The Majority of Voters Have Elected an American Fuhrer

In speech after speech, Trump, JD Vance, and others have spoken as if they will have boundless power after January 20, 2025. They are not wrong.

Ralph Nader
Nov 10, 2024

Common Dreams


On September 17, 1787, the last day after the drafting of our Constitution in Philadelphia, Ben Franklin was leaving the building when a prominent resident, Elizabeth Willing Powel, asked him “Well Doctor, what have we got—a republic or a monarch?” Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

On November 5, 2024, our fragile Republic became a Monarchy-elect. A majority of voters elected a Dictator. This is no exaggeration. Look at just some of the damage Donald Trump has done and the appalling things he has said. In July 2019, he declared, “With Article II, I can do whatever I want as president.” And he did, throughout his four years, he violated all kinds of federal laws and provisions of the Constitution, mostly openly, with impunity. He obstructed justice from the White House as a way of life. He defied over 125 congressional subpoenas. He is a very successful fugitive from justice with lawyers skilled at endlessly delaying judges and courts where federal and state prosecutors have obtained indictments. His convictions and adverse civil verdicts are like water on a duck’s back.

He openly admires foreign dictators and meets with them proudly, musing about wanting to be more like them. Moreover, he is gathering around him a large number of vengeful, dictatorial Trumpsters readying to take over the federal departments and agencies. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, 900-page report prepared a detailed blueprint for the corporate state that is the definition of fascism, American style. Together with Trump, they have their “enemies list” both individually and collectively.

Get ready this January for chaos, revenge, greed, rampant abuses of power, and the unbridled control of corrupt plutocrats and oligarchs. With Elon Musk in the lead.

In speech after speech, Trump, JD Vance, and others have spoken as if they will have boundless power after January 20, 2025. They are not wrong. They control the compliant Republican House and the Senate. The U.S. Supreme Court (6 to 3) decided fanatically last June that a president’s “official” conduct no matter how extreme was immune from criminal prosecution. Three of the justices were Trump’s nominees.

He believes his presidency will be above the law. There is no one to challenge him. Ordinary citizens have no “legal standing” to sue. And as is the practice, he will replace all the federal prosecutors working at the Department of Justice, under the new attorney general whom he chooses.

Trump may be on facts and policies, “dumb as a rock,” “with a low IQ!”—to use his words about other persons, but when it comes to knowing the electorate and the mass media, he is a master magician who induces mass masochism. As with violent climate disruptions are “a hoax, drill baby drill.”

He weaves a web of fantasy about his past failed business and presidential records and constantly repeats his megalomaniac refrain: “Only I can fix it.”

His daily lies often come across to his supporters as a form of entertainment garnished with massaging their own grievances and biases into political campaign fodder. He tells those who think they are victims, that he is their savior. He promises a paradise in America in his next presidential term but doesn’t have a clue about how to get there.

As far as the media, his denunciations of them, “fake news,” and the “failing New York Times,” only result in journalists giving him constant top-level coverage, even repeating in CAPITAL LETTERS his pejorative nicknames for people who are not given a chance to reply in the press.

True, the major newspapers have exposed his numerous dark sides—whether personal against women; commercial against workers, students and creditors; against the government with his tax evasions; or as past president, with his brazen violations of law and overt unethical self-enrichment.

Mark Green and I contributed two books—Fake President: Decoding Trump’s Gaslighting, Corruption, and General Bullsh*t in 2019 and Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All in 2020—about dangerous, corrupt Donald.

However, in the end, nothing stuck or mattered. Do-little Donald’s fulminating lies were embraced by his followers. His slippery Teflon persona was underestimated. Voter acceptance of the Trumpian mirage reflects poorly on the majority of the voters who cast their ballots for him.

Trump did have some crucial luck. A weak, arrogant Democratic Party leadership, loaded with inhibitory corporate campaign money, constrained by corporate conflicted political and media consultants, who control the party’s campaigns and bar input from the experienced citizen community (see, winningamerica.net) made it impossible for the Democratic Party to learn from its past mistakes or its recurring disastrous strategies.

Trump played the Democratic Party, from its bungling nomination process to the anemic Harris campaign like a fiddle—repeatedly, personally, and without a teleprompter, he fed his crowd blatant falsehoods, hateful rhetoric, and delusionary promises. And he gave the middle finger to the “deep state.”

People must realize they are, with all voters, in a two-party duopoly Trap, excluding full access to third-party and independent candidates. No Western country erects, as the USA does, such barriers to ballot access and many other exclusions and endless harassment. (See Theresa Amato’s book, Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny). A competitive democracy we are not. Still, at the presidential level, alternative candidates are often on the ballot if not in the news or in the debates. But most voters want “to be with a winner,” and glumly or willingly accept their electoral incarceration.

Get ready this January for chaos, revenge, greed, rampant abuses of power, and the unbridled control of corrupt plutocrats and oligarchs. With Elon Musk in the lead.

Fascistic states flow into exercises of terror. The majority of the voters have elected an American Fuhrer. Trump will be our founding father’s greatest nightmare. They inserted numerous protections in our Constitution to block another King George III tyrant with their separation of powers and checks and balances. Come 2025 these protections will be shredded.

 UK

What Do You Say to Your Pro-Israel MP?

My local MP answered a letter I signed demanding "no UK arms to Israel"

by Stuart Littlewood / October 30th, 2024

I recently signed a letter drafted by Amnesty UK to MPs which included this message:

“The human rights violations taking place in Gaza have long been at catastrophic levels. Despite knowing this, the UK still hasn’t suspended all transfers of arms to Israel. Stopping some arms isn’t enough, there should be no loopholes and no UK arms to Israel

“The International Court of Justice has warned of a plausible risk of genocide against Palestinians by the Israeli authorities. Continuing to allow some arms transfers is not in line with international legal standards and demonstrates a dire need for accountability in arms transfers.”

Our newly-elected MP John Cooper, a Conservative, replied with the sort of pro-Israel froth we’ve heard many times before from his party. Here are some of his remarks, which presumably represent the ‘party line’, and my own responses….

JC began by saying: “Israel suffered the worst terror attack in its history at the hands of Hamas, and Palestinian civilians continue to face a devastating humanitarian crisis in Gaza. My thoughts are with the families of those still held hostage.”

