Trump Allies Attack and Intimidate Journalists

Taking another page from the Nazi regime in Germany in the early 1930's, Trump minions and sycophants are now actively targeting journalists and legitimate news outlets that report on the misdeeds and corruption of Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer on this blog, and his cronies and cabinet officials.  The goal is to intimidate the press and impose a form of self-censorship that is a direct attack on democracy and the role of the free press in exposing official corruption and wrongdoing.  Anyone who cares about democracy and the U.S. Constitution should be very afraid of what this organized campaign says about Trump's contempt for the rule of law and desire to rule as an authoritarian. Do NOT fall for Trump's claims that he is not directly involved in this effort. Here are highlights from the New York Times, one of the targeted news outlets, on this dangerous and sinister development:

A loose network of conservative operatives allied with the White House is pursuing what they say will be an aggressive operation to discredit news organizations deemed hostile to President Trump by publicizing damaging information about journalists.

It is the latest step in a long-running effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to undercut the influence of legitimate news reporting. Four people familiar with the operation described how it works, asserting that it has compiled dossiers of potentially embarrassing social media posts and other public statements by hundreds of people who work at some of the country’s most prominent news organizations.

The group has already released information about journalists at CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times — three outlets that have aggressively investigated Mr. Trump — in response to reporting or commentary that the White House’s allies consider unfair to Mr. Trump and his team or harmful to his re-election prospects.

The research is said to extend to members of journalists’ families who are active in politics, as well as liberal activists and other political opponents of the president. . . . . Some involved in the operation have histories of bluster and exaggeration. And those willing to describe its techniques and goals may be trying to intimidate journalists or their employers.

[A]mong the central players in the operation is Arthur Schwartz, a combative 47-year-old conservative consultant who is a friend and informal adviser to Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. Mr. Schwartz has worked with some of the right’s most aggressive operatives, including the former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon.

“If the @nytimes thinks this settles the matter we can expose a few of their other bigots,” Mr. Schwartz tweeted on Thursday in response to an apologetic tweet from a Times journalist whose anti-Semitic social media posts had just been revealed by the operation. “Lots more where this came from.”

The information unearthed by the operation has been commented on and spread by officials inside the Trump administration and re-election campaign, as well as conservative activists and right-wing news outlets such as Breitbart News. In the case of the Times editor, the news was first published by Breitbart, immediately amplified on Twitter by Donald Trump Jr. and, among others, . . .

The Trump campaign said it was unaware of, and not involved in, the effort, but suggested that it served a worthy purpose. “We know nothing about this, but it’s clear that the media has a lot of work to do to clean up its own house,” said Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s communications director.

The campaign is consistent with Mr. Trump’s long-running effort to delegitimize critical reporting and brand the news media as an “enemy of the people.” [Trump] The president has relentlessly sought to diminish the credibility of news organizations and cast them as politically motivated opponents.  Journalism, he said in a tweet last week, is “nothing more than an evil propaganda machine for the Democrat Party.”

[U]sing journalistic techniques to target journalists and news organizations as retribution for — or as a warning not to pursue — coverage critical of [Trump] the president is fundamentally different from the well-established role of the news media in scrutinizing people in positions of power.

“If it’s clearly retaliatory, it’s clearly an attack, it’s clearly not journalism,” said Leonard Downie Jr., who was the executive editor of The Post from 1991 to 2008. Tension between a president and the news media that covers him is nothing new, Mr. Downie added. But an organized, wide-scale political effort to intentionally humiliate journalists and others who work for media outlets is.

A. G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The Times, said in a statement that such tactics were taking the president’s campaign against a free press to a new level.  “They are seeking to harass and embarrass anyone affiliated with the leading news organizations that are asking tough questions and bringing uncomfortable truths to light,” Mr. Sulzberger said. “The goal of this campaign is clearly to intimidate journalists from doing their job, which includes serving as a check on power and exposing wrongdoing when it occurs. The Times will not be intimidated or silenced.”

In a statement, a CNN spokesman said that when government officials, “and those working on their behalf, threaten and retaliate against reporters as a means of suppression, it’s a clear abandonment of democracy for something very dangerous.”

A Russian Reporter Beats the Kremlin

In what might be a cautionary tale for Donald Trump - assuming he watched anything but Fox News - in terms with is treatment of the free press can be found in perhaps the most unlikely place: Vladimir Putin's Russia. Putin has long sought to silence the independent press, especially when the press seeks to expose the corruption that defines Putin himself, not to mention his cronies and fellow oligarchs.  For Fox News viewers, an oligarch is a very rich (and often unscrupulous if not criminal) business leader with a great deal of political influence.  In standard Putin form, he had journalist Ivan Golunov arrested in early June on fabricated drugs charges in an effort to silence his reporting on the dirty and likely criminal behavior of Putin cronies.  What Putin likely did not count on is the public backlash to Golunov's arrest which forced the charges to be dropped and Golunov to be released (personally, if I were Golunov, I'd lease the country ASAP before he can be mysteriously murdered on Putin's orders).  Putin's Russia is the image of how Donald Trump sees himself and how he wants to be above the law. Golunov's release suggests that perhaps Trump should consider rethinking his game plan. I believe a majority of Americans are not racist, brain dead Trump supporters.  At some point, they will cease believing his lies.  A piece in Politico looks at Putin's - and by extension, Trump's - miscalculation.  Here are highlights:

MOSCOW—The men who ordered the arrest of Ivan Golunov in early June on fabricated drugs charges can have had no idea how his name would be known to millions within just a few hours and overshadow the speeches of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum the same weekend.

The reaction was so strong—from street demonstrations in Moscow to three daily newspapers sharing the same front page to protest Golunov’s arrest—that the authorities actually backed down on June 11, just five days after taking him into custody. Charges against Golunov were dropped and the Ministry of Interior announced it was suspending the police officers involved.

