Democracy or Plutocracy?

by Lawrence S. Wittner / April 17th, 2025

Despite much lofty rhetoric portraying the United States as a democracy (in which the people rule), this nation, in fact, has often resembled a plutocracy (in which the wealthy rule).

The confusion owes a great deal to the fact that the United States, at its founding, was somewhat more democratic than its contemporaries.  In the eighteenth century, European nations, governed by kings, princes, and other wealthy hereditary elites, usually provided a contrast to the more unruly, less hidebound new nation, where some Americans even had the vote.

Even so, the overwhelming majority of Americans didn’t have the vote, which was largely confined to property-owning or tax-paying white males―about 6 percent of the U.S. population in 1789.  Women (comprising about 50 percent of the population) were, with very few exceptions, denied voting rights.  And slaves (about 18 percent of the population) lacked both voting rights and citizenship.

Wealthy Americans maintained firm control of the U.S. and state governments.  The Founding Fathers were rich white men―in many cases, owners of massive plantations dependent upon slave labor.  And the first President of the United States, George Washington, was one of the wealthiest Americans of his time.  Women and slaves had no governing role at all.

Another reason for the association of the United States with democracy is that, over the course of its history, the country has gradually grown more democratic―although only by overcoming determined opposition from its traditional economic elites.

During most of the nineteenth century, the struggle for democracy was difficult, indeed.  Although white male suffrage expanded, campaigns for women’s rights and, especially, for the abolition of slavery met fierce resistance.  The wealthy planter class of the South resorted to a bloody Civil War rather than accept limits on slavery―an overplaying of its hand that, ironically, led to slavery’s abolition and voting rights for the former slaves.  And thanks to the postwar enfranchisement of millions of African Americans, Reconstruction governments injected elements of political, economic, and social equality into Southern politics.  Horrified, the old planter elite launched a counter-revolution―a terror campaign spearheaded by the Ku Klux Klan that deprived African Americans of voting rights and public office, while riveting white supremacy into every aspect of Southern life.

In the North, the rising industrial magnates of the late nineteenth century, deploying the enormous wealth of their giant corporations, fastened their grip on governance during what became known as the Gilded Age.  Enjoying lives of unprecedented opulence and power, corporate titans easily bought the allegiance of politicians or acquired public office themselves.  Indeed, the U.S. Senate became known as a “millionaire’s club.”  Meanwhile, masses of impoverished immigrants, drawn to jobs in the new factories, crowded into big city slums.  Although “Panics” (economic depressions) periodically swept through the nation, producing massive unemployment and hunger, neither the federal nor state governments enacted relief measures.  Instead, most politicians―ignoring widespread poverty, the suppression of Black voting rights, and a growing women’s suffrage campaign―concentrated on serving the new corporate titans by passing pro-corporate legislation.

With the governments of North and South subservient to the economic elites of the late nineteenth century, radical movements emerged outside the two-party system.  Angry farmers organized the Populist Party to take back the nation from the plutocrats, and for a time enjoyed substantial electoral success.  Bitter strikes and workers’ struggles convulsed the nation.  Perhaps the best known of them, the nationwide Pullman Strike of 1894, was broken only when the federal government stepped in to destroy the American Railway Union and arrest its leaders.

The pent-up popular outrage at plutocracy finally broke through in the early twentieth century.  Capturing portions of both the Democratic and Republican parties, the Progressive movement succeeded in limiting some of the more flagrant abuses of rule by the wealthy.  Its reforms included the direct election of Senators, a constitutional amendment authorizing a progressive income tax, workers’ rights measures, and a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women’s right to vote.

Although World War I and the return of conservative Republican rule in the 1920s undermined the struggle for democracy, it revived dramatically after the onset of the Great Depression and the beginning of the New Deal.  Drawing upon an overwhelming majority in Congress, the Democrats passed legislation sharply raising taxes on the wealthy, establishing the right of workers to union representation, inaugurating massive relief projects, and establishing Social Security, minimum wage laws, maximum hours laws, and other measures designed to serve “forgotten” Americans.  Despite bitter opposition from the Southern elite, even the civil rights issue made an appearance, in the form of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s executive order establishing a Fair Employment Practice Committee.

These popular egalitarian initiatives were supplemented in the 1960s by major voting rights and other civil rights legislation, immigration reform legislation, Medicare and Medicaid, and measures to reduce poverty, advance educational opportunity, and create public broadcasting.

Today, of course, we are witnessing a new counter-revolution, led by billionaires like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, to reduce public access to the vote, intimidate their opponents, and, more broadly, return the U.S. government to its earlier role as a guardian of political, economic, and social privilege.  Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in their current barnstorming tour, refer to this program as “Oligarchy” (rule by the few).  And they are correct.  But, more specifically, it is plutocracy (rule by the wealthy), designed to serve the interests of the wealthy.

Although the United States has never been a thoroughgoing democracy, there are many indications that, over the centuries, it has made significant progress toward that goal.  And the question today is:  Will we scrap that progress and return to the Gilded Age―or worse?

This is an historic moment―one that provides an opportunity for Americans to defend what Abraham Lincoln lauded as “a government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people.”  It would be a shame if Americans abandoned that democratic vision.TwitterRedditEmail

Lawrence S. Wittner is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press). Read other articles by Lawrence, or visit Lawrence's website.

