How Elon Musk Stoked the Fire of the UK’s Far Right Anti-Immigrant Riots | Truthout
How will the UK government respond to this assault by the world’s wealthiest and most powerful online troll?
8. The Nitty Gritty: Capitalism & Fascism
Project 2025
In 2024 Platform, Democrats Lurch Right on Policing and Immigration | Truthout
DNC delegates will vote on a platform that pledges to crack down on asylum and fund the police.
Trump vs Harris & Tarriffs
Sean O’Brien Walked Right Into It - The Atlantic
The Teamsters’ leader should never have lent his credibility to Trump’s project.
Eat the Rich: Billionaires Should Not ExistIran: Key to World Peace | Dissident Voice
From what is read and what is said, Iran is the major sponsor of international terrorism — creating turmoil, preventing peace, and wanting to dominate the Middle East. One problem with the accepted scenario is that the facts do not coincide with the assumptions. Except for revenging terrorist attacks by Iranian dissidents and Israeli intelligence
Iran & Middle East
the press can fuck straight off, let us count the ways
the media continues to make excuses for Donny’s incoherence
Woke, Antifa & Manufactured "Culture Wars"
How Project 2025 Backfired - The Atlantic
Democrats have managed to make detailed policy ideas into one of Trump’s greatest liabilities.
Canada is the No. 1 Country in the World, According to the 2021 Best Countries Report - News
The sixth annual Best Countries report reveals the importance of social justice as a global ambition, the unexpected societal byproduct of the COVID-19 crisis and the influence of conspiracy theories. WASHINGTON, D.C., April 13, 2021—For the first time, Canada takes the top spot overall in the 2021 Best Countries Report,…Read More
101's, History, Economy etcPolitical Thought in Canada: An Intellectual History - Katherine Fierlbeck - Google Books
What, if anything, makes Canada's political identity unique? Pollsters can measure values, but they cannot explain how these values arose over time, why they changed, or how people have attempted to make sense of them within a changing social and political environment. By examining the history of political ideas in Canada, we can better understand why Canada takes the shape that it does. In this book, Katherine Fierlbeck looks at the legacy of ideas taken from (or shaped in reaction to) the nations that have been most influential to Canada's development: the United Kingdom and the United States. The first section looks specifically at the nature of toryism, constitutional liberalism, and market liberalism. Then she examines the evolution of social justice in Canada. Does the country have, as J.S. Woodsworth hoped, a definitive "third way." The final section focuses upon debates over cultural identity and minority rights. Contemporary political discussions in Canada are very much based upon the expressions of French-Canadian nationalism that have existed as long as, and perhaps even longer than, the country itself. How have these ideas influenced current thinking about culture and accommodation?The experiences characterized by Canadian political thought also provide insight and ideas for nations around the world as their citizens struggle with similar questions. The political dynamics of the present are a product of how Canadians have viewed their country, or a vision of their country, in the past. These ideas of Canada, in history and in myth, provide a way of thinking about politics that may provoke and inspire Canadians and others to reflect upon their future.
A Moment for Canada’s Far Right, Still Struggling for Support - The New York Times
The country’s political system has made it hard for fringe groups to gain influence. But a new cause, and fund-raising across borders, could begin to fuel Canadian populists.
B.J. Dichter, who was listed on the convoy’s official fund-raiser alongside Ms. Lich, has said that “political Islam” is “rotting away at our society like syphilis.”
The organizers are mostly fringe activists, rather than truck drivers, an overwhelming majority of whom are vaccinated.
Pat King, who is listed as an official contact for a regional group involved in the protest and has been a prominent champion of the protests online, has called Covid a “man-made bioweapon” and claimed that international financiers seek to “depopulate the Anglo-Saxon race.” He has said of lockdowns, “The only way that this is going to be solved is with bullets.”
“You did have far-right populism — historically it was there — but it was isolated,” said Jeffrey S. Kopstein, a Canadian political scientist at the University of California, Irvine.
Canada’s populist right has lagged, Dr. Kopstein said, in part because the typical drivers of such movements — cultural polarization and white racial resentment — are less prevalent in the country than in other Western nations.
The country’s large and politically well-organized immigrant populations mean that both major parties see greater gain in courting immigrants than in cultivating white backlash.
As a result, Canada’s Conservative leaders have neither embraced nor been co-opted by the more extreme elements in their base to the same degree as some other right-wing parties.
Romana Didulo, a Canadian QAnon activist who has called for military executions of doctors who vaccinate children.
Canada’s populist right, though homegrown, is also heavily influenced by its far more numerous and better-resourced American counterparts. This helps provide the movement with energy and direction, though often in ways that hinder its influence in Canada, where Donald J. Trump is deeply unpopular.
