Biggest threat to global leftism returns to power: US fake-leftism (1/2)

 

Ramin Mazaheri is currently covering the US elections. He is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.

January 08, 2021

by Ramin Mazaheri (@RaminMazaheri2) for the Saker Blog

It was an interesting ride, at least, but the Electoral College’s vote for Joe Biden marks the definitive end of the Donald Trump presidency.

Preview in new tab

Trump was somebody you could never support in a vacuum, only by comparison; there’s nothing wrong with a united Europe but not this American-penned, neoliberal version, so it’s clear why Britain chose Brexit; France has long been the West’s only hope, so it’s not fair to put the politically advanced, physically courageous, full of solidarité Yellow Vests in with this group, but all three here are certainly related.

I never supported Trump. What I support is the fight against fake-leftism, which is the perhaps the biggest threat to real leftism.

Many Anglophones now have no idea what I am talking about. That’s a problem.

There’s a problem when you Google such a hugely important concept like “fake-leftism” and Ramin Mazaheri has multiple hits on the very first results page: what on earth have Anglophones been talking – or not talking – about?

Fake-leftism is such a huge threat because we all know what the right-wing wants – they are totally clear about it, and that is at least respectable. It must be conceded that while some of their values (like rabid anti-socialism) have no merit at all, some of their other values are respectable and cannot destroyed any more than yang can destroy yin.

So in many vital ways fake-leftism is as big a threat to leftism as rightism because fake-leftists are right-wingers in disguise on some issues and totally deluded about what true leftism is on other issues – they distort, distract and undermine real leftism and thus are actually perpetually engaged in pushing things always to the right.

So spending time fighting fake-leftism is certainly just as vital as opposing right-wing forces. Unfortunately, there are enormous, tedious, ineffective reams of the latter and yet so little of the former that I am seemingly in the position to monetise the term “fake-leftism” with T-shirts and coffee mugs?

Let’s start in the opposite direction: what is fake-rightism?

It’s very interesting to listen to American fascist media. I am not referring to Fox News, nor even Christian conservative radio. The US has genuinely, openly fascist media you can find on the fringe, but I’m not going to give them free publicity by listing them.

As a daily hack journalist it’s my job to listen to everyone and quickly provide copy; and perhaps temperamentally I am simply lucky in that I can listen to people I disagree with without getting angry.

These American fascist media are full of unacceptable racism and hatred but still can provide some very unique takes on Trumpism, as Trumpism is a right-wing ideology which they naturally grasp more about than I do: For example, they actually assert that Trump lost because he betrayed his White Power base – which is to say that Trump lost because he was not racist enough – and the fact that the only group he lost votes from in 2020 as compared to 2016 was White men proves that. Considering how close the vote was, the idea should be considered, at least. However, I have and I find it insufficient and actually just more typically-Western “race and tribe and religious differences are everything” (we are talking about the analyses of racist fascists, after all) and actually mere identity politics (we are talking about the analyses of modern Americans, after all).

But something they said once stuck out for me: The Republican Party is the party paid to lose. That was funny because I was interviewing a Green Party candidate in my recent work in the US for PressTV and he said the same thing about the Democratic Party. We absolutely cannot draw a false equivalence between the far-right and the far-left (though, of course this is exactly what is done all the time in the know-nothing corporate Mainstream Media), but both are totally right.

That is very easy to explain, but nobody wants to explain it. I can explain it quickly, I just can’t get it published in any Mainstream Media, because the MSM does not want to promote clear political understanding as that would threaten the grip of the 1%.

The Republican Party is slightly watered-down Western fascism – which was never discredited by defeat in the US, unlike in Europe due to World War II. Modern Republicans are actually a “fake-fascist” party: they have rejected open racism (the apartheid of Jim Crow). This explains why you can find American fascist media openly rejecting both Republicans and even Trump – many modern Republicans have rejected a key pillar of fascism, after all – openly espousing racism and claims of racial superiority. American fascists also point out that Trump never built the Mexico wall, and that many Republicans encourage making the US less White via immigration – two more pillars of fascism which have gone unbuilt, so it’s no wonder genuine American fascists rejected Trump long before the Electoral College did.

Again, it’s not hard to explain, but who in the MSM takes American fascism seriously? The US MSM only wants to support the 1%, not to be intellectually rigorous, honest and willing to openly discuss American failures. Just look at how Russiagate was foisted on the US public from 2016-19 for proof of the latter.

At the very least I think we can agree that on the left wing (and probably the centre wing) of the Republican Party their racism and xenophobia is hidden – this runs contrary to fascism’s open racism. So to true American fascists people who do this would be labelled as “fake-fascists”.

Despite the clear accuracy of this logic the term of “fake-fascist” is – per a Google search – so unpopular that it also appears open to monetisation. But only a fascist would ever try to monetise everything, of course, and only a fascist would ever even try to denounce somebody’s fascism as “fake” or “insufficient”.

Yes, I promised to write about fake-rightism and gave you fake-fascism. I have a perfectly good answer to which allows me to move on: This is America, where fascism was never discredited and thus fascism is actually rampant (even if often a bit watered-down).

