slavic pagan symbol that resembles a swastika.

I get that foreign policy ain’t beanbag, but experience shows that appeasing Nazi movements is not a good long term strategy.

So, Now Nazis are a Protected Group in Canada?

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Police in Ontario are investigating graffiti on a monument to an SS division as a hate crime.

I can understand that someone spray painting, “Nazi war monument,” on the side of a ……… well ……… Nazi war monument ……… might constitute vandalism, but it’s not a hate crime, it’s truth in labeling.

It appears that as a result of this controversy, a number of Canadians have become rather upset about the cenotaph in a Ukrainian cemetary to the 14th SS Division as well, so perhaps the end game may involve taking this item down.

I’m sure that some Canadian-Ukrainians would object to that, claiming that this is their heritage, but, much like people claiming Confederate heritage in the United States, I don’t give a crap what they think:

An incident involving graffiti spray painted on a monument to those who fought in Adolf Hitler’s SS is being investigated as a hate crime by an Ontario police force.

Someone painted “Nazi war monument” on a stone cenotaph commemorating those who served with the 14th SS Division. The monument is located in Oakville in the St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Cemetery.

The division, made up of Ukrainians who pledged allegiance to Hitler, was part of the Nazi’s Waffen SS organization. Some members of the division have been accused of killing Polish women and children as well as Jews during the Second World War.

………

But researcher Moss Robeson, who has written articles on Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazis, provided details about the graffiti and the monument on Twitter, prompting questions about why Halton Regional Police think members of the Nazi SS can be the subject of hate crimes.

In response to questions from this newspaper, Const. Steve Elms, spokesman for Halton-Regional Police, cited a section of the Criminal Code that noted those communicating statements in any public place inciting hatred against any identifiable group could face imprisonment not exceeding two years. “This incident occurred to a monument and the graffiti appeared to target an identifiable group,” he explained in an email to questions about how a hate crime could be perpetrated against members of the SS.

If this reminds you of people in the “Blue Lives Matter” movement claiming that protests against the police is a hate crime, not only are you very perceptive, and likely quite likely devastatingly attractive as well.

The 14th SS Division, also known as the Galizien Division, was formed in 1943 when Nazi Germany needed to shore up its forces as allied troops, including those from the U.S., Canada, Britain and Russia, started to gain the upper hand and turn the tide of the war. In May 1944, SS leader Heinrich Himmler addressed the division with a speech that was greeted by cheers. “Your homeland has become more beautiful since you have lost – on our initiative, I must say – the residents who were so often a dirty blemish on Galicia’s good name – namely the Jews,” Himmler said. “I know that if I ordered you to liquidate the Poles, I would be giving you permission to do what you are eager to do anyway.”

………

There are allegations members of the 14th SS Division took part in killing hundreds of Polish civilians in 1944 in the village of Huta Pieniacka. Some Ukrainians dispute that the SS division took part in the killings or they argue that only small elements from the unit – and under Nazi command – were involved. Others argue the SS members were heroes who fought against the Russians.

………

Bernie Farber of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network said there is a need for Halton Regional Police to better educate themselves on what constitutes a hate-motivated crime. “Yes, it’s destruction of property for sure,” Farber said of the graffiti on the monument. “But a hate crime? Far from it.”

The monument to the 14th SS Division was also in the headlines in 2017 when the Russian Embassy in Ottawa posted images on its Twitter account pointing out the “Nazi monuments” in Canada.

BTW, after the furor, the Halton Regional Police are now investigating the graffiti as simple vandalism, and the police chief is wondering why there is a Nazi monument in the first place.

Whoever put that graffiti on the monument may see it coming down now.

Yeah, Fascism

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Roving bands of masked federal agents are jumping out of unmarked cars and dragging people away.

The mayor of Portland, the governor of Oregon, the Portland PD, and the Oregon State police have received no notice about this:

In the early hours of July 15, after a night spent protesting at the Multnomah County Justice Center and Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse, Mark Pettibone and his friend Conner O’Shea decided to head home.

………

A block west of Chapman Square, Pettibone and O’Shea bumped into a group of people who warned them that people in camouflage were driving around the area in unmarked minivans grabbing people off the street.

