Now it’s bare-faced fascism—but doctors are putting up more resistance than Democrats

~ Louis Further ~

As wildfires aggravated by climate collapse swept through the Pacific Northwest, last month a group of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operatives turned up at the site of the ‘Bear Gulch’ blaze in Washington state. Two of those working to save lives and property were seized and ‘disappeared’. Their lawyers were unable to ascertain their whereabouts or work to reverse their illegal abduction by those claiming to ‘protect’ the United States’ southern border two thousand miles away.

A fortnight or so later, the US Supreme Court effectivey legalised institutional racism. Voting six to three, the Court legitimised ICE agents targeting anyone they hear speaking Spanish, or who ‘looks’ LatinX, during raids for suspected immigrants. This is at a time when the same operatives are attacking, abusing, torturing—and even trying to or actually killing guest workers, as they operate from unmarked vehicles and fail to identify themselves.

Trump’s stated aim during the campaign last year—to take revenge on those whom he dislikes, with whom he disagrees, or who tried to curb his actions between 2016 and 2020—is now in full swing. Those who express opposition are being sacked. Those who have spoken out against him are ‘investigated’. CNN even has a ‘retaliation tracker‘. The list grows almost by the day. Last month, a senior State Department official, Shahed Ghoreishi, was fired for suggesting that the Department expressed condolences for journalists killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.

Yet the opposition Democratic Party still does not does not appear to understand or recognise that the MAGA cult is not part of ‘conventional’ party politics. Democrats are proffering no effective resistance—even in the face of the extraordinary moves by Trump and his followers: concentration camps for non-whites; armed forces in the streets to kidnap and traffic non-whites; refusal to act on legal rulings against them; crackpot economic repression and destruction; the advancement of planetary demise through increased use of fossil fuels; mass sacking of workers; and concerted acts of revenge on multiple people and groups.

The reaction of media and politicians to the assassination of homophobic bigot and white-Christian-male supremacist Charlie Kirk epitomised this, dishing out the “Let’s all pull together” Pablum. In the face of his ‘Turning Point USA‘s foul lies and intolerance of transgender youth, black women and—-a huge irony— gun control activists, the left-leaning MSNBC even sacked one of its senior political analysts for offering the necessary context of what this MAGA adjunct stands for. Apparently to highlight ca statement such as “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified’” is too ‘divisive’. Very few outlets (such as Common Dreams) condemned the rush by many on the right to lay the blame on the ‘radical left’ for demonising people like Kirk.

Latter-day eugenics

Alongside the environment, perhaps the most severely-affected area is the health of millions living in the US. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., head of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HSS), is a bigoted MAGA cultist quack with neither experience nor qualifications in public health. He denies both the efficacy and effectiveness of vaccines; his assertions that Covid vaccines are available are being repeatedly proven to be lies.

In the last few weeks Kennedy and his team have destroyed infrastructures in the US which have guided public health policy for decades. For example Kennedy replaced every member of the renowned Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine advisory committee with MAGA loyalists with anti-vaccine delusions.

The state of Florida is removing all vaccine mandates for children after its equally unqualified quack surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo (on whose lunatic policies during the Covid pandemic Freedom reported), chose not to carry out studies on the probable negative impact on public health infrastructure of this move: parents’ “right to choose” is more important. The implications are actually frightening.

The director of the CDC, Dr. Susan Monarez, was sacked after under a month in the job because her vision is “not aligned” with Trump’s and Kennedy’s. Hundreds of workers overseeing public health in government-funded and run bodies have also lost their jobs; or resigned. It will be very difficult, if not impossible, to rebuild such a body of expertise. These agencies are known to be in chaos and decline and morale is very low.

Unusually for such professionals, criticism of MAGA’s and Kennedy’s conduct is rife—with widespread calls for the latter’s resignation. Dr. Kathleen Bachynski, professor of public health at Muhlenberg College, described Kennedy’s comments as “absolute gibberish”, calling him a “dangerous buffoon… [who is] threatening us all.” Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean at Brown University School of Public Health called Kennedy(‘s team)’s onslaught “…wacky, flat-earth, voodoo stuff.”

But this is not mere quackery. Kennedy is on record as saying that his ‘philosophy’ for public health aims to see the fittest survive while the rest go to the wall. By ‘fittest’ he means those with what he calls “superior genes”. These include Donald Trump. He has also claimed that he can tell whether a child has “mitochondrial challenges” by walking past them at a distance in airports. Taken alongside Kennedy’s overt and persistent racism, this is a latter day eugenics seeking to kill off an imagined surplus population—an essential component of the new American fascism.

There are, though, signs of ‘local’ pushback to the lunacy: the Pacific coast states (California, Oregon, Washington) have formed an alliance to try and protect their residents from the sadism of Kennedy/MAGA by providing health guidance and resources independently of the CDC.