But what is the Democratic Party? It is fake-leftism

About this there is enormous, gigantic misunderstanding. It is so enormous that Google says that little old Ramin Mazaheri is a top exponent of what is the Democratic Party: It is a fake-leftist party.

Again, the far-right and the far-left are not at all, not at all, not at all the same, but political know-nothings, political-nihilists and lazy thinkers all like to claim that they are. So it’s important to briefly clarify why comparing socialists and fascists does not actually compare two extremes:

On the extreme left of the global spectrum of political thought anarchists occupy the furthest pole, with communists to the right of them, and then socialists to the right of them, and then centrists (combining elements of both left and right) to the right of them. Thus, socialism IS leftism and NOT far-leftism on the global spectrum of political thought. This is not up for debate – definitions are clear and accepted, and you are not allowed to make up your own if you want to talk among others without ruining the discussion.

Contrarily, the different national spectrums of political thought are indeed up for debate and are quite, quite mutable – merely look at how “Trumpism” clearly just become at least half of the Republican Party.

But the global political spectrum is almost totally immutable – it requires a stunning revolution in thought to upset it. One must concede that humans have thought about politics for a very long time, and that’s why it’s so hard to change the global political spectrum: what’s more to the left of anarchism, which posits that every person has total liberty and that nobody is in charge of anyone else? What’s to the right of totalitarian fascism, which has been most fully experienced by the victims in places like Apartheid South Africa, slave-owning states and Israel? Iranian Islamic Socialism was a huge, stunning revolution – many don’t know where to really place it on the global political spectrum – but it didn’t move the poles, right? Right.

So we know what things are on the global political spectrum when we see it, and the US Democratic Party is undoubtedly fake-leftist. We can argue about whether it is on the centre or right of the global political spectrum but it is definitely, definitely, DEFINITELY wrong to place it on the global political spectrum’s left.

So wrong it would be laughable if this issue of fake and real leftism were not so hugely vital.

Let’s unwelcome back the US fake-left’s return to power

I have written about this so much that even Google must acknowledge it, but I must admit I took some time off from writing about fake-leftism recently. I don’t think it was out of the boredom caused by repetition, but also because 21st century fake-leftism was deposed by Trump in the US, by Brexit in the UK and by the Yellow Vests in France – it became far more interesting to try and humbly publicly analyse these movements and why they arrived.

But with Biden’s ascension I realise I have to get back on the horse, because fake-leftism is back on the horse – it’s a huge threat to global leftism, after all, and one that goes totally, totally, totally unaddressed.

Part 2 of this article will remind us of just how right-wing the US Democratic Party is. This is perfectly obvious when what Joe Biden and his supporters actually believe are held side-by-side with the basic tenets of actual leftism. Because the West is so rabidly anti-leftist the basic, globally similar tenets of leftism are never openly discussed, and thus people get so very confused about what leftism is that they actually come to believe that Democrats are a “left” party on the global political spectrum. That’s absurd.

One last note, just to expand out this article as much as possible: In 2017 I supported Marine Le Pen for only the two weeks between Round 1 and Round 2 in France’s presidential election because I opposed Emmanuel Macron’s “fake-centrism”. Macron went on to wage incredibly fascistic violence against the Yellow Vests, extended the state of emergency for 2 years, closed down Muslim community centres, gutted longstanding French measures of economic redistribution and protection, and did many other things which would have caused an uproar…if they had been done by Le Pen. Macron was always a fake-centrist – he was also very far on the right, and the failure to call things by their proper names led to even worse long-term social disorder than if the repugnant Le Pen had won.

The repugnant Trump won in America, and so many great leftist-inspired movements absolutely dominated large swaths of Trump’s tenure: Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and a few others were not perfect, but mainly because in the US fake-leftism is so powerfully misleading and problem-inducing.

Let’s put aside Trump – perhaps only until 2024 – and focus on saying hello to the restoration of fake-leftism in the US.

It is very unfortunate to see you.

*************************************************************

Dispatches from the United States after the presidential election

Results are in: Americans lose, duopoly wins, Trumpism not merely a cult (1/2) – November 5, 2020

Results are in: Americans lose, duopoly wins, Trumpism not merely a cult (2/2) – November 6, 2020

4 years of anti-Trumpism shaping MSM vote coverage, but expect long fight – November 7, 2020

US partitioned by 2 presidents: worst-case election scenario realized – November 9, 2020

A 2nd term is his if he really wants it, but how deep is Trump’s ‘Trumpism’? – November 10, 2020

CNN’s Jake Tapper: The overseer keeping all journalists in line (1/2) – November 13, 2020

‘Bidenism’ domestically: no free press, no lawyer, one-party state? (2/2) – November 15, 2020

Where’s Donald? When 40% of voters cry ‘fraud’ you’ve got a big problem – November 17, 2020

The 4-year (neoliberal) radicalisation of US media & Bidenites’ ‘unradical radicalism’ – November 22, 2020

80% of US partisan losers think the last 2 elections were stolen – December 3, 2020

Trump declares civil war for voter integrity in breaking (or broken) USA – December 5, 2020

Mess with Texas via mail-in ballot? States secede from presidential vote – December 8, 2020

Biden won? 2016-2020 showed what the US does to even mild reformers – Dec 18, 2020

Alleged Nashville bomber not Muslim: Western media disappointed – January 2, 2020

This week in the US: The ‘model nation’ for no nation anymore – January 7, 2020

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

This week in the US: The ‘model nation’ for no nation anymore

 Thursday, 07 January 2021 7:57 AM  [ Last Update: Thursday, 07 January 2021 8:07 AM ]

Supporters of US President Donald Trump walk on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, the US, on January 5, 2021, one day ahead of a joint session of the US Congress to certify the Electoral College vote that confirmed Joe Biden as the presidential winner. (Photo by AFP)

Ramin Mazaheri is currently covering the US election. He is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea, and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China,’ which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.