………

They had barely made it half a block when an unmarked minivan pulled up in front of them.

“I see guys in camo,” O’Shea said. “Four or five of them pop out, open the door and it was just like, ‘Oh sh%$. I don’t know who you are or what you want with us.’”

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.

The tactic appears to be another escalation in federal force deployed on Portland city streets, as federal officials and President Donald Trump have said they plan to “quell” nightly protests outside the federal courthouse and Multnomah County Justice Center that have lasted for more than six weeks.

Federal officers have charged at least 13 people with crimes related to the protests so far, while others have been arrested and released, including Pettibone. They also left one demonstrator hospitalized with skull fractures after shooting him in the face with so-called “less lethal” munitions July 11.

………

But interviews conducted by OPB show officers are also detaining people on Portland streets who aren’t near federal property, nor is it clear that all of the people being arrested have engaged in criminal activity. Demonstrators like O’Shea and Pettibone said they think they were targeted by federal officers for simply wearing black clothing in the area of the demonstration.

………
“Feds are driving around, grabbing people off the streets,” O’Shea said on the video. “I didn’t do anything f%$#ing wrong. I’m recording this. I had to let somebody know that this is what happens.”

………

“I am basically tossed into the van,” Pettibone said. “And I had my beanie pulled over my face so I couldn’t see and they held my hands over my head.”

………

Pettibone said he was put into a cell. Soon after, two officers came in to read him his Miranda rights. They didn’t tell him why he was being arrested. He said they asked him if he wanted to waive his rights and answer some questions, but Pettibone declined and said he wanted a lawyer. The interview was terminated, and about 90 minutes later he was released. He said he did not receive any paperwork, citation or record of his arrest.

(%$# mine)

I’m trying to figure out whether or not this is Brownshirt sh%$, or if it’s Blackshirt sh%$.

In either case, there area a lot of “Good Germans” out there who need to be dealt with when Trump goes.

Franco’s Misbegotten Spawn

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This is not a surprise.  Spain’s People’s Party (PP) is a direct successor to Franco’s fascists, and sacrificing civilians to political expediency is in their blood:

By the time Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, declared a state of alarm on March 14, the deadly coronavirus had already begun to infiltrate and rip through many of the nursing homes across the nation’s capital. Like sitting ducks, the highest risk members of society didn’t stand a chance.

Thousands died all alone; in Madrid, several were found lifeless in their beds by soldiers who had been drafted to disinfect the area. Many were carted off to the city’s ice rink, by that time converted into a makeshift morgue. Families were unable to say goodbye.

Those in nursing homes lucky enough to avoid the virus have been unable to step out into the world for over three months. The situation has been likened by many to incarceration. The mental and physical toll has been tremendous.

Yet Madrid’s right-wing regional government seems to have washed its hands of the problem, mudslinging in parliament in order to divert the discussion from this tragic situation. Spaniards are indignant at its failings. But now we must examine why elderly people can be so easily discarded, just because they’re no longer contributing to the economy.

………

In Spain, whose healthcare system is decentralized across its seventeen autonomous regions, the overall figure for care home deaths alone is said to be close to twenty thousand — more than double Germany’s entire death toll.

………

Madrid, a region that has been governed by the conservative People’s Party (PP) since 1995, accounts for around 32 percent of the country’s COVID-19 deaths, while representing only 14 percent of its population.

This was no natural disaster. Years of closures and cuts left the region ill-equipped to face the gravest humanitarian crisis to hit the country since the 1936 civil war.

………

The mounting death toll in nursing homes was initially lost in the widespread frenzy and panic that gripped Spain as the infection curve continued to soar. But now the dust has settled — 48 new cases were detected in Spain on Sunday, June 14; a month ago this figure was 849 — and the harrowing truth has emerged.

It has now come to light that the regional health ministry emailed nursing homes across the Madrid region instructing them to prevent patients of a certain condition, or indeed patients over a certain age, from being hospitalized.

Ayuso claims that the original communication was merely a draft that was released “by mistake.”