But in years since, populist movements across the Western world have continued to rise and to coordinate across borders, helping to aid their Canadian counterparts’ slow but steady growth.
In a demonstration of this effect in action, a number of American political and media figures, including Mr. Trump, have forcefully endorsed or promoted the trucker protests. Americans are thought to have provided much of the $8 million raised online for the convoy.
And there is another change: Canada’s Conservative Party, after a difficult year, may be rethinking its longstanding practice of isolating conservative fringes.
Party officials recently ousted Erin O’Toole, the party leader, in part, they said, for insufficiently embracing the truck protests.
The new interim leader attracted controversy last year when a photo surfaced showing her wearing a Make America Great Again hat. Several Conservative lawmakers have since visited the protests in support. One was photographed alongside Mr. King, the white nationalist and conspiracy theorist, though later issued a statement condemning “any violent rhetoric.”
In some ways, support for the protests seems to reflect public opinion oscillations related more to the pandemic than to the far right.
The "Convoy"
Canada’s Secret to Resisting the West’s Populist Wave - The New York Times
Minority voters have a large political voice, immigration is seen as positive and multicultural identities are encouraged.
Outsiders might assume this is because Canada is simply more liberal, but they would be wrong. Rather, Canada has resisted the populist wave through a set of strategic decisions, powerful institutional incentives, strong minority coalitions and idiosyncratic circumstances.
In other Western countries, right-wing populism has emerged as a politics of us-versus-them. It pits members of white majorities against immigrants and minorities, driven by a sense that cohesive national identities are under threat. In France, for instance, it is common to hear that immigration dilutes French identity, and that allowing minority groups to keep their own cultures erodes vital elements of Frenchness.
Identity works differently in Canada. Both whites and nonwhites see Canadian identity as something that not only can accommodate outsiders, but is enhanced by the inclusion of many different kinds of people.
Canada is a mosaic rather than a melting pot, several people told me — a place that celebrates different backgrounds rather than demanding assimilation.
Jason Kenney, then a Conservative member of Parliament, convinced Prime Minister Stephen Harper that the party should court immigrants, who — thanks to Mr. Trudeau’s efforts — had long backed the Liberal Party.
“I said the only way we’d ever build a governing coalition was with the support of new Canadians, given changing demography,” Mr. Kenney said.
The result is a broad political consensus around immigrants’ place in Canada’s national identity.
That creates a virtuous cycle. All parties rely on and compete for minority voters, so none has an incentive to cater to anti-immigrant backlash. That, in turn, keeps anti-immigrant sentiment from becoming a point of political conflict, which makes it less important to voters.
In Britain, among white voters who say they want less immigration, about 40 percent also say that limiting immigration is the most important issue to them. In the United States, that figure is about 20 percent. In Canada, according to a 2011 study, it was only 0.34 percent.
In Canada, because all parties compete for all ethnic blocs, minorities do not tend to polarize into just one party. That leaves little incentive for tribalism, even as minority groups feel empowered to champion their ethnic or religious identity.
But because Canadian politics accounts for diversity without polarizing across ethnic or religious lines, it is more resilient. Everyone, including whites, becomes less likely to see politics as a game of us versus them.
Rapid changes in demographics tend to spur anti-immigrant sentiment within the dominant group, experts say, bolstering far-right politicians who promise harsh tactics against outsiders.
But although Canada’s high immigration rates have transformed the country in just a few decades, the public has mostly been calm and accepting.
One reason may be Canada’s unusual immigration policies. A sponsorship system, in which Canadian families host newcomers, allows communities to feel they are a part of the country’s refugee resettlement program.
And a points system, which favors migrants who are thought to contribute economically, makes immigration feel like something that benefits everyone.
Fascism in Canada
The 'contradiction at the heart of the Republican Party' that gives Dems an advantage: columnist
When Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi was asked by New York Times Opinion columnist Ezra Klein "why House Democrats have held together more easily than House Republicans," the former California lawmaker replied: "It’s very hard to find leverage with people who don’t have really any beliefs or any agenda. It’s hard to negotiate with somebody who wants n...
Inciting rioters in Britain was a test run for Elon Musk. Just see what he plans for America
The presidential election is three months away. What if the billionaire contests the result? What if he decides democracy is overrated?
If Musk chooses to “predict” a civil war in the States, what will that look like? If he chooses to contest an election result? If he decides that democracy is over-rated? This isn’t sci-fi. It’s literally three months away.