By Ramin Mazaheri and cross-posted with The Saker

As this article is on the verge of publication, the United States Capitol has been occupied by protesters on the day of Electoral College’s presidential vote. It’s very exciting stuff, certainly, but an insatiable craving for excitement seems to have long been a major flaw of Western culture.

Few people are as guilty of greedily loving the short-term sugar high of daily news as I am — being a longtime hack reporter — but whether the immediate outcomes of this historic election week in the United States give you rushes or drops, it’s important to remember that what’s really historic is just how far the US has truly fallen and will keep falling.

We all agree America on January 6, 2020 is certainly not at an apex, but it’s only via constant spin, rationalization, and deflection that one cannot see that the US has so very far to go — this is not the nadir.

No matter what happens, this is not even really over.

In my reporting from here, it turns out the wisest and most pleasant of the “never Trumpers” — normally a very disagreeable lot — were right to say that they are not assuming anything about Joe Biden’s projected victory until after inauguration day, January 20. Maybe the Proud Boys are going to blow up the Washington Monument next week — who really knows what will happen over here?

I have to add a last-minute modification to that hyperbolic exaggeration: Maybe a peaceful “Occupy Capitol Hill” is a real thing?

If you want to read more Trump-obsessed hysteria, you can always go to Politico’s “Trumpology” section, where everything before 2016 never was, but this column is trying to establish exactly where America as a whole really is: What should the globe’s global assessment be of the country which in 1991 seemed poised for a century of global superiority?

There is no doubt that there was a time when the US was really at the forefront of global political thought; when they were successfully enjoining many people to do good and forbidding a lot of bad — I am referring to 1776, the birth year of modern anti-imperialism.

The calendar has just turned to 2021. You would have to be so jacked up on Western Mainstream Media sugar spin to believe that — whatever happens this week — the US is somehow doing well, or looking well, or acting well, or was anything else but a society in decline, dispute, degradation, and maybe even dissolution.

I think the latter goes too far, but I include it to point out: this is not a country like France or Iran or China in that it’s still debatable whether the US has enough years under its belt to really consider that they have a unified sense of nationhood/culture given that this was never really a country but a unity of separate, self-involved, self-serving states inside America (which used to be the term used for the entire Western Hemisphere). This is the United States of America, after all, and Scotland is awfully close to breaking up the United Kingdom — so why couldn’t their over-the-sea brethren go in the same direction?

A short but exciting list of things US media would like you to ignore this week.

Their United Kingdom brethren/clients finally admitted they cannot hand over Julian Assange, the greatest journalist of my generation, not because the US will execute him but because they essentially fear that American prisons are so atrocious that he won’t be killed but that he will be tortured without end.

(Things like this are, of course, why the US and UK are the unquestionable arbiters of what “human rights” and “political prisoners” are.)

Have money, join the duopoly, you will get elected: The Georgia elections were the most expensive congressional seats in history — they spent an estimated 900 million dollars, say the early returns. The only presidential candidate who ever exceeded that in their campaign was brand change golden boy Barack Obama, in a testament to what a huge role the rich, the 1% and corporations play in manipulating American elections.

(You have to have rocks in your head the size of Gibraltar if you are an average American and you give a single greenback to either of the duopoly — just so people Kamala Harris and the Clintons can fund their lavish lifestyles.)

The Electoral College emphatically does not have majority democratic support, as years of polls have shown that 60% of the US wants it abolished. Is it so shocking that as I type this, the voting of this body has been stopped by upset Americans?

Pro-Trump protesters breach US Capitol as Congress holds session to certify Biden victoryProtesters supporting
US President Donald Trump have stormed the US Capitol where the lawmakers were engaged in the process to certify the victory of President-elect Joe Biden.

The American intelligentsia is so unpersuasive, so ineffective, so overpaid and so distrusted that even if Democrats do capture both Georgia Senate seats — and thus the Senate — the anti-Trump “Blue Wave” they almost universally rammed down American throats for four years merely goes from a total failure to a major failure: In this decentralized country local states control local matters and conservatives captured the local legislative, executive, and judicial branches. In a redistricting year, no less. The reason it was rejected, of course: the “Blue Wave” was fake-leftism and not real leftism — why would American lower classes get excited about that?

(And how many Congressional Democrats are so right-leaning and so desirous only of winning their own re-election that Republicans won’t be able to swing this very definition of “tenuous majority” by buying Democrat Congressmen off on countless key votes via things like promising to build more B-2 bombers in their home state?)

