If they thought that the truth didn't matter

It’s been more than a month since I’ve read through and written about an episode of Gaslit Nation, However, the protests, nasty guy photo op, and police rioting made me want to see what hosts Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa had to say, since they study authoritarian regimes. This episode came out last Wednesday. I’m writing about it today so that I can work from the transcript. The episode is titled Reichstag Fire. A week ago I had written about that term, which refers to an authoritarian regime using an incident as a pretext for cracking down on its enemies.

I’ve been wondering – now that I’ve read about the protests over George Floyd’s death, including how many people, how many cities and towns, and how long they’ve gone on – whether this popular uprising will thwart the authoritarian efforts of the nasty guy, his minions, the GOP, and white supremacists in general. These are signs of hope.

Alas, Kendaior and Chalupa give us a grim view, with a bit of hope at the end.

Chalupa said it is disheartening that after three years of pointing out how the nasty guy is being authoritarian so many people still don’t believe them. The way he is implementing the authoritarian playbook is not at all creative.

Authoritarian history should be a part of civic education worldwide. Citizens should be able to spot the signs of rising authoritarianism.

As a dictator rises there is also a problem of self-censorship in the press. George Orwell wrote *Animal Farm* as a children’s book so that society would see what is happening. But in his time they took it as entertainment, not a warning.

Kendzior and Chalupa have been describing the authoritarianism of the nasty guy since before he was elected. They’ve been dismissed, yet what they’ve talked about is happening. They keep sharing what is painfully obvious to them so that the rest of us are prepared. Because it’s going to get worse.

Putin will help the nasty guy steal the election [amid talk of Dems having a very good chance taking over the Senate and most of the swing states going in Biden’s direction] because if Biden is elected it is accountability time.

Be prepared so that you are not demoralized. One of their tools is to take away our hope, to terrorize us. Stay engaged. Keep art alive. Don’t be cowered into silence. Don’t put a timeline on the end. This could take years. The war is first and foremost in your mind. For help go to the Gaslit Nation action and reading guides.

People, especially public officials, are saying they are surprised at what’s happening. They say that to avoid accountability. If it couldn’t be seen, then it couldn’t be prevented. This is a cover, to change expectations of what public servants are to do, to avoid the obligation to stop it. Kendzior says that includes Speaker Pelosi. Because so many are complacent they are complicit. That feigned surprise also happens over police brutality and white supremacy. White supremacy is the original sin of America and is the root of authoritarianism. That is now showing up as selective genocide through the virus and police brutality.

After reviewing the original Reichstag fire Chalupa said:

So, understand that peace, peace is protection, peace is solidarity, peace is resistance. That's built into the culture of the progressive movement. That's a very long tradition that we stand on.

What Trump desperately needs is us to rip each other apart. He needs a civil war. Putin needs a civil war. There is even documentation going around held up by Russian opposition leaders saying that part of Putin's chaos agents were pitching an idea of helping feed a race war in America to destabilize us, to rip us apart. They want America to break apart into separate states. They want the United States to be over. It's about divide and conquer. It's all been documented. We've been talking about this since the start of the show.

So, peace is protection, peace is solidarity, peace is resistance. That's what organizers are leading with on the ground.

Kendzior said the day after the fire the German constitution was suspended and with it several basic rights. She then talked about rioting in the midst of protests and that it was difficult to tell who the rioters were (though it was clear many were white).

Anyway, that's why it was so convenient for Bill Barr when he came out and announced that “the violence instigated and carried out by Antifa and other similar groups in connection with the rioting is domestic terrorism and will be treated accordingly".

This is such a typical tactic of an authoritarian regime. They will take an amorphous group, they will expand the definition so that it is as wide as humanly possible. They will deem it a terrorist threat, and then they will use that as a pretext to round up anyone, to round up journalists, to round up activists, to round up protesters, to round up bystanders who nearly witnessed atrocities.

Which means anyone who opposes the nasty guy will be labeled as Antifa – and that fits, even though there is no organization by that name because the nasty guy is being fascist and we who oppose him are being anti-fascist or Antifa. Kendzior again:

So, if you've been online like me and Andrea and other scholars of fascism and other opponents of fascism–which you should all be because it's fascism!–then you are going to likely be targeted by this administration. I don't know in what form, but they're going to make this as expansive as possible, and it's just incredibly dangerous on so many levels, first, to have this scapegoat, but secondly, to just openly be declaring, "Yes, we oppose people who oppose fascism. We are fascist."

They are so blatant about this. They have been blatant the whole time. From the minute that Trump announced his platform, which had the classic hallmarks of fascism, of scapegoating minorities, wanting to use excessive military force, claiming that he himself is the government, saying he wouldn't accept the election results–he did that back in 2016, he's going to do it again now.

Because it was so blatant it is disgraceful that people still refuse to see it. And people suffer, including this time journalists.

Kendzior covered Ferguson because she lives in St. Louis. At that time most cops didn’t like being recorded (the rest flaunted their strength) because they didn’t want a DOJ investigation. But AG Eric Holder and President Obama are gone now. And AG Bill Barr and the nasty guy are certainly not going to investigate police violence. As with those at the top police don’t mind being caught, they mind being punished. And who’s going to punish them? That means by October the chaos could be so great the election is suspended automatically.

Chalupa said:

So, one point that we keep making on the show is that in authoritarian regimes, the police, the secret police, are recruiting tools for sadists. All of the sadists find each other. Who do you think was carrying out Stalin's purges? The chief of the secret police at the time was an infamous sadist who liked to torture people personally.

And the nasty guy’s base supports that and loves it.