None of this is happening in a vacuum. For a brief minute after 2016, there was an attempt to understand how these tech platforms had been used to spread lies and falsehoods – or mis- and disinformation – as we came to know them and to try to prevent it. But that moment has passed. A years-long effort by Republican operatives to politicise the entire subject of “misinformation” has won. It barely even now exists in US tech circles. Anyone who suggests it does – researchers, academics, “trust and safety” teams – are now all part of the “censorship industrial complex”.
A US congressional committee headed by Republican Jim Jordan, convinced that big tech was silencing conservative voices, went on the warpath. It subpoenaed the email history of dozens of academics and has chilled an entire field of research. Whole university departments have collapsed, including the Stanford Internet Observatory whose election integrity unit provided rapid detection and analysis in 2020.
Even the FBI has been prevented from communicating with tech companies about what officials have warned is a coming onslaught of foreign disinformation and influence operations after a lawsuit brought by two attorneys general went all the way to the supreme court. The New York Times reported that it has only just now quietly resumed.
But what Musk – the new self-appointed Lord of Misrule – has done is to rip off the mask. He’s shown that you don’t even have to pretend to care. In Musk’s world, trust is mistrust and safety is censorship. His goal is chaos. And it’s coming.
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Race Consciousness: Fascism and Frank Herbert’s “Dune” | Los Angeles Review of Books
Referenced in https://youtu.be/vusjRPQwUmc?si=J12Tnn4o3fBnjZ1B
The alt-right now regularly denounces or promotes science fiction films as part of its recruiting strategy: fascist Twitter popularized the “white genocide” hashtag during a boycott campaign against inclusive casting in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. But Villeneuve’s film seemed to provoke greater outrage than normal because Herbert’s book is such a key text for the alt-right.
but geek fascists see the novel as a blueprint for the future.
As Norman Spinrad suggested, fans are willing to accept a narrative about strongmen exterminating alien hordes when it is presented in fantastic form.
Both Faye’s and Herbert’s worlds represent impossible attempts to square the circle of fusing the destructive dynamism of capitalist modernization with the stable order prized by traditionalism.
Beyond a shared affinity for space-age aristocrats, Faye and Herbert see the sovereign as one who is capable of disciplined foresight. Drawing on the Austrian School economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe, many thinkers on the alt-right believe that only men from genetically superior populations are capable of delaying gratification and working toward long-term goals. The alt-right asserts that white men hold an exclusive claim over the future. According to these white nationalists, science fiction is in their blood.
Fascists are repulsed by actually existing modernity but enamored with its innovations. To resolve this dilemma, they claim that capitalism’s expansionary and self-revolutionizing tendencies are actually inborn properties of the white race. In what Moishe Postone would call the capital fetish, white nationalists insist that capital’s propensity to break through every limit and remake the world is merely the external manifestation of a Dionysian drive or Faustian sprit infusing Aryan blood. Conversely, fascists displace all of capitalism’s negative qualities onto racialized others — especially Jews — who are blamed for the anomie, atomization, and alienation of modern life.
As Joshua Pearson has shown, Paul acts like the ultimate neoliberal subject. He is a ruthless entrepreneur with the flexibility to exploit even the most speculative of opportunities. Creative destruction is part of his appeal. Some reactionaries are willing to accept the most punishing of regimes as long as they share the privilege of white skin with the CEO.
Once his antagonists are out of the way, Paul uses this ability to carry out a multi-millennia plan for civilizational renewal that requires him to sacrifice billions. As he worries about his grim destiny, Paul begins to look like the Nazi Einsatzgruppen who pitied themselves for being forced to endure the difficult task of committing mass killings to build the thousand-year Reich.
we cannot forget for a moment that their political program necessarily ends in genocide. When Spencer presided over the Unite the Right rally that ended in Heather Heyer’s murder, he allowed the polite mask to fall long enough to reveal that even the most erudite or fanciful aspects of his public persona are motivated by a will toward brutal violence and racial domination.
Although the game is clearly tongue in cheek — often falling in the same satirical tradition as 2000 AD’s Judge Dredd — many misanthropic young men missed the joke and used the setting instead to play out their macho fantasies of dominance and submission. Matthew Heimbach, who founded the Traditionalist Worker Party and built an alliance between Neo-Nazis and Klansmen, radicalized himself in part through his devotion to the Warhammer 40,000 game world. In 2016, alt-right partisans circulated memes with Trump’s face pasted onto the armored body of the God-Emperor of Mankind, casting themselves as fanatical shock troops willing to die in his service.
Any speculative text that contains Jews, Muslims, or people of color therefore becomes a threat to their entire political project. This is why recent developments in fields such as Afrofuturism and Black horror are so crucial. They provide a critical alternative to the alt-right’s exterminationist fantasy of an all-white future. Just as importantly, they offer readers other ways of thinking about time that do not fall in line with the fascist dream of a history that unfolds step-by-step along the lines of the Aryan dictator’s master plan.