 

De Facto Occupation: Israel’s Security Zone Strategy

by Binoy Kampmark / April 18th, 2025

In recent months, the Israeli Defense Forces have been much taken by a term that augurs poorly for peaceful accord in the Middle East. “Security zones” are being seized in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Syria. Land is, for claimed reasons of self-defence, being appropriated with brazen assuredness. It is hard, however, to see this latest turn as anything other than a de facto military occupation, a situation that will prolong the crisis of vulnerability the Jewish state so wishes to overcome. Israel’s insecurities are much the result of various expansions since 1948 that have only imperilled it to future attack and simmering acrimony. The pattern threatens to repeat itself.

In Syria, Israel rapidly capitalised on the fall of the Assad regime by shredding the status quo. Within a matter of 11 days after the fleeing of the former President Bashar Al-Assad to Moscow, and again on February 1 this year, satellite images showed six military sites being constructed within what is nominally the UN-supervised demilitarised zone, otherwise known as the Area of Separation. A seventh is being constructed outside the zone and in Syria proper. Such busy feats of construction have also accompanied Israeli encroachment on the land of Syrian civilians, coupled with vexing housing raids, road closures and unsanctioned arrests.

All this has taken place despite undertakings from Syria’s transitional President Ahmed al-Sharaa that he would recognise the 1974 agreement made with Israel, one which prohibits Israel from crossing the Alpha Line on the western edge of the Area of Separation. “Syria’s war-weary condition, after years of conflict and war, does not allow for new confrontations,” admitted the new leader on December 14, 2024. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was only scornful, regarding the 1974 agreement between the two countries as a dead letter buried by history. “We will not allow any hostile force to establish itself on our border,” he snottily declared.

Lebanon is also facing a stubborn IDF, one that refuses to abide by the Israel-Hezbollah agreement last November which promised the withdrawal of both forces from southern Lebanon, leaving the Lebanese army to take over the supervising reins. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, who faces the herculean task of removing Hezbollah’s weapons while potentially integrating members of its group into the Lebanese army, has found his task needlessly onerous. In recent discussions with US deputy Mideast envoy Morgan Ortagus, the Lebanese leader reasoned “that Israel’s presence in the five disputed points gives Hezbollah a pretext to keep its weapons.”

On April 16, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz promised that such security zones would provide relevant buffers to shield Israeli communities. Ominously, the IDF would “Unlike in the past [not evacuate] areas that have been cleared and seized”. They would “remain in the security zones as a buffer between the enemy and [Israeli] communities in any temporary or permanent situation in Gaza – as in Lebanon and Syria.”

In Gaza, it is becoming increasingly clear that any prospect of Palestinian autonomy or political independence is to be strangled and snuffed out. Israel has already arbitrarily created the “Morag Corridor”, which excises Rafah from the Strip, and the Netzarim Corridor, which severs Gaza in half. Katz has also promised that the policy of blocking all food, medicine and other vital supplies to Gaza implemented on March 2 will continue, as it “is one of the main pressure levers preventing Hamas from using it as a tool with the population”.

Displacement orders, euphemised as “evacuation orders”, have become the staple of operating doctrine, the means of creating buffers of guns and steel. On April 11, Israeli authorities issued two such orders, effectively “covering vast areas in northern and southern Gaza”, according to UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric. “Together, these areas span more than 24 square kilometres – roughly the size of everything south of Central Park here in Manhattan.” Within these zones of military seizure lie medical facilities and storage sites filled with vital supplies.

The UN Human Rights office also expressed its concerns about Israel seemingly “inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life increasingly incompatible with their continued existence as a group in Gaza.” The population was being “forcibly transferred into ever shrinking spaces with little or no access to life-saving services, including water, food, and shelter, and whey they continue to be subject to attacks.” Engaging in such conduct against a civilian population within an occupied territory, the office pointedly observes, satisfies the definition of a forcible transfer, being both a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of 1998.

The latest doctrine of appropriation and indeterminate occupation adopted by Katz and the IDF has not impressed the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in Israel, long advocating for the release of Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza by Hamas. “They promised that the hostages come before everything,” came the organisation’s aggrieved observation. “In practice, however, Israel is choosing to seize territory before the hostages.” In doing so, the prerogatives of permanent conflict and habitual predation have displaced the more humane prerogatives of peace.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

How Social Media Shapes Our Interpretatf Reality

Framing the Feed

by Shealeigh Voitl / April 18th, 2025

In 2024, Project Censored introduced Beyond Fact-Checking: A Teaching Guide to the Power of News Frames to critically analyze narrative strategies media outlets use to present news stories. Framing shapes how we understand these stories by emphasizing certain aspects and downplaying others, ultimately promoting a particular interpretation of events. The point of framing is that it’s subtle and extremely easy to overlook, so the guide walks readers through framing red flags, such as selective sourcing, passive voice in headlines, and deceptively cropped images.

Although my colleague, Andy Lee Roth, and I initially developed this guide to educate students about how news can be factually accurate and still misleading due to framing, this concern is not limited to news. Framing shapes our interpretations of all kinds of content seen online every day.

After all, we’re all the architects, or framers, of our personal online presence. We carefully curate what we want others to see or know about us and deliberately omit the less desirable aspects of our lives. But in a more extreme form, this curation becomes the domain of influencers, where false advertising, dubious health recommendations, or shameless self-promotion are often tools to boost one’s image and ultimately generate significant income.

Algorithmic curation on platforms like X, Instagram, and TikTok also works to make framing a mostly invisible practice. Algorithms subtly amplify certain narratives more than others, ultimately trapping users in harmful echo chambers they’re unaware of.