Why the big fuss? After all, Golunov is not a celebrity, still less a political heavyweight. He’s a journalist, well-known, before last week, only to a small circle—amongst whom I am proud to include myself, as I have known him for 15 years. The police who seized him surely reckoned he was a nobody they could detain quite brazenly.

That was a big mistake on their part. In fact, it was Golunov’s unassuming modesty that propelled the kind of protests that Russia has not seen for years.

Golunov did his journalistic work with quiet professionalism and did not befriend Russia’s big shots. His work spoke for itself. That is precisely why so many ordinary Russians came out to support him. Seeing what happened to a professional doing his job, they understood with frightening clarity their own defenselessness vis-à-vis the Russian state’s security machine.

Golunov’s work touched on sensitive topics, to be sure. He had investigated state procurements and those dark corners of Russian government business where officials worked with criminals under the protection of the security services: the lucrative cemetery business, the commercial dealings of the Russian Orthodox Church, how the Moscow’s mayor offices procured building materials for street renovation.

Despite the grim information he uncovered, Golunov is not one of Russia’s classic “opposition journalists.” If one of the threads he was pulling at led to Putin, Golunov would name him for sure, but he is not in the business of unmasking the whole of Russia’s ruling regime, as some others are.

This is why his arrest for drug possession on June 6 sent a chill through many ordinary citizens. Not every Russian feels like fighting against the Putin regime. But literally every one of them feels defenseless against the police and intelligence services, knowing how they can use the trick of planting drugs on a person to make him lose his job or business or ruin his life in just a few minutes.

In 2004, 40,000 people were in jail in Russia on various drugs charges. Today that number stands at an immense 140,000, 80 percent of whom have confessed to possessing drugs, often in private and uncontested hearings. Amazingly, the accused always seem to possess just the right amount of narcotics to make them eligible for criminal prosecution.
Alleged drug possession is now a way that officials can extract a bribe, confiscate a business, force someone to emigrate or simply to keep silent. (This is not to say that drug addiction is not a serious problem in Russia—it is).

In other words, Ivan Golunov’s story—with what looks like a happy ending on June 11—should not be read as another tale of Russia’s Westernized liberals fighting the regime. The whole Russian media community rose up to defend him, including journalists from pro-government outlets such as RT.

[T]his issue is bigger than being for or against Putin. It has galvanized everyone, from the businessman to the journalist to the Central Asian guest worker who feels unprotected by the law in today’s Russia.

Now that Golunov is free and several senior policemen are being punished, it’s not just the editors who “want blood,” a large segment of society wants it too. They want to see the higher-ups who dreamed up this abominable episode held to account and arrested.

In Italy, the murder of anti-mafia investigator Giovanni Falcone in 1992 caused such public revulsion that it became a turning point in the fight against the Mafia. The protest against Golunov’s arrest has a similar feeling about it—Russians want to be rid of the mafia-like grip the security services have over their everyday lives. That is on their minds much more than a fight for true democracy. Although winning the battle for one might eventually pave the way to the other.

While has tried nothing like what Putin tried, I suspect he would if he could.  An narcissistic authoritarian in high office is a danger to every law abiding, morally decent citizen. 

Trump, the "Lying Press" and the Nazis

As noted many times on this blog, history has many lessons it can teach us.  Most importantly, it can warn us of dangerous trends and individuals, provided we are willing to listen and not blinded by our own closed mindedness, prejudices, and often intellectual laziness.  A professor of modern German history and European History at the University of Louisiana has a piece in Salon that focuses on Donald Trump's endless lies and, more frighteningly, his attacks of the press as he pushes an authoritarian agenda, seeks to diminish American institutions and marginalize and demonize anyone who opposes him or simply reports the truth.  The parallels with Hitler's Nazi Germany are disturbing although one historian friend views Trump more as a Mussolini as opposed to a Hitler.  Let's hope that view proves correct.  Meanwhile, emboldened by Trump's rhetoric and lies, The Independent reports:

In Detroit, an armed white supremacist group called the National Socialist Movement (NSM) descended on the annual Motor City Pride Festival, where they held placards, gave Nazi salutes and displayed armbands with swastikas.

The caption of this post comes from the Salon piece which is a must read.  Here are article highlights:  

At an election rally in Cleveland in October 2016, two supporters of Donald Trump were captured on video shouting, “Lügenpresse!” What was going on? Why would people who are looking to Trump to “Make America Great Again,” be shouting a German word at one of his events? And what did it mean? The “lying press” — an idea at the heart not only of Trump’s campaign and presidency, but of his entire worldview.

The news media, Trump complains, treats him unfairly. It does not report all the positive news about his campaign and then his presidency. Instead, he insists, it lies to the public, publishing what he calls “fake news.”

Within the confines of Trump’s community of supporters, stories critical of Trump are seen as lies, as phony left-wing propaganda. They’re not to be believed. As it turns out, the use of the term Lügenpresse happens to be quite illuminating. It sheds light on a connection between Trump’s political approach and that of Hitler in the 1930s, when one also heard that word used quite often.

The term Lügenpresse has its origins in Germany during the First World War. Initially intended to counter allied propaganda campaigns (a good deal of which we now know to have actually been accurate) the Nazis used it to attack hostile media.

As with so much of Nazi propaganda, the description of an opposition press based on lies was a classic case of projection. Hitler based his whole approach to politics on lies—something he made no secret of, having described his strategy of the “Big Lie” in his memoir, "Mein Kampf." Hitler lied to officials about his party’s use of violence, he lied about his own past, he lied to foreign leaders about his intentions, and, of course, his whole understanding of the world was based on the lie of a global Jewish conspiracy. Truth would never get in the way of Hitler’s goals.