Stuart Littlewood: What Israel suffered on October 7 last year was nothing compared with the terror, illegal occupation and dispossession inflicted on Palestinian civilians by Israel’s brutal occupation forces for the last 76 years. In the 23 years leading up to October 7, Israelis were slaughtering Palestinians at the rate of 8:1 and children at the rate of 16:1. Actual figures: Palestinians killed by Israelis 10,651 including 2,270 children and 6,656 women; Israelis killed by Palestinians 1,330 including 145 children and 261 women (source: Israel’s B’Tselem).

You seem worried only for Israeli hostages held by Hamas rather than the 7,200 Palestinian hostages, including 88 women and 250 children, languishing in Israeli jails on the day before the attack. Over 1,200 were imprisoned under ‘administrative detention’ without charge or trial and denied ‘due process’.

Add the fact that Gaza had been under cruel military blockade for 17 years with Israel regularly “mowing the grass” (you surely know what that means), and October 7 was clearly a retaliation. Or do you think the Palestinians should have taken all that lying down?

JC: “I want to see the Gaza conflict brought to a sustainable end as quickly as possible…. Pauses can also help to create the conditions necessary to bring about a permanent and sustainable end to hostilities.”

SL: How would pauses bring about a permanent end to hostilities? Under international law the correct way to deal with the threat posed by Hamas is by requiring Israel to immediately end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and theft of Palestinian resources. Wouldn’t that be a more sensible way forward?

JC: “In the longer term, I continue to support a credible and irreversible pathway towards a two-state solution of Israel and Palestine.”

SL: The Israeli regime has said repeatedly that it will not permit or accept a Palestinian state.

The only credible pathway was mapped by international law decades ago but never followed because it doesn’t suit Western powers’ ambitions in the region. They prefer lopsided negotiations through dishonest brokers like the US (and unfortunately the UK). This ensures the problem drags on indefinitely while Israel continues annexing Palestinian land and creating irreversible ‘facts on the ground’.

There can be no peace without law and justice. Failure to understand that simple truth has brought us all to the present horrific crisis.

JC: “I support Israel’s right to defend itself, in line with international humanitarian law. Indeed, it is important that international humanitarian law be respected and civilians protected….”

SL: Indeed it is. But Israel has no claim to self-defence against a threat from the territory it belligerently occupies. That has been made perfectly clear by the UN and many other authorities. It’s the Palestinians who have a cast-iron right to self-defence, using “armed struggle” if necessary, against Israel’s illegal military occupation and murderous oppression (UN Resolutions 37/43 and 3246). As China reminded everyone at the ICJ, “armed resistance against occupation is enshrined in international law and is not terrorism”.

It does no good to keep saying that Israel must abide by international humanitarian law. Israel has no intention of doing so, and everyone knows it. Israel wants to dominate the Holy Land and has advertised its evil intent very clearly for a very long time. As is well documented, it was a criminal enterprise from the start.

JC: “The UK’s position, which I support, is clear and longstanding. There should be a negotiated settlement leading to a safe and secure Israel living alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state, based on 1967 borders with agreed land swaps, with Jerusalem as the shared capital of both states, and a fair and realistic settlement for refugees. The UK has consistently called – bilaterally and via the UN – for an immediate end to all actions that undermine the viability of the two-state solution.”

Longstanding is the word. So longstanding that you might ask why it hasn’t happened yet. It’s because Britain has played a leading part in blocking the two-state idea. We promised a Palestinian state back in 1915 in return for Arab help in defeating the Turks but repeatedly reneged on it – in 1917, in 1923, in 1948 – and continue to sidestep the issue. The UK position is anything but clear.

What would this “negotiated” two-state solution look like? Our Government can’t or won’t describe it. Why must Israel be “safe and secure” and Palestine only “viable”? One’s security is no more important than the other’s. The UK still stands in the way of Palestinian statehood while 140+ other nations have recognised it. At the same time the UK has done nothing to prevent Israel overstepping its 1947 UN Partition boundaries and seizing swathes of Palestinian land and key resources at gunpoint. And the UKGov (of both flavours) has been shamefully supportive of Israel’s year-long genocide and war of extermination which has sickened all decent-minded people.

In any case, why should Palestinians have to negotiate their freedom in their own homeland? Notice how keywords like law and justice are always missing in the UK’s position statements.

JC: “The Government’s decision to announce an arms embargo on the day that Israel was burying murdered hostages, and within weeks of British military personnel and arms defending Israel from Iranian attack, was difficult to swallow…. We must be clear that there is no moral equivalence between Hamas and the democratically elected Government of Israel.”

SL: Yes indeed, there is no moral equivalence. Hamas were democratically elected under the scrutiny of international observers at the last election permitted in Palestine (2006). Israel is no Western-style democracy with Western values — it is an unpleasant ethnocracy which recently enacted discriminatory nation state laws to prove it.

‘Think Hamas, think terror’ is what UKGov and mainstream media teach us. Branding Hamas a terrorist organisation was a propaganda masterstroke. It has allowed Zionists and other pro-Israel elements within our Government to avoid having to explain Israel’s far greater terror record, and instead focus hatred on Hamas (and now Hezbollah).

But the inescapable fact is, the Israelis wrote the manual on terrorism long before Hamas (and Hezbollah) came into being. Read their Dalet Plan, or ‘Plan D’. This was the Zionists’ blueprint for the violent and bloody takeover of the Palestinian homeland drawn up in early 1948 by the Jewish underground militia, the Haganah, at the behest of David Ben-Gurion, then boss of the Jewish Agency. Plan D anticipated the British mandate government’s withdrawal and the Zionists’ declaration of Israeli statehood, and plotted the ethnic cleansing that was to follow. They have pursued it relentlessly ever since.

You mention British military personnel and arms defending Israel from Iranian counter-attack. Why weren’t they defending Palestinian women and children from Israeli genocide?

JC: “For many years, the UK has been very clear that Settlements are illegal under international law, present an obstacle to peace and threaten the physical viability and delivery of a two-state solution. Settler violence and the demolition of Palestinian homes is intolerable, and I expect to see Ministers firmly raising these issues with the Israeli Government, and taking robust action where necessary.”