The (apparent) demise of Trump actually does not totally destroy Trumpism, even though the chattering classes promised that voting him out for president is all it would take to end what they insisted was merely a Russian-orchestrated cult of personality.

(Four years ago, the US chattering classes certainly didn’t have to accept Trumpism, but they could have at least taken Trumpism seriously. By refusing to have that honest and open conversation, the US has wasted four years. The US has not progressed in this sense since 2016’s inauguration day — and now Capitol Hill is occupied by angry citizens who likely feel they have been unfairly ignored and demonized.)

It was just announced that the cops who shockingly shot Jacob Blake in Wisconsin in the back seven times will not even face a trial. Last night, protests in Kenosha were calm, but what about tonight?

(My bosses have a tough decision to make soon, perhaps: Do I cover the political rebellion in Washington or the possible racial rebellions if they break out again?)

A short, healthy conclusion to balance out this sugar high.

That was not a difficult list to compile, nor an exhaustive one. I’m sure everyone wants to read about Capitol Hill but the short-term question (how much violence will they use to clear out this protest?) is not as vital as the long-term questions (how did we get here, how does the US heal from this), nor is it as vital for the world as the global question of America’s longstanding claim to global leadership.

Both sides of America have disgraced themselves in the eyes of the world since 2016, with their only-low-blows cultural civil war, and it’s not as if the world wasn’t already quite, quite appalled at American behavior since 2003.

2020 was indeed a woeful and unfortunate low point, but the consequences of 2020 are so very, very bad that who can say that it is over? Things were so bad a brand change or calendar change can’t fix things.

Who would say that America’s political cultural civil war is over? Who can say the dispute over electoral integrity is over? Who can say that 1%-rewarding, inequality-creating Quantitive Easing/Austerity is over? Who can say the endless foreign wars are over? Who can say the healthcare crisis is over? Or the unemployment crisis, or the famine crisis, or the housing crisis, etc., etc.?

Who is the nation which is modeling themselves on the United States and why on earth are they doing that?

Gerald Ford famously said as Richard Nixon left that, “America’s long national nightmare is over.” Less than a week into 2021 it should be dawning on the world that the American model produces an endless bad dream not only for their colonies and their clients but even for their own people. That makes sense because that is precisely the goal of Western neo-imperialism and neo-liberalism.

Whoever is the accepted winner of the Electoral College — assuming they ever meet again — is not likely to change that trajectory because American problems were not caused, and cannot be fixed, by just one man.

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV.)

---

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.ir

www.presstv.co.uk

www.presstv.tv

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

US Senate Reconvenes for Electoral College Vote Count with Heavily Armed Guards After Capitol Siege

 

By Staff, Agencies

American lawmakers gathered to continue certifying Electoral College votes for the 2020 race, reconvening at the Capitol hours after a massive group of demonstrators stormed the building, prompting an evacuation of officials.

The House and Senate made another attempt to certify votes around 8pm on Wednesday night, resuming the process following an eruption of violence in Washington, DC, which saw hundreds of Trump supporters storm the Capitol, occupying the chambers for several hours before they were cleared out by law enforcement.

While a number of GOP lawmakers had planned to object to the vote certification, alleging irregularities in the presidential race, asked about the matter before Congress regrouped, Republican Senator Rand Paul (Kentucky) said he did not expect any serious objections the second time around.

“In consultation with [House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer] and [House Whip Jim Clyburn] and after calls to the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the Vice President, we have decided we should proceed tonight at the Capitol once it is cleared for use,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement ahead of the second effort to certify.

Security forces clad in heavy body armor were stationed near the Senate floor on Wednesday night, with piles of gear seen strewn across the building’s hallways. House Democrat Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries earlier reported that the Capitol had been cleared, and that lawmakers would return “when it is safe.”

Staffers were allowed back inside through underground tunnels, seen in a photo shared on Twitter by NBC correspondent Garrett Haake.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell [R-Kentucky] addressed the day’s events when the body reconvened.

“The United States Senate will not be intimidated. We will not be kept out of this chamber by thugs, mobs or threats. We will not bow to lawlessness or intimidation. We are back at our post, we will discharge our duty under the Constitution and for our nation – and we’re gonna do it tonight,” he said.

One woman was fatally shot as rioters attempted to breach the Senate chamber, captured in disturbing footage circulating online. She was seen leaving the building on a stretcher and later died of her injuries, according to law enforcement sources.

A 6pm curfew was ordered across the nation’s capital amid the chaos, as well as in nearby Arlington and Alexandria, Virginia, where Governor Ralph Northam has also declared a state of emergency. DC’s National Guard unit was “fully activated” to assist local police.

Legislators had only just begun the certification process when the violence erupted, part of the formal procedure to transfer power to President-elect Joe Biden. President Trump and his supporters maintain the 2020 race was plagued by extensive voter fraud and had repeatedly called on Republican lawmakers, as well as Vice President Mike Pence, to challenge the Electoral College count. Pence, however, signaled earlier on Wednesday that he would not do so, arguing he lacked the authority to invalidate votes. His refusal, however, did little to calm the swarm of Trump supporters gathered outside the Capitol on Wednesday afternoon.

