RAW STORY
January 3, 2024
Thousands of Trump supporters gather at the Supreme Court to show their support for President Trump after the election. (Shutterstock.com)
Defense analyst Brynn Tannehill has taken a look at recent polling of Republican primary voters and has come to the sobering conclusion that many of them want former President Donald Trump to be a dictator.
Writing in the New Republic, Tannehill notes that a recent poll of GOP voters showed that Trump's Nazi-esque rhetoric about migrants "poisoning the blood" of the nation made 42 percent of respondents more likely to support him, while only 28 percent said it made them less likely to support him.
"About half of Republicans hear Trump’s rhetoric and think, 'Yes, this exactly what I want,'" he writes. "Which is to say, an unbreakable plurality of the GOP explicitly wants fascism."
While the fascist bloc of the GOP may not constitute a majority of voters in the country, Tannehill points to historical precedent showing they don't need to be in order to impose a potential dictatorship on the country.
"When Milton Mayer visited Germany in the early 1950s to interview former low-level members of the Nazi party, he concluded that perhaps only a million out of 70 million Germans were 'Fanatiker' (fanatics or true believers)—the rest were just along for the perks or to simply avoid unwanted scrutiny for lack of ideological purity," Tannehill explains. "In my own experience as an analyst in U.S. Central Command who studied insurgency, I estimated that you only needed 10 to 15 percent of the population to be supportive of the insurgents to get a situation like what I saw in Iraq in 2005–2006."
In other words, says Tannehill, "you don’t need all that many people dedicated to dictatorship, theocracy, or any other awful possibility to absolutely collapse a country into barbarism."
Read the full analysis here.
January 3, 2024
Thousands of Trump supporters gather at the Supreme Court to show their support for President Trump after the election. (Shutterstock.com)
Defense analyst Brynn Tannehill has taken a look at recent polling of Republican primary voters and has come to the sobering conclusion that many of them want former President Donald Trump to be a dictator.
Writing in the New Republic, Tannehill notes that a recent poll of GOP voters showed that Trump's Nazi-esque rhetoric about migrants "poisoning the blood" of the nation made 42 percent of respondents more likely to support him, while only 28 percent said it made them less likely to support him.
"About half of Republicans hear Trump’s rhetoric and think, 'Yes, this exactly what I want,'" he writes. "Which is to say, an unbreakable plurality of the GOP explicitly wants fascism."
While the fascist bloc of the GOP may not constitute a majority of voters in the country, Tannehill points to historical precedent showing they don't need to be in order to impose a potential dictatorship on the country.
"When Milton Mayer visited Germany in the early 1950s to interview former low-level members of the Nazi party, he concluded that perhaps only a million out of 70 million Germans were 'Fanatiker' (fanatics or true believers)—the rest were just along for the perks or to simply avoid unwanted scrutiny for lack of ideological purity," Tannehill explains. "In my own experience as an analyst in U.S. Central Command who studied insurgency, I estimated that you only needed 10 to 15 percent of the population to be supportive of the insurgents to get a situation like what I saw in Iraq in 2005–2006."
In other words, says Tannehill, "you don’t need all that many people dedicated to dictatorship, theocracy, or any other awful possibility to absolutely collapse a country into barbarism."
Read the full analysis here.
Kathleen Culliton
RAW STORY
January 2, 2024
Donald Trump (AFP)
Donald Trump’s return to the White House would instate an authoritarian rule comparable to fascist leaders of 1930s Europe, an Ivy League academic and Forbes columnist argued Tuesday.
“There will be camps,” wrote Columbia University lecturer Tom Watson. “We will be Spain under Franco. Or worse.”
Watson, in Tuesday’s edition of his newsletter The Liberal, describes a bleak future for the U.S. under a Trump administration he fears would dismantle checks and balances to the detriment of those who do not identify as white and male.
“Ethnic and religious minorities will suffer. Millions will be targeted because of sexual orientation. Immigrants will suffer,” Watson writes.
“Criminal gangs will run the Federal government and even deep blue states will be hard-pressed to resist the pull of authoritarian rule.”
But the silver lining of Watson’s looming storm cloud is a mix of optimism and odds: “I think we will win.”
Watson argues that President Joe Biden’s position is much stronger than conservatives, critics, and the media would have Americans believe.
“Biden’s strengths are the kind that win elections,” Watson writes. “And you know who agrees? State parties in swing and blue states.”
Watson challenges the “Dems in disarray” critique — arguing the liberal party is well-funded, well-organized and activated — and urges readers to remember Democrats' strong swing-state showing in the 2022 midterm elections.
“Democrats’ statewide margins were greater than the 2020 presidential margins in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania — all recent battleground states,” Watson writes.
“That showing led the party to pick up a Senate seat, four state legislative chambers and two governorships, and helped keep the House of Representatives close, making it far more likely Republicans lose it in 2024.”
But Watson warns of real challenges in the months to follow, including voter suppression, bigotry, the “clickiness” of Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the slow pace of the criminal court system.