For example, a user who repeatedly comes across a particular type of political content can begin to assume that most others on the platform share that same perspective. When, in reality, it’s not a matter of consensus—it’s a feedback loop. The user simply engages the most with that kind of content and certain accounts, signaling to the algorithm to feed them more of the same. This reality may feel organic, but tech companies have thoroughly engineered this exclusive focus over time.

In 2013, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) cracked down on influencers and celebrities peddling products without disclosing brand partnerships, marking the beginning of the .Com Disclosures. By 2017, the FTC began improving disclosures on social media specifically, sending out more than ninety warning letters to influencers and celebrities about clearly identifying brand partnerships in posts, using hashtags like #sponsored or #ad.

Notably, in 2020, the FTC alleged that the brand Teami Blends misled consumers by not “adequately disclos(ing) payments to well-known influencers.” The brand’s 30 Day Detox Pack, promoted by Cardi B, Jordin Sparks, Alexa PenaVega, and others, was touted as a sort of miracle product that would help consumers lose weight, fight or prevent cancer, and clear clogged arteries, among other unsubstantiated claims.

Influencers’ “before and after” photos showed thinner versions of themselves, suggesting these positive body transformations were the result of using Teami’s teas, instead of what was likely a combination of rigorous diet and exercise. Moreover, the FTC said that when influencers did disclose paid partnerships, the relevant hashtags were often not visible unless users clicked a link to read more.

In November 2023, the FTC sent warning letters to lobbying group American Beverage Association (ABA), the Canadian Sugar Institute, and health influencers with a cumulative follower count of more than 6 million across TikTok and Instagram, saying it had identified nearly three dozen posts that “failed to clearly disclose who was paying the influencers to promote artificial sweeteners or sugary foods.” Unlike Teami Blends’ partnership posts, these posts were clearly captioned #ad, but they offered followers no clear identification of the influencers’ sponsors.

One follower of Mary Ellen, or @milknhoneynutrition, a registered dietitian with more than 150,000 Instagram followers, commented on the partnered post, saying, “Genuine question – your post says this is an ad/paid partnership…with who? Diet Coke? Aspartame? The FDA? The ADA? The WHO? I’m just curious…” By leaving the partnership unidentified, Mary Ellen could convince followers that her endorsement was more neutral or personally motivated than it was.

Beyond the FTC violation, critics argued that online dietitians flogging the safety of sugar substitutes was inappropriate, if not unethical.

Of course, consumer awareness is an essential ethical consideration. But what happens when FTC guidelines have not been violated, when disclosures are clear and conspicuous, but the concern that should be disclosed isn’t the paid partnership itself, but instead, the political and moral implications of the partnership?

For her “Challenge Accepted” series, YouTuber Michelle Khare, whose channel has more than 5 million subscribers, became an army soldier for a day, sponsored by (you guessed it) the United States Army. Khare’s video highlights the physical commitment of training, including obstacle courses, parachute operations, and marksmanship. However, her video neglects to emphasize the actual challenges and responsibilities of military life, such as combat risks and stress, and long-term contractual obligations. Instead, the video glorifies military service by framing it as an opportunity to travel, pursue education, and learn foreign languages, without addressing some of the most obvious risks and consequences.

Khare’s army video is a clear departure from a lot of her other content in the original series, including videos where she tries anchoring the news, training like a chess grandmaster, or joining the traveling circus. In these, Khare gains a deeper appreciation and understanding of the skill, discipline, and dedication required in a wide range of professions. However, Khare’s army video, and her previously sponsored Marine boot camp video, deliberately blur the line between entertainment and recruitment. The underlying message is: This could be a better version of who you are now.

Framing is everywhere and often intentionally subtle. Even the most skeptical among us can fall prey to curated realities, algorithmic manipulation, and persuasive narratives cloaked in (apparent) neutrality. These days, it’s not enough for the news we consume and social media accounts we follow to pass a fact-check. We must be vigilant frame-checkers, off and online, asking ourselves how facts are presented, what perspectives are prioritized or outright excluded, and whose interests are served.

We can’t eliminate misinformation or misleading framing, but we can try to see it more clearly.

First published at Project Censored.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Shealeigh Voitl is Project Censored’s Digital and Print Editor. A regular contributor to the Project’s yearbook series, her writing has been featured in State of the Free Press 2023, Truthout, The Progressive, and Ms. Magazine. Read other articles by Shealeigh.

 

Leonard Zeskind (1949-2025): Author of Blood and Politics, Groundbreaking Exposé of White Nationalism

(Dedicated to Leonard Zeskind and his life partner Carol Smith)

by Bill Berkowitz / April 18th, 2025

Leonard Zeskind, 75, a fearless investigator of the nooks and crannies of America’s racist history and fragile democracy, has died. He spent the better part of his life advocating for civil and human rights and combatting racism. He attended white nationalist meetings to understand this rising movement, risking his life and going to places that most leftists and progressives wouldn’t dare. Much of what he learned he reported in his groundbreaking book, Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream, and in numerous articles. He was one of the first activist-journalists to report on the dangers of white nationalism, understanding how white nationalists were becoming a major force on America’s political landscape as well as becoming the go-to issue for the Trump-ruled Republican Party.

Not so coincidentally, Blood and Politics was one of nearly 400 titles included in the purge of books from the U.S. Naval Academy’s Nimitz Library, as part of a Trump administration directive to eliminate materials promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Prior to founding the Institute for Research and Education of Human Rights, a social justice and public affairs watchdog organization, Zeskind worked in heavy industry as a first class structural steel fitter, on automobile assembly lines, as a welder and other jobs. He was a community activist, and a human rights advocate, and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, colloquially called the “Genius Grant.”

