Destabilized Saturday Edition #40

America's fascists gaining confidence, a Liz Truss limerick, the perfect Miami metaphor, a malaria breakthrough

Oct 22, 2022

This is American fascism | openDemocracy

I’ve had a palpable sense this week that fascist forces in the U.S. are growing more and more confident. It’s hard to know for sure if this reflects real world dynamics or is an artifact of my personal information bubble. But it sure feels real, and there’s no shortage of examples to point to.

Max Berger @maxberger

Republican elected officials are favorably quoting fascist dictators in public. Do journalists expect national Republican leaders to reject such language?

Rep. Anthony Sabatini @AnthonySabatini

“I answer only to God and to History.” -Francisco Franco

Will Stancil @whstancil

Got to be one of the most racist things on US TV in 50 years. Carlson talking about white women "as the key to reproducing the white race," and claiming black people are targeting white women for that reason. Adds that a black anchor "can barely speak a coherent sentence."

Brody Levesque @BrodyLevesque

“Charge them all as pedophiles. Throw them in prison, and whenever they get out put them on the sex offender registry for life”

losangelesblade.comMatt Walsh: Police need to “break down the doors” of drag shows“Charge them all as pedophiles. Throw them in prison, and whenever they get out put them on the sex offender registry for life”

It’s as if people who harbor bigoted beliefs are realizing not only is there no social penalty for being openly fascist, in some cases expressing hateful ideas publicly is status enhancing because it attracts other people with the same inclinations. And so they grow bolder.

philip lewis @Phil_Lewis_

Parents are stunned by a school board candidate’s comments in an Indiana town: “All Nazis weren't 'bad' as you specify. They did horrible things … Who is to say if we were both there in the same place and time, that we wouldn't have done the same thing”

wthr.comParents stunned by Zionsville school board candidate’s comment on NazisDr. Matt Keefer commented on a Facebook post that, “All Nazis weren’t ‘bad’ as you specify. They did horrible things. They were in a group frenzy.”

Bradley P. Moss @BradMossEsq

The Federalist is now publishing authoritarian pieces demanding “conservatives” become more comfortable wielding more government authority and to expand the criminal code to more directly control society.

Justin Baragona @justinbaragona

Jesse Watters: "Gandhi had it right, you just sit there and let people in authority drag your limp heavy body out of wherever they are protesting." Gutfeld: "You mean like the guys on the street blocking traffic?" Watters: "No, you run those guys over!"

Significantly, there’s no pushback on this extremism, incitement, and bigotry from anyone in the Republican Party.

Judd Legum @JuddLegum

No GOP elected official has criticized: 1. Trump's racist attack on McConnell's wife ("CoCo Chow") 2. Sen Tuberville's racist diatribe against Black Americans ("the people that do the crime") 3. Trump's antisemitic rant ("U.S. Jews have to get their act together")

To top it off, alongside this fascist boomlet we have Republicans rising (slightly) in the polls. I still think it’s entirely possible the election could go well for Democrats, which would be remarkable given the comparable first-term midterm results of Biden’s predecessors. But this week I’ve had a sinking feeling about where things are headed.

Chris Hayes @chrislhayes

I think it's very hard to communicate to the median voter convincingly the chaos that a GOP victory is likely to unleash, and I think a lot of professionals vastly underestimate the tail risk.

Finally, as if rising fascism weren’t bad enough on its own, Republican congressional majorities will freeze progress on climate change.

Prof Michael E. Mann @MichaelEMann

My greatest climate concern is upcoming #midterm2022 elections. If we lose our Democracy, we won't get it back. W/out climate leadership from U.S. (world's largest historical polluter), global climate action will falter. Vote like a livable planet depends on it. Because it does.

But nothing is decided yet. Onward!

My Work

Has Florida already started to unravel? (link)

As is often the case in the climate change era, Ian’s ripple effects may ultimately do the most damage, in both human and material terms. We can’t know for sure what will happen in the future, but if a few things go the wrong way, life in Florida may start to unravel. If the unraveling does begin, there is a real danger it could take on a logic and momentum of its own, which would make it difficult to reverse.

Interesting Reads

Stand back and stand by. Proud Boys may be coming to a park near you. (link)

On this crisp Saturday morning, the far-right nationalist group was not aiming to overthrow the result of a presidential election with a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol. Their goal was to intimidate a small contingent of parents who had brought their mostly preschool-age children to the park to hear a drag queen tell stories. The harassment of little kids and their parents that day was a vivid display of the new, more localized strategy that the Proud Boys have embraced since their national leadership dissolved amid the crackdowns and arrests that followed the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. Their below-the-national-radar tactics are now being formulated by individual chapters…