Fascism

It’s an open question if Trump and his Project 2025 minions have hearts, but they do understand that hearts and minds are won in our schools and universities—places, Jason Stanley explains, that democratic societies across the world are now ill-prepared to defend against the fascist assault currently underway. How do we punch back at those trying to erase our history to change the future? Maya and Jason talked how to punch up and back!

Mark Jacob writes, "My nominee for chief culprit in the rise of fascism: Rupert Murdoch."

Donald J. Trump was lauded as a political genius for cosplaying as a minimum wage worker at a McDonald’s franchise while The New York Times published an audio interview of Gen. John F. Kelly describing Trump as a fascist and admirer of Hitler. Fox decided to bury the story in a heap of French fries prepared by the same wannabe dictator Kelly was trying to warn the American public about. Everyone clutched their pearls to dust after Kamala Harris called Trump a fascist. Stephen A. Smith verbally mopped the floor with Sean Hannity in an amusing and delightful extended rant.

On October 30, 1939, American Nazis rallied at Madison Square Garden in support of establishing a “white Gentile-ruled United States.” Tonight, Oct. 27, 2024, Donald Trump will rally support for his xenophobic, fascist agenda in that same venue using, as Marshall Curry writes, "symbols of patriotism to whip up his followers against refugees, the press, and religious minorities."

Al From weighs in on the stakes in the closing days of the election: "[Trump's statements of fascination and adoration] should be an anathema to patriotic Americans and should on their own disqualify Trump from ever occupying the Oval Office again."

Today we keep it simple. Trump is actually a fascist, Rick explains why he is an enemy to us all.

Mark Jacob writes: "Journalism isn’t easy, but it’s damn important, and more people in the news industry need to start doing it before they wake up one day and realize that journalism has become illegal."

Fascists want to control what we talk about and how we think about it. To save democracy, we have to weirdify what fascists desperately want to make normal.

For those who don't speak Christian Nationalist, the deeper meaning and even more troubling agenda of Project 2025 is difficult to spot. Christian Nationalism-survivor Andra Watkins is fluent and reveals what every American must understand.

"If you're not already paying attention, you need to be," warns Kristen Du Mez of the deep and dangerous ties between a second Trump term and Christian Nationalism, "What are we looking at if Trump wins the presidency? It won’t be a repeat of his first term. It will be all that and more."

"Even a mass of blackshirts saluting the dead Duce in 2024 does not seem objectionable to the neo-Fascist Prime Minister,"writes Ruth Ben-Ghiat.

Violence is essential to fascism, as Benito Mussolini explained: “fascism does not, generally speaking, believe in the possibility or utility of perpetual peace.”

"(For Matt Gaetz) even the Iowa State Fair, a family event, is fair game: working in calls for violence while people are enjoying themselves is ideal for receptivity. Would you like some Fascism with your pork chop on a stick?," writes Ruth Ben-Ghiat