The Reichstag fire allowed the Nazis to consolidate power. The first concentration camp, Dachau, was opened less than a month later. We already have a growing camp system on our border. Incarcerating migrants is likely a test run for a broader project. Being tested positive for the coronavirus could be an excuse to take people away.

From Chalupa:

So, it's not enough for us to tell everyone how so not racist we are. It's not enough anymore for us to do that. We have to now be anti-racist. We cannot politely condone confederate symbols anymore, considering that they're the equipment of Nazi symbols. We need to stomp out Nazism. We need to stomp out the fascists here on our soil. That needs to end now.

That's what we're witnessing. We're witnessing this confrontation and it's going to be painful. It's going to be scary. It's going to have moments of absolute terror, and it's going to take years. It's not going to go away any time soon, but it's a necessary process that we need to finally undertake. It's a process of healing. It's a process of understanding that black people have been extraordinarily patient. They've been extraordinarily patient, and that's also a theme throughout history.

To me it sounds like they are saying we may finally deal with white supremacy but that dealing with it will be a bloody horror.

When the Tsar was overthrown in early 20th Century it was because Russians had been pushed to the breaking point. The French Revolution happened because women had been pushed to the breaking point. It was the same thing recently in Ukraine.

And now black people in America have been pushed to the breaking point. Because of the economic collapse they have time to protest. Needing to wear a mask in public will help protest safely. Black people have been extraordinarily patient and now have no other choice.

The Reichstag fire (though I think more properly the response to the fire) is the nasty guy wanting to deploy the military into the states. Kendzior has studied authoritarian regimes, including Uzbekistan. In many of these countries there are the police, there are the military, and then there are those who aren’t quite either one. And this is the group the citizens fear.

From Kendzior:

But I'm so appalled, not just that this is happening, but by the lack of any kind of organized response from people who wield far much more political power than us, or more money like Robert Reich from the New York Times, he tweeted, "Where's congress? Where's the Supreme Court? Where are the mayors and governors, living former presidents? Where are the university presidents, foundation heads, religious leaders, corporate leaders, union heads, editors, and publishers? All must stand up to Trump's madness."

Chalupa complains about one particular publisher:

So, the latest from the newspaper of power, from the New York Times, the headline is "As chaos spreads, Trump vows to end it now." Trump IS the chaos. Trump desperately needs chaos in order to steal this election and stay power.

Putin, who helped bring him into power, desperately needs chaos in order for Trump to stay in power, in order to avoid sanctions from the US. So, again, the New York Times, another critical election with democracy on the brink, the New York Times is choosing to be not the newspaper of record, but the New York Times is the newspaper of power.

Kendzior:

So, if you're going to oppose it from within the bounds of Congress, you need to be creative in your own approach. If they're going to do things unconventionally, then you need to do it as well. To just tweet out these little statements like, "Oh, I'm deeply concerned," or "I'm so shocked," it's like, my God! Our country is going to die. We've been very clear about that for the last four years.

People are going to die while fighting for it. This was the point that we wanted to avoid. This is what happens when you have an utter failure of accountability and a failure to even identify reality as reality because you're so concerned with protocol or prestige or maybe there are darker agendas involving blackmail, bribery, donor money, loyalties to other countries above the US, what have you. It's a different situation for everyone.

What I know is you can't go by the book when the book is burning. That is a lesson that Congress has absolutely failed to learn, and they need to learn it now, and they need to learn it fast, because we're already past the bounds of too late.

Chalupa lists the things the nasty guy and Putin have in common:

There's organized crime, there's money laundering, there's attacks on the press, censorship, propaganda, they both incite violence–especially against opposition leaders and the press. They both want to stay in power. They purge. They consolidate power. They encourage sadistic police and law enforcement tactics, and they want a deep state police state, and there's something more.

That something more: They’re both highly racist.

Putin calls for the return of the Soviet Union, yet Russians don’t want to live alongside the people they once colonized. After Putin? Chalupa said:

Once Putin is gone, another autocrat will take his place. Fascism in Russia is not going away anytime soon. Russians will tell you that they need a strong leader. As one Russian-Ukrainian woman explained to me, it's because they fear a return to the volatility of the Yeltsin years when the collapse of communism plunged everything into chaos. They also fear, she says, ethnic minorities rising up against them, the "real Russians", and creating a civil war. Fascism has become a gravity holding Russia together.”

Chalupa urges us to donate to progressive causes. To be in a safer place ten years from now we need to invest in that now. Kendzior adds:

For those who think there's no point in going forward, all is lost, et cetera, et cetera, we still have not only a moral obligation, but an open demonstration that we still do wield some leverage that the people and their power collectively are still a threat. If they thought it wouldn't matter if you voted, they would not work so hard to prevent you from doing it. If they thought that the truth didn't matter, then they wouldn't work so hard to suppress it. If they thought that your right to assembly was no big deal and would yield no repercussions, they would not have these blatant abuses and arrests out in the street.

They fear a critical, independent-minded populous that is relentless, that is relentless in its pursuit of truth, that's relentless in its pursuit of justice, and that makes demands, that doesn't just roll over and lie dead. I don't know what the outcome of this will be, but I know that I'm not rolling over, and I'm not backing off. I know that Andrea isn't backing off either, and I know that our listeners aren't either.

So, if you're listening to this and you feel alone, you're not. There are millions. There are people out in the street. There are people in their homes who can't protest or are afraid to, but are very much of like-mind. We are living under the tyranny of the minority, but we are the majority. We are not the silent majority. We are the loud majority, and we need to keep it even louder in the weeks to come.