US Congress in Turmoil as Violent Trump Supporters Breach Building

By Staff, Agencies

Violent supporters of US President Donald Trump have breached the Capitol in Washington, as lawmakers met to confirm President-elect Joe Biden’s poll win.

In dramatic scenes, demonstrators swarmed the building as Congress members were escorted out by police.

A joint session of Congress had been counting and confirming Electoral College votes but has been suspended and forced into recess.

There are reports of guns drawn in the building and at least one person shot.

A woman was reported to be in a critical condition after receiving a neck injury.

There has been an armed confrontation at the doors of the House of Representatives. Tear gas has also been used.

Members of Congress have been told to evacuate the building or remain where they are. One congresswoman tweeted that she was staying in her office.

Trump urged people to remain peaceful and respect law enforcement officials.

Vice-President Mike Pence called on the rioters to leave the Capitol immediately, saying the violence and destruction “must stop now”.

Trump’s spokeswoman, Kayleigh McEnany, tweeted that the National Guard was being deployed.

Rioters were seen marching through the building chanting “We want Trump” and one was photographed in the Senate president’s chair.

A citywide curfew has been declared from 18:00 to 06:00 [23:00 to 11:00 GMT] by Washington DC’s mayor.

There are also reports of protests at state legislatures in Kansas and Georgia.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

UNITED STATES IS IN CHAOS: TRUMP SUPPORTERS CAPTURED CAPITOL. NATIONAL GUARD DEPLOYED. FIRST SHOTS FIRED

 South Front

UPDATE 3: Trump called the election rigged, but appealed on his supporters to act peacefully and leave the Capitol because it is needed to keep ‘law and order’.

Nonetheless, the problem is that if the Trump team and its supporters surrender now, the electoral college will meet once again and approve Biden the President of the United States. This will mark the start of the new era – the era of the neo-liberal fascism in the United States. Chances of the political persenecution of Trump supporters and Trump himself (under some pretext) are also pretty high in this scenario.

pic.twitter.com/Pm2PKV0Fp3

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2021

UPDATE 2: Biden made remarks on the situation blaming Trump. The so-called ‘Democrats’ do not understand or do not want to understand that the source of the current crisis is not Trump himself, but the resistance of the population of  the United States that stands against the neo-liberal/anti-national push of the ruling class.

UPDATE: The National Guard was deployed to the US Capitol to clear the building from Trump supporters. According to media reports, Trump personally ordered to employ the National Guard to ‘put an end to violence’.

MSM also reported that security forces found an IED in the Capitol area.

***

The United States is in the chaos amid the unprecedented growth of social and political tensions, the increase of street crime waged by neo-liberal-supported gangs, and months of protests by radical left-wing groups widely painted by mainstream media as some ‘democratic movement’ to fight ‘Russia’s puppet Trump’.

At the same time, the patriotic and conservative parts of the society are deeply dissatisfied with the rigged presidential election that they believe stole Trump’s victory and the forceful promotion of neo-liberal values as well as the discrimination of non-minority part of the population.

An unarmed woman was shot by security forces in the Capitol:

On January 6, pro-Trump supporters captured the US Capitol and are now clashing with Police in the area. The number of pro-Trump supporters inside the building is about 100. The building itself was evacuated.

When the incident happened, inside the Capitol, the Congress was meeting to certify the electoral college votes for ‘President-elect’ Joe Biden.

Thousands Trump supporters protest outside the Capitol.

The President of the United States seems to be not so decisive as his supporters:

Photos from the building:

At this very moment, if President Trump and the political forces supporting him declare their firm support to the democratic will of the people, reject the result of the election that they have repeatedly called ‘rigged’, and employ their power to support the protesters, they would have all chances to repel the pro-globalist/pro-neo-liberal turn promoted under the brand of the incoming ‘Biden administration’. Nonetheless, actions of the Trump administration in the previous months have demonstrated that the current US president is not ready for radical steps to fight the ‘swamp’.

Therefore, the January 6 protests will likely just become another case that would be used by forces behind Biden’s rigged victory in the presidential election to suppress patriotic forces, the freedom of speech and alternative media.

MORE ON THE TOPIC:

• Military And Political Trends Of 2020 That Will Shape 2021
• Biden’s Pyrrhic Victory

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

U.S. Election ‘Success’… And Hey Presto ‘Russian Interference’ Disappears

Source

November 27, 2020

The United States’ election victory of Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden has yet to be officially confirmed. That requires the 500-plus Electoral College comprising the 50 federal states to cast the final vote when the constitutional body meets on December 14. Biden holds a commanding lead of over 300 delegates in the Electoral College, more than 70 above Donald Trump’s quota and decisively more than the 270 threshold required for election to the White House.

Nonetheless, already one thing is indisputably clear. Biden’s nominal victory from the popular vote tallies is glaring proof that Russia did not interfere in the American presidential ballot. Not in 2020. And not, we may discern, in 2016, nor in any other election. Yet the silence in US media over this obvious conclusion is deafening.