El País newspaper, however, reports that Carlos Mur de Víu, director general of social and health coordination, sent at least four emails, on March 18, 20, 24, and 25, to the Ministry of Social Policies. These provided the guidance that hospitals and residences followed, ruling out the hospitalization of disabled and elderly patients with COVID-19.

If one “draft” email may indeed have been released in error, Mur de Víu’s actions clearly show the type of strategy that was deployed. As hospitals edged ever closer to the breaking point, it became a matter of survival of the fittest. The voiceless elderly were an easy sacrifice.

………

Ayuso claims that the original communication was merely a draft that was released “by mistake.”

El País newspaper, however, reports that Carlos Mur de Víu, director general of social and health coordination, sent at least four emails, on March 18, 20, 24, and 25, to the Ministry of Social Policies. These provided the guidance that hospitals and residences followed, ruling out the hospitalization of disabled and elderly patients with COVID-19.

………

186 nursing homes in Spain are currently being invested by the public prosecutor’s office — almost half of them in the Madrid region.

………

In a cruel twist, showing once again that social inequality often lasts from the cradle to the grave, it has been reported that elderly people who were able to afford private health insurance were not denied hospital treatment. Íñigo Errejón, leader of Más País, tweeted: “This is the freedom of the neoliberals. You’re left to die if you have no money, you’re allowed to save yourself if you pay. Shameless.”

Franco’s bastards.

Objectively Pro-Bigotry and Pro-Fascist

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Clearly Fraudulent

I am referring, of course to Facebook.
It turns out that Zuckerberg’s monster is complicit in Ben Shapiro’s astroturfing to monetize false engagement.

You can be sure that if this were someone selling cheesecake, they would have been banned years ago.

From a more personal perspective, if I were to do this on my blog, I would be demonitized instantly.

In fact, if I were to make a post just SUGGESTING that you click through on the ads on my blog, I would subject to sanctions from Google™ Adsense™.  (Please see my disclaimer below)

I’m not sure if Zuckerberg is a wing-nut, or if he simply finds that it’s more profitable to sell whack-doodle conspiracy theories to the wing-nuts, and I don’t care.  The effect is the same:

The success of The Daily Wire, the website run by right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro, on Facebook is mind-boggling. The site has a small staff and primarily aggregates content from Twitter and other news outlets. Typically, its articles are very short, usually less than 500 words, and contain no original reporting.

And yet, last month, The Daily Wire was the seventh-ranked publisher on Facebook, according to the analytics service NewsWhip. Articles published in The Daily Wire attracted 60,616,745 engagements in May. Engagement is a combination of shares, likes, and comments, and is a way of quantifying distribution on Facebook. The reach of The Daily Wire’s articles was equal to the New York Times (60,722,727) and more than the Washington Post (49,219,525).

But that actually understates how well The Daily Wire does on Facebook. While the New York Times published 15,587 articles in May, and the Washington Post published 8,048, The Daily Wire published just 1,141. On a per article basis, The Daily Wire receives more distribution than any other major publisher. And it’s not close.

What explains The Daily Wire’s phenomenal success on Facebook? Popular Information revealed part of the answer last October. But the full story is much darker.

Popular Information has discovered a network of large Facebook pages — each built by exploiting racial bias, religious bigotry, and violence — that systematically promote content from The Daily Wire. These pages, some of which have over 2 million followers, do not disclose a business relationship with The Daily Wire. But they all post content from The Daily Wire ten or more times each day. Moreover, these pages post the exact same content from The Daily Wire at the exact same time.

The undisclosed relationship not only helps explain The Daily Wire’s unlikely success on Facebook but also appears to violate Facebook’s rules.

………

The network of large Facebook pages promoting The Daily Wire are all run by Corey and Christy Pepple, who are best known as the creators of Mad World News. Facebook pages controlled by the Pepples include Mad World News (2,176,003 followers), The New Resistance (2,857,876 followers), Right Stuff (610,809 followers), America First (577,753 followers), and American Patriot (447,799 followers).

………

Why do these toxic Facebook pages keep sharing content from The Daily Wire? Do the Pepples just really like Ben Shapiro’s site? The Daily Wire did not respond to a request for comment. But the behavior of these pages strongly suggests that The Daily Wire and Mad World News, LLC, the company owned by Corey and Christy Pepple, have a business relationship.