Zeskind was early in spotting the dangers of an anti-immigrant sentiment in the country. In a 2009 interview, he talked about the “anti-immigrant movement—[and] the lobbyists, Minuteman vigilantes, and racist think tanks that support them. It is here that the idea that the United States is or should be a ‘white’ country takes on the form of a policy issue. If you follow the discussion among anti-immigrant groups, the dominant discourse is about how the United States is becoming a ‘Third World’ country because of all the brown-skinned Spanish-speaking people crossing the Rio Grande—never mind the fact that these same people have been on this side of the border ever since 1845.”

Zeskind, an internationally recognized expert on white nationalist movements, was a historian, storyteller, and philosopher poet. He loved poetry and poets; he lived the spirit of the beats. He read philosophical works for pleasure. If you ever had a question about Existentialism, Stoicism, Phenomenology, Kantianism, or other isms, he would more likely than not be able to explain the differences and nuances.

I first met Lenny in 1968 when he came to Kansas University (see my poem “The First Time I Saw Him” at the end of this piece). We worked on the alternative newspaper Vortex (nee Reconstruction), and lived together in what was called the Michigan Street House, a commune in a formerly old-folks home. Although we focused on different anti-democratic movements (I on Christian nationalism, Lenny on white nationalists) and even though living in different cities, we kept in touch. We loved each other. He was Uncle Lenny to my daughter Leah … and will always be.

In 2009, shortly after the publication of Blood and Politics, I interviewed Zeskind. Now, some sixteen years later, in the aftermath of January 6, this year’s pardons of the J6 insurrectionists, and the rollout of Project 2025, the mainstream media is examining the white nationalist movement’s Christian roots, anti-Semitism, and racist beliefs. (For a listing of Zeskind’s extraordinary multi-decade written contributions to our understanding of white nationalism, see here.)

Bill Berkowitz: How did you get started monitoring and investigating these movements?

Leonard Zeskind: I came to the age of social consciousness when the black freedom movement was very strong and civil rights were high on the national agenda. I was taken by the notion, articulated during the mid-1960s, that white people should focus on organizing other white people to oppose racism. As a grassroots activist that idea stayed with me. In 1970, I started doing anti-racist work with impoverished working class young white people who had previously been at odds with poor black people living virtually in the same neighborhood. For thirteen years I worked as a welder, an ironworker, and on assembly lines. Around 1978, I noticed that Klan and neo-Nazi activity had picked up, and so it was my interest in racism in general that led me to research and write about the white supremacy movement. Between 1985 and 1994, I was the research director at the Center for Democratic Renewal (formerly the National Anti-Klan Network).

BB: Why did you decide to write Blood and Politics?

LZ: It became apparent to me that much of the received wisdom about white supremacists was simply wrong. And I wanted to write a book that did not just say what I thought was correct, but I wanted to show it through specific characters, scenes of action and analysis. These white-ists are not just a bunch of uneducated bumpkins down on their economic luck. Instead, they are demographically much like the rest of white Americans, working class and middle class with a significant stratum of middle class professionals—professors, lawyers, chiropractors, etc.—as their leaders.

And, these are not a string of disconnected organizations sharing only a common set of hatreds. Rather, this is a single movement, with a common set of leaders and interlocking memberships that hold a complete and sometimes sophisticated ideology. Further, the white nationalist movement today is organized around the notion that the power of whites to control government and social policy has already been overthrown by people of color and Jews, rather unlike the Klan of the 1960s which sought to defend a system of racial apartheid in the South.

BB: How do the religious beliefs of the movement’s different constituencies—the Christian patriots, neo-Confederates, survivalists, white power skinheads, Holocaust deniers, scientific racists, and others—manifest themselves?

LZ: For some, religion is simply a way of expressing group identity. That is most obviously true among the pagans and Odinists in the skinhead scene, where the invocation of the old Norse gods is not about theology or even ethics, but about style and promoting their subculture. In a similar sense, there are neo-Confederates and white nationalists who believe that “Christian-ness” is one aspect of their Western civilization—along with respect for tradition, authority, and whites-only citizenship rights. For this wing of the movement, best exemplified in my book by a now-deceased Washington Times columnist Sam Francis, opposition to abortion is less a theological imperative and more a program plank alongside support for gun rights and opposition to immigration.

Then there are the so-called Christian patriots and Posse Comitatus-types for whom a specific theological strain known as “Christian Identity” defines their notions of themselves as white people, and their ideas of national identity and governmental power. They hold Bible camp retreats for families where they teach each other how to live and what to believe. They also promote their belief that the United States is a white Christian republic rather than a multiracial democracy. And in a number of cases they turn their conviction that white Christians have superior civil and political rights—over those they deem “Fourteenth Amendment” citizens (everybody else)—into fraudulent schemes with fake money. In other instances, they establish “Christian” courts and militia groups that act as if they are legitimate arms of “lawful” government.

In this belief system, whites from northern Europe—the Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Teutonic and Lombard peoples—are the real descendants of the biblical people of Israel. As such, Jews are fakes and considered either satanic by nature or Satan himself incarnate. In this schema, black people and other people of color are considered “pre-Adamic,” that is before Adam: not fully human in the way white people are. In this telling, interracial marriage is a sin akin to bestiality, and the presence of Jews in their Christian society is a crime against their God. While such ideas may seem ridiculous on their face, Christian Identity followers derive their entire belief system from their Bible.