Four years of frenetic and unsubstantiated allegations of “Russian interference” have disappeared overnight, it seems. Poof! Gone! As if by a magic conjuring trick. Now you see it, now you don’t, so to speak.

The New York Times has declared the recent presidential contest a “great election.. a resounding success free of fraud”. The Department of Homeland Security pronounced the election to be the “most secure in American history.” Other US media outlets have jettisoned supposed political neutrality and can barely contain their elation at Biden’s electoral victory.

But hold on a moment. In the months and weeks leading up to the November election, there was a fever pitch in US media among politicians, national security chiefs, pundits and anonymous intelligence sources that Russia was allegedly stepping up “interference efforts” to get Trump re-elected. Those evidence-free claims were predicated on the equally absurd assertion that Trump was a Manchurian candidate for the Kremlin. That “Russiagate” fable was first spun in 2016 and for the past four years elaborated into a tangled web to “explain” how a maverick former reality TV star had been elected to the White House.

Suddenly, however, the Democrats and supportive US media are now asserting that the voting process was impeccable and unblemished by any malfeasance. Of course they would say that in order to bolster legitimacy of Biden’s win against the Republican White House incumbent Donald Trump. But the thundering takeaway which the US political class and media are bizarrely ignoring is that Russia did not interfere not in the 2020 race nor in any other election. Russia has always categorically said it is not meddling in US politics and its electoral process. Turns out that Russia is de facto vindicated in its protestations against American slander.

The “Russiagate” nonsense was hatched by Democrats, their supportive media and intelligence agencies because they could not come to terms with the reality of why Trump beat the then establishment-ordained candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016. Could it have been because Clinton and the Democrat party was repudiated by popular sentiment due to perceived corruption and overseas wars? No, another “explanation” had to be found. And the US political establishment came up with the “Russian interference” narrative.

No matter that the Mueller investigation found after 22 months of probing and hundreds of millions of taxpayer-dollars spent that there was no evidence of “Russia collusion” with the Trump campaign. Nevertheless, Mueller and the Democrats, their media and intelligence backers, persisted in the spurious notion that Russia meddled in the 2016 election and, allegedly, was continuing to meddle, purportedly with even more sophisticated, nefarious techniques.

How can US politicians, intelligence officials and media credibly claim that Russia interfered in 2016 and in mid-term congressional elections in 2018, but now in 2020 it evidently did not? The most logical explanation is simply that Russia never did.

Four years of hysterical American accusations against Russia have transpired to just that: bogus hysteria. US politicians, media and so-called intelligence gurus should be held to account for fabricating what is perhaps the biggest hoax ever played on the American public.

Though, one can be sure that they won’t be held accountable in a formal way. Venal power doesn’t work like that. And the US political system has built-in layers of self-protection for the political class never to be prosecuted. But in an informal no less real way, the system is being held to account by the wider public who are increasingly holding it in contempt and distrust. The political class and their plaything media are losing the moral authority to govern. This goes beyond mere Trump Derangement Syndrome. The systematic lying and deception over alleged Russian interference perpetrated on such a grand scale has fatally damaged the credibility of American institutions. Not just in the US, but around the world too.

Equally lamentable is the corrosive, damaging effect that the bogus hysteria has had on bilateral US-Russia relations and international tensions. Relations are at a dangerous all time low comparable to the depth of the Cold War. This has in turn sabotaged diplomatic efforts to strengthen arms controls and global security. The anti-Russia hysteria has led to the US abandonment of key nuclear weapons treaties, the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and soon the New START.

The Russophobia that has been whipped up as a political weapon against Trump over the past four years is not something that can be easily put aside. It has engendered deep-seated hostility against Russia. During the presidential debates, Joe Biden vowed that the would take a tough stand against Russia for “interfering” in US politics. The incoming administration is being mentally held hostage by its own Russophobia which was cultivated on entirely false grounds.

It is disturbing how the US nation has been dragged into an obsession about alleged Russian malign activities, an obsession which turns out to be a mirage. Not for the first time either. Recall the Cold War Red Scares and McCarthyite witch-hunts which poisoned American society.

The implications are daunting. How can bilateral relations with Russia be restored? How can an intelligent dialogue be conducted with a nation whose leaders are so self-deluded and irrational?

Moreover, this is a nation whose leaders presume to have the prerogative to use overwhelming military force whenever they deem so. It is not unlike the driver of a juggernaut vehicle on a precipice who is hurtling along while out of his brain on misconceptions.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Trump Doubles Down on Coup D’État

Finian Cunningham

Former editor and writer for
major news media organizations.
He has written extensively on
international affairs, with articles
published in several languages

November 12, 2020©

For the first time in the history of the United States an incumbent president is refusing to concede electoral defeat. Ominously, Donald Trump, the sitting president, has this week also packed the Pentagon’s civilian leadership and intel agencies with political loyalists who are described as his “foot-soldiers”.

The flurry of appointees are former special forces and generals. Here is a profile of the president’s men. One Pentagon insider said of them: “These are the people who go in and do whatever they think is required to achieve his [Trump’s] agenda. They are true soldiers in the war on government, the war on what Trump calls the deep state.”

