Failing to capture the White House will not stop the MAGA cult in its onslaught on vulnerable Americans and life on earth
— After the failed assassination of Trump on 13 July in Pennsylvania, there was a clutch of threats by members of the MAGA cult to kill their enemies in revenge. It’s to be noted that the man suspected of trying to kill Trump belonged to the same Republican party as repeatedly blocks attempts to introduce control on guns; and which vehemently advocates ‘open carry’ laws — in, say, Wisconsin, the very state where the Republican Party crowned their ‘king’ the following week.
As the media reporting and analytical dust settled after the failed assassination in Pennsylvania, the threats did not. That same constituency, brainwashed by Trump and his cult, repeatedly tried to blame its members’ opponents for being (too) critical of their hero; and so for having tried to kill him. They threatened that those critics would be next.
Some Republicans have even publicly tried to blame Joe Biden for the failed assassination of Trump. And have incited retributive violence against him.
Most significant was the response of J D Vance, the racist and supremacist, far right senator from Ohio, who is now Trump’s choice for Vice President. Vance immediately posted that Biden’s criticisms of Trump (which are judged by many thoughtful folk to be far too mild) “…led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination[sic].”
Less than 30 minutes after the shooting, Republican representative Mike Collins (Georgia) tweeted — offering no evidence — that Biden “sent the orders” for the shooting, and that he (Biden) should be prosecuted for “inciting an assassination”. A federal lawmaker, remember, who is presumably looked up to by many hundreds of thousands of voters.
Within 24 hours others had joined the wrongheaded disinformation machine: Lauren Boebert (the Florida Republican who couldn’t find anyone else willing to nominate her so she moved to Colorado, where she owned a restaurant for nine years in which staff members were encouraged to carry firearms openly) said, “…I do believe that Joe Biden is responsible for the shooting today.” With no hint of evidence, Senator Rick Scott (Florida) also said that it “must be” the fault of his opponents: “This isn’t some unfortunate incident. This was an assassination attempt by a madman inspired by the rhetoric of the radical left.” Similarly, the (thankfully) inimitable Marjorie Taylor Greene, tweeted “The Democrats and the media are to blame for every drop of blood spilled today”.
In more ‘normal’ times these actions would attract lawsuits for libel and possibly the arrests of those responsible for conspiracy and incitement to murder.
Thoughtful people will look at these comments and conclude that they’re all cases of deflection: try to accuse your ‘enemies’ of what you yourself are responsible for. They will in large part be dismissed as the rantings of dizzy, filth-filled cult victims. But those sympathetic to and supportive of those who spew such messages regularly continue to lap them up and move even more closely in step with its fascistic nonsense.
Vance
Vance is definitely someone to worry about. He has advocated the virtual removal of government, for example. He agrees with Trump that civil servants should be replaced with Trump loyalists. In an interview with Vanity Fair in 2022 Vance said, “Fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people. …We are in a late republican period…”, by which – on further elaboration – the possible future President of the United States (if another assassination were successful) meant that the country needed a dictator, which in turn would need the MAGA movement to “…get pretty wild, and pretty far out there…” Vance also authored the foreword to the main manifesto of Project 2025, which Trump claims to know nothing about.
Vance also opposes abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, having said in 2021, “why have we let the Democrat Party become controlled by people who don’t have children?”. Vance helped Trump to try and overturn the results of the 2020 election and backs fossil fuels as well as denying the climate catastrophe.
Vance has also has praised the policies of Hungary’s far-right leader, Viktor Orbán, and is openly misogynistic, on record, for example, as wanting abortion to be a crime in every state; he is against same-sex marriage as well as having espoused and endorsed the racist pseudo-scientific nonsense of figures like Curtis Yarvin, who associates intelligence with genes.
As recently as 2021 Vance praised notorious conspiracy theorist and supremacist, Alex Jones. Because of the latter’s offensive and harmful conspiracy theories, for Vance to ally himself with Jones is a deliberately provocative stance; and gratuitously overtly so, given Jones’s resultant criminal convictions and bankruptcy.
The person who has contributed the most to Vance’s rise to this position (picking Vance for VP strongly suggests that the Republicans are confident of winning, so controversial and potentially off-putting are many of Vance’s views) is one Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal. It’s to Thiel that Vance owes his success. In 2009 Thiel wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible. [women gaining: voting rights] … rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron”. A few years later, in 2016, Vance’s mentor, Thiel, welcomed white nationalist Kevin DeAnna to a ‘Right Wing Dinner Squad’. Predictably, Vance’s acceptance speech at the 2024 convention was packed with lies.
Later in the week of the RNC convention notorious fascist, Tucker Carlson, took the platform at an event held by the The Heritage Foundation, the far right group partially responsible for Project 2025 and with which both Trump and Vance are closely allied. He talked about what he calls “indoctrination” in schools. Less than a month later, the élite in Utah imposed its first statewide censorship on learning: of the 13 books no longer allowed in the state’s school system are 12 written by women. These include Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, Forever by Judy Blume, Milk and Honey (Rupi Kaur) and six books by Sarah J. Maas.