Trump is also a man who has never let the truth get in the way of what he wants to say and who projects his own dishonest nature onto others. And like Hitler, he’s made no secret of the fact that he lies — bragging to a group of Republican donors that he simply made up numbers to argue about trade policy with the Canadian prime minister.

Trump launched his political career, in fact, on a lie: the story that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, and was also possibly a Muslim. And since assuming the presidency his dishonesty has reached breathtaking proportions. In his first 828 days in office, Trump has delivered 10,111 false or misleading claims according to the fact-checkers at the Washington Post. He needed 601 days to reach 5,000, but only 226 to make it to 10,000 — a feat that required an eye-popping average of 23 lies per day. And the topics about which he lies span the spectrum.

And regardless of how often and how definitively they’ve been revealed as lies, he continues to repeat them, over and over.

Once in power, Hitler continued his campaign against the Lùgenpresse. On the one hand, he had the newspapers of his main political opposition — the Communists and Socialists — forcibly shut down. In doing so, the police arrested many of the editors and sent them to concentration camps. . . .  the Nazis often took over the facilities and equipment in order to publish their own papers, and with them, their own version of reality.

Early on this involved an effort to counter foreign papers that reported on the violence and persecution already taking place under the new Hitler government. The regime offered instead its own alternative reality, calling such criticisms and stories “atrocity propaganda.”

Though he has not taken such extreme steps yet, Trump has made clear his desire to restrict and ultimately silence critical media sources. One of the more common themes of his Twitter activity involve attacks on various news outlets as “fake.” He repeatedly calls out and attacks journalists for critical reports or for not complimenting him. He’s belittled and denigrated reporters such as Katy Tur, Megyn Kelly and Mika Brzezinski, referred to Don Lemon as “the dumbest man on television,” called CNN a network of liars, and actually ordered one CNN correspondent out of the White House for asking a question he didn’t like.

[T]he Justice Department told Time Warner in November 2017 that it would not receive approval for its planned merger with AT&T unless it sold off CNN, a network that’s been a frequent target of Trump’s ire. The message is clear. If a media company wants fair treatment when it comes to regulations or approval of prospective business deals, it ought to think twice before airing anything critical of [Trump] the President. And this is not the only danger of a government that rejects the truth and peddles in lies.

When a regime camouflages its true actions and intentions in lies and euphemisms, it can provide cover for the most horrifying measures. The Holocaust is a perfect example. Instead of deportations to death camps in German-occupied Poland, the Nazi government spoke of "relocations" and "work camps" in the east. . . . For those who did not want to know the truth of what was really happening to their former neighbors and fellow citizens, they could choose to believe the rhetoric. How many people would want to believe that their own government was systematically murdering millions of unarmed men, women and children in their name? It was much easier on their conscience to choose a more palatable reality and therefore that much easier to justify doing nothing to stop it.

At its heart, the use of "fake news" by the Trump Administration is illiberal, anti-democratic, and in fact, authoritarian. Dismissal of critical news as “fake” implies that criticism of the president is illegitimate, inappropriate and even unpatriotic. It serves to confuse. . . . . Trump’s attempts to obliterate reasonable understanding of truth give rise to such confusion and hesitation. And hesitation allows him time to consolidate his power.

Assaults on the truth also serve to divide. On one side they pit those who choose to believe the president and therefore do not accept the reality of any news outlets critical of him. On the other side are those who understand the role of journalism in a democracy and can discern true stories from false. Those within the boundaries of the Trump media world see those fake news" purveyors — and their consumers — as hindering the president and actively working against him. They are, as Donald Trump himself so shockingly asserted in February of 2017, “the enemy of the American people.” Should anyone be surprised then when a man calls into CNN to deliver racist diatribes and threatens to “gun you all down?” Or that someone would actually deliver on such threats? Should anyone have been surprised when a gunman opened fire in the newsroom of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, in June 2018?

The point at which politics shifts from truth to lies, from opponents to enemies, is the point at which democracy dies.

What Really Makes Trump Scary

Stocks Suffer Worst Year Since 2008 Banking Crisis.

Just hours ago Americans across the country welcomed in the new year with thoughts and wishes of peace, good health and happiness for the year ahead for themselves and others.  Yet at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the principal occupant cares nothing about the nation or its population.  Instead, it is all about him - protecting his corrupt business empire, milking his position to enrich himself, and stamping out investigations that could well expose him as a traitor. Trump is a metastasizing cancer on the USA and the future of millions of Americans is fraught with danger from the impulsive and dangerous actions of a malignant narcissist who cares nothing for anyone but himself.  If pushed, I suspected he'd throw his own children under the bus.  The question circles back to when and under what circumstances Congressional Republicans, particularly those in the U.S. Senate will belatedly decide that Trump is a danger that must be eliminated by whatever means necessary.  A piece at CNN looks at just a portion of the damage being wrought against Americans.  Here are excerpts:

And so it continues. With no end in sight to the government shutdown, President Donald Trump, who rightly said a government shutdown should be blamed on the White House, now seems unwilling to accept responsibility.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of innocent government workers -- Democrats, Republicans and Independents -- are being forced to go without the paychecks they need to feed, house and clothe their families. (These are government workers who, by the way, Trump decided will not receive any pay raise in 2019.) And millions of citizens nationwide are being forced to go without some of the government services on which they may depend. It increasingly appears he is acting in his own, putting America and Americans second.  Let's take a look at a few recent examples of this "Trump first" approach at play: Withdrawal of US troops from SyriaNo one likes the idea of putting US troops in harm's way, especially in the midst of what seems like an unwinnable war thousands of miles away. That said, our armed forces are in Syria for a good reason: to eradicate an avowed enemy that seeks to destroy us -- ISIS.  Trump made a unilateral choice, which shocked our political and military establishment, as well as our allies abroad -- but delighted our chief international adversary, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Given that the threat of ISIS still remains, it appears Trump's decision is more motivated by a desire to fulfill a campaign promise than to ensure the safety of the American people at large. Also, if the United States leaves, ISIS could well be able to reactivate with few, if any, interruptions from enemy forces, and that certainly will not be in America's national security interests. Intentionally undermining pillars of democracy
Trump's incessant criticisms of the press and our system of justice are so frequent that some may be getting numb to their poisonous effects. But a democracy cannot exist without these two pillars.  Trump does not seem to care. A muzzled press and a corrupt justice system are hallmarks of authoritarian regimes. That Trump seeks to intimidate and corrode public confidence in these pillars of democracy is -- to use one of his favorite words -- a disgrace.
 But Donald Trump knows both institutions are devoted to pursuing the truth about him, his businesses and his presidential campaign. That seems to scare him, so his attacks are unlikely to let up any time soon. His personal interests are best served by a lack of public confidence in the press and in the justice system. The heck with what is best for the country.
 Endangering the smooth working of free marketsAdd Wall Street to the list of institutions Trump appears to no longer respect. In his sights is the very essence of our economic system: the stock market. He is making it virtually impossible for anyone to know in what to reliably invest.
 [H]e has taken the highly unusual step of publicly criticizing his hand-picked chairman of the independent Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, whom he appointed just last year -- saying he was "not even a little bit happy" with him. In fact, according to CNN sources, Trump has even asked about the legality of firing Powell, which only adds to instability and uncertainty in the marketplace. No one should be surprised at Trump putting himself first. After all, he campaigned on being a disruptor, and clearly much of the country welcomed that approach. He and his supporters seem to relish his eschewing of "presidential norms." But this pattern of Trump putting his interests before the country's could not be more at odds with what a president is supposed to do.  Indeed, the one norm to which every president must adhere is putting the American people first.
 That means supporting -- not seeking to destroy -- what makes our country great, even if doing so is at his own expense. Recent actions by Trump provide legitimate reason to question if, whenever the government comes back to full strength, that will be his priority. On that there can be no compromise. Ever. Our survival depends on it.

Trump Celebrates Assault Of Reporter

Donald Trump has been an apologist for the brutal Saudi regime that by all evidence had Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi murdered and dismembered. And, as the Washington Post is reporting, Trump supporters have mounted a whispering campaign against Jamal Khashoggi that is designed to protect President Trump from criticism of his handling of the dissident journalist’s alleged murder by operatives of Saudi Arabia. These efforts include highlighting his association with the Muslim Brotherhood in his youth and raising conspiratorial questions about his work decades ago.  The goal?  To telegraph the message that his murder was justified.  It is all part and parcel with Trump’s contempt for the free press which is the last backstop to keeping dishonest politicians and authoritarians honest and accountable.  If you doubt this, look at Trump's praise for Congressman Greg Gianforte's physical assault on a reporter at a rally last night in Montana.  Just as frightening, the crowd cheered.   All of this is reminiscent of Hitler's war against the free press as he rose to power - as is the behavior of far too many Americans who ought to know better if they are the moral people they pretend to be.  Here are highlights from ABC News on Trump's foul behavior:

Donald Trump kicked off a western tour in Montana on Thursday ostensibly to support Matt Rosendale as he attempts to unseat Sen. Jon Tester, but it was his praise for Congressman Greg Gianforte's physical assault on a reporter that stole the show.

Gianforte is running for re-election as the state’s lone seat in the House of Representatives, and made national headlines during a special election for assaulting a reporter in a moment caught on audio tape.

"Any guy that can do a body slam, he is my type!" Trump said to cheers.  "I was in Rome with leaders when I heard about it, and I heard that he body-slammed a reporter," Trump said.  Trump said he was afraid Gianforte would lose after the moment, but then recalled, "Wait a moment, I know Montana."

Gianforte pleaded guilty and was sentenced to community service for the incident. He apologized on the night of his election victory, saying, "When you make a mistake you have to own it."

For Trump, the Montana Senate race is personal. Trump came to Montana on the attack against Tester, a two-term Democratic senator, who is in a close race against Matt Rosendale, the current state auditor.

[Trump] The president has made it his mission to unseat Tester, whose office publically released information about alleged misconduct that led to White House physician Adm. Ronny Jackson’s failed nomination to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs. Jackson denied allegations of misconduct and that he overprescribed medications, but eventually withdrew his name from consideration. Trump never forgot.

[Trump] The president spoke at length about immigration and falsely said that Democrats are supporting a caravan of immigrants traveling up from Central America. . . . “As you know, I’m willing to send the military to defend our Southern border if necessary all because of the illegal immigration onslaught brought by the Democrats because they refuse to acknowledge or to change the laws -- they like it,” Trump said. While Trump comfortably won the Big Sky state by 20 points, Tester, a moderate Democrat, maintains a slight lead in what has become one of the most expensive political contests in the small state’s history as millions of dollars have poured into Montana. It’s the president’s third trip to Montana, and Tester is only a few points ahead of Rosendale in recent polls.

Praising violence against journalists and playing on racial hatred - all perfectly fine with Trump supporters, including evangelical Christians who like the Pharisees of the Bible make a show of their feigned religiosity even as they betray Christ's message.  

Homeland Security Will Collecting Data on Journalists

In follow up to the previous post and the growing dangers of a revival of fascism, Bloomberg has a piece reporting on a new operation by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.  In a move that could have legitimate benign purposes yet is also reminiscent of what the Bolsheviks did following the October Russian Revolution and what Hitler did during his rise to power, the Homeland Security will start collecting data on hundreds of thousands of journalists, media outlets and even bloggers.  While useful in identifying anti-American foreign efforts and Russian derived "fake news," the action is fraught with potential abuse.  Yes, the effort could be useful to even identify terrorist operatives, it could also be used to harass, censor or silence those simply reporting the truth and/or those critical of Der Trumpenführer regme which describes any critical pieces as "fake news" regardless of their accuracy and truthfulness.  A fress press is the number one threat to would be dictators.  Here are article highlights: 

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security wants to monitor hundreds of thousands of news sources around the world and compile a database of journalists, editors, foreign correspondents, and bloggers to identify top “media influencers.”