SL: Agreed. But it’s pointless merely “raising” these issues with the Israeli Government. Settlements have been key to Israel’s expansionist ambitions since 1967. Pointless also sanctioning settler organisations. Many of the settlers are racist thugs on a terror mission. You need to sanction the criminals who send them into Palestinian territory, pay them and arm them – and that’s the Israeli Government itself.

Respected legal opinion (Ralph Wilde) puts it this way:

“There is no right under international law to maintain the occupation pending a peace agreement, or for creating ‘facts on the ground’ that might give Israel advantages in relation to such an agreement, or as a means of coercing the Palestinian people into agreeing on a situation they would not accept otherwise.

“Implanting settlers in the hope of eventually acquiring territory is a violation of occupation law by Israel and a war crime on the part of the individuals involved. And it is a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the sovereignty of another state and a violation of Israel’s legal obligation to respect the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people; also a violation of Israel’s obligations in the international law on the use of force. Ending these violations involves immediate removal of the settlers and the settlements from occupied land and an immediate end to Israel’s exercise of control, including its use of military force.…”

JC also mentioned: “the planned new Free Trade Agreement with Israel”.

SL: This is now is being championed by Jonathan Reynolds, the new Business Secretary. For him and the Starmer Government it’s business as usual with the apartheid regime while it conducts its non-stop genocide against the women and children of the Holy Land. No surprise there when you realise that Reynolds is a vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel which, it seems to me, puts him in breach of the Government’s Ministerial Code and Principles of Public Life which (see ‘Integrity’) state: “Holders of public office must avoid placing themselves under any obligation to people or organisations that might try inappropriately to influence them in their work….. They must declare and resolve any interests and relationships.” Like all the other Israel stooges embedded in Westminster he doesn’t.

Question 1 – Why is the UK so head-over-heels in love with a depraved, criminal regime like Israel?

It is certainly not because we the British people share the Israelis’ moral values (although some in leadership positions at Westminster apparently do). The answer is probably to be found in America’s QME doctrine. In 2008 Congress enacted legislation requiring that US arms sales to any country in the Middle East other than Israel must not adversely affect Israel’s “qualitative military edge” (QME). This ensures the apartheid state always has the upper hand over it neighbours. It is central to US Middle East policy and guaranteed to keep the region at or near boiling point and ripe for exploitation.

The UK seems to have superglued itself to America’s cynical partnership with Israel for security reasons and in the hope of profiting from the misery and unrest, though it would never admit this. But the world, and especially the Middle East, is changing. Our track record out there is abysmal and we’re increasingly disliked.

Question 2 – Why prolong the UK’s century of betrayal by still not recognising Palestinian statehood?

Freedom and self-determination are a basic right which doesn’t depend on anyone else, such as the US-UK-Israel axis, agreeing to it. The UK thinks otherwise when we should be among the vast majority of nations that have already recognised Palestinian statehood. When 138 of the world’s states at the UN General Assembly voted in 2012 to re-designate Palestine’s status from ‘non-member Entity’ to ‘non-member State’, it had the legal effect of establishing statehood. But the UK and other Western influencers who are dragging their feet need to finally accept it before statehood become effective on the world stage.

UKGov recognised Israeli statehood quickly enough in 1949 after Zionist gangs carried out countless atrocities including massacres at the King David Hotel, Deir Yassin, Lydda and elsewhere, trashed 500 Palestinian towns and villages, drove 700,000 civilians out of their national homeland, and made clear Israel’s ambition to dominate the entire Holy Land “from the river to the sea”.

It’s time our political leaders understood that the British public don’t want to be tainted by defending and protecting a so-called ally that’s bent on genocide and the wanton destruction of another people’s homeland and heritage, and has been contemptuous of human rights and norms of decency for as long as most of us can remember.

Kind regards, etc.

 

Stuart LittlewoodFacebookTwitter

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Stuart Littlewood, after working on jet fighters in the RAF, became an industrial marketeer in oil, electronics and manufacturing, and with innovation and product development consultancies. He also served as a Cambridgeshire county councillor and a member of the Police Authority. He is an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society and has produced two photo-documentary books including Radio Free Palestine (with foreword by Jeff Halper). Now retired, he campaigns on various issues, especially the Palestinians' struggle for freedom. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

King Charles III acknowledges 'painful past,' does not endorse reparations for royal slavery profiteering

Britain's King Charles III Thursday acknowledged a painful past of Britain and the royal family's profiting from human slavery, but did not support financial reparations payments at a Samoan summit of Commonwealth leaders. Twelve British monarchs profited from the slave trade over a span of 270 years, according to historians. Photo by Lukas Coch/ EPA-EFE

Oct. 25 (UPI) -- King Charles III acknowledged a "painful" past of Britain and the royal family's profiting from human slavery, but did not support financial reparations payments at a Samoan summit of Commonwealth leaders.

Speaking to the gathering in Chogm, Charles said, "the most painful aspects" of the British commonwealth's past "continue to resonate."

He said there is a need to "acknowledge where we have come from."

According to historians, for 270 years 12 British monarchs sponsored, supported or profited from Britain's human slave trafficking.

From Elizabeth I in the 1500s, who shared profits from the slave trade and gave a large royal ship to slave trader John Hawkins, all the way to William IV in the 1800s, Britain's royal family directly benefited from slavery.

Some African and Caribbean nations have called for Britain and other European powers to pay financial reparations as compensation for slavery.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has ruled out reparations or even apologizing for Britain's complicity in the slave trade, but has indicated a willingness to support debt relief and financial institution restructuring to partially address reparatory justice.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said a reparative justice plan is needed that deals with the enduring psychological and socioeconomic impacts of slavery.

He noted that millions of dollars in compensation went to enslavers when slavery was abolished, while zero was paid to those people who were enslaved.

"There was nothing for them to start with and build on -- no land, no money, no training, no education," Gonsalves told The Guardian.

Calls for reparations in the British Commonwealth aren't just attempts to get money paid to slavery's victims of the past, it's an effort to officially recognize that centuries of enslavement have had centuries of adverse impacts on descendants of slaves.