Carlson probably did not see the irony: last month’s Notes from the US drew attention to illegal steps being taken in some states to introduce and/or increase purely Christian doctrine. Carlson lamented the dearth of “weak men” willing to commit violence against school employees: “…In the country that I grew up in, the dad would just punch the counsellor out. You know, ‘Put me in jail, I don’t care…'” Similarly, the fascist senator for Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, claimed that schools are staffed by “…radical Marxists [who] are trying to steal our children’s future…”?
Elections
Last month Notes from the US looked in depth at the upcoming elections. Republicans and the wider right increasingly warn that, unless they win, they will call “foul” and claim they were cheated of victory regardless.
Absurd though this aspect of the fascist MAGA cult is, it warrants further analysis – certainly more exposure. As always this comes with the usual proviso that anarchists have scant interest (and less belief) in elections — unless they make things worse. So let’s accept that the cult appears to have no real intention of living with a loss in November. And alarmingly that — even should they win — they will disallow future changes in the way the United States is run; apparently including abolishing elections every four years.
Trump wants a “bloodbath” if his cult loses; and wants to turn the US into a fascist dictatorship in all but name if it wins. The Lincoln Project — formed in 2019 by Republicans who see the horror of a return by Trump — may well have it just about right.
Unlikely though this seems, too many (senior and influential) figures on the right to ignore or discount are articulating the threat. Trump said so at a rally last month. There are also widespread reports of election officials (who are appointed as neutral administrators, not politicians) already putting the public on notice that they will refuse to certify results unless they are for Trump and the Republicans.
At an event in Washington DC last month, for instance, the executive director of the far right Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, Mike Howell, made extraordinary comments to the effect that any results of any election which Trump and the Republican party did not win were bound to be false.
One state senator, George Lang from Ohio, went further, saying at a rally, “I’m afraid if we lose this one, it’s going to take a civil war to save the country, and it will be saved.”
Then at a rally last week — after Trump had loudly and clearly praised three election workers (they are all functionaries and not politicians, remember) for being ready to deliver “victory” for him and for MAGA — the State Election Board in Georgia voted to change the certification process so that election deniers have a stronger strategy in that state. They can now cause at the least a delay certification of the result. If that happens, the Republicans will then pressure the courts (up to and including the pro-MAGA US Supreme Court) actually to overturn the result if it’s not pro-MAGA. This is also significant because Georgia is a key swing state.
Environment
During that same Republican Convention last month, no mention was made of the greatest threat to Republicans, their families and children — as well as to everyone and everything else: environmental destruction.
After all, records that illustrate the extent to which the southern (now in winter) as well as northern hemispheres are drastically overheating were being broken as MAGA cult members bellowed about their wish to accelerate the catastrophe by undertaking more drilling for fossil fuels. Within a few days of the end of what really was an obscene — admittedly performative — sewer of supremacist lies and threats at the convention, hurricane Debby hit the South and East of the United States. Large anomalies in the Antarctic make up yet more indications of the disasters already now happening. A ‘heatwave’ in the same — polar — region is forcing temperatures tens of degrees above normal. In the north a melting glacier caused flooding of parts of Juneau in Alaska. There have been reports that methane emissions are rising faster than previously thought.
Indeed, if it ever became part of a Trump presidency, Project 2025 would spell disaster for wildlife as well as almost everything and everyone else.
All of this is flouted, ignored, denied (and/or there are threats that minimally potentially ameliorating actions are to be reversed) by the vast majority of politicians — Democrats as well as Republicans.
Oppression
Last month a report by the Associated Press was published. It detailed growing gaps between salaries and wages paid to senior management in private industry and the workers who create their wealth. The salaries of chief executives of major companies grew by almost 13% in 2023 to a median of US$16.3 (£12.7) million, while those of the workers only grew by 14%; this widened the pay gap to almost two hundred to one. Little wonder that a group of the very rich is largely throwing itself fully behind Trump.
It makes sense to revisit from time to time just how much money the United States spends on weapons. This time, it’s the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) which revealed the extent of the spending. Their most recent report details an annual increase of 18%. Yes, the world’s nuclear powers increased their spending on murder by the equivalent of US$250 million a day. But the US outspent all the others by the amount of over US$51 (£41) billion; that’s nearly £1,300 every second around the clock every day in the year.
In July Idaho’s House Bill 710 became law. This is one of the more extreme examples of bigotry and censorship on the grounds that anything to do with the LGBTQ+ communities or such ‘aberrations’ as masturbation is ‘harmful’ to children. Now libraries in Idaho must remove any book to which anyone – library reader or not – objects. They only have 60 days to do so, or face a US$250 (£193) fine. It looks as though the Idaho Family Policy Center which is largely responsible for this push to enshrine intolerance and discrimination into law, has been successful: as far back as January this year half of the state’s librarians were already apparently ready to leave their jobs, and even to leave the state entirely.
