| tbyfield on Tue, 1 Sep 2020 16:43:41 +0200 (CEST) |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
| Re: <nettime> This is what fascism looks like |
On 1 Sep 2020, at 7:46, d.garcia@new-tactical-research.co.uk wrote:
However nn a boring response to your final three questions is to get out the vote. Given that the most terrible short-term outcome is the re-election of the unspeakable Trump. All those who can walk, crawl ride or drive should fight to get out every last single Democrat vote out. No matter how disappointing and uninspiring the Biden/Harris ticket may be we know its not the worst that can happen to the American polity.We know it won't be enough in and of itself "de-nazify the USA" but in terms of your first imperative which is to “survive the American Autumn”, it will at the very least buy a little time for progressive forces to re-group and find new ways to confront the deep reckoning that is upon us all.
tl;dr: You're right, but...it's a mistake to assume that what's happening now is only, or even primarily, an election. Elections are 'eventual,' in some ways a nostalgic ritual from a bygone world. To understand the current situation requires a sort of parallax view, with one eye on a 'longuer' durée that will run well past Election Day — and, I think, past Inauguration Day.
I've been arguing since Trump was elected, and probably earlier, that he won't leave the White House voluntarily. If it weren't so frightening, it'd be funny to see how many mongers of conventional wisdom have been drifting toward this view lately. But they're like customers, of whom it's said that for every one who complains there are a hundred who don't. Washington is worried, but not nearly enough. In a city that — truly — is dominated by institutions, institutionalism runs deep, so the assumption has been that these edifices would somehow be enough to restrain or remove him.
Over the past few months we've heard Pelosi and Biden say as much, but we also saw Pelosi say that Trump using the White House as the backdrop for his acceptance speech was "not happening." The result: multiple Trumps did exactly that, and the *entire* RNC was designed to look awfully White Housey. The truth is that the Dems are toothless: they barely have half of a half of chamber in the Legislative Branch, slightly less than half of state governorships, and *maybe* a slim majority of the near-minority (~59%) of eligible voters who actually vote. And what they specifically *don't* have is solid support outside of civil government: not in the military or intelligence, not among police, not on Wall Street, and not even in the media. And the Trumps know it. I speak of them in the plural because there are several; and now that they've tasted the blood of dynasty, they won't give it up without a fight. And Trump Sr wants a fight: he lives for numbers, the bigger the better, and he lives in a world where positive is negative and negative is positive. He's already presided over the hundreds of thousands of deaths, and in his mind millions would only make him greater.
But let's get into some specifics about how things may — I think *will* — pan out. Here are a few things I've posted to Facebook (yes I know...) recently:
- - - - - - - - - - - - 8< SNIP! 8< - - - - - - - - - - - - 29 AUGMy $5 says this is what'll happen (because it *is* happening): masses of surprised purged voter registrations, polls shutting leaving impossibly long lines, scrambled and shuttered precincts, vigilante 'poll watchers,' USPS fiascos, delayed counts, bot networks broadcasting outright lies, right-wing outlets amplifying trivial anecdotes and anomalies, an explosion of FUD from Trump, creepy statehouse legal maneuvers to certify sketchy 'results,' a tumble of judicial rulings that are all over the map, legitimate media triangulating wildly, FB and twitter 'performing' empty actions and policies... The net result: IT WILL BE IMPOSSIBLE TO SAY OR PROVE THAT BIDEN WON. And, in the drawn-out absence of that certainty, Trump will crow louder and louder not just that he won but that he won in a landslide. People who challenge that de facto outcome will be cast as sore losers, delusionals, dupes of Russian propaganda, insidious forces aiming to disenfranchise white grievance voters, or — if they somehow mount a serious challenge — treasonous plotters of a coup.
tl;dr: Keep on fighting all the good fights, but don't be fooled into thinking that "election" is the best or only way to understand the mass of what's happening. Elections end and produce results; this one won't. The election underway is just one strand in the Trumps' (plural) strategy. They don't need to win, they just need to not lose — and the way to do that is, as they say, to flood the zone with bullshit.
Are you confident that the Dem leadership — Pelosi and Hoyer in the House, Schumer and Durbin in the Senate, Tom Perez as chair of the party — will be willing to rock the boat hard enough to cut through this clusterfuck? If not, who or what would it take? Street protests won't be enough, so — again — please start thinking deeply and in detail about you and your networks can do that will have real, immediate, and clear impact. We'll all need to take risks like we've never taken before.
- - - - - - - - - - - - 8< SNIP! 8< - - - - - - - - - - - - 1 AUGHere's some hard-core Constitutional phun! You'll have to bear with me — this is worth it.