BB: What are the differences between the beliefs of these groups and those of the Christian Right?

LZ: Much like the Christian right types, Identity believers oppose abortion and homosexuality as violations of what they deem to be God’s Law. Similarly, they view women’s role in the family and society as subordinate to men. They also support prayer in school and oppose secularism in society. But Christian Identity is much more forthright in its anti-Semitism and racism. They are decidedly not “Christian Zionists,” and do not have an eschatology, or theory of the End Times, with Israel at its center. In fact, they tend to call themselves “End Times Overcomers,” and believe the final conflict is a race war that they win. And Christian Identity has a much more highly defined theory of Satan.

BB: Explain the Christian Identity theory of the Devil.

LZ: Actually they have two competing theories of Satan and Jews. In one case, they believe that the snake in the Garden of Eden was Satan, and that he impregnated Eve, and that Cain was not only Satan’s offspring, but also that Jews are descendants of Cain, and Satan incarnate. In a second case, they believe that Satan worked through Esau, and that the Jews are descendants of Esau (Edomites) and do the Devil’s work here on Earth. Blood and Politics details this belief system and its implications, and even readers already vaguely familiar with the ideas of Christian Identity will find this discussion helpful. Indeed, it is my argument that without a proper understanding of these devil theories, the average person cannot actually understand what Christian Identity is about.

BB: Why do you describe this movement as “white nationalist”?

LZ: Most obviously because the movement’s foremost aspect is its regard for white skin color as a badge of national identity. Many of the organizations and leaders look back to the Constitutional order prior to the Civil War, when the national-state was a whites-only republic. Others look forward to the creation of a new white nation-state carved out of the lands of North America. While these ideas were present in the movement from its re-inception in the mid-1970s, they only became dominant in the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War ushered in a new era. Across the globe, nationalism became a language of opposition to the New Global Order, and racial and ethnic nationalism became more salient than its liberal civic opposition. Books such as Blood and Belonging and Jihad vs. McWorld explored these issues globally. In the United States, racial nationalism meant white nationalism, and the old white supremacist movement was thus transformed into 21st-century white nationalism.

BB: You argue in the book (and the title references it) that white nationalists have successfully moved from the “margins to the mainstream.” How did this happen?

LZ: Through a combination of factors. First, through the slow accretion of organizing week-in, week-out events: Klan rallies, Bible camps, survivalist and gun shows, white-power music concerts, etc., many of which are described in my book. Second, when David Duke won a majority of white votes while running in two Louisiana statewide elections in 1990 and 1991, he uncovered a middle-American constituency that supported at least a portion of his national socialist ideas. Third, a group of respected (if not respectable) ultra-conservatives broke with the Bush 41-era Republican consensus during the first Persian Gulf War and headed in the white direction. These were the Buchananites [led by current television commentator and author Pat Buchanan] and they helped create a realignment of forces that continues to plague us today.

BB: How does that show itself today?

LZ: Primarily in the anti-immigrant movement—the lobbyists, Minuteman vigilantes, and racist think tanks that support them. It is here that the idea that the United States is or should be a “white” country takes on the form of a policy issue. If you follow the discussion among anti-immigrant groups, the dominant discourse is about how the United States is becoming a “Third World” country because of all the brown-skinned Spanish-speaking people crossing the Rio Grande—never mind the fact that these same people have been on this side of the border ever since 1845.

From this perspective, one of the most interesting Republican pieces of legislation languishing in Congress is a proposal to end birthright citizenship for children born in the United States to parents lacking the proper documents. If such a measure was enacted, it would run smack dab into the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees birthright citizenship and equality before the law. In this sense, the Republicans who signed onto this bill are proposing measures that the Christian patriots and Posse Comitatus-types talked about twenty-five years ago. It is important for us to be able to connect these dots.

BB: Now that the economy is in a severe tailspin, what are the implications for the white nationalist movement?

LZ: Although I loathe predicting the future, I will say that in the past, hard economic times have not automatically translated into an expansion for white nationalists. There was a growth surge during the Clinton years, for example, which were generally considered better economic conditions for middle class people. In the past, the politics of race and nation mattered more than economic hard times. White nationalists will support protectionist measures, and they oppose free trade in capital goods because they oppose free trade (or open borders) for labor. Whether or not they gain traction by claiming that the stock market and banks are controlled by Jews depends on whether people of goodwill are able to offer a more compelling vision of change.

With Obama in the White House, I think we can expect more of the same, plus some. Some white nationalists will focus on tending to their current base—which is not inconsiderable. They will continue to push for secessionist-style white enclaves and might engage in militia-style violence. Others will attempt to widen their base, and carve out a larger niche among conservative Republicans. Without an electoral vehicle of their own, they will suffer from the vicissitudes of the Republican leadership. Their natural base, however, will be the five percent of white voters who told pollsters last summer that they would never vote for a black person for president. More than Rush Limbaugh will get ugly.

*****

On a personal note, here is a poem I wrote about encountering a young Leonard Zeskind.

The First Time I Saw Him for Leonard Zeskind

The first time I saw him,
it was a crisp fall morning.
He wore a long, Hasidic-like overcoat,
black jeans, scuffed engineer boots,
and a black wool cap—
from which his dark curls spilled
like secrets.

He was eighteen,
newly arrived at the University of Kansas,
after some time adrift at Florida.
How he ended up in Gainesville
was always a mystery to me.