The Daily Wire is the only website outside of those owned by the Pepples that is shared by these five pages. And each of the five Facebook pages shares at least ten Daily Wire links every day. Conspicuously, the Facebook pages share the exact same links from The Daily Wire at the exact same time.

………

The pattern repeats over and over again, ten times or more every day. It’s behavior that strongly suggests that Mad World News, LLC is being paid to promote content from The Daily Wire.
If that’s the case, The Daily Wire could be violating Facebook’s rules. Facebook allows pages to be paid to post content, but the sponsorship must be disclosed using Facebook’s branded content tool.

………

The activity also appears to violate Facebook’s prohibition on coordinated inauthentic behavior, which includes a ban on activity to “artificially boost the popularity of content.”

………

There is no reason that the network of Facebook pages run by Corey and Christy Pepple should have flown beneath Facebook’s radar. Years ago, the Pepples became notorious for exploiting Facebook with poisonous content.

………

The Daily Wire’s apparent business relationship with Mad World News isn’t the first time the site has been caught flouting Facebook’s rules. Last October, Popular Information revealed a clandestine network of 14 large Facebook pages that purported to be independent but exclusively promote content from The Daily Wire in a coordinated fashion.

………

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a relationship with Shapiro, who Zuckerberg has hosted at his home. According to a source who has spoken with Shapiro, Zuckerberg and Shapiro remain in direct communication.

My standard disclaimer on any post about the aforementioned service applies:

Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™.

OK, Not an Accident

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While I do not generally favor the use of Gamatria* in politics, there is a significance to these numbers.  1488 is a commonly used argot of Neo-Nazis, referring to both Hitler and the “protection” of the “white race”.

As the good folks at Psychology Today observe, “Once is a coincidence; twice is a tendency; three times is a rule.”

As Richard Dreyfuss noted in Jaws, “This is not a boat accident.”

On Thursday, June 18th, Facebook removed ads that the Trump re-election campaign began running the day earlier, citing the company’s policy against promoting organized hate. At the center of the ads and of the controversy was an inverted red triangle. The same symbol was used by Nazis to mark political prisoners–Communists, Freemasons, people who had helped Jews–in concentration camps.

If your reaction is, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” consider also that the first sentence of the ads contained 14 words, and a total of 88 ads were purchased by the campaign to be run on Facebook.

Fourteen words, 14, symbolizes a popular alt-right slogan, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” Eighty-eight, 88, stands for Heil Hitler—H is the 8th letter of the alphabet. Together, 14-88 are often used to signal allegiance to an alt-right group and the ideas of White Supremacy.

A mentor used to say, “once is a coincidence; twice is a tendency; three times is a rule.” So it would seem that in this case, the red triangle may not just be a red triangle, that it may stand for something else.

………

A White Power symbol posted by the U.S. president’s re-election campaign, “Team Trump,” helps to legitimize the alt-right movement. When the symbol is shared by the U.S. president himself and by Vice President Pence, observers might wonder if many people actually condone the alt-right movement’s goals and values.

This signaling may be far more sophisticated, and far more malicious, than I had previously thought.

*In Hebrew, every letter is also a number, and Gematria is a sort of mysticism where the numerical characteristics of  sentences and word connote a greater meaning.

Trump is Less Subtle Than I Had Understood

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I still can’t believe that I am saying this, but Trump’s lack of subtlety on race baiting has stunned me.

Facebook on Thursday removed advertisements posted on its platform by the Trump campaign that prominently featured a symbol used by Nazis to classify political prisoners during World War II, saying the imagery violated company policy.

The Trump campaign had used the ads, with a picture of a large red triangle, to inveigh against antifa, a loose collective of anti-fascist protesters that President Trump has blamed for violence and vandalism during the nationwide protests against racial injustice. There is scant evidence that antifa has been involved in any coordinated campaigns during the demonstrations.

………

It was not clear if the Trump campaign was familiar with the origin of the symbol, which was reclaimed after World War II by some anti-fascists in Britain and Germany, in the same way that various political groups over the years have reclaimed words and symbols used to oppress them.