Just one company formed by British royals to conduct the slave trade took 41,923 African slaves captive on its ships from 1714-1740, according to the Slave Voyages database.

Queen Anne, who reigned from 1702-1714, dramatically expanded Britain's slave trading by using the South Sea Company to secure a monopoly on supplying African slaves to Spain's South American colonies.

In 2023, Charles III indicated support for researching royal family links to slavery after a 1689 document revealed King William III had a financial investment in a slave trading company.

-- -- -

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Eric Williams Capitalism and Slavery - fnac-static.com

colonial world without an engagement with Eric Williams's Capitalism and ... tion of the Slave Trade', was published as Capitalism and Slavery in 1944,.

- -- -

King Charles sips narcotic kava drink, becomes Samoan 'high chief'

Agence France-Presse
October 24, 2024 

Britain's King Charles III drinks kava as Queen Camilla looks on during a ceremony in Samoa (AFP)

King Charles III took part in a traditional kava-drinking ceremony before a line of bare-chested, heavily tattooed Samoans and was declared a "high chief" of his Pacific island realm on Thursday.

The British monarch is on an 11-day tour of Australia and Samoa, independent nations where he is still head of state -- the first major foreign trip since his cancer diagnosis earlier this year.

Wearing a white safari-style suit, the 75-year-old king sat at the head of a carved timber longhouse where he was presented with a polished half-coconut filled with a mildly narcotic kava brew.

The peppery, slightly intoxicating root drink is a key part of Pacific culture and is known locally as "ava".

The kava roots were paraded around the marquee, prepared by the chief's daughter and filtered through a sieve made of the dried bark of a fau tree.

Once ready, a Samoan man screamed as he decanted the drink, which was finally presented to the king.

Charles uttered the words: "May God Bless this ava" before lifting it to his lips. The ceremony concluded with claps.

Charles's wife, Queen Camilla sat beside him, fanning herself to ease the stiffing tropical humidity.

- High Chief -


Many Samoans are excited to host the king -- his first-ever visit to the Pacific Island nation that was once a British colony.

The royal couple later visited the village of Moata'a where Charles was made "Tui Taumeasina" or high chief.

According to local legend, the area around Moata'a is where the coconut originated.


"Everyone has taken to our heart and is looking forward to welcoming the king," local chief Lenatai Victor Tamapua told AFP ahead of the visit.

"We feel honoured that he has chosen to be welcomed here in our village. So as a gift, we would like to bestow him a title."

Tamapua also planned to raise the issue of climate change with the king and queen and show them the local mangroves.


"The high tides is just chewing away on our reef and where the mangroves are," he told AFP, adding that food sources and communities were being washed away or inundated.

"Our community relies on the mangrove area for mud crab and fishes, but since, the tide has risen over the past 20 years by about two or three meters (up to 10 feet)."

The king is also in Samoa for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting which is taking place in Apia.


- Colonialism and climate -

The legacy of empire looms large at the meeting.

Commonwealth leaders will select a new secretary-general nominated from an African country –- in line with regional rotations of the position.


All three likely candidates have called publicly for reparations for slavery and colonialism.

One of the three, Joshua Setipa from Lesotho, told AFP that the resolution could include non-traditional forms of payment such as climate financing.

"We can find a solution that will begin to address some injustices of the past and put them in the context happening around us today," he said.


Climate change features heavily on the agenda.

Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Fiji have backed calls for a "fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty" -- essentially calling for Australia, Britain and Canada to do more to lower emissions.

Pacific leaders argue the trio of "big countries" have historically accounted for over 60 percent of the Commonwealth's emissions from fossil fuels.


Vanuatu's special envoy for climate change Ralph Regenvanu called on other nations to join the treaty.

"As a Commonwealth family, we look to those that dominate fossil fuel production in the Commonwealth to stop the expansion of fossil fuels in order to protect what we love and hold dear here in the Pacific," he said.

Australia's foreign minister Penny Wong said her gas and mineral-rich nation was working to be cleaner.


"We know we have a lot of work to do, and I've been upfront with every partner in the Pacific," she said.

Pacific island nations -- once seen as the embodiment of palm-fringed paradise -- are now among the most climate-threatened areas of the planet.

 

They once were rebels

Ranters, Diggers & mystics who challenged church authority

by Bill Weinberg

Fifth Estate # 415, Summer 2024

a review of
Resistance to Christianity: A Chronological Encyclopaedia of Heresy from the Beginning to the Eighteenth Century by Raoul Vaneigem, translation by Bill Brown. ERIS, 2023

While evangelical Protestantism has for generations overwhelmingly been a force of deep reaction in this country and is poised, if Donald Trump regains the White House this November, to instate a situation such as depicted in Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale (and its screen and TV adaptations).

This potential recently made a media splash when Trump posted to his Truth Social platform an ultra-creepy video entitled “God Made Trump,” portraying a personification of him as Redeemer and Avenger sent by the Almighty. Ralph Reed, founder of the Christian Coalition, is hawking his new book, For God and Country:: The Christian Case For Trump.

Under a restored Trump regime, evangelical Protestantism could play the same role that reactionary Catholicism did in the clerical-fascist regimes of Francisco Franco in Spain, Ante Pavelic in Croatia and, to an extent, Benito Mussolini in Italy, in which the state and the ultimate leader are sanctified, labor suppressed, harsh and repressive interpretation of Christian morality made law, and enemies of the state eliminated.

A contemporary example of such a clerical-fascist regime is Putin’s Russia, in which rights for women and sexual non-conformists are being rapidly repealed, even very indirect expressions of disagreement with the regime are severely punished, with the Russian Orthodox Church of Patriarch Kirill, a key propaganda pillar of the aggressive war in Ukraine. The church promotes a narrative of protecting Russian traditional values against Western liberal assault, and is in explicit alliance with the evangelical right in the U.S., despite the denominational gulf.

However, beside the usual role of Christianity functioning as a handmaiden of repressive state authority, heresies have emerged under its rule that have a long history of birthing rebellious groups. They are chronicled by Situationist Raoul Vaneigem in this comprehensive account of rebels, ranters, and millenarians.