Years later, he told me:
a professor there had spoken
of a Heidegger scholar—
someone in Kansas,
someone he had to study with.

He was hell-bent on Heidegger.

But the day before he set foot on campus,
that scholar died—
a car crash on an empty road.
Fate, it seemed,
was already writing footnotes
in the margins of his life.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. Read other articles by Bill.

 

Bad Math

by E.R. Bills / April 19th, 2025

The bombed remains of automobiles with the bombed Federal Building in the background, April 19, 1995.

Sometimes we see pictures of ourselves from a decade or three back and think, what was going through their head?

In other circumstances, we don’t have to wonder. We know.

It happens to writers a lot. It’s often our and stock-in-trade.

I know exactly what I was thinking after the Oklahoma City bombing thirty years ago today, and it was not popular. But I recorded it in the April 25, 1995 edition of The Shorthorn at the University of Texas-Arlington. And the math sucks. It’s aged much better than the author.

In the Aftermath

To terrorize is to dominate or coerce by intimidation, the threat of violence, or the calculated perpetration of destruction, catastrophe, assassination, murder, etc. In the popular mind, terrorism is qualified by additional connotations. People recognize it as a vicious, cold-blooded attack on defenseless civilians or bystanding innocents. Few crimes are judged with such an unchallenged sense of vehement righteousness. Perpetrators of terrorism are hounded with unparalleled sanctimony and fanatic zeal. I read President Clinton’s pledge in the newspaper: “Nobody can hide any place in this country; nobody can hide any place in this world from the terrible consequences of what has been done.”

Indeed, I think . . . unless they are American.

Reports of the Oklahoma City bombing shock, enrage, and sadden me, but an ancient adage haunts my conscience: Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.

For the last four decades, the United States has perpetrated terrorist activities around the world. Our remorseless work in Vietnam, before and during the war, provided a chilling catalogue of American terrorism. The CIA-planned and CIA-executed assassination of the democratically-elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, evidenced a harrowing propensity for terrorist realpolitik. And the United States has repeatedly installed and/or subsidized puppet dictators around the world who perform terrorist acts on their own constituencies.

On a subtler level, in cases such as Israel and, until recently, South Africa, we support governments that permit, if not directly sanction, terrorist enterprises against their own indigenous populations, ranging from summary executions to simple violations of the most basic human rights.

I see tattered infant-victims of the bombing in Oklahoma City and cringe, rueful and angry.

But my jaw also stiffens as I recall the Guatemalan and El Salvadoran “Death Squads,” the genocidal military wings of regimes we encouraged and assisted in rises to power in Central America.

In Guatemala, we supported the coup against and eventual overthrow of democratically elected president Jacob Arbenz. The faction we bet on—and invested in—began an incomprehensible reign of terror, decimating over 440 indigenous villages, conducting an estimated 100,000 political killings (more than 40,000 termed “disappearances”), and leaving over 200,000 children orphaned. And our man in Chile, General Augusto Pinochet, upstaged his Guatemalan counterparts, employing tortures that included inserting sabers in vaginas and disemboweling female victims while their families watched.

And who can forget the “fraidy-Eighties” under Ronnie Reagan?

No one in Nicaragua can.

Men, women and children no different than the citizens of Oklahoma City were afraid all the time, and not just over one incident, but several every week. Besides funding and arming the Contras, we also published and distributed a terrorist handbook for their training. The CIA called it a “Freedom Fighters Manual,” but it included, among other things, detailed instructions (with illustrations) for making and utilizing Molotov cocktails.

And these are just are just a few of the examples where U.S. involvement in terrorist activities actually became public. There were no doubt countless others. In fact, by popular definition, the largest single terrorist atrocity in human history was the allied firebombing of Dresden, Germany in World War II. Although it occurred during wartime, it was a vicious, calculated attack on a virtually defenseless civilian community.

The second and third largest terrorist atrocities in world history were probably our nuclear strikes in Japan. These incidents pale in comparison to the widespread pogroms of Hitler, Belgium’s King Leopold, and the Catholic Church, but genocide is not a single act or terrorism—it constitutes a regimen of terrorism (of which our nation could be accused of domestically regarding indigenous people and Blacks and also in much of the Third World in general).

As Americans, we are largely and more recently unaccustomed to displays of first-hand terrorist bloodshed, but, for much of the rest of the world, it’s nothing out of the ordinary. They live with it every day.

I shudder at the scenes from Oklahoma City; but I also quake at our bloody ignorance. Did we think our acts of terror would never be reciprocated? Or that our fellow citizens were incapable of them?

Did we really think we could be immune from terrorism after having so long been one of its chief contagions?!

American terrorism has, however, evolved. Now, it’s openly encouraged and sanctioned by our commander-and-chief.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

E.R. Bills, a native of Fort Worth, is the author of Letters from Texas, 2021-2023, Texas Obscurities: Stories of the Peculiar, Exceptional & Nefarious and Tell-Tale Texas: Investigations in Infamous History. Read other articles by E.R..

What Lies behind Nvidia’s Commitment to “unswervingly serving the Chinese market”

by Global Times / April 19th, 2025

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has visited China again three months after his trip in January, recently publicly stated that the company would “unswervingly serve the Chinese market” and emphasized China’s key role in the global supply chain. He said Nvidia has grown together with the Chinese market and achieved mutual success. Against the backdrop of the US imposing tariffs and banning Nvidia’s export of H20 chips to China, Huang’s visit and his emphasis that China is a “very important market for Nvidia” can be seen as US companies’ indirect resistance to US government’s protectionist trade policies. His stance, viewing China as an opportunity rather than a threat, and the call for cooperation rather than decoupling, resonates strongly with the American tech and business community.