“We removed these posts and ads for violating our policy against organized hate,” Facebook said in a statement. “Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group’s symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol.”

I’m even more stunned that Facebook actually took action and yanked the ads.

Please, Pry Their Guns from Their Cold Dead Hands

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Following an attempt by armed gunmen to rush the state legislature, Michigan Governor Whitmer allows her state of emergency to expire, then restarts the state of emergency a few hours later, resetting the 28 day clock that the ‘Phants in the state legislature refused to extend.

If these ammosexual lunatics had been black, they already would have been shot to death by police:

Confronted with armed protesters at the state capitol and a lawsuit threat from GOP lawmakers over her executive orders, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) was unmoved, deciding to extend Michigan’s state-of-emergency declaration against the legislature’s wishes and without its approval.

Whitmer’s executive actions on Thursday, which extend various business closures and the emergency declaration to May 28, capped a remarkable day at the Michigan State Capitol, complete with gun-toting protesters and impassioned speeches on the House floor by Republican lawmakers trying to curtail Whitmer’s power.

Outside the House chamber, the protesters crammed into the hallway and stairwell, periodically chanting, “Lock her up!” and “Let us in!” Their chanting could be heard faintly from the House floor — and ultimately, the Republicans gave the protesters what they wanted: a refusal to extend Whitmer’s emergency declaration. In Michigan, legislative approval is required to extend emergency declarations beyond 28 days; Whitmer’s expired Thursday night, with no such approval to renew.

But at the end of the night, that didn’t stop Whitmer from issuing a new set of executive orders anyway, citing even broader emergency powers.

They were brandishing their guns in an attempt to intimidate.  This is assault with a deadly weapon, and they should have been arrested.

Well, That’s a Mature Way to Handle This

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In response to stories revealing that Liberty University had called its students back to campus, risking a Covid-19 outbreak, the educational [sic] institution has sworn out arrest warrants against the journalists revealing their reckless behavior.

Here is the Christo-Fascist right in a nutshell:

Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. on Wednesday said that arrest warrants had been issued for reporters from The New York Times and ProPublica after both publications wrote stories criticizing his decision last month to partially reopen his Virginia-based college.

 Photos of the arrest warrants for New York Times freelance photographer Julia Rendleman and ProPublica reporter Alec MacGillis were published on the website of conservative radio host Todd Starnes. The warrant alleges each committed misdemeanor trespassing on campus while gathering information for their respective stories.

 Falwell’s decision on March 24 to reopen the private evangelical Christian university campus came nearly two weeks after Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) issued a state of emergency.

The university said that some students couldn’t return home in an effort to protect elderly family members living under the same roof, while roughly 750 students were international students who couldn’t return to their home countries.

Five days after the campus reopened, The New York Times reported that, according to the school’s director of student health services, nearly a dozen students had reported symptoms similar to those experienced in positive coronavirus cases.

 ………

 The university said that the reporters committed “trespassing on posted property.”

 “The arrest warrants are issued by a magistrate based on information derived from an investigation conducted by Liberty University Police Department, the police agency with primary jurisdiction, based on reports of criminal trespassing on posted property made by Liberty University,” the university told The Hill in an email.

 The New York Times and ProPublica have each stood by their reporting.

 “Our freelance photographer was engaged in the most routine form of news gathering: taking a picture of a person who was interviewed for a news story,” said a Times spokesperson in an email to The Hill. “We are disappointed that Liberty University would decide to make that into a criminal case and go after a freelance journalist because its officials were unhappy with press coverage of the university’s decision to convene classes in the midst of the pandemic.”

Traditional Values, Huh?

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At a Sanders Rally in Phoenix, a protester unveiled a Nazi flag and shouted, “Heil Hitler.”

Clearly, the problem is “Bernie Bros” saying nasty things on Twitter.

More seriously, why the hell aren’t Sanders and Biden getting Secret Service protection?

Moments after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) took the stage at his campaign rally in Phoenix on Thursday night, the crowd was on its feet cheering madly for the Democratic presidential candidate.

