A Brief History of Fascist Lies is the title of a new book by Federico Finchelstein, the author of a number of books on fascism and populism. Finchelstein both draws distinctions that slot politicians into categories (such as fascist or populist) and points out the overlaps and the shades of gray, the forerunners and the enablers.

Not only have there been politicians who resembled Trump in other countries in recent decades, but the appearance of Trump — I think — depended on the regimes of Bush the Lesser and Obama. And the Trumplike politicians sprouting up today come out of their own countries’ traditions as well as feeding off and feeding into fascist tendencies in the United States.

Trump is supposedly a populist rather than a fascist, because he is elected (even if he cheats?), and because he encourages bigoted violence but has no plan for genocide. Of course he drops tens of thousands of bombs a year on parts of the world not labeled “white,” advances climate collapse, and risks nuclear war, but that stuff can’t make him anything other than “American,” since every U.S. president does those things.

A group of locally-based, high-profiled corporations are financially backing the Issue 2 campaign – for a civilian review board of the Columbus Police – but when asked whether they would officially endorse it publicly, or encourage their employees and customers to vote ‘yes,’, the answer was ‘no.’

The Columbus Partnership, the region’s so-called public-private partnership seeking prosperity for all Central Ohioans, and its biggest players have (quietly) contributed to the Issue 2 campaign. This includes Huntington Bank, Nationwide Insurance, Cardinal Heath and JP Morgan.

But they aren’t putting their mouth where their money is.

Huntington Bank was the only one to respond to repeated emails asking whether they would publicly endorse a ‘yes’ vote to finally bring a civilian review board to Columbus.

As many know, Columbus is one of the largest US cities without a civilian review board to independently investigate citizen complaints against police, and city residents are set to make a historic vote on November 3 to create one within the city charter.

Tuesday, October 27, 2020, 12:00 - 1:30 PM
Noam Chomsky, Institute Professor, MIT and Professor of Linguistics, University of Arizona.  The world is facing unprecedented crises on several fronts. Lack of leadership by the United States has intensified many flash points around the world including nuclear threats and the abandonment of arms control negotiations, bio-safety, climate change, food insecurity, instability and tensions in the East, and increased pressure from nationalists and extremists at home and abroad. This Tuesday seminar series will capture a subset of these critical issues facing humanity and the planet. Register for webinar here.

More Tuesday, October 27 events listed here.

Released in time for the election, Fish in a Barrel is an exposé of how the NRA’s history of alleged campaign violations have stymied popular efforts to make even modest reforms on access to firearms, despite hundreds of mass shootings in the United States over the past two decades. The NRA’s electoral enterprise ended up being gamed by Russian agents of influence in the 2016 election, as detailed in the 2019 U.S. Senate Finance Committee report: The NRA & Russia: How a Tax-Exempt Organization Became a Foreign Asset. 

“As mass shootings have continued, the NRA obstructs any effort at reform to prevent future massacres. It’s angering watching politicians tweet ‘Thoughts and prayers,’ then do nothing to stop it from happening again,” says director John Wellington Ennis. “But when I learned that the NRA had become a Russian asset while working to elect Trump, I knew I had to do something.”

I don’t have any use for PEP politicians (progressive except on the Pentagon), but there are going to be serious members of the U.S. Congress next year who aren’t afraid of flags and war songs. There are going to be a lot more than (AOC+3) four of them.

CORI BUSH

One is going to be Cori Bush from St. Louis who won her primary against a long-time incumbent. She’s recently tweeted the following:

“If you’re having a bad day, just think of all the social services we’re going to fund after we defund the Pentagon.”

“Militarization makes up 64% of our federal budget. Medicare & Health are 6%. Education is 5%. Social Security, Unemployment, and Labor together are 3%. Ignorance is thinking those priorities keep our families safe.”

“220K+ people, including 1,700 healthcare workers, have died from COVID-19 due to our government’s inability to protect its citizens & pass pandemic relief. Ignorance is Trump’s Pentagon taking $1 billion in funding designated for PPE production to make jet engine parts.”