In Resistance to Christianity, he traces a chronology from the heresies of the ancient and medieval periods, especially those in the Gnostic tradition that rejected the Church and worldly authority as inherently corrupt, through the millenarian movements that ultimately prefigured the Protestant Reformation, a heresy that succeeded.

A key episode was the German Peasants’ War of 1524, which had a spiritual and millennial aspect in the person of the revolutionary priest Thomas Müntzer. He was a contemporary of Martin Luther, who disavowed Müntzer as being far too radical with his call for expropriation of the aristocracy by the commoners. The peasant army flew a rainbow flag as a symbol of solidarity and hope, but were ultimately defeated by armed forces of the lords.

This spirit was also present in the revolutionary movements of the English Civil War of the 1640s. This period famously saw the Diggers, who in 1649 at St George’s Hill pulled off what the historian George Woodcock called the world’s first anarchist direct action, reclaiming land from the aristocracy for their collective farms, with a vision of the earth as a “common treasury for all.” The Ranters of the same period were fiery mystical anarchists who rejected all worldly authority and Christian morality.

Both the Puritans and the Quakers also came out of this ferment, and have had a significant influence on our side of the Atlantic. The Quakers were deeply involved in slavery abolitionism, aiding escaped slaves through the Underground Railroad, and in later struggles for social justice, especially war resistance based on their pacifism.

The more militant abolitionism of the armed insurrectionist John Brown in the 1850s, of Harpers Ferry and Bleeding Kansas fame, was steeped in Puritan millenarianism. And, there is a stamp of this a century later in the Baptist and pacifist Martin Luther King, Jr., seen in his famous invocation of the Old Testament: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

So, how did this trajectory warp into its opposite?

A turning point can be seen in the late 19th century with the rise of Biblical literalism in reaction to the rise of science, characterized by the application of a strict literal interpretation to scripture.

In the 1890s, the fundamentalist and populist politician William Jennings Bryan was a fighter for small farmers and laborers who sought to abolish the gold standard in the interest of working people. But he was on the wrong side in the 1925 Scopes trial, opposing the teaching of evolution in the schools. Battles still going on today a century later strongly echo such religiously-inspired themes.

The 1920s saw the formal, doctrinal establishment of fundamentalism. But the critical turning point was the weaponizing of the abortion issue by the Republican Party after the 1973 Roe v Wade decision. This culminated in the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, concomitant with the founding of the Moral Majority, comprised of conservative Christian political action committees.

This sealed the pact between the GOP and Protestant fundamentalism, with the fundis abandoning any remnant of economic populism to close ranks with neoliberalism and Reaganomics as the price for mainstreaming of their cultural-conservative agenda.

The surviving millenarian stamp in this new ultra-reactionary and Biblical-literalist form is particularly ominous. In the Book of Revelations, with which evangelicals are so obsessed, the foretold Apocalypse for John the Revelator, writing in the first century CE, was the fall of Rome. Jumping forward a millennium and a half to the English Civil War era, the prophecy was reconceived as overthrow of the aristocracy and lords of property, exemplified by the execution of the king.

For contemporary evangelicals and fundamentalists, the Apocalypse can be seen as a literal rain of fire and brimstone which state rulers now have the power to bring about through modern military weapons technology. The notion of believers in an imminent and literal Apocalypse getting anywhere near the U.S. nuclear arsenal is terrifying.

Despite his supposed love affair with Putin, the blustering, erratic Trump taking power in what is, after Ukraine and Gaza, a world at war, holds unprecedented risk of escalation to the unthinkable despite those sectors of the left who view Trump as the less dangerous candidate because he would be less likely to get into a war with Russia.

Vaneigem’s title, Resistance to Christianity, is in some ways more relevant and in other ways less than the author himself anticipated when he first wrote the book in 1994. Vaneigem ends his story with the 1789 French Revolution, saying that it brought about the “fall of god”—after which liberatory movements no longer had to resort to the vocabulary and iconography of religion. In an afterword for the new English edition, Vaneigem doesn’t really rethink that, seeing the world as moving “beyond religion.” This is, especially at this moment, entirely too optimistic.

On the other hand, secularism isn’t sufficient to resist the MAGA variant of clerical fascism on its own. Resistance is going to have to come, in part at least, from within elements of Christianity, and others who view the struggle in spiritual rather than rationalist terms.

Hopefully, the contradiction will be too blatant for some of those rallying around the obviously irreligious Trump in the name of religion. Some lonely figures have indeed broken ranks, such as Russell Moore, once a top official in the Southern Baptist Convention and now author of Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call For Evangelical America, warning that evangelism is becoming the antithesis of everything it supposedly stands for by embracing MAGA.

There are also pastors in the Black church who are keeping the MLK tradition alive, such as Rev. William Barber in North Carolina, who led the Moral Mondays campaign in that state against the overturn of civil rights protections and imposition of restrictions on abortion rights. And, there are Christians who are risking their freedom to assist desperate migrants in the southern borderlands. These are a reminder that there are other currents in the Christian tradition, broadly defined, than its most reactionary exponents now preparing a bid for total power.

The history chronicled in Vaneigem’s book, as obscure as much of it may seem for contemporary readers, is well worth grappling with at this moment.

Bill Weinberg rants weekly on his podcast CounterVortex.

Inside Ziklag, the Secret Organization of Wealthy Christians Trying to Sway the Election and Change the Country

The little-known charity is backed by famous conservative donors, including the families behind Hobby Lobby and Uline. It’s spending millions to make a big political push for this election — but it may be violating the law.

By Andy Kroll, Nick Surgey
July 15, 2024
Source: ProPublica

Source: Kelly Kanayama via ReligionWatch

A network of ultrawealthy Christian donors is spending nearly $12 million to mobilize Republican-leaning voters and purge more than a million people from the rolls in key swing states, aiming to tilt the 2024 election in favor of former President Donald Trump.

These previously unreported plans are the work of a group named Ziklag, a little-known charity whose donors have included some of the wealthiest conservative Christian families in the nation, including the billionaire Uihlein family, who made a fortune in office supplies, the Greens, who run Hobby Lobby, and the Wallers, who own the Jockey apparel corporation. Recipients of Ziklag’s largesse include Alliance Defending Freedom, which is the Christian legal group that led the overturning of Roe v. Wade, plus the national pro-Trump group Turning Point USA and a constellation of right-of-center advocacy groups.