But those cheers were swiftly replaced by deafening boos when Sanders’s supporters noticed that one man standing behind the senator in an upper section of the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum wasn’t waving a “Bernie” sign like many of those around him.

Instead, the man was holding a red flag above his head — and it was emblazoned with a swastika.

“It was absolutely wild,” Brianna Westbrook, a national surrogate for the Sanders campaign, told The Washington Post. “I never thought I would have seen a swastika at a political event. It’s gross.”

While people near the protester quickly ripped the offending item out of his hands and he was removed from the arena, the mere appearance of a Nazi flag at an event dedicated to a democratic socialist who could become the country’s first Jewish president sparked outcry. The moment, captured in videos and photos that circulated on social media Thursday night, was denounced as an act of anti-Semitism and prompted increased concerns about Sanders’s safety on the campaign trail.

………

“I was expecting Trump supporters to be protesting. I didn’t expect a swastika flag to be unfurled,” Orlando Garrido, a rally attendee, told The Post. “I never thought I would actually see something like that.”

On Twitter, the display was widely condemned as observers pointed out that Sanders’s Polish relatives were murdered in the Holocaust.

………

The Anti-Defamation League identified the protester Friday as Robert Sterkeson, a resident of Arizona. According to the ADL, Sterkeson is “a self-described ‘stunt activist’ who has harassed a range of Jewish and Muslim organizations and events.”

The Germans Have Learned Nothing and Forgotten Nothing*

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In 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany because the mainstream parties were unwilling to make common cause with the left.

Now discover that the German Christian Democrats are cutting deals with the Fascist AfD because they are unwilling to make common cause with the left, specifically die Linke:

Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats have prided themselves on the strict cordon sanitaire they built around the far-right Alternative for Germany — ruling out any co-operation or contact. Many now wonder whether it is time for the barrier to come down.

Events of the past week, where a local row over dealings with the AfD culminated in national leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer deciding to quit, have shown just how consequential the CDU’s attitude to the far-right has become.

………

This month’s upheaval was sparked in Thuringia, where the CDU sided with the AfD in the eastern state’s parliament to elect a little-known politician as prime minister. He was the first regional leader in post-war German history brought to power with the support of the populist right.

 It was also a startling rebuff to Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer, who had warned the Thuringian branch of the party not to vote alongside the AfD. Her authority in tatters, she announced on Monday that she would step down as CDU chairwoman and abandon her campaign to succeed Ms Merkel as chancellor.

Since then more CDU politicians have come forward to criticise the party’s anti-AfD fatwa. Raymond Walk, secretary-general of the CDU in Thuringia, described it as a “straitjacket” and demanded a rethink.

………

In Germany, the issue is even more emotional. Any discussion of a possible tie-up between CDU and AfD is overlaid with memories of the Nazi era and of how mainstream conservative parties facilitated Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.

………

The AfD itself, which is the largest opposition party in the Bundestag, with 89 seats, has strongly criticised the CDU’s cordon sanitaire. Alice Weidel, leader of the AfD group in the German parliament, has called such “rejectionism” “foolish and deeply undemocratic”.

But for most in the CDU, the AfD, with its stridently anti-Islam and anti-immigration tone and its revisionist views of Germany’s 20th century history, is beyond the pale. Its Thuringian branch, led by the right-wing radical Björn Höcke, presents a particular problem: a court in the state ruled last year that Mr Höcke could legally be termed a “fascist”, saying such a designation “rests on verifiable fact”.

The CDU’s problems are compounded by the equally strict firewall it has constructed around another radical party — the hard-left Die Linke, which has its roots in the East German communist party.

………

Ms Prien pointed to the CDU’s refusal to back Thuringia’s previous prime minister, Bodo Ramelow, a relatively moderate trade unionist from Die Linke. By boycotting him, the party had in effect equated him with Mr Höcke.

Ms Prien insisted she was a “committed anti-Communist”, but to put “a respectable prime minister like Bodo Ramelow on a par with someone like Mr Höcke is a political and historical distortion”.

Germany in general, and the CDU in particular, seem determined to recreate the conditions which led to the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s, whether it is its insistence on austerity, or its refusal to deal with the non-racist left.