It’s seeking a contractor that can help it monitor traditional news sources as well as social media and identify “any and all” coverage related to the agency or a particular event, according to a request for information released April 3.

The data to be collected includes a publication’s “sentiment” as well as geographical spread, top posters, languages, momentum, and circulation. No value for the contract was disclosed.

“Services shall provide media comparison tools, design and rebranding tools, communication tools, and the ability to identify top media influencers,” according to the statement. DHS agencies have “a critical need to incorporate these functions into their programs in order to better reach federal, state, local, tribal, and private partners,” it said.

The DHS wants to track more than 290,000 global news sources, including online, print, broadcast, cable, and radio, as well as trade and industry publications, local, national and international outlets, and social media, according to the documents. It also wants the ability to track media coverage in more than 100 languages including Arabic, Chinese, and Russian, with instant translation of articles into English.

The request comes amid heightened concern about accuracy in media and the potential for foreigners to influence U.S. elections and policy through “fake news.”

The DHS request says the selected vendor will set up an online “media influence database” giving users the ability to browse based on location, beat, and type of influence. For each influencer found, “present contact details and any other information that could be relevant, including publications this influencer writes for, and an overview of the previous coverage published by the media influencer.”

A department spokesman didn’t immediately return a phone call and email seeking comment.

I have no faith in the current Trump/Pence regime not to put such information to nefarious uses.

Americans Still Allow Themselves to Be Played for Fools by Russia

With the information set forth in the indictments on Friday of 13 Russian nationals and 3 Russian companies, there should be little questions in the minds of sentient Americans that (i) Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election, and (ii) that Russia wanted a Trump victory because it viewed Trump as more friendly to Russia and/or more likely to destroy America's institutions.  Yet many - including almost all of the anchors on Fox News, a/k/a Faux News, a/k/a Trump News, continue to do precisely what Putin wants: breeding distrust of the government in general and the FBI, CIA and the judiciary in general.  It is also telling that the Russian effort sought to bolster the campaigns of Bernie Sanders (will Bernie supporters ever admit they were played?) and Jill Stein who personally, I suspect colluded with Putin.  Lastly what is disturbing is House Republicans - think Devin Nunes - who seem to be playing directly into Russia's hands and fulfilling Russian goals of destabilizing America.  A column in the New York Times looks at Putin/Russia's objectives.  Here are excerpts:

It’s a Hollywood cliché that’s been adopted by villains from the trickster god Loki in Marvel’s “The Avengers” to James Bond’s “Skyfall” nemesis Raoul Silva: They are captured, only for the heroes to realize — too late! — that being caught was part of the villain’s evil plan all along. With Friday’s release of an indictment detailing Project Lakhta — the information operations component of Russia’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election — it’s worth asking whether President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has been reading from a similar script. 

If there were any lingering doubts that Russia’s intervention was aimed at harming Hillary Clinton’s campaign and bolstering Donald Trump’s, an internal directive quoted in the indictment spells it out explicitly: “use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump — we support them).”

That Russia should have preferred Mr. Trump’s victory to Mrs. Clinton’s is hardly a surprise: The real estate mogul had long been open in his fawning admiration for autocratic leaders generally and Mr. Putin in particular. But in any game of strategy, the best moves are those that accomplish multiple objectives. Friday’s indictment should serve as a reminder that Project Latkha didn’t merely aim to influence the outcome of the election, but also its tone, and Americans’ attitudes toward their own democratic institutions.

There’s a critical back story to Russia’s interference: A longstanding Kremlin grudge against Mrs. Clinton, cemented in 2011 when, as secretary of state, she cast doubt on whether Russia’s parliamentary elections, plagued by allegations of fraud and vote rigging, had been “free and fair.”

The bulk of the Russian team’s online trolling efforts were directed at Mrs. Clinton, but the indictment notes that they also took aim at other Republican candidates; Mr. Trump, Bernie Sanders and the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, were spared. The trio had something more than opposition to Mrs. Clinton in common: A central theme of their campaigns was that the American political system is fundamentally rigged — the same claim that had so incensed Mr. Putin.

One of the more memorable stunts the Russian team sponsored — hiring an American to attend rallies dressed as Mrs. Clinton in prison garb, toting an ersatz jail cell — fits the same pattern: She had to be cast not merely as an inferior candidate, but as a criminal who could win only through corruption.

In hindsight, it’s natural to think that Russia’s primary aim was to achieve the upset Trump victory we now know occurred. But if they were relying on the same polls as the rest of the world, they would have regarded that as a long-shot. It seems at least as likely that they hoped a strong showing would position a defeated Mr. Trump as a thorn in Mrs. Clinton’s side, casting a pall over the legitimacy of her administration by fuming publicly about how he had been cheated.

If we run with the hypothesis that Russia’s core goal was to sow doubt about the integrity and fairness of American elections — and, by implication, erode the credibility of any criticism aimed at Russia’s — then the ultimate exposure of their interference may well have been viewed not as frustrating that aim but as one more perverse way of advancing it.

United States intelligence officials themselves have voiced suspicions that Russia intended to be caught. . . . . . If this sounds plausible, we should also consider that our political response, too, may have been part of the plan. With President Trump dutifully refusing to implement retaliatory sanctions imposed on Russia by a large bipartisan majority in Congress, legislators have begun eyeing the online platforms on which so much disinformation spread. “You created these platforms,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, railed at a panel of lawyers for Google, Facebook and Twitter in November, “and now they’re being misused. And you have to be the ones who do something about it — or we will.”