Just one indication of how cruel, misinformed and intolerantly aggressive fascistic groups have become emerged when the bigotry-based Moms for Liberty brought a law suit (fortunately it failed) aimed at blocking the implementation of a new rule to protect LGBTQ+ pupils in more than 800 counties across the United States.
Another example of intolerance surfaced in New York (Nassau County) this week. Anyone who DOES wear a face mask now risks up to a year in jail or a US$1,000 (£785) fine. As the world is again experiencing a fresh, record, surge of COVID cases, moronic and cruel measures are still being enacted. Some of those attending the hearings in New York to protest were deliberately coughed upon last week.
Racism
Unsurprisingly, hatred and racism abounded at the aforementioned Republican convention last month. Several of the contributors to the Project 2025 ‘enterprise’ have been revealed as having explicitly supremacist views and agendas.
The week following the convention, on 24 July, something occurred which should horrify and cause revulsion, even disbelief. Despite many calls to abandon the invitation, and massive protests in Washington DC, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was given a standing ovation in the US Congress. The same Netanyahu who is the architect of a war to terrorise, burn, slice, crush, maim, starve, injure, torture, slaughter tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of (non-combatant) children, women and males in Gaza, a war which has reduced the country to rubble, deliberately flattened most arms of its infrastructure, hospital and health facilities, and seats of learning.
If congresspeople can read, if they have access to television and (in)formal news feeds – online and provided by their staff in furtherance of their jobs: to do good, then one has no alternative but to reach the conclusion that the overwhelming majority of lawmakers in the most powerful country in the world – from novices to the president – specifically, emphatically, overtly and officially value the lives of Palestinian children, women and (non-combatant) men far, far less than those of their counterparts, the Israelis. And that the Netanyahu’s enablers and those who cheerers at cannot see that centuries of oppression do not give the oppressed the right to commit genocide in turn.
If so, doesn’t that call into question these US lawmakers’ ability to make almost any judgement – if they are supportive of genocide? Doesn’t the fact that there may well be retaliation – both against Israeli civilians and eventually, perhaps, against the US itself as a direct result of the latter’s promotion of genocide – also call these lawmakers’ judgement into doubt?
In other words, the US is applauding, enabling, funding, supporting and furthering the genocide as if it were not happening. The recent slaughter of Palestinian families in the al-Tabin school in Gaza City, for instance (where rescuers were unable to find a single body of the hundred massacred by Israeli terrorists – only mangled, bleeding remains) was carried out using American weapons just two days after Biden announced a further US$3.5 (£2.7) billion in arms and just a few days before the US State Department announced that it effectively agreed with and supported the gross human rights violations perpetrated by five Israeli military units; and would take no action.
Although more than a hundred Democrats boycotted the address by Netanyahu, he will have left with the — correct — impression that a majority of lawmakers in the United States (and conceivably a majority of its inhabitants) believe that the torn limbs, wailing, screams of pain, the intentional spread of infectious and contagious disease in the summer heat are good things, which should continue with their full support.
Night after night the fascistic media equate those voicing anything from concern to opposition to the genocide in Gaza as “Hamas supporters”, and screech for “Victory”. Indeed, several states in the trumpy south have introduced legislation to make voicing solidarity with Palestinians a crime: Bill 2348/Senate Bill 2610 in Tennessee; Senate Bill 523 (now integrated into House Bill 505) in Georgia; Executive Order GA-44 in Texas; and of course Senate Bill 470/House Bill 465 in Florida. Nationally House Resolution 6408 with a companion bill in the Senate S.4136 are passing through the House of Representatives in Washington DC with the intention of much wider suppression of calls for peace.
Barely a week after that shameful public legislative endorsement of genocide by the US Congress, probably the most egregious – certainly the most widely-reported – public example of Trump’s own racism came when he was interviewed at the annual conference of the National Association of Black Journalists. Perhaps the saddest moment was when – presumably knowing where he was — Trump delivered himself of the pithy pearl that… “A lot of the journalists in this room are — Black”.
The 30 minutes which followed were full of insults, hatred and lies, Trump tried to cast doubt on Kamala Harris’s racial identity; claimed again that immigrants are taking ‘Black jobs’ (whatever those are); and that he was the best president ever for African Americans. One of the moderators at the event, Rachel Scott, subsequently began to receive death threats — presumably because she (like Harris) does not see the world as cult members do.
To end, we see yet another plank of fascism in action: intolerance of — and in this case physical harm to — ‘The Other’, which for those on the right in United States means anyone who is not white, preferably male and straight. Last week the fascist governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, signed an executive order which now obliges hospitals in the state to get the immigration status of patients seeking help and treatment.
~ Louis Further
Photo: Wikimedia commons CC BY-SA 2.0