China is one of the world’s largest consumer markets, and its thriving industrial ecosystem and broad application scenarios provide crucial momentum for continuous innovation for many American companies like Nvidia. As Huang put it, in-depth cooperation with Chinese companies has enabled it to evolve into an even more competitive international enterprise. Previously, some US business leaders also noted that they don’t need to hitch a ride with the US government, they need the government to clear the path for us. The importance and urgency of cooperation with China have “unexpectedly” been highlighted against the backdrop of the US’ reckless imposition of tariffs.

Not just in the tech and business industry, the call for “We need China” has recently spread across various sectors of American society. A recent poll by Pew Research Center also revealed surprising results. The survey showed that fewer and fewer Americans now view China as an enemy, with significant year-over-year decline in the share of Americans with an unfavorable view of China over the past five years. Bloomberg described this as “a sentiment that runs counter to the tariff,” calling the finding “surprising.” Moreover, on overseas social platforms like TikTok, Chinese e-commerce has unexpectedly risen to prominence, sparking a new wave of “Made in China” enthusiasm among US consumers. Many influencers have posted unboxing videos of products bought from Chinese e-commerce platforms, exclaiming that they can get the same quality items for just a tenth of the price.

Despite Washington frequently having sent signals of confrontation, which has pushed China-US economic relations to the brink, American society is not in favor of a zero-sum game between the two countries. Pew’s survey results, to some extent, puncture the bubble of the so-called tariff policies inflated by Washington. Relevant approach has not reflected public opinion in the US, but instead oversimplifies the complexity and multifaceted nature of the bilateral relationship, turning it into a full-scale confrontation. Washington’s abuse of tariffs ignores the high degree of economic complementarity between the two countries and the practical needs of their people, creating chaos and uncertainty for both the US and the global economy – something the American public is feeling firsthand.

Those who are “surprised” by public opinion should reflect on what exactly is American public’s attitude toward China, and who is “influencing” Americans’ perceptions of China. Over the past few years, the so-called “China threat” has almost become the default opening line for politicians when discussing China, and the attitudes of some members of the public have also been affected. “China is taking advantage of the US,” “the US must get the trade imbalance fixed,” and “pursuing economic containment of China to achieve ‘America First'” – this is the outdated logic behind Washington’s so-called tariff policies toward China.

China-US economic and trade cooperation has brought enormous economic benefits to both sides, and the US has benefited just as much as China. The US imports a large volume of consumer goods, intermediate goods, and capital goods from China, supporting the development of its manufacturing supply chains and industrial chains, enriching consumer choices, lowering the cost of living, and improving the real purchasing power of the American public, especially for middle- and lower-income groups. When taking into account goods trade, services trade, and the local sales revenue of domestic enterprises operating in each other’s countries, the economic gains from China-US trade are roughly balanced. These facts cannot be concealed by lies or slander; in fact, the more China-US economic and trade relations come under strain, the more likely these truths are to resonate within the US.

Gavin Newsom, governor of California, recently announced plans to sue the US federal government over its abuse of tariff policies, stating, “We’re standing up for American families who can’t afford to let the chaos continue.”

The hope of the China-US relationship lies in the people, its foundation is in the two societies, its future depends on the youth, and its vitality comes from exchanges at subnational levels. According to the public opinion survey conducted by the Global Times Institute (GTI) on “mutual perceptions between China and the US” in 2024, around 90 percent of respondents from both China and the US express concern over bilateral relations, with mainstream public opinion in both countries favoring strengthened economic and trade exchanges, people-to-people exchanges, and cooperation on climate change.

The phenomenal grassroots interactions between Americans and Chinese on social media recently also reflect that, beneath the anti-China clamor stirred up by some Washington politicians, there remains a strong, constructive desire among the people of both nations for peaceful coexistence and cooperative engagement. If the US continues to go its own way, pressing China with tariff blackmail and inciting for China-US “decoupling,” the growing opposition from their voters may become a political reality that Washington can no longer ignore.

Global Times, where this article was first published, takes great pains to present facts and views that could help the readers better understand China. Read other articles by Global Times, or visit Global Times's website.

 

Some Sleepwalk into Autocracy

I was Dragged Kicking and Screaming

by Hope Loudon / April 19th, 2025

I am a whistleblower with a master’s of public policy from Central European University (kicked out of Hungary by Orban’s regime), and I have spent the last several years feverishly trying to blow the whistle about authoritarianism and rising fascism in the U.S. On Christmas Eve in 2023, I wrote a prescient and illustrative letter to civil society abroad as I begged for help on behalf of a marginalized, targeted U.S. activist. When the international civil society employee had a call with me, she explained what human rights are to me, assuming I did not know, and she seemed to think Americans have said rights to such an extent that we could not possibly urgently need the support her organization provides.

“We don’t help with democratic backsliding,” she said.

“How bad does it have to get?” I replied.

I am not angry at the Trump voters who ”chose” Trump when they did not have a choice, as the U.S. has not had enough election integrity for it to matter for years. At best, billionaires gave ordinary voters the illusion of choice, asking them to pick between two right-wing candidates on the menu the oligarchy provided. It is like children being told, “You must wear pants, so do you want the red ones or the blue ones? We bought them both.” I am angry at the careerist civil servants and civil society members who served themselves at society’s expense, leading us to this point instead of preventing it. Almost every time I tried to explain the Orwellian details of U.S. case studies, and the playbook of corruption paving the way for fascism, to supposed experts and members of civil society, I was dismissed or laughed out of “the room where it happens.” Far from helping us, civil society betrayed us.