ProPublica and Documented obtained thousands of Ziklag’s members-only email newsletters, internal videos, strategy documents and fundraising pitches, none of which has been previously made public. They reveal the group’s 2024 plans and its long-term goal to underpin every major sphere of influence in American society with Christianity. In the Bible, the city of Ziklag was where David and his soldiers found refuge during their war with King Saul.

“We are in a spiritual battle and locked in a terrible conflict with the powers of darkness,” says a strategy document that lays out Ziklag’s 30-year vision to “redirect the trajectory of American culture toward Christ by bringing back Biblical structure, order and truth to our Nation.”

Ziklag’s 2024 agenda reads like the work of a political organization. It plans to pour money into mobilizing voters in Arizona who are “sympathetic to Republicans” in order to secure “10,640 additional unique votes” — almost the exact margin of President Joe Biden’s win there in 2020. The group also intends to use controversial AI software to enable mass challenges to the eligibility of hundreds of thousands of voters in competitive states.

In a recording of a 2023 internal strategy discussion, a Ziklag official stressed that the objective was the same in other swing states. “The goal is to win,” the official said. “If 75,000 people wins the White House, then how do we get 150,000 people so we make sure we win?”

According to the Ziklag files, the group has divided its 2024 activities into three different operations targeting voters in battleground states: Checkmate, focused on funding so-called election integrity groups; Steeplechase, concentrated on using churches and pastors to get out the vote; and Watchtower, aimed at galvanizing voters around the issues of “parental rights” and opposition to transgender rights and policies supporting health care for trans people.

In a member briefing video, one of Ziklag’s spiritual advisers outlined a plan to “deliver swing states” by using an anti-transgender message to motivate conservative voters who are exhausted with Trump.

But Ziklag is not a political organization: It is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity, the same legal designation as the United Way or Boys and Girls Club. Such organizations do not have to publicly disclose their funders, and donations are tax deductible. In exchange, they are “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office,” according to the IRS.

ProPublica and Documented presented the findings of their investigation to six nonpartisan lawyers and legal experts. All expressed concern that Ziklag was testing or violating the law.

The reporting by ProPublica and Documented “casts serious doubt on this organization’s status as a 501(c)(3) organization,” said Roger Colinvaux, a professor at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law.

“I think it’s across the line without a question,” said Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, a University of Notre Dame law professor.

Ziklag officials did not respond to a detailed list of questions. Martin Nussbaum, an attorney who said he was the group’s general counsel, said in a written response that “some of the statements in your email are correct. Others are not,” but he then did not respond to a request to specify what was erroneous. The group is seeking to “align” the culture “with Biblical values and the American constitution, and that they will serve the common good,” he wrote. Using the official tax name for Ziklag, he wrote that “USATransForm does not endorse candidates for public office.” He declined to comment on the group’s members.

There are no bright lines or magic words that the IRS might look for when it investigates a charitable organization for engaging in political intervention, said Mayer. Instead, the agency examines the facts and circumstances of a group’s activities and makes a conclusion about whether the group violated the law.

The biggest risk for charities that intervene in political campaigns, Mayer said, is loss of their tax-exempt status. Donors’ ability to deduct their donations can be a major sell, not to mention it can create “a halo effect” for the group, Mayer added.

“They may be able to get more money this way,” he said, adding, “It boils down to tax evasion at the end of the day.”

“Dominion Over the Seven Mountains”

Ziklag has largely escaped scrutiny until now. The group describes itself as a “private, confidential, invitation-only community of high-net-worth Christian families.”

According to internal documents, it boasts more than 125 members that include business executives, pastors, media leaders and other prominent conservative Christians. Potential new members, one document says, should have a “concern for culture” demonstrated by past donations to faith-based or political causes, as well as a net worth of $25 million or more. None of the donors responded to requests for comment.

Tax records show rapid growth in the group’s finances in recent years. Its annual revenue climbed from $1.3 million in 2018 to $6 million in 2019 and nearly $12 million in 2022, which is the latest filing available.

The group’s spending is not on the scale of major conservative funders such as Miriam Adelson or Barre Seid, the electronics magnate who gave $1.6 billion to a group led by conservative legal activist Leonard Leo. But its funding and strategy represent one of the clearest links yet between the Christian right and the “election integrity” movement fueled by Trump’s baseless claims about voting fraud. Even several million dollars funding mass challenges to voters in swing counties can make an impact, legal and election experts say.

Ziklag was the brainchild of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur named Ken Eldred. It emerged from a previous organization founded by Eldred called United In Purpose, which aimed to get more Christians active in the civic arena, according to Bill Dallas, the group’s former director. United In Purpose generated attention in June 2016 when it organized a major meeting between then-candidate Trump and hundreds of evangelical leaders.

After Trump was elected in 2016, Eldred had an idea, according to Dallas. “He says, ‘I want all the wealthy Christian people to come together,’” Dallas recalled in an interview. Eldred told Dallas that he wanted to create a donor network like the one created by Charles and David Koch but for Christians. He proposed naming it David’s Mighty Men, Dallas said. Female members balked. Dallas found the passage in Chronicles that references David’s soldiers and read that they met in the city of Ziklag, and so they chose the name Ziklag.

The group’s stature grew after Trump took office. Vice President Mike Pence appeared at a Ziklag event, as did former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Sen. Ted Cruz, then-Rep. Mark Meadows and other members of Congress. In its private newsletter, Ziklag claims that a coalition of groups it assembled played “a hugely significant role in the selection, hearings and confirmation process” of Amy Coney Barrett for a Supreme Court seat in late 2020.

Confidential donor networks regularly invest hundreds of millions of dollars into political and charitable groups, from the liberal Democracy Alliance to the Koch-affiliated Stand Together organization on the right. But unlike Ziklag, neither of those organizations is legally set up as a true charity.

Ziklag appears to be the first coordinated effort to get wealthy donors to fund an overtly Christian nationalist agenda, according to historians, legal experts and other people familiar with the group. “It shows that this idea isn’t being dismissed as fringe in the way that it might have been in the past,” said Mary Ziegler, a legal historian and University of California, Davis law professor.