Paul’s army of desert guerillas, the Fremen, clearly owe something to Arabic and Islamic cultures, and Paul’s own genealogy defies the fascist demand for racial purity. The alt-right has tried to wrestle Islamophobic and Antisemitic messages from the book but they are stymied by its refusal to map existing ethnic categories onto the characters.
Herbert himself saw the series as a critique of authoritarianism demonstrating for his readers that “superheroes are disastrous for humankind.” Dune’s aristocrats replaced artificial intelligences with people deformed to act like soulless machines. As Paul becomes the guidance mechanism for a vast social system, he loses touch with humanity. Seeing the terror he has wrought, he plots to end his own despotic command over humankind’s fate. The God-Emperor in Warhammer 40,000 does not get this far: he is locked in suspended animation while the empire he built decays around him. These are obviously not ideals worth emulating.
Fascism 101 (aka Right Wing Disinformation not Left)
Project 2025 Co-Author Lays Out "Radical Agenda" for Next Trump Term in Undercover Video
Support our work: https://democracynow.org/donate/sm-desc-ytAs Donald Trump tries to distance his campaign from Project 2025, those behind the right-wing pol...
Yes, The Republicans Are Fascists - by Noah Berlatsky
Claudia Koonz's The Nazi Conscience shows that fascism was less total than we think
An Overview of Canada’s Online Harms Act
Mandy Lau digs into the specifics of Bill C-63, Canada's proposed Online Harms Act.
Mrs. Jorpy Kermitson
Jordan B. Peterson could (still) lose his license
The text in the thumbnail is said by Peterson in this video. Seriously.Jordan B. Peterson appealed the Ontario court's ruling regarding his order to take soc...
Israeli Prisons Are a Giant Torture Machine
A new Israeli human rights group report shows that Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and detention centers during the war on Gaza are subjected to torture, sexual abuse, violence, humiliation, starvation, sleep deprivation, and denial of medical care.
Genocide, Apartheid &... Evil
Israel, Not Iran or Hezbollah, Wants a Wider War
Having painted itself into a corner by launching a war that has killed 40,000 Palestinians and failed to defeat Hamas, Israel has doubled down, provoking a wider war with Iran and Hezbollah to bring in the US against enemies it cannot vanquish alone.
100+ Journalists Push Blinken to 'Immediately Cease' Arms Transfers to Israel | Common Dreams
A coalition of individual journalists, news outlets, and press freedom organizations sent a letter Thursday imploring U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to immediately halt all American weapons sales to the far-right Israeli government.
From the WhitePeopleTwitter community on Reddit: Greatest outing of an "intellectual person" showing their true stupidity
Explore this post and more from the WhitePeopleTwitter community
Gender & LGBTQ+From the onguardforthee community on Reddit: Earth to millennials: Pierre Poilievre is playing you on housing
Explore this post and more from the onguardforthee community
Clearly Biased PP/Convoy References cuz Fascism
When does a formal democracy degenerate into fascism?
It can happen here. “Here” being any country in which capitalism rules. When does a bourgeois formal democracy tip over into fascism? That is a question that needs an answer in many places, certain…
Israeli Prisons Are a Giant Torture Machine
A new Israeli human rights group report shows that Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and detention centers during the war on Gaza are subjected to torture, sexual abuse, violence, humiliation, starvation, sleep deprivation, and denial of medical care.
Leaked Project 2025 Training Videos Show Former Trump Officials Detailing Plans to Dismember Gov’t
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
Economic Overlords Are Destroying Democracy — and Our Lives
Economic power is political power. We spoke with Peter Phillips, author of Titans of Capital, about how the capitalist class is subverting democracy and controlling the lives of billions through massive investments in everything from food to war.
Understanding the Rise of the Global Far Right - ZNetwork
There is no denying the far right has emerged as a formidable political force around the world. Take the June European parliamentary elections, where
UK riots expose double standards on far-right and Islamist violence | The far right | The Guardian
Severe cases of far-right violence need to be recognised as terrorism and not ‘thuggery’, write Rusi researchers
Palestine Has Mobilized a Global Movement. For It to Last We Must Get Organized. | Truthout
Past solidarity movements teach us that organization is just as important as mobilization.
#BDS & Action
'Has he met his boss?' Vance mocked after whining about Dems turning tables on the GOP - Alternet.org
In a 2017 article published by Politico Magazine titled "Trump the Bully," journalist Jack Shafer submitted that Donald Trump's constant "insults exact damage by violating the usual comity that governs civilized life." Shafer added, "Like a Hell’s Angel, Trump transgresses for the pure joy of it, an...