That would be a final irony, and an unpleasant one. No less than our “meddling” in their internal elections, Russia has long resented United States criticism of the country’s repressive approach to online speech. Their use of online platforms to tamper with our presidential race reads not only as an attack, but as an implicit argument: “The freedoms you trumpet so loudly, your unwillingness to regulate political speech on the internet, your tolerance for anonymity — all these are weaknesses, which we’ll prove by exploiting them.”

Urgent as it is for the United States to take measures to prevent similar meddling in the next election, we should be careful that our response doesn’t constitute a tacit agreement.

Historian: Almost Inevitable that Trump Will Attempt a Coup

Perhaps many of us are growing accustomed to the normalization of the reprehensible and destruction of political norms after 100 days of misrule by Der Trumpenführer, Reichsmarschall Pence, and his propaganda ministers.  As I speculated over the weekend, perhaps Trump lacks the self-discipline and consistent ideology to be another Adolph Hitler.  But one historian sees Trump as a continuing danger to American Democracy.  Timothy Snyder, a professor of history at Yale University, is the award-winning author of numerous books including the recent “Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning,” “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin,” and a new book, "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.”  Snyder, in fact believes that Trump will attempt a coup as he finds himself unable to increase his popularity and unable to pass any meaningful legislation be it good, bad or indifferent.  A piece in Salon looks at why Snyder sees a continuing threat.   It also tells us that we must resist and not dive into the flow or become complacent.  Here are excerpts:

American democracy is in crisis. The election of Donald Trump feels like a state of emergency made normal.

Trump has threatened violence against his political enemies. He has made clear he does not believe in the norms and traditions of American democracy — unless they serve his interests. Trump and his advisers consider a free press to be enemies of his regime. Trump repeatedly lies and has a profoundly estranged relationship with empirical reality. He uses obvious and naked racism, nativism and bigotry to mobilize his voters and to disparage entire groups of people such as Latinos and Muslims.

Trump is threatening to eliminate an independent judiciary and wants to punish judges who dare to stand against his illegal and unconstitutional mandates. In what appears to be a violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, Trump is using the office of the presidency to enrich himself, his family and his inner circle by peddling influence and access to corporations, foreign countries and wealthy individuals.

How long does American democracy have before the poison that Donald Trump and the Republican Party injected into the country’s body politic becomes lethal?

Timothy Snyder, a professor of history at Yale University . . . . explores how the American people can fight back against Donald Trump’s incipient authoritarian regime.

The Greeks understood that democracy is likely to produce oligarchy because if you don’t have some mechanism to get inequality under control then people with the most money will likely take full control.

With Trump, one sees the new variant of this where a candidate can run by saying, “Look, we all know — wink, wink, nudge, nudge — that this isn’t really a democracy anymore.” He doesn’t use the words but basically says, “We all know this is really an oligarchy, so let me be your oligarch.” Although it’s nonsense and of course he’s a con man and will betray everyone, it makes sense only in this climate of inequality.

As I see it, there are certainly elements of his approach which are fascistic. The straight-on confrontation with the truth is at the center of the fascist worldview. The attempt to undo the Enlightenment as a way to undo institutions, that is fascism. . . . . Another thing that’s clearly fascist about Trump were the rallies. The way that he used the language, the blunt repetitions, the naming of the enemies, the physical removal of opponents from rallies, that was really, without exaggeration, just like the 1920s and the 1930s.

In your book you discuss the idea that Donald Trump will have his own version of Hitler’s Reichstag fire to expand his power and take full control of the government by declaring a state of emergency. How do you think that would play out?

Let me make just two points. The first is that I think it’s pretty much inevitable that they will try. The reason I think that is that the conventional ways of being popular are not working out for them. The conventional way to be popular or to be legitimate in this country is to have some policies, to grow your popularity ratings and to win some elections. I don’t think 2018 is looking very good for the Republicans along those conventional lines — not just because the president is historically unpopular. It’s also because neither the White House nor Congress have any policies which the majority of the public like.

Whether it works or not depends upon whether when something terrible happens to this country, we are aware that the main significance of it is whether or not we are going to be more or less free citizens in the future.

My gut feeling is that Trump and his administration will try and that it won’t work. Not so much because we are so great but because we have a little bit of time to prepare. I also think that there are enough people and enough agencies of the government who have also thought about this and would not necessarily go along.

The thing that matters the most is to realize that in moments like this your actions really do matter. It is ironic but in an authoritarian regime-change situation, the individual matters more than [in] a democracy. In an authoritarian regime change, at the beginning the individual has a special kind of power because the authoritarian regime depends on a certain kind of consent. Which means that if you are conscious of the moment that you are in, you can find the ways not to express your consent and you can also find the little ways to be a barrier. If enough people do that, it really can make a difference — but again only at the beginning.

You have to accept there is a time frame. Nobody can be sure how long this particular regime change with Trump will take, but there is a clock, and the clock really is ticking. It’s three years on the outside, but in more likelihood something like a year. In January 2018 we will probably have a pretty good idea which way this thing is going. It’s going to depend more on us than on them in the meantime. Once you get past a certain threshold, it starts to depend more on them than on us, and then things are much, much worse. It makes me sad to think how Americans would behave at that point.

Every day you don’t do something, it makes it less likely that you will ever do something. So you’ve got to get started right away. “On Tyranny” is a suggestion of things that everyone can do. There are plenty of other great ideas from people coming from other traditions, but the basic thing is you have to change your protocol of daily behavior now.

Don’t obey in advance because you have to start by orienting yourself against the general drift of things. If you can manage that, then the other lessons — such as supporting existing political and social institutions, supporting the truth and so on — those things will then come relatively easily if you can follow the first one, which is to get out of the drift, to recognize that this is the moment where you have to not behave as you did in October 2016. You have to set your own habits now.

I hope he's wrong, but I can all to easily see Trump using a national emergency real or manufactured - to seize power, mussel the media and curtail civil rights. 

Trump Wants to Change to Libel Laws to Block Unwanted News

The fragility of Der Trumpenführer's ego seemingly knows few limits - not surprising since he is a malignant narcissist - and now the White House has floated the notion of changing the libel laws so that Trump, in true dictator form, can sue any news out let which reports stories he doesn't like. Namely, stories that (i) tell the truth about him and his endless series of lies and untruths, (ii) they dysfunction that reigns in his regime, (iii) his unpopularity outside of the "basket of deplorables" who make up the bulk of his base, and (iv) his likely - in my view - collusion with Russia.  In the mentally ill word of Trump, anything that doesn't support his detached from reality view of himself is "fake news" while in truth, if anything is fake, it is what spills out of his mouth or onto his twitter feed.  The Guardian looks at this disturbing issue.  Here are highlights:

 A day after Watergate reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward issued a stirring call for the press to hold Donald Trump to account, the president’s chief of staff said the White House is actively considering a change to libel laws affecting news reporting. 

“I think it’s something that we’ve looked at,” said Reince Priebus, appearing on ABC’s This Week. “How that gets executed and whether that goes anywhere is a different story.”

On the campaign trail last year, Trump responded to reporting on his policies and background by floating the possibility of a change to libel laws. Such a move would in reality require a change to the US constitution, which enshrines freedom of the press in the first amendment, the supreme court having ruled on the issue.

Undaunted, the president returned to the theme on Thursday, writing on Twitter: “The failing [New York Times] has disgraced the media world. Gotten me wrong for two solid years. Change libel laws?”

On ABC, Priebus cited “articles out there that have no basis of fact and we’re sitting here and 24/7 cable companies writing stories about constant contacts with Russia and all these other matters”.

Links between Trump aides and Russia affecting the election campaign are the subject of House, Senate and FBI investigations as well as anonymously sourced reporting by major news outlets. Trump has been strongly critical of such reporting, on Russia and other subjects.

Woodward and Bernstein, who won Pulitzer prizes for their exposure of the cover-up of criminal activity by the Nixon White House, spoke at the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington on Saturday night.

Priebus was also asked about Trump’s suggestion that people who burn the American flag should be jailed or have their citizenship revoked. The supreme court has said burning the flag is a form of free speech.

“People need to stand up for our flag,” Priebus said, adding: “It’s something that, again, is probably going to get looked at.”

Trump’s Alternative Reality Rally in Pennsylvania

To celebrate his 100th day in office with not a single legislative success to show, Der Trumpenführer held a campaign style rally in Pennsylvania, one of the states responsible for inflicting Trump on America.  This is Trump's preferred venue since typically only his delusional, reality free supporters show up and he can avoid speaking to the press which has the inconvenient habit of asking hard questions and pointing out the fact that he's lying.  Indeed, during the rally of deplorables, Trump lashed out at the news media and "fake news," even though the only fake news is what comes out of Trump's mouth and the mouths of his propaganda ministers and Republicans in general. The tactic of attacking the free press has long been favored y dictators and would be authoritarians.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the alternate reality of Trump and his very frightening followers.  And yes, there were members of hate groups in open attendance.  Here are excerpts:

President Donald Trump emerged with a wave and a clap of his hands from behind a blue curtain at the Pennsylvania Farm Show and Expo Center in Harrisburg on Saturday night, underneath a sign that read PROMISES MADE PROMISES KEPT.

He wanted, he said, to commemorate his first 100 days in office with the Pennsylvania voters who had helped put him there. But he also, he made clear, intended to provide counterprogramming to the events taking place back in the swamp: the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and the constellation of related events wherein the fake news media and the rest of the Washington elite dresses up and schmoozes from cocktail hour on Friday until hangover brunch on Sunday.

Entering a Trump rally in the year 2017 requires you suspend your critical faculties to a degree, since the people there — most of all the president — seem to be under the impression that the campaign is ongoing, that Hillary Clinton remains Trump’s most formidable foe, and that they are united against the creatures of a swamp controlled by … someone else … it’s not clear who. Several times Saturday night, the crowd chanted, “LOCK HER UP,” seemingly unaware that Clinton retreated long ago into some woods in Chappaqua.

In a less surreal time, the president of the United States would be at the dinner, which supports the White House Correspondents’ Association. . . . . Not showing up, then, was both a fuck-you to the media which Trump publicly pretends to hate and a thank-you to his fans who still believe he is a different sort of politician. One man walked around the floor of the stadium holding a sign that read MY PRESIDENT SKIPPED THE DINNER TO GIVE US OUR DESSERT. He proudly stopped before the press pen to ensure we all got a good look.

“A large group of Hollywood actors and Washington media are consoling each other in a hotel ballroom in our nation’s capital right now. They are gathered together for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner” — he lowered his voice mockingly — “without the president.”

As the crowd erupted in cheers and whistles, he smiled.

“And I could not possibly be more thrilled than to be more than 100 miles away from Washington’s swamp, spending my evening with all of you and with a much, much, larger crowd and much better people, right? Right?”

The space holds more than 7,000, but tickets for the event — like all Trump rallies during the campaign — aren’t sold; they’re offered for free on DonaldJTrump.com, and they aren’t required for admission. And while the crowd was substantial, it didn’t fill the room. Seats remained open in the stands, and space remained available on the floor.

[T]he people in attendance were excited — one man, sporting a long ponytail and a leather vest, turned to the person next to him when Trump started talking. “I love him,” he said. And they provided a stark contrast to the scene back in Washington, where people are dressed in gowns and tuxes and pretending to like each other. Studding the crowd were rather menacing-looking members of Keystone United (previously KSS, or Keystone State Skinheads), which the Southern Poverty Law Center characterizes as a white-supremacist hate group. 