The Christian nationalism movement has a variety of aims and tenets, according to the Public Religion Research Institute: that the U.S. government “should declare America a Christian nation”; that American laws “should be based on Christian values”; that the U.S. will cease to exist as a nation if it “moves away from our Christian foundations”; that being Christian is essential to being American; and that God has “called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.”

One theology promoted by Christian nationalist leaders is the Seven Mountain Mandate. Each mountain represents a major industry or a sphere of public life: arts and media, business, church, education, family, government, and science and technology. Ziklag’s goal, the documents say, is to “take dominion over the Seven Mountains,” funding Christian projects or installing devout Christians in leadership positions to reshape each mountain in a godly way.

To address their concerns about education, Ziklag’s leaders and allies have focused on the public-school system. In a 2021 Ziklag meeting, Ziklag’s education mountain chair, Peter Bohlinger, said that Ziklag’s goal “is to take down the education system as we know it today.” The producers of the film “Sound of Freedom,” featuring Jim Caviezel as an anti-sex-trafficking activist, screened an early cut of the film at a Ziklag conference and asked for funds, according to Dallas

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An excerpt from Ziklag’s “Declaration and 30-Year Vision for the Mountains of Influence.” The document outlines Ziklag’s mission to reshape each major aspect of American society so that it operates according to a biblical worldview. Credit: Obtained by ProPublica and Documented

The Seven Mountains theology signals a break from Christian fundamentalists such as Jerry Falwell Sr. and Pat Robertson. In the 1980s and ’90s, Falwell’s Moral Majority focused on working within the democratic process to mobilize evangelical voters and elect politicians with a Christian worldview.

The Seven Mountains theology embraces a different, less democratic approach to gaining power. “If the Moral Majority is about galvanizing the voters, the Seven Mountains is a revolutionary model: You need to conquer these mountains and let change flow down from the top,” said Matthew Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies and an expert on Christian nationalism. “It’s an outlined program for Christian supremacy.”

“The Amorphous, Tumultuous Wild West”

The Christian right has had compelling spokespeople and fierce commitment to its causes, whether they were ending abortion rights, allowing prayer in schools or displaying the Ten Commandments outside of public buildings. What the movement has often lacked, its leaders argue, is sufficient funding.

“If you look at the right, especially the Christian right, there were always complaints about money,” said legal historian Ziegler. “There’s a perceived gap of ‘We aren’t getting the support from big-name, big-dollar donors that we deserve and want and need.’”

That’s where Ziklag comes in.

Speaking late last year to an invitation-only gathering of Ziklaggers, as members are known, Charlie Kirk, who leads the pro-Trump Turning Point USA organization, named left-leaning philanthropists who were, in his view, funding the destruction of the nation: MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos; billionaire investor and liberal philanthropist George Soros; and the two founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

“Why are secular people giving more generously than Christians?” Kirk asked, according to a recording of his remarks. “It would be a tragedy,” he added, “if people who hate life, hate our country, hate beauty and hate God wanted it more than us.”

“Ziklag is the place,” Kirk told the donors. “Ziklag is the counter.”

Similarly, Pence, in a 2021 appearance at a private Ziklag event, praised the group for its role in “changing lives, and it’s advanced the cause, it’s advanced the kingdom.”

A driving force behind Ziklag’s efforts is Lance Wallnau, a prominent Christian evangelist and influencer based in Texas who is described by Ziklag as a “Seven Mountains visionary & advisor.” The fiery preacher is one of the most influential figures on the Christian right, experts say, a bridge between Christian nationalism and Trump. He was one of the earliest evangelical leaders to endorse Trump in 2015 and later published a book titled “God’s Chaos Candidate: Donald J. Trump and the American Unraveling.” More than 1 million people follow him on Facebook. He doesn’t try to hide his views: “Yes, I am a Christian nationalist,” he said during one of his livestreams in 2021. (Wallnau did not respond to requests for comment.)

Donald Trump shakes hands with Lance Wallnau, a self-described Christian nationalist. Credit: Lancewallnau.com

Wallnau has remained a Trump ally. He called Trump’s time in office a “spiritual warfare presidency” and popularized the idea that Trump was a “modern-day Cyrus,” referring to the Persian king who defeated the Babylonians and allowed the Jewish people to return to Jerusalem. Wallnau has visited with Trump at the White House and Trump Tower; last November, he livestreamed from a black-tie gala at Mar-a-Lago where Trump spoke.

Wallnau did not come up with the notion that Christians should try to take control of key areas of American society. But he improved on the idea by introducing the concept of the seven mountains and urged Christians to set about conquering them. The concept caught on, said Taylor, because it empowered Christians with a sense of purpose in every sphere of life.

As a preacher in the independent charismatic tradition, a fast-growing offshoot of Pentecostalism that is unaffiliated with any major denomination, Wallnau and his acolytes believe that God speaks to and through modern-day apostles and prophets — a version of Christianity that Taylor, in his forthcoming book “The Violent Take It By Force,” describes as “the amorphous, tumultuous Wild West of the modern church.” Wallnau and his ideas lingered at the fringes of American Christianity for years, until the boost from the Trump presidency.

The Ziklag files detail not only what Christians should do to conquer all seven mountains, but also what their goals will be once they’ve taken the summit. For the government mountain, one key document says that “the biblical role of government is to promote good and punish evil” and that “the word of God and prayer play a significant role in policy decisions.”

For the arts and entertainment mountain, goals include that 80% of the movies produced be rated G or PG “with a moral story,” and that many people who work in the industry “operate under a biblical/moral worldview.” The education section says that homeschooling should be a “fundamental right” and the government “must not favor one form of education over another.”

Other internal Ziklag documents voice strong opposition to same-sex marriage and transgender rights. One reads: “transgender acceptance = Final sign before imminent collapse.”