The shakeup in the military-intelligence apparatus has stunned observers from its audacity. There is speculation that Trump will next sack the Pentagon’s top general Mark Milley, FBI chief Christopher Wray and CIA director Gina Haspel, to be replaced by “true believers” of his Make America Great Again project.

There is an edgy feeling that Trump, a maverick megalomaniac, is actually going for it. That is, a coup d’état.

But this can’t happen here, or so goes the plaintive refrain. Well, it looks like it is.

A stunning bold-faced denial of reality this week came from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who told incredulous reporters that there would be a “smooth transition”… to a second Trump administration.

Most of the Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are refusing to acknowledge publicly that Democrat Joe Biden won the presidential election – despite him gaining a decisive lead of more than five million votes over Trump as well as in the all-important Electoral College votes.

Trump-appointed Attorney General William Barr is brazenly politicizing the justice department by endorsing Trump’s calls for investigations and lawsuits over allegations of voting fraud and other purported irregularities. There is negligible evidence to support these allegations, many of which have been thrown out already by state judges as frivolous. But Barr is giving inordinate authority to shore up what amounts to tittle-tattle from a sore loser.

State election officials, both Republican and Democrat, have unanimously reported no significant electoral fraud or malfeasance.

Republican city commissioner in Philadelphia Al Schmidt, in the key swing state of Pennsylvania which was won by Biden, confirmed there were no voting irregularities. He was then denounced as “disloyal” by Trump. Schmidt also claims to have subsequently received death threats.

Strangely, too, Trump and Republicans in Congress aren’t complaining about fraud in the down-ballot votes for the House and the Senate races where they performed relatively well in gaining or holding on to seats. Even though those ballots were cast in the exact same process as the presidential vote. How can one item on the ballot sheet be prone to fraud, but the ones which suit Republicans aren’t? It’s self-serving duplicity that’s what it is.

What Team Trump is betting on is not winning litigation over the election results. There is not a chance of the president overturning the large majorities that Biden won in key swing states. No, the game plan seems to be to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the elections and run out the clock so that Republican legislatures in states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona do not certify Biden as the winner of the popular vote.

Moreover, it is being mooted that Republican legislatures in these states will appoint electors to the Electoral College who will nominate Trump as the winner, in defiance of the popular vote. The Electoral College is to convene on December 14 when the deciding vote is cast on who is to be next president. Tradition and precedent holds that the state electors respect the popular vote, but this election is unprecedented. It is not unthinkable that Trump will continue insisting that the election was stolen from him by citing (baseless) fraud claims. For many of his 72 million voters, there is a shared conviction (delusion) that the election was rigged or absurdly contend that the coronavirus was “weaponized”.

Biden won over 77 million votes in the popular ballot. If Trump goes for barricading himself in the White House claiming he is the rightful winner, then the U.S. faces a constitutional nightmare scenario. Widespread violent protests are on the cards, if not civil war. Already Trump hacks have prepared the propaganda narrative that any protests against Trump are the work of “Antifa subversives” and “Marxist terrorists”. We saw that outlandish narrative being wheeled out during the recent months of legitimate massive protests against racist police killings.

As tensions boil over in the run-up to the presidential inauguration date on January 2o, what Trump and his cadres will declare is a state of emergency and martial law to “protect the nation” from leftists and “deep state” orchestrated “color revolution” against a “democratically elected president”.

This is the significance of the shakeup at the Pentagon and intelligence apparatus this week. Trump is putting in place the kind of fascist operatives to carry out his coup d’état.

Ironically, Trump claims he was the target of coup forces from the deep state after his 2016 election victory over “swamp creature” Hillary Clinton. To be fair to Trump, that effort to unseat him was real enough, centered on baseless “Russia collusion” claims that dogged his entire presidency. However, that coup attempt failed. But now another seizure of power is underway this time hatched by Trump himself and his cronies.

Biden and his Democrat party are being sheepishly complacent about the dramatic and daring power grab taking place by Trump. Biden this week sought to sound calm and cool, saying that Trump’s refusal to concede defeat was merely “embarrassing”. Biden really is being “sleepy Joe” if he doesn’t realize that there is a coup going down in the White House.

Another sign of complacency was from the New York Times which headlined: ‘Trump Stacks the Pentagon and Intel Agencies with Loyalists. To What End?’

The NY Times answered its question by speculating Trump was planning overseas adventurism, perhaps a military attack on Iran or a rushed withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.

How stupidly complacent. Trump’s adventurism is not overseas, it is right at home. It’s all about trashing the U.S. constitution and installing himself for a second term regardless of democratic mandate. In short, dictatorship.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

First Comes A Rolling Civil War

 November 09, 2020

By Pepe Escobar posted with permission and first posted at Asia Times

The massive psyops is ongoing. Everyone familiar with the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) knew how this would imperatively play out. I chose to frame it as a think tank gaming exercise in my Banana Follies column. This is a live exercise. Yet no one knows exactly how it will end.

