BE AFRAID, VERY AFRAID

'Cast of dangerous clowns': Columnist claims Cabinet picks reflect 'allure of Trumpism'

Kathleen Culliton
November 19, 2024 9

RAW STORY

People dressed as clowns attend the Zombie Walk, October 20, 2024. REUTERS/Pablo Sanhueza

The kind of man Stephen King would depict luring unsuspecting children into sewers is the kind President-elect Donald Trump would pick for the secretary of education, a political columnist argued Tuesday.

Salon writer Amanda Marcotte on Tuesday made the case that Trump is actively seeking out men accused of sexually assaulting women for top positions in his administration or, as she calls it, his "cast of dangerous clowns."

"It's not just that Trump doesn't care about sexual assault," wrote Marcotte. "He appears to see it as a bonus if one of his nominees or allies has faced such allegations."

Three men Trump has tapped for Cabinet have faced sexual assault accusations, reports show.

The congressional Ethics committee investigated whether former Rep. Matt Gaetz sexually assaulted an underage girl, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been accused of sexually assaulting his children's babysitter and Fox News personality Pete Hegseth has been accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel room, reports show.

The three men have publicly denied the accusations.

Marcotte argued Tuesday that the denials — and the accusations — don't matter to Trump or his voters.

"He expects his base voters to see these ... like they see him, as an aspirational figure," Marcotte wrote. "And not because they believe they're innocent men done wrong, either. The ability to commit crimes — even sex crimes — and get away with it is part of the allure of Trumpism."

Marcotte argued Trumpism came as response to the #MeToo movement that sought to hold men such as film mogul Harvey Weinstein — the convicted rapist Trump recently complained had been "schlonged" — accountable for attacking women.

"Defending a man's 'right' to have sex with underage girls would be making good on a campaign promise," she wrote. "It's tempting to hope this will anger the public and result in consequences for Trump, but frankly, that's unlikely."

'Apparently not a joke': Critics stunned as WWE co-founder reportedly expected for Cabinet as Education Secretary
Matthew Chapman
November 19, 2024 8:01PM ET

Donald Trump is reportedly expected to appoint Linda McMahon, the former co-founder of WWE and the chief of the Small Business Administration in his previous presidency, to head up the Department of Education.

The appointment, which swiftly followed Trump's announcement of TV personality and former Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz to head up the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, prompted an instant reaction from commenters on social media.

"Linda McMahon being tipped for Trump’s education secretary," wrote Telegraph editor Gareth Davies on X, attaching a clip of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin's famous "Stunner" finishing move. "Another senior US politician who has been Stunnered."

"Cause nothing says educating our children like being an ex-professional wrestling performer and running the @WWE, which has allegedly failed to protect employees from workplace harassment and sexual misconduct," wrote Kendra Barkoff Lamy, a former spokesperson to President Joe Biden while he served as vice president.

In addition to the reaction on X, others commented on the site's growing competitor, Bluesky.

"And, in further 'apparently not a joke' news, Linda McMahon of the WWE for Secretary of Education. LULZ PWNED as a theory of governance, I guess," wrote McGill University professor and Niskanen Center fellow Jacob T. Levy.

"Sort of like Oz at CMS, it’s not clear to me that McMahon would have an agenda of her own, but that might not be a problem for an administration that wants to shrink and eliminate much of DOE," wrote Yahoo Finance's Jordan Weissmann.

"I wonder if Linda McMahon will allow Jim Jordan and @timgill924.bsky.social [to] settle education policy disagreements in the ring?" wrote Michigan State University professor Brendan Cantwell.

'Betsy DeVos 2.0': Trump education pick raises alarms

Jake Johnson
Common Dreams

November 20, 2024

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced late Tuesday that he intends to nominate Linda McMahon, the billionaire former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, to lead the Department of Education, a key agency that Republicans—including Trump and the authors of Project 2025—have said they want to abolish.

McMahon served as head of the Small Business Administration during Trump's first White House term and later chaired both America First Action—a pro-Trump super PAC—and the America First Policy Institute, a far-right think tank that has expressed support for cutting federal education funding and expanding school privatization.

Trump touted McMahon's work to expand school "choice"—a euphemism for taxpayer-funded private school vouchers—and said she would continue those efforts on a national scale as head of the Education Department.

"We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort," Trump said in a statement posted to his social media platform, Truth Social. (McMahon is listed as an independent director of Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs Truth Social.)

The National Education Association (NEA), a union that represents millions of teachers across the U.S., said in response to the president-elect's announcement that McMahon is "grossly unqualified" to lead the Education Department, noting that she has "lied about having a degree in education," presided over an organization "with a history of shady labor practices," and "pushed for an extreme agenda that would harm students, defund public schools, and privatize public schools through voucher schemes."

"During his first term, Donald Trump appointed Betsy DeVos to undermine and ultimately privatize public schools through vouchers," NEA president Becky Pringle said in a statement. "Now, he and Linda McMahon are back at it with their extreme Project 2025 proposal to eliminate the Department of Education, steal resources for our most vulnerable students, increase class sizes, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle-class families, take away special education services for disabled students, and put student civil rights protections at risk."

"The Department of Education plays such a critical role in the success of each and every student in this country," Pringle continued. "The Senate must stand up for our students and reject Donald Trump's unqualified nominee, Linda McMahon. Our students and our nation deserve so much better than Betsy DeVos 2.0."

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, took a more diplomatic approach, saying in a statement that "we look forward to learning more about" McMahon and that, if she's confirmed, "we will reach out to her as we did with Betsy DeVos at the beginning of her tenure."

"While we expect that we will disagree with Linda McMahon on many issues, our devotion to kids requires us to work together on policies that can improve the lives of students, their families, their educators, and their communities," Weingarten added.

McMahon is one of several billionaires Trump has selected for major posts in his incoming administration, which is teeming with conflicts of interest. During Trump's first term, McMahon and her husband, Vince McMahon, made at least $100 million from dividends, investment interest, and stock and bond sales.

The Guardian noted Tuesday that "in October, [Linda] McMahon was named in a new lawsuit involving WWE."

"The suit alleges that she and other leaders of the company allowed the sexual abuse of young boys at the hands of a ringside announcer, former WWE ring crew chief Melvin Phillips Jr," the newspaper reported. "The complaint specifically alleges that the McMahons knew about the abuse and failed to stop it."

'Declaration of war on expertise': Experts explain danger of Trump 'MAGA zealot' nominees

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump is interviewed by Fox and Friends co-host Pete Hegseth at the White House in Washington, U.S. April 6, 2017. 

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

David Badash

November 20, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump has surprised and even alarmed many across the country, and “puzzled” and “baffled” some within his own party, with his Cabinet and other top White House nominations. Critics on the left have denounced his picks for their apparent lack of experience or qualifications for the roles they are expected to take on, noting some hold controversial or even false positions in the fields they may soon direct policy on. Meanwhile, experts in the fields of government, fascism, and democracy, are raising serious concerns about the potential “danger” some nominees represent, drawing comparisons to the “professional propagandists” often found in authoritarian regimes.

Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an NYU professor of history and a recognized expert on fascism and authoritarianism, on Wednesday pointed to this report on one of Trump’s most-recent nominations, Linda McMahon:





McMahon was Trump’s former administrator of the Small Business Administration, and is a former CEO of WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), a major GOP donor, and has recently been the chair of a pro-Trump Super PAC, the board chair of a pro-Trump think tank, and the co-chair of Trump’s second transition team.

“Trump’s cabinet picks are a declaration of war on expertise and facts (that’s why there are several Fox hosts in the mix). The con artists, fraudsters, and professional propagandists that populate authoritarian governments see facts and laws as impediments to their goals,” Dr. Ben-Ghiat wrote.

READ MORE: JD Vance Accidentally Reveals FBI Director Wray Is Likely Being Replaced

Trump, announcing McMahon’s nomination, claimed, “Linda will use her decades of Leadership experience, and deep understanding of both Education and Business, to empower the next Generation of American Students and Workers, and make America Number One in Education in the World.”

McMahon’s only brush with the field of education came about 15 years ago, when she served on the Connecticut State Board of Education. She resigned after 15 months. At the time, her appointment was controversial, with one lawmaker lamenting, “her depth of knowledge regarding education is lacking.”




McMahon is far from the only controversial nominee.

On Tuesday, the vice chair of the powerful House Rules Committee Jim McGovern (D-MA) blasted Trump’s nominees as “beyond insane.”

“Someone who is credibly accused of having sex with an underage girl. Someone who sucks up to foreign dictators and has attracted major concern that they can’t be trusted to protect America’s secrets from our adversaries. Someone who paid hush money to cover up a sexual assault accusation, you know, to lead our military, he’s picked because Donald Trump likes him on Fox News? Someone who says that tap water turns kids gay? I mean, this is the dream team? This is the dream team? Really?”

He appeared to be referring to Attorney General presumptive nominee Matt Gaetz, Director of National Intelligence presumptive nominee Tulsi Gabbard, Defense Secretary presumptive nominee Pete Hegseth, and HHS Secretary presumptive nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State posted video calling Trump’s nominees “a trainwreck.”

“Gaetz, Gabbard, RFK – none of them have the experience or qualifications for the positions they’re seeking, in addition to the fact they’re all dangerous MAGA zealots,” the organization declared. They posted a video clip (below) from MSNBC with a chyron that noted opposition from the right to Trump’s Attorney General nominee, Matt Gaetz.

MSNBC’s justice and legal affairs analyst Anthony Coley told viewers that Gaetz, the recently resigned U.S. Congressman, “has no national security experience—not anything meaningful—little anti-trust experience, and he certainly has no experience with criminal law, except for being the target of a federal criminal investigation looking into inappropriate sexual contact, allegedly, with a minor.”

Trump has also just appointed his former acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, a strong Trump loyalist, to be the U.S. Ambassador to NATO.

“Whitaker has little evident foreign policy or national security experience, making him an unknown to many in U.S. security circles,” The Associated Press reports. “Previous ambassadors to NATO have generally had years of diplomatic, political or military experience.”

“Before serving Trump,” Mother Jones notes, “he helped a company hawk bizarre products like a ‘masculine toilet’ to help ‘well-endowed men’ avoid unwanted contact with water.”

But The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a former U.S. Naval War College professor and an expert on Russia and nuclear weapons, served up this warning: “This is just hilarious, but the danger here is that it makes him Senate-confirmed and available for other stuff later.”

In other words, assuming Whitaker is confirmed, Trump could nominate him to another, even more critical role, declaring he’s qualified because he’s already been Senate-confirmed.

Last week, Nichols declared that Trump’s “nominations for intelligence, defense, and justice were revenge on people he thinks are his enemies. This is just endangering millions of innocent people.”

On Monday on MSNBC, Nichols went much further, delivered a scathing analysis of Trump’s nominees, calling them “an all-fronts assault on American democracy,” in another warning.

Trump, he said, is “trying to break the institutions of American government and American society, and what you’ve been seeing for the past few weeks is an all-fronts assault on American democracy, especially with these nominations.”

“I think the most dangerous of these nominations is actually [Pete] Hegseth,” Nichols explained. “And I’m kind of startled that we’re not sitting here talking more about taking a morning Fox [News] host and sticking him in the nuclear chain of command, to lead the largest—one of the largest—bureaucracies in the United States, in the world, including the person that’s supposed to look after the most powerful fighting force on the planet.”

And he concluded, “it’s also important to recognize that we could be in the first phases of a major constitutional crisis, even before Trump is sworn in.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

Dr. Oz nomination seen as potential boon for Medicare privatization

Donald Trump looks on as Pennsylvania Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz speaks at a pre-election rally to support Republican candidates in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, U.S., November 5, 2022. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo
Donald Trump looks on as Pennsylvania Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz speaks at a pre-election rally to support Republican candidates in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, U.S., November 5, 2022. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo

Eloise Goldsmith, 

Common Dreams

November 21, 2024

Dr. Mehmet Oz, whose unsuccessful 2022 Pennsylvania Senate bid included pitching voters on a plan to expand the privatized Medicare Advantage program, is now in a position to potentially actualize that plan.

President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that Oz, also known by his TV personality name Dr. Oz, is his pick to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

"Dr. Oz—a massive investor in Pharma—told the voters of Pennsylvania his plans to privatize Medicare… and they rejected him. Now Trump is giving him the authority to see his industry-approved plan carried through," wrote the progressive-leaning outlet The Lever, which covered Oz's support for Medicare Advantage back in 2022.

Through Medicare Advantage, which has been promoted by Trump and other congressional Republicans, seniors can opt out of traditional government-run Medicare health plans and instead choose plans administered by private insurers, such as UnitedHealthcare and Cigna.

According to The Lever's 2022 reporting, Oz pushed Medicare Advantage plans on his show The Dr. Oz Show and co-wrote a 2020 column for Forbes with a former healthcare executive in which they argued that a "Medicare Advantage For All" plan can "save" our healthcare system. In the column, Oz and his co-author articulated a plan to expand Medicare Advantage by imposing a 20% payroll tax.

Oz "is not a good pick for a very powerful position in charge of a trillion dollars of healthcare spending," wrote Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project on X, in reference to The Lever's investigation.

The Lever also reported that Oz's plan to expand private plans under Medicare Advantage could "boost companies in which he invests." For example, Oz and his wife owned up to $550,000 worth of stock in UnitedHealth Group, at the time of reporting. UnitedHealthcare and Humana account for nearly half, or 47%, of Medicare Advantage enrollees nationwide, according to the health policy organization KFF.

Additionally, a 2022 investigation by The New York Timesfound that major health insurers have exploited Medicare Advantage to boost their profits by billions of dollars.

Project 2025, a list of right-wing policy proposals led by the Heritage Foundation that Trump has tried to distance himself from, calls for making Medicare Advantage the default option for Medicare beneficiaries, which, if enacted, "would be a multibillion-dollar annual giveaway to corporations at the expense of Medicare enrollees and taxpayers," according to the liberal research and advocacy organization the Center for American Progress.

Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, offered a related critique of Oz: Americans "need someone who will crack down on insurers who want to deny care to the sick, providers who skimp on quality healthcare, corporations that want to privatize Medicare, and Big Pharma profiteers and ideologues who want to slash Medicaid and refuse care to low-income people. What they do not need is a healthcare huckster, which unfortunately Dr. Mehmet Oz appears to have become, having spent much of his recent career hawking products of dubious medical value."

In addition to the potential boon for private insurers, some researchers, news outlets, and members of Congress have also raised concerns about the quality of care administered under Medicare Advantage.

A 2022 government report found that "[Medicare Advantage Organizations] sometimes delayed or denied Medicare Advantage beneficiaries' access to services, even though the requests met Medicare coverage rules" and also "denied payments to providers for some services that met both Medicare coverage rules and [Medicare Advantage Organization] billing rules."

In October, a group of three Democratic lawmakers wrote to the current CMS administrator about increasingly widespread abuses and care denials by for-profit Medicare Advantage insurers.

"We are concerned that in many instances MA plans are failing to deliver, compromising timely access to care, and undermining the ability of seniors and Americans with disabilities to purchase the coverage that’s right for them," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), and Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) wrote in a letter.

"We continue to hear alarming reports from seniors and their families, beneficiary advocates, and healthcare providers that MA plans are falling short, and finding a good plan is too difficult," they wrote.


In particular, they pointed to Medicare Advantage plans' growing reliance on prior authorization, a complex, barrier-ridden process whereby doctors must demonstrate a proposed treatment is medically necessary before the insurer will cover it.

"Overuse of prior authorization is not only harmful to patients, it hinders healthcare providers' ability to offer best-in-class service," they added.

Social Security Works, a progressive advocacy group, warned in a social media post Tuesday that "Dr. Oz wants to fully privatize Medicare."

"That's why Donald Trump put him in charge of Medicare," the group added. "We will fight to stop this charlatan from getting anywhere near our Medicare system."

Trump nomination of crypto banker Howard Lutnick another 'win for the billionaire class'

Howard Lutnick, Chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, gestures as he speaks during a rally for Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden, in New York, U.S., October 27, 2024. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo

Julia Conley

Common Dreams

November 20, 2024

Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen feigned surprise on Wednesday over President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of Wall Street CEO Howard Lutnick to lead the U.S. Department of Commerce.

"Oh look, another billionaire has made his way into Trump's Cabinet," said the group, noting Lutnick is also a promoter of cryptocurrency and a Trump megadonor. "The conflicts of interest are almost too many to count."

Among the conflicts are Lutnick's involvement in the crypto industry and federal and state cases against Cantor Fitzgerald.

In addition to running the Wall Street firm, Lutnick is a banker for the "stablecoin" company Tether; purchasers receive a Tether token for $1, with the proceeds invested in reserves and Treasury bonds managed by Lutnick's Cantor Fitzgerald.

As Public Citizen noted, New York Attorney General Letitia James found in 2021 that Tether and another crypto firm "recklessly and unlawfully covered up massive financial losses to keep their scheme going and protect their bottom lines."

The company is also reportedly under federal investigation over alleged criminal violations of anti-money laundering rules and sanctions.

Public Citizen also said that while co-chairing Trump's transition team, Lutnick "may also have helped arrange a meeting between Trump and Coinbase chief Brian Armstrong," who "helped steer a record amount of political spending from the crypto industry into the 2024 election."

Crypto firms poured over $119 million into directly influencing the 2024 federal elections, Public Citizen found in August, making the industry's spending second only to that of fossil fuel companies.

As Politico reported in October, even other members of Trump's inner circle have accused Lutnick of using his transition team co-chair position to take meetings on Capitol Hill and "talk about matters impacting his investment firm, Cantor Fitzgerald—including high-stakes regulatory matters involving its cryptocurrency business."

Lutnick's nomination, said former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, serves as a reminder that "Trump serves the oligarchy, not the people."

"Debris from crypto's political spending tsunami will jam up more halls in Washington than ever before if Lutnick is confirmed as secretary of commerce," said Bartlett Naylor, a financial policy advocate for Public Citizen. "The president-elect, who once correctly called bitcoin a scam, now surrounds himself with even more crypto enablers. Cryptocurrency won't return good jobs to the heartland or reduce food prices; it will only thin the wallets of those vulnerable to a now government-legitimized con."

Government watchdog Accountable.US pointed to more than $19 million in political donations Lutnick has made since 2009, nearly all of which went to GOP candidates and political action committees. He contributed $6 million to Trump's super PAC, Make America Great Again, Inc., in 2024 alone.


"Howard Lutnick's questionable qualifications to lead the Department of Commerce begin and end with his loyalty to the president-elect," said Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk.

Tether isn't the only Lutnick-linked company that's been investigated for wrongdoing. The Securities and Exchange Commission fined Cantor Fitzgerald $1.4 million in 2023, saying the company repeatedly failed "to identify and report customers who qualified as large traders." The company also agreed to pay $16 million in fines to the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2022 for using unauthorized communication channels.

Should Lutnick be confirmed as commerce secretary, Accountable.US said a "major regulatory conflict" could arise due to a dispute between the BGC Group, a spin-off brokerage of Cantor Fitzegerald, and futures and commodities exchange CME Group, over a competing trading platform BGC Group is launching.

"Lutnick's company's violations resulting in financial regulator fines and millions in right-wing political donations shows that political devotion takes precedence over actual experience to do the job in Trump's Cabinet," said Carrk.

Trump campaigned as a champion of working people as he railed against high grocery prices. As The New Republicreported on Tuesday, Lutnick has showered Trump's plan for across-the-board tariffs with effusive praise—even as leading economists warn the plan to impose tariffs on foreign imports will pass higher costs onto consumers, not foreign countries.

"In September, Lutnick told CNBC that 'tariffs are an amazing tool for the president to use—we need to protect the American worker,'" wrote Edith Olmsted. "Lutnick also gushed about tariffs at Trump's fascistic rally in Madison Square Garden last month, claiming that America was better off 100 years ago, when it had 'no income tax and all we had was tariffs.' His high praise for tariffs came even as he admitted Americans would face higher prices as a direct result."

Lutnick's nomination, said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), "is a win for the billionaire class at the expense of working people.


"The across-the-board tariff plan," she said, "is a distraction from the MAGA scam to extend tax giveaways for giant corporations and billionaires like Howard Lutnick."

Trump's Cabinet of horrors exposes his totalitarian drift

John Stoehr
November 19, 2024 

Former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard attends a campaign rally of Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump in Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S. October 22, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Donald Trump nominated an alleged rapist and sex trafficker to be attorney general. He picked a Russian asset to be director of national intelligence. He chose a religious fanatic and Kremlin stooge to be secretary of defense. And for secretary of health and human resources, he selected an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who once had a literal brain worm, and who habitually takes (“legal”) steroids to maintain, at the age of 70, the appearance of a physique of a man half his age.

There are the obvious things to say about this motley crew. Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr are , respectively, not qualified to lead the agencies they have been chosen to lead. None has managed anything larger than an office. None has the expertise required. Gaetz has never worked in law enforcement, Gabbard in intelligence, Hegseth in military leadership or Kennedy in public health. Their only qualification is their loyalty to the man who picked them, and how they look to him when they are on television.

Right now, the discussion seems to be concentrated on the Senate Republicans, who will have majority control of that chamber in January. They will be responsible ultimately for vetting Trump’s cabinet picks. The question is whether they will find the courage to restrain the President-elect or roll over, either by approving them or by letting Trump have what he wants through recess appointments.

Among liberals, the discussion seems to be limited to the absurdities each of these people brings to governance as well as the dangers they pose. “Yes, shake your head at the seeming absurdity of these picks,” wrote MSNBC’s Jen Psaki. “But don’t stop there. These choices aren’t just controversial; they require us to stay vigilant about how each potential new Cabinet member could negatively affect our lives.”

But I think we’re missing the bigger picture. These nominations signal the totalitarian drift that’s coming to Washington and the country. Yes, that’s right. No, I’m not exaggerating. It’s time to start using that word.

Totalitarianism seeks dominion over the individual to the point where individuality is erased. That’s what happened to the Republican Party. Individuals have looked the same, talked the same, acted the same and thought the same for a long time. (The men sometimes literally dress the same as Donald Trump, with a blue suit and a long red tie.) After the election, however, Republican behavior has finally been totalized.

As one GOP congressman said, Trump “is the leader of our party. … His goals and objectives, whatever that is, we need to embrace it. All of it. Every single word. If Donald Trump says jump three feet high and scratch your head, we all jump three feet high and scratch our heads.”

The objective is forcing the rest of America to conform the way the Republican Party has conformed. This can be seen in the anger expressed by some MAGAs. It wasn’t enough to win. Losers must now shut up and get in line, too. As a Trump attorney said recently: “You’ve got to own when you lose and say: this is America. We have to stand behind President Trump.” Senate Republicans are likely to approve his picks, no matter how bad, because the losers must be taught a lesson.

Totalitarianism also seeks to dominate the individual’s mind by going to war against facts, reason, science and any useful meaning of the word “proof.” In normal times, pre-Trump, we could expect the Senate to have a spirited debate over a President-elect's cabinet nominations, beginning with whether they’re qualified. Such debate is going to be impossible now, because “being qualified” is a meaningless term.

It is a stone-cold fact that Kennedy’s views on vaccines are not only insane, but in direct opposition to the moral principles of public health. But that fact won’t be accepted as fact. It will be taken as evidence of Trump’s enemies trying to sabotage his presidency. And there’s no way to break through this "conspiracist mindset," as Lindsay Beyerstein calls it. It is impervious, she said. “When scientists or the government or journalists come forward with evidence that vaccines save millions of lives and prevent untold suffering, the conspiracist answer is: Well, that’s what conspirators to kill our children would say.”

Because there’s no empirical anchor to conspiratorial thinking, totalitarians can make reality into whatever they want. Up is down, left is right – or in the words of the totalitarian regime in George Orwell’s 1984: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

Therefore, the Republicans are likely to see nothing wrong with his picks. His nominee for the law is anti-law. His nominee for national intelligence is anti-intelligence. His nominee for national defense is anti-defense. His nominee for science is anti-science. But there’s no dissonance in the world of conspiratorial thinking. Up is the new down, and the only measure of morality is whether it pleases the dear leader.

The drift toward conformity and away from individualism isn’t limited to the GOP. Thanks to the right-wing media apparatus, which is global in scale, totalizing groupthink has also been growing in the culture at large. The trick is that it comes disguised as subversive individualism.

During his interview with Trump, popular podcaster Joe Rogan said, “the rebels are Republicans now. They’re like, you want to be a rebel? You want to be punk rock? You want to, like, buck the system? You’re a conservative now. That's how crazy. And then the liberals are now pro-silencing criticism. They’re pro-censorship online. They’re talking about regulating free speech and regulating the First Amendment.”

If you are listening to liberals directly, you know there are no such efforts. But if you are listening to the right-wing media apparatus, or if you just feel the conspiratorial ambiance that it generates, it’s possible to cast yourself as a person who’s bucking the system, as if the party of billionaires is the party of the common people, as if people who look the same, talk the same, act the same and think the same are punk rock.

But the strongest evidence of totalitarian drift is the plain awfulness of Trump’s cabinet picks. They have not earned the right to be called on. They haven’t studied or mastered their disciplines. They haven’t built reputations among leaders, peers and professionals in their fields. They haven’t overcome adversity and hardship. They haven’t reached high and achieved. They certainly haven’t followed the road toward the American dream, which asks us to work hard and play by the rules.

And that’s the point. Totalitarians fear individual excellence, first because they can’t understand it, and second because excellence threatens their goal of totalizing conformity. They are not humble enough to admit that they are mediocre people but they are arrogant enough to believe they can force the rest of us down to their level.


With this cabinet, Trump can pick up where his second campaign left off, which is a movement toward “the consistent persecution of every higher form of intellectual activity …” as Hannah Arendt once wrote.

“Total domination does not allow for free initiative in any field of life, for any activity that is not entirely predictable,” she said. “Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty” (my italics).

The ‘Budapest playbook’: A blueprint we can’t afford to follow

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead 

16 November, 2024 
Right-Wing Watch

Orbán’s authoritarian playbook, which Trump and his fellow MAGA Republicans seem to idolise, shows just how vulnerable democratic institutions are in the face of rising populism, and how quickly democratic models can be eroded. The need for a robust defence of democratic values has never been more critical.

As Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House, far-right populist leaders across Europe are celebrating, using his victory as a rallying cry for their own nationalist agendas.

Among them is Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s authoritarian prime minister, who sees Trump’s success as a transformative moment for global nationalism. “History has accelerated… The world is going to change,” he said.

And Trump makes no secret about his admiration for Orbán, having referred to him as a “strongman” and a “real boss.”

This raises an urgent question: Could Orbán’s Hungary serve as a blueprint for Trump to follow, and even more concerning, could such a model be applied in the UK, where Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration party has also achieved electoral success?

Reform MP and the party’s former leader Richard Tice said that the US election had been a “comprehensive rejection of the status quo” and voters “have had enough of classic, smooth wafflers who talk a good game but fail to deliver.”

The MAGA movement

Those who are celebrating Trump’s return in Europe share ideological affinities with Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that stronger borders, lower taxes, better international agreements, Conservative judges, more freedom, and anti-migration policies are what define the MAGA movement for Trump supporters.

And these MAGA Republicans have been described as being ‘obsessed’ with Viktor Orbán. JD Vance, Trump’s 2024 running mate, said that the US “could learn a lot” from Hungary, while Trump himself said, “There’s nobody that’s better, smarter, or a better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s fantastic.”

The winning side of history?

Orbán, once politically isolated in Europe, has positioned himself as the leading figure in the far-right movement, promoting a vision of a Europe that resists multiculturalism and globalism. He has long asserted that he and his growing coalition of nationalist allies are destined to emerge on the winning side of history.

And it’s not difficult to understand the far-right’s adulation of Orbán. While electoral success is one thing, maintaining power is another, and Orbán has been prime minister of Hungary, with a constitutional majority, for 14 consecutive years. As such, he has had remarkable influence on reshaping the country to his own vision.

Similar to Trump and Nigel Farage, some of Orbán’s appeal is owed to his ability to address people with convincing messages centred on national pride, defending borders, prosperity and more, in a simple way.

However, Orbán’s ‘success’ is, more broadly, rooted in his ability to avoid unpopular measures by constructing a political, media and economic infrastructure on personal connections.

Under his leadership, Orbán and his party have effectively seized control of Hungary’s democratic institutions. Today, every major institution is headed by individuals that have been hand-picked by Orbán.

Hungary has also seen the orchestration of a nationwide right-wing media network that promotes government narratives and suppresses dissent, creating a political climate reminiscent of propaganda regimes.

The Voice of America reported in 2022 that Orbán’s allies “have created a pervasive conservative media ecosystem that dominates the airwaves and generally echoes the positions of the Orbán government.”

Additionally, Orbán’s government has manipulated electoral processes to maintain its grip on power. This has included gerrymandering electoral districts and staffing critical institutions with loyalists.

The same can be said about