Heading into the 2024 election year, Ziklag executive director Drew Hiss warned members in an internal video that “looming above and beyond those seven mountains is this evil force that’s been manifesting itself.” He described it as “a controlling, evil, diabolical presence, really, with tyranny in mind.” That presence was concentrated in the government mountain, he said. If Ziklaggers wanted to save their country from “the powers of darkness,” they needed to focus their energies on that government mountain or else none of their work in any other area would succeed.
“Operation Checkmate”

In the fall of 2023, Wallnau sat in a gray armchair in his TV studio. A large TV screen behind him flashed a single word: “ZIKLAG.”

“You almost hate to put it out this clearly,” he said as he detailed Ziklag’s electoral strategy, “because if somebody else gets ahold of this, they’ll freak out.”

He was joined on set by Hiss, who had just become the group’s new day-to-day leader. The two men were there to record a special message to Ziklag members that laid out the group’s ambitious plans for the upcoming election year.

The forces arrayed against Christians were many, according to the confidential video. They were locked in a “spiritual battle,” Hiss said, against Democrats who were a “radical left Marxist force.” Biden, Wallnau said, was a senile old man and “an empty suit with an agenda that’s written and managed by somebody else.”Wallnau speaks with Drew Hiss, Ziklag’s executive director, about the group’s goals for political engagement. Credit: Obtained by ProPublica and Documented

In the files, Ziklag says it plans to give out nearly $12 million to a constellation of groups working on the ground to shift the 2024 electorate in favor of Trump and other Republicans.

A prominent conservative getting money from Ziklag is Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer and Trump ally who joined the January 2021 phone call when then-President Trump asked Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes to flip Georgia in Trump’s favor.

Mitchell now leads a network of “election integrity” coalitions in swing states that have spent the last three years advocating for changes to voting rules and how elections are run. According to one internal newsletter, Ziklag was an early funder of Mitchell’s post-2020 “election integrity” activism, which voting-rights experts have criticized for stoking unfounded fears about voter fraud and seeking to unfairly remove people from voting rolls. In 2022, Ziklag donated $600,000 to the Conservative Partnership Institute, which in turn funds Mitchell’s election-integrity work. Internal Ziklag documents show that it provided funding to enable Mitchell to set up election integrity infrastructure in Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin.

Now Mitchell is promoting a tool called EagleAI, which has claimed to use artificial intelligence to automate and speed up the process of challenging ineligible voters. EagleAI is already being used to mount mass challenges to the eligibility of hundreds of thousands of voters in competitive states, and, with Ziklag’s help, the group plans to ramp up those efforts.

According to an internal video, Ziklag plans to invest $800,000 in “EagleAI’s clean the rolls project,” which would be one of the largest known donations to the group.

Ziklag lists two key objectives for Operation Checkmate: “Secure 10,640 additional unique votes in Arizona (mirroring the 2020 margin of 10,447 votes), and remove up to one million ineligible registrations and around 280,000 ineligible voters in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Wisconsin.”

In a recording of an internal Zoom call, Ziklag’s Mark Bourgeois stressed the electoral value of targeting Arizona. “I care about Maricopa County,” Bourgeois said at one point, referring to Arizona’s largest county, which Biden won four years ago. “That’s how we win.”

For Operation Watchtower, Wallnau explained in a members-only video that transgender policy was a “wedge issue” that could be decisive in turning out voters tired of hearing about Trump.

The left had won the battle over the “homosexual issue,” Wallnau said. “But on transgenderism, there’s a problem and they know it.” He continued: “They’re gonna wanna talk about Trump, Trump, Trump. … Meanwhile, if we talk about ‘It’s not about Trump. It’s about parents and their children, and the state is a threat,’” that could be the “target on the forehead of Goliath.”

The Ziklag files describe tactics the group plans to use around parental rights — policies that make it easier for parents to control what’s taught in public schools — to turn out conservative voters. In a fundraising video, the group says it plans to underwrite a “messaging and data lab” focused on parental rights that will supply “winning messaging to all our partner groups to create unified focus among all on the right.” The goal, the video says, is to make parental rights “the difference-maker in the 2024 election.”

According to Wallnau, Ziklag also plans to fund ballot initiatives in seven key states — Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Montana, Nevada and Ohio — that take aim at the transgender community by seeking to ban “genital mutilation.” The seven states targeted are either presidential battlegrounds or have competitive U.S. Senate races. None of the initiatives is on a state ballot yet.

“People that are lethargic about the election or, worse yet, they’re gonna be all Trump-traumatized with the news cycle — this issue will get people to come out and vote,” Wallnau said. “That ballot initiative can deliver swing states.”

The last prong of Ziklag’s 2024 strategy is Operation Steeplechase, which urges conservative pastors to mobilize their congregants to vote in this year’s election. This project will work in coordination with several prominent conservative groups that support former president Trump’s reelection, such as Turning Point USA’s faith-based group, the Faith and Freedom Coalition run by conservative operative Ralph Reed and the America First Policy Institute, one of several groups closely allied with Trump.

Ziklag’s website outlines its three major operations and which mountains each one targets. Credit: Screenshot by ProPublica

Ziklag says in a 2023 internal video that it and its allies will “coordinate extensive pastor and church outreach through pastor summits, church-focused messaging and events and the creation of pastor resources.” As preacher and activist John Amanchukwu said at a Ziklag event, “We need a church that’s willing to do anything and everything to get to the point where we reclaim that which was stolen from us.”

Six tax experts reviewed the election-related strategy discussions and tactics reported in this story. All of them said the activities tested or ran afoul of the law governing 501(c)(3) charities. The IRS and the Texas attorney general, which would oversee the Southlake, Texas, charity, did not respond to questions.

While not all of its political efforts appeared to be clear-cut violations, the experts said, others may be: The stated plan to mobilize voters “sympathetic to Republicans,” Ziklag officials openly discussing the goal to win the election, and Wallnau’s call to fund ballot initiatives that would “deliver swing states” while at the same time voicing explicit criticism of Biden all raised red flags, the experts said.

“I am troubled about a tax-exempt charitable organization that’s set up and its main operation seems to be to get people to win office,” said Phil Hackney, a professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh and an expert on tax-exempt organizations.

“They’re planning an election effort,” said Marcus Owens, a tax lawyer at Loeb and Loeb and a former director of the IRS’ exempt organizations division. “That’s not a 501(c)(3) activity.”