US intel is very much aware of well-documented instances of election fraud. Among them: NSA software that infiltrates any network, as previously detailed by Edward Snowden, and capable of altering vote counts; the Hammer supercomputer and its Scorecard app that hacks computers at the transfer points of state election computer systems and outside third party election data vaults; the Dominion software system, known to have serious security issues since 2000, but still used in 30 states, including every swing state; those by now famous vertical jumps to Biden in both Michigan and Wisconsin at 4am on November 4 (AFP unconvincingly tried to debunk Wisconsin and didn’t even try with Michigan); multiple instances of Dead Men Do Vote.

The key actor is the Deep State, which decides what happens next. They have weighed the pros and cons of placing as candidate a senile, stage 2 dementia, neocon warmonger and possible extorsionist (along with son) as “leader of the free world”, campaigning from a basement, incapable of filling a parking lot in his rallies, and seconded by someone with so little support in the Dem primaries that she was the first to drop out.

The optics, especially seen from vast swathes of the imperial-interfered Global South, may be somewhat terrible. Dodgy elections are a prerogative of Bolivia and Belarus. Yet only the Empire is able to legitimize a dodgy election – especially in its own backyard.

Welcome to the New Resistance

The GOP is in a very comfortable position. They hold the Senate and may end up picking up as may as 12 seats in the House. They also know that any attempt by Biden-Harris to legislate via Executive Orders will have…consequences.

The Fox News/ New York Post angle is particularly enticing. Why are they suddenly supporting Biden? Way beyond internal family squabbles worthy of the Succession saga, Rupert Murdoch made it very clear, via the laptop from hell caper, that he has all sorts of kompromat on the Biden family. So they will do whatever he wants. Murdoch does not need Trump anymore.

Nor, in theory, does the GOP. Former CIA insiders assure of serious backroom shenanigans going on between GOP honchos and the Biden-Harris gang. Trade-offs bypassing Trump – which most of the GOP hates with a vengeance. The most important man in Washington will be in fact GOP Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.

Still, to clear any lingering doubts, a vote recount would be absolutely necessary in all 6 contested states – WI, MI, PA, GA, NV and AZ. Through hand counting. One by one. The DoJ would need to act on it, immediately. Not gonna happen. Recounts cost a ton of money. There’s no evidence Team Trump – on top of it short of funds and manpower – will be able to convince Daddy Bush asset William Barr to go for it.

While relentlessly demonizing Trump for spreading “a torrent of misinformation” and “trying to undermine the legitimacy of the US election”, mainstream media and Big Tech have declared a winner – a classic case of pre-programming the sheep multitudes.

Yet what really matters is the letter of the law. State legislatures decide whose electors go to the Electoral College to appoint the President.

Here it is – Article II, Section 1, Clause 2: Each state shall appoint electors “in such Manner as the Legislature Thereof May Direct.”

So this has nothing to do with governors, not to mention the media. It’s up to GOP state legislatures to act accordingly. The drama may roll out for weeks. The first step of the Electoral College procedure takes place on December 14. The final determination will only happen in early January.

Meanwhile, talk of a New Resistance is spreading like wildfire.

Trumpism, with 71 million + votes, is firmly established as a mass movement. No one in the GOP commands this kind of popular appeal. By sidelining Trumpism, the GOP may be committing seppuku.

So what will Deplorables do?

The always indispensable Alastair Crooke hits the nail on the head in a powerful essay: Trump is the President of Red America. And depending on how the scripted (s)election tragicomedy develops next, the Deplorables are bound to become The Ungovernables.

Crooke references a crucial parallel evoked by historian Mike Vlahos, who shows how the current American saga mirrors Ancient Rome in the last century of the Republic, pitting the Roman elite against the Populares – which today are represented by Red (Trumpist) America:

“This was a new world, in which the great landowners, with their latifundia [the slave-land source of wealth], who had been the ‘Big Men’ leading the various factions in the civil wars, became the senatorial archons that dominated Roman life for the next five centuries — while the People, the Populares, were ground into a passive — not helpless — but generally dependent and non-participating element of Roman governance: This sapped away at the creative life of Rome, and eventually led to its coming apart.”

So as much as the Dem machine had wanted it, Trump is not yet Imperator Caesar Augustus, whom the Greeks called Autokrator (autocrat), but was a de facto monarch. The American Augustus, Tiberius and most of all Caligula is still further on down the road. He will definitely be a benign, humanitarian imperialist.

In the meantime, what will imperial Big Capital do?

The West, and especially the American Rome, is on the edge of a double precipice: the worst economic depression ever, coupled with imminent, myriad, uncontrollable explosions of social rage.

So the Deep State is reasoning that with Biden – or, sooner rather than later, Supreme shakti and Commander-in-Chief Maa Durga Kamala – the path gets smoother towards the Davos Great Reset. After all, to reset the chess pieces, first the chessboard must be knocked over. This will be one step beyond Dark Winter – which not accidentally was evoked by teleprompter-reading Biden himself on the final presidential debate. The script gets ominously closer to the Rockefelller Foundation’s 2010 Lock Step.

Meanwhile, Plan B is kept in ready, steady, go mode: the lineaments of a global rampage, focused on “malign” Russia’s sphere of influence to satisfy a “revived” NATO and the military-industrial complex, which selected the now media-appointed President-Elect in the first place because he’s no more than a pliant cardboard figure.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!