Benefiting from the system and becoming one with it—seeking status, fancy titles, and nice salaries, as well as a seat at the politician’s table—precludes the due diligence of protecting the public from the system and the excesses of those politicians. Chris Hedges likes to refer to this gutted and gutless “Liberal Class” as “careerists” and “courtiers” in his books such as Death of the Liberal Class. Many of these “experts” who got interviewed on mainstream media over the past few years still thought “everything is fine” like the dog drinking coffee in the house on fire meme out of excessive privilege, fragile egos, and self-delusion. Other “experts” and members of civil society knew things were bad, but did not want to sound the alarm with accurate urgency because they wanted to keep their rapport with the powers that be such as the morally bankrupt Democratic party (as Chris Hedges calls it). There were powerful people who admitted privately to me that they knew our supposed rights and the constitution do not function in practice, but who feebly justified being two-faced when it was time to face the music. They are, in the worst cases, members of marginalized groups themselves who helped corrupt cronies by misleading people like them into traps set by state-sponsored perpetrators.

Funding was doled out by billionaires and corporations, and accepted by supposedly independent academia with strings attached, leading partially to the crackdown on speech against the genocide in Palestine. I believe civil society groups and researchers partnered with Big Tech to whitewash AI’s impacts and image, especially when it comes to harms related to journalism. Some civil society groups even operate on behalf of the enemy, redefining victims as perpetrators and perpetrators as victims. As a whistleblower, I found no help for people like me, but I did find organizations helping people who are part of the problem. I attended one Florida-based “whistleblower” organization’s vicariously embarrassing online event two years ago, and concluded they were supporting people who had been justly punished for racism, sexism, and homophobia, not the victims of said people.

In other situations, I recall civil society members allowing pure egotism and petulance to prevent their receptivity to the truth and willingness to find real solutions. A program coordinator at a legal aid organization got angry when I said they were bringing their programs to the U.S. late and explained how access to justice would not solve the problem of a corrupted and commandeered judiciary. She practically pouted like a child as though the truth was a personal attack, and I received no replies to my follow-up emails even after her boss tried to direct me back to her through LinkedIN. Instead of spending their money and advocacy training on me, perhaps they trained some of the other people in the info-session: A Native American conspiracy theorist supporting anti-trans parents against Child Protective Services intervention for their kids, and an open pedophile trying to conflate being a pedophile with being gay and a victim of unfair state persecution.

It is telling to me that I am so relieved when someone like Ellie Mystal so much as states the obvious and asks,

To turn it around back on the people who were telling me for months that the courts would save us, what do you all got now? What’s your plan now? Now that the courts have issued their order and Trump has ignored their orders, what’s plan B because plan A was the courts going to save us, and that was never going to work?

A few days ago, after trying for seven months to reach one of the most powerful and important people I have ever managed to contact to ask for help fighting fascism, I was dismissed with the worst, most tone-deaf and delusional advice I have ever received in my life which was essentially:

“Come back to the U.S. and get any job you can find regardless of how houseless it leaves you. Convince people not to believe Trump’s lies, and work your way up into politics.”

Nevermind that dissidents, LGBTQ+, disabled people, houseless people, etc. are being targeted and will certainly be put into prison camps such as those called for in Project 2025 domestically (not just in El Salvador). Nevermind that I tried everything to organize, and collaborate, and resist, over the last few years, and have worked in advocacy and awareness-raising pro-bono since 2021. Nevermind that there is no such thing as working your way up into politics from the working class under autocratic dictatorships. I should thank this rich, white, boomer member of the establishment for the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” and return to stand in front of the firing squad pitch. I know he did not mean it to be arrogant, condescending, negligent, and reprehensible, but it is.

We are now witnessing the social media and televised version of developing genocide, and while false information and free press concerns make the truth harder for people to discern, the regime is allowing photo journalists in and creating a public spectacle as it gloats about its crimes. I wish everyone in the world could see that photo of bound detainees having their heads shaved and read about how innocent Andry Hernandez Romero, a gay makeup artist deported to Trump’s torture gulag, called for his mother as he wept with his hair falling all around him. I wish everyone would read ProPublica’s article detailing the experiences of the helpless and morally-conflicted flight attendants on the unmistakable modern version of the trains to the concentration camps.

I cannot share my 2023 letter here, but I wish I could submit it as a primary source if there is a future museum or archive where people go to see evidence painting a picture of a dark chapter in history they promise to never repeat. It is worth noting that, in 2023, the Holocaust Museum in Mexico even had an exhibit on Trump, playing his dehumanizing quotations about immigrants and vulnerable people on repeat. This time, we won’t be able to say we did not know. People like me who had little power knew, and people who had the most power and authority did not listen, would not help, and did not protect anyone but themselves. Psuedo-experts whose careers rested on fealty knowingly or unknowingly participated in a collective gaslighting of the victims of the broken system and sick society in a cover-up for the increasingly authoritarian and oligarchic state. They dragged us kicking and screaming into autocracy, or threw us under the bus, and I will never forgive them for it.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Hope Loudon holds an MA of Public Policy from Central European University and has spent several years documenting, analyzing, and resisting what she believes is the systematic nullification of civil rights laws through corruption as a prerequisite for Fascism. Her social media is hopeloudon.bsky.social. Read other articles by Hope.