Outside, a man who said he was named Jeff Thomas wore a green Pepe the Frog mask — a symbol of the alt-right — and waved the fictitious flag of “The People’s Republic of Kekistan.”

And while the crowd was animated by Trump’s claims about his accomplishments — executive orders he’s signed, the Supreme Court justice he got confirmed (they chanted “build the wall!” although there is no concrete plan to do so) — they seemed to take the most delight in feeling, finally, a sense of superiority. “

Will Americans Submit to Despotism?

Far too few Americans know accurate history - of America itself, which has many ugly aspects, or of the larger world.  History is down played in public education and many feel that history has no relevant lessons.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  History tells of mistakes made in the past and offers lessons on how to avoid repeating past errors that have all too often led to horrors, including millions of needless deaths and immense suffering.  Sadly, supporters of Der Trumpenführer are either too ignorant or refuse to see frightening parallels between between events in the past and those now overtaking America that range from ceaseless attacks on the free press to  cynical scapegoating of minorities to using "protecting the people" to justify authoritarian behavior. Add to this the endless brainwashing coming from Fox News, a/k/a Faux News, and Breitbart and the scene is set for some Americans to clamor for a strong man dictator.  The question now is whether the majority of citizens will wake up and stop the dangerous trend.  A piece in Salon looks at what must be done to save American democracy.  Here are excerpts: 

President Donald Trump took his rancorous feud with the press to a frightening new level last week when he posted an inflammatory tweet that echoed tyrants of the past, calling the all-caps “FAKE NEWS” media “the enemy of the American People.”

As many were quick to point out, the phrase “enemy of the people” has a disturbing and violent history, and has long been used by totalitarian dictators to foster resentment and hatred of certain groups, and eventually to crush dissent and opposition. The infamous French revolutionary and Reign of Terror apologist Robespierre declared that the revolutionary government owed “nothing to the enemies of the people but death,” while the term was widely used in Stalinist Russia to single out dissidents, who were either imprisoned, executed or sent to the Gulag (in the end, almost all of the original Bolsheviks became “enemies of the people” during the great purge — which in reality meant enemies of Joseph Stalin).

Needless to say, the fact that President Trump thought it was appropriate to use this incendiary language on the free press — long considered the “bulwark of liberty” — is dangerous and alarming, and just the latest manifestation of the Trump administration’s authoritarian tendencies. Just one month into his term, the president has spent most of his time in public scapegoating and demonizing the free press, blatantly lying and espousing conspiracy theories that undermine faith in the electoral system and displaying his contempt for the idea of separation of powers and judicial review.

Trump has surrounded himself with sycophantic enablers and right-wing extremists who appear eager to advance his authoritarian agenda. One of these individuals is the president’s 31-year-old senior adviser, Stephen Miller, a weaselly young man who would be perfectly cast as a Star Wars villain. Last week, Miller made the almost cartoonish assertion that “our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.”

Like the phrase “enemy of the people,” this is the kind of language used by party hacks in a totalitarian state, not a free and democratic society.

Not long ago this kind of rhetoric would have provoked outrage from both sides of the aisle and widespread disapproval from the populace. But today, in our hyper-partisan political landscape, many Americans have instead cheered Trump and his administration’s increasingly dictatorial and undemocratic behavior.

Shortly after the election, Yale historian Timothy Snyder, who recently said that we have “at most a year to defend the Republic,” wrote a chilling article in Slate narrating Adolf Hitler’s unexpected rise to power — without once saying his name — to draw parallels with our current historical situation, and to highlight how the German people quickly fell in line once Hitler had consolidated power and established his totalitarian regime.

One of the many brilliant Jewish intellectuals to flee from Germany after Hitler’s rise, philosopher and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm attempted to explain the shocking spread of totalitarianism in his lifetime with his influential and urgent 1941 book, “Escape from Freedom.” This classic investigation into the psychology of authoritarianism can help elucidate some of what is happening today.

Fromm’s powerful thesis:

If the economic, social and political conditions on which the whole process of human individuation depends, do not offer a basis for the realization of individuality … while at the same time people have lost those ties which gave them security, this lag makes freedom an unbearable burden. It becomes identical with doubt, with a kind of life which lacks meaning and direction. Powerful tendencies arise to escape from this kind of freedom into submission or some kind of relationship to man and the world which promises relief from uncertainty, even if it deprives the individual of his freedom.

It is not hard to see this psychology at work in modern America, where economic inequality has grown rapidly over the past several decades, where livelihoods have been outsourced or automated and where communities have collapsed due to the forces of globalization and the technological revolution, leaving millions of people desperate and isolated. When these economic factors are combined with other factors, including the perceived dangers facing America (i.e., Islamic terrorism) — which are greatly inflated by the mass media and politicians — and cultural/social shifts over the past few decades, the victory of an authoritarian demagogue like Trump becomes less surprising . . .

The danger of the increasingly authoritarian Trump administration is heightened by the growing number of Americans who are now prepared to support a strongman if it means restoring, as it were, “primary ties” that once provided “security and a feeling of belonging and of being rooted somewhere.”

Seventy-five years ago Fromm argued that to counteract this dangerous drive toward authoritarianism, it was necessary to “expand the principle of government of the people, by the people, for the people, from the formal political to the economic sphere.” Democracy, he continued, “will triumph over the forces of nihilism only if it can imbue people with a faith … in life and in truth, and in freedom as the active and spontaneous realization of the individual self.”

Fromm advocated democratic socialism and believed that only a truly democratic society — politically and economically — could stop the dark clouds of despotism. Today, as President Trump rehashes the language of past tyrants, one can only hope that the desire for freedom will triumph over the urge to submit.