First: Yes, I know Trump can't unilaterally cancel or postpone the election. That's not happening. But it doesn't need to. The GOP *can* file lots of lawsuits after the election to discredit and/or delay results. If they did so, they'd argue that X outcome isn't conclusive until the courts have *finally* ruled. If they did, what would follow is a period of maddening uncertainty: definitely about particular results, potentially about *all* results, depending on the specifics of the lawsuits. But rather than recite all these mumbo-jumbo caveats, I'll just say "no election*", with an asterisk to remind you that I don't mean it wasn't actually held. It will be.
This paragraph is the cartoon version, which WILL NOT happen — but I need to spell it out in order to get to the real point... In the coming election, *every* Member of the House is up for reelection this year — so if there's no election*, as of Jan 3 there could be no House. None. The Senate has some complicated stuff going on that I can't entirely figure out, including two special elections, one of which will be held on a different date, I think. But of the 33 Senate elections this year, 22 are for seats held by the GOP. If there's no election*, that means the GOP could be reduced from a 53-seat majority to 33 seats, whereas the Dems' 45 seats would be reduced to 33. (I know 22 + 12 != 33. Someone else can solve that mystery.) Mitch McConnell might not have much to say about this because he's running for reelection — so, if there's no election* he wouldn't be a senator. IOW, the Dems could conceivably gain the Senate majority. Trump would still be pres and Pence would still be veep for a few more weeks, from Jan 3 through Jan 20, when their term expires. Pelosi would be out of the picture (remember, no House), so next in line would be the Senate's Speaker Pro Tempore...Charles Grassley, who isn't up for reelection. But a Dem-led Senate would try to elect a new SPT, who'd then have a fairly serious claim to the presidency. 😹
Here's the meat: That kind of cartoon outcome is completely ridiculous, so: yes, I know, NO. But these dynamics are less ridiculous than you might first think. If Trump and the GOP try to bury some or all election results in litigation, they can hardly argue that fraudulent / fake / etc ballots *only* involve the presidency — the litigation would apply up and down the entire ballot. If those lawsuits aren't uniformly, conclusively, and resoundingly resolved by Jan 3, the indeterminacy would also infect the House and Senate elections. And, potentially, which party holds the majority in either chamber.
Will Grassley become president? NO — so put that out of your mind right now. But: If Trump didn't like the results *and* it were entirely up to him, he'd probably argue the entire election was BS. However, it wouldn't be entirely up to him. Instead, lawsuits would be filed by various fractious arms of the GOP, almost certainly on a state-by-state basis — say, because State X had ~liberal mail-in ballot laws or because of some other ginned-up BS. The GOP wouldn't challenge results where they won, would they? And the same applies to the Dems: they'd only challenge states where they lost. But what exactly "lost' means is slippery. It's likely that, in some litigated states, the balloting results would be mixed: for example, Trump loses but GOP House and/or Senate win, etc, etc.
I'll focus on the GOP here. In their cases, the lawsuits might seem haphazard, but their aims would be strategic. They might pay lip service to "Trump really won," but it's more likely that the decisive, pragmatic aim would be "Biden *didn't* win" — not because anyone serious believes he didn't, but because (a) saying so would cast doubt on his legitimacy and mandate, and (b) it could deny the Dems critical gains in the House and Senate: "You don't actually have the majority, so..." Dem suits would be different, but would share some strategic aims.
If these kinds of dynamics erupt, they could cause a complete meltdown in Congress and put excruciating pressure on the federal judiciary — not just to "legislate from the bench" but, in effect, to *elect from the bench*. The Roberts court would try to walk a fine line between kicking the can down the road (say, with Kavanaugh leaking his memos) and desperately needing to resolve this endless judicial loop. This would ensure that *no one* ever again sees the federal judiciary as impartial.
For many murky forces around the world, this kind of total political catastrophe in the US would smell like napalm in the morning. That means there's a widespread, *open* incentive to drive this kind of BS with botnet mayhem about "fake election results," "fake Congress," "judicial corruption," etc, etc. Cleanse your mind of the idea that this is all Putin — it isn't. And ultimately it doesn't matter who it is, because we'll never know and can't do much about it. It could be a confluence of quasi-GOP and/or quasi-Dem actors, Russia, China, Iran, miscellaneous basement trolls and nihilists, and who know who (or what) the fuck else or why. But the net result would be full-scale "Constitutional" chaos: Dems shouting that the GOP doesn't "really" run the Senate, and the GOP shouting that Dems don't "really" run the House, or vice versa. If Biden "really" wins, x>30% of the US won't *really* believe it and countless botnets will rant on social media and by SMS that Trump is the "real" president; if Biden loses, it’ll be a variation on that, but with more street activists and fewer botnets.
