Re: <nettime> This is what fascism looks like

David Garcia is right, it's time to get out the vote. Ted Byfield is also right: that might not help.

US residents - scroll over the next 2 paragraphs to skip stuff you know.

People outside the country may not understand. Concern over electoral fraud went through the roof when Democrats realized that the new Postmaster General, a Trump mega-donor named Louis DeJoy, was carrying our organizational changes and ordering equipment removals that caused significant slowdowns in mail delivery. DeJoy has a direct interest in the failure of the public post, since he holds $30 million of stock in postal logistics provider XPO, which could take over for the Post Office. Today, the House of Representatives issued a subpoena for documents about the slowdown that DeJoy had refused to hand over voluntarily. You have to realize that Democrats have successfully pressed for an expansion of voting by mail in most states because of the pandemic, and that they attempted to put more specific voter-reform laws in the first stimulus bill. At the time, Trump said on Fox News: "The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again."

Ted's also right that the concerns go a lot further back. In February 2019 Trump filled the office of Attorney General (head of Justice Dept) with William Barr, a Bush senior veteran who has proven far more loyal to Trump than even the ultra-conservative racist Jeff Sessions. Barr has passed all bounds in defending Trump from multiple legal indictments (essentially for treason). After previous heads of Homeland Security refused to do Trump's bidding, on November 1, 2019, he named as acting director a man named Chad Wolf, who was recently at the center of the deployment of federal agents to Portland, stoking the fires that recently culminated in murder on the streets. These and many other top officials are willing to do anything for the president - and that includes overriding the powers of the Congressional Committees that are supposed to serve as checks on abusive presidential power. We'll see if DeJoy hands over the documents. Previous subpoenas in the context of the Russia case have been simply ignored. Barr consistently proclaims presidential immunity from any legal oversight.

Probably less well known is the fact that in early July an adhoc body known as the Transition Integrity Project "convened a bipartisan group of over 100 current and former senior government and campaign leaders and other experts in a series of 2020 election crisis scenario planning exercises." Basically they war-gamed a number of election and post election scenarios in which Trump contests the election by legal and extra-legal means. This is brilliant to the extent that it shows that people in high places are preparing for the worst, which they find likely. Not so brilliant to the extent that in most scenarios, officials were unable to counteract Trump's moves. Documents and press coverage here:

https://paxsims.wordpress.com/2020/08/04/transition-integrity-project-preventing-a-disrupted-presidential-election-and-transition/

Many people in the United States are highly alienated, for obvious reasons, and what I described yesterday are the first results of Trump's strategy to mobilize his increasingly fascist base by exacerbating the violent protests that have followed the initial grassroots responses to the murder of George Floyd. This installs a heavily racialized extreme right/extreme left binary in place of the earlier amazingly determined movement for structural change. It also serves to place most police forces - often under the de facto leadership of highly belligerent police unions - on what we have to call the fascist side. The aim is threefold: stoke fear and encourage a law and order vote for Trump; drive a wedge between centrist Democrats and more radical Progressives and Blacks; and raise the militias that could prove central in any attempt by Trump to hold onto power.

How we get through this fall is not a rhetorical question, it's a practical one. To speak of a 'general strike' goes in the right direction, but it's still too vague. Coordinated non-violent action across the full range of civil society gives a closer approximation of what may be needed - and that's still way too vague. Ted is absolutely right when he says we will likely have to do things we have never done before. Some serious resources in that direction can be found here:

https://wagingnonviolence.org/2020/08/plan-prevent-trump-election-coup-research

https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/CoupManual11.pdf

Finally if you want to know more about the psychology of authoritarianism, check out these books by Bob Altemeyer, whose work was discussed on nettime way back at the moment of his election. The first one is dead academic serious; the second, timely and galvanizing:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Authoritarian_Specter/i1Q8ZVi4OcIC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Bob+Altemeyer&printsec=frontcover

https://books.google.com/books?id=LYXzDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

That's the way I see it.

Brian

On Tue, Sep 1, 2020 at 9:39 AM tbyfield <tbyfield@panix.com> wrote:

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:

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29 AUG

My $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.

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1 AUG

Here'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. 👍🏼

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29 AUG

https://gizmodo.com/jared-kushner-in-fight-with-telecom-ceos-over-trump-cam-1844486620

This 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?

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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.

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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
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