This will not end well.

*Once again, though this quote is frequently attributed to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, but he almost certainly did not create the quote.

Tweet of the Day

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Not often a European soccer game is stopped due to fans being *too anti-Nazi*.

Rayo Vallecano's anti-fascist fans already chased Ukrainian Nazi Roman Zozulya out of town once. Then he came back with a new team.https://t.co/cCjIhp9VEp

— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) December 17, 2019

Anti-Nazi chants from rowdies at a soccer match in Europe.

There may be hope for the future of humanity yet.

An Interesting Historical Data Point

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When we look at the rise of Fascism in the 1930s, they all started with the troika of privatization, tax cuts for the rich and businesses, and shredding the social safety net.

This is quite literally the neoliberal consensus:

It’s time to talk about the Banality of Evil. The Nazis didn’t start with genocide. Heck, they didn’t even start with the Nuremberg Laws. Our education system and popular media focus on the most horrific, the most dramatic, and the most apparent aspects of Fascism. However, Fascism begins in a much less dramatic fashion. In the beginning,Fascism is banal, and to many of us, it is oddly familiar.

 Before the rise of Fascism, both Italy and Germany had a robust social safety net and public services. In Italy, the trains were nationalized, and they ran on time while serving rural villages in 1861. The telecom industry was nationalized in 1901. Phone lines and public telephone services were universally available. In 1908, the life insurance industry was nationalized. For the first time, even poor Italians could ensure that their family could be taken care of if they died a premature death.

Between 1919 and 1921, Italy went through a time of worker liberation that has been dubbed as Bienno Rosso. Italian workers had formed factory co-ops where they shared the profits. Large landlords were replaced by cooperative farming. Workers received many concessions: higher wages, fewer hours, and safer workplace conditions.

………

 Benito Mussolini became Prime Minister in October 1922. Nazis rose to power in 1933 in Germany. Mussolini convened a meeting of his cabinet and immediately decided to privatize all the public enterprises. On December 3, 1922, they passed a law where they promised to reduce the size and function of the government, reform tax laws and also reduce spending. This was followed by mass privatization. He privatized the post office, railroads, telephone companies, and even the state life insurance companies. Afterward, the two firms that had lobbied the hardest: Assicurazioni Generali (AG) and Adriatica di Sicurtà (AS), became a de-facto oligopoly. They became for-profit enterprises. The premiums increased, and poor people had their coverage removed.

 In January 1923, Mussolini eliminated rent-control laws. His reasoning ought to be familiar since that is the same reasoning used in many contemporary editorials against rent control laws. He claimed rent control laws prevent landlords from building new housing. When tenants protested, he eliminated tenants’ unions. As a result, rent prices increased wildly in Rome, and many families became homeless. Some went to live in caves.


 Once more, these policies allowed landlords to increase their profit and holdings while they severely hurt the poor.

 ………

 Hitler’s economic policy was Mussolini’s policy on steroids. In the 1920s, the NSDAP was a minor party. In the 1932 elections, the Nazi Party did not have an outright majority. According to the Nuremberg Trial transcripts, on January 4, 1933, bankers and industrialists had a secret backroom deal with with then Chancellor Hindenberg to make Hitler the Chancellor of Germany in a coalition.

In 1934, Nazis outlined their plan to revitalize the German economy. It involved reprivatization of significant industries: railways, public works project, construction, steel, and banking. On top of that, Hitler guaranteed profits for the private sector, and so, many American industrialists and bankers gleefully flocked to Germany to invest.

The Nazis had a thorough plan for deregulation. The Nazi’s economist, stated,” The first thing German business needs is peace and quiet. It must have a feeling of absolute legal security and must know that work and its return are guaranteed. The interferences In a business which occurred at first, perhaps as a result of too much zeal, have become intolerable.”

………

 Fascism isn’t the merger of corporations and government that is too vague, and too easy to confuse. Fascism is government functions being replaced by private corporations. Fascism is when the public good is replaced by private profit.

(emphasis mine)

If you have ever wondered why the US foreign policy (and its proxies like the IMF) seems to favor entities who could be reasonably described as fascist, this provides some valuable context.