“The thunderstorm is coming,” Watson concludes. “Consider these hard truths without turning away."
Read "The Gathering Storm" in entirety here.
January 2, 2024
Donald Trump (AFP)
Donald Trump’s return to the White House would instate an authoritarian rule comparable to fascist leaders of 1930s Europe, an Ivy League academic and Forbes columnist argued Tuesday.
“There will be camps,” wrote Columbia University lecturer Tom Watson. “We will be Spain under Franco. Or worse.”
Watson, in Tuesday’s edition of his newsletter The Liberal, describes a bleak future for the U.S. under a Trump administration he fears would dismantle checks and balances to the detriment of those who do not identify as white and male.
“Ethnic and religious minorities will suffer. Millions will be targeted because of sexual orientation. Immigrants will suffer,” Watson writes.
“Criminal gangs will run the Federal government and even deep blue states will be hard-pressed to resist the pull of authoritarian rule.”
But the silver lining of Watson’s looming storm cloud is a mix of optimism and odds: “I think we will win.”
Watson argues that President Joe Biden’s position is much stronger than conservatives, critics, and the media would have Americans believe.
“Biden’s strengths are the kind that win elections,” Watson writes. “And you know who agrees? State parties in swing and blue states.”
Watson challenges the “Dems in disarray” critique — arguing the liberal party is well-funded, well-organized and activated — and urges readers to remember Democrats' strong swing-state showing in the 2022 midterm elections.
“Democrats’ statewide margins were greater than the 2020 presidential margins in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania — all recent battleground states,” Watson writes.
“That showing led the party to pick up a Senate seat, four state legislative chambers and two governorships, and helped keep the House of Representatives close, making it far more likely Republicans lose it in 2024.”
But Watson warns of real challenges in the months to follow, including voter suppression, bigotry, the “clickiness” of Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the slow pace of the criminal court system.
“The thunderstorm is coming,” Watson concludes. “Consider these hard truths without turning away."
Read "The Gathering Storm" in entirety here.
‘Full Hitler’: Trump’s push for dictatorship to be focus of Biden campaign
RAW STORY
January 2, 2024
Joe Biden, Donald Trump (Photo by Brendan Smialakowski for AFP)
President Joe Biden's campaign is preparing to run against Donald Trump as if the Republican candidate were Adolf Hitler.
CNN reported that Biden's campaign operatives are being careful to slowly increase the campaign rhetoric so voters do not get numb to the arguments that Trump is behaving like a dictator.
"[A]s some of the younger aides on Biden's reelection campaign have been grimly joking, it's about when to go 'full Hitler' – when the leading Republican candidate's speeches and actions go so far that the Biden team goes all the way to a direct comparison to the Nazi leader rather than couching their attacks by saying Trump 'parroted' him," the CNN report said.
Trump has joked that he would behave as a dictator on day one of his next presidency. And the candidate recently hinted on social media that his goals were "corruption," "revenge," and "dictatorship."
ALSO READ: More questions arise about college’s ‘pink slime,’ conservative PAC-backed publisher hire
"You have this moment in the first quarter where he is continuing to go full MAGA extremist now in order to shore up support in his own base," a senior campaign aide explained to CNN. "While he may be successful in that effort, if we do our job, we'll point out that everything he's saying is extreme and unpopular."
The campaign aide suggested Biden's strategy would not change much even if Trump is not the Republican nominee
"There's zero distance between these [GOP candidates] on the insane and dangerous worldview for which they're advocating," the senior campaign aide said. "Our ability to develop a contrast does not change based on who has the nomination at this point."
January 2, 2024
Joe Biden, Donald Trump (Photo by Brendan Smialakowski for AFP)
President Joe Biden's campaign is preparing to run against Donald Trump as if the Republican candidate were Adolf Hitler.
CNN reported that Biden's campaign operatives are being careful to slowly increase the campaign rhetoric so voters do not get numb to the arguments that Trump is behaving like a dictator.
"[A]s some of the younger aides on Biden's reelection campaign have been grimly joking, it's about when to go 'full Hitler' – when the leading Republican candidate's speeches and actions go so far that the Biden team goes all the way to a direct comparison to the Nazi leader rather than couching their attacks by saying Trump 'parroted' him," the CNN report said.
Trump has joked that he would behave as a dictator on day one of his next presidency. And the candidate recently hinted on social media that his goals were "corruption," "revenge," and "dictatorship."
ALSO READ: More questions arise about college’s ‘pink slime,’ conservative PAC-backed publisher hire
"You have this moment in the first quarter where he is continuing to go full MAGA extremist now in order to shore up support in his own base," a senior campaign aide explained to CNN. "While he may be successful in that effort, if we do our job, we'll point out that everything he's saying is extreme and unpopular."
The campaign aide suggested Biden's strategy would not change much even if Trump is not the Republican nominee
"There's zero distance between these [GOP candidates] on the insane and dangerous worldview for which they're advocating," the senior campaign aide said. "Our ability to develop a contrast does not change based on who has the nomination at this point."
No comments:
Post a Comment