Welcome to 2021. 👍🏼 - - - - - - - - - - - - 8< SNIP! 8< - - - - - - - - - - - - 29 AUG https://gizmodo.com/jared-kushner-in-fight-with-telecom-ceos-over-trump-cam-1844486620This story is framed as being about the election, about big telcos and wonky FCC policies, about Kushner, etc, but it's also about something else. Twitter has put Trump on notice that when he or his campaign go too far, they'll clamp down. So far, that's only taken the form of after-the-fact warnings attached to his tweets, but the clear implication is that they can shut his account down — and have the internal structures needed to to do so on a moment's notice. This fight over text spamming is a sign that Trump's people recognize that. They're focusing on building an alternative way to broadcast to their followers, and on defeating any mechanisms that could prevent them from spamming without limit. With that in mind, try reading this passage in a way that *isn't* about wonky telecom policy:
/// In what seems like a violation of voluntary telecom industry guidelines, many of the messages reportedly contain no option for recipients to unsubscribe from the president’s hellhole contact list and are being sent to people who never actually signed up in the first place. One seen by [Business Insider] reads:
Hi it’s Pres. Trump. I need your help ASAP to FIGHT BACK against the radical left & take back my majority. Take a stand NOW.
About a million of the texts went through, according to Politico, in what was supposed to be a test run before the general election begins. A similar dust-up in the crucial period immediately preceding election day, however, could sabotage a candidate’s campaign. ///
But who says it'd have to be before the election? Why not after it? Shouting about how it was RIGGED, the results are fake, the Dems are TRAITORS, it's a COUP, etc. Would it work? Not really — but it depends on what we mean by work, doesn't it?
- - - - - - - - - - - - 8< SNIP! 8< - - - - - - - - - - - - 22 JULY https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-22/philly-d-a-threatens-to-arrest-federal-agents[Philadephia reform-oriented prosecutor Larry] Krasner is a star, and this is great. But this is also how things can go next-level, right? Awkward face-offs between armed forces over 'jurisdiction,' which is a fancy name for territory. And, if it wasn't clear yet, yes, PDs *are* armed forces. It wouldn't be surprising to see a few other prosecutors take the same line as Krasner, but just a few. If there are any face-offs, however 'civil' they may turn out, it'll nonetheless be interesting to see how PDs present themselves — say, in 'militarized' gear we hear so much about, or in de-escalatory, traditional police uniforms? That, in itself, might say something about the sympathies of the police. For example, in NYC I'd expect the NYPD to all but ally itself with federal troops. Note that I haven't anything about anyone getting hurt.
The fact that we're reaching a point where considerations like that take fairly concrete form means that things already are next-level, in some ways. And, despite the recent flurry of 'postmature anti-fascism' from the Serious Squad, very few have really grokked just how bad things have gotten. And they'll get worse not better.. The cities that Trump has singled out for federal intervention — New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Milwaukee — are pretty chocolate cities, at least in the mind of someone who's cognitive framework froze in about 1981. This makes it plainly clear that Trump's strategy, electoral *and otherwise*, is to escalate racial conflict around country, in full knowledge that it could blow up into open civil conflict. No, it wouldn't look like the capital-T The Civil War, but that didn't look like earlier conflicts either, did it? Leave reenactments of the past to Colonial Williamsburg and its ilk. This is the future, and it'll be new and different.
So, now, who's going to splain to me about how the sparks of a civil war in the US are just the fever dreams of the radical fringe? Or about how Trump would never 'really' try to overstay his welcome in the WH? What, he's going to try to use unaccountable paramilitary forces to spur civil conflicts around the country and then gracefully step down because, after all, the peaceful transition of power is what matter most? Or how Pelosi, with a small majority in half of Congress, has the authority to muster those true, patriotic professionals who'll risk everything to drag a sitting president from the WH? How about the courts? Well, as the saying goes, how many divisions does Roberts have? One thing's for sure: fewer than Barr does. "BUT PEOPLE WON'T STAND FOR IT!" you say? Sorry, the majority *will* stand for it — because it starts small, in 'pockets,' because it looks like other things they've seen for decades, because I mean really what do you expect, because it won't directly affect them, because it's frightening, because chaos. And a pretty big chunk of that majority will actively cheer it on.
So, like I said earlier, it's getting time to start thinking seriously about what you won't stand for under any circumstances. It was always a good idea, but now it might 'really' matter. Even for you.
- - - - - - - - - - - - 8< SNIP! 8< - - - - - - - - - - - -I could cut-and-paste dozens more, but why bother? The only thing that matters is how challenges to Trump's self-reelection could be made, if not legitimate, at least forceful enough to command respect? 'The Resistance' protesting in 'the streets' won't be enough. So what would? The only answer I can see is a general strike; but at a time when the US will be facing many winters, real and metaphorical — cold, maybe bitterly cold months, a pandemic, a depression, and more — it's hard to see how such a thing could reach the critical mass needed to prevail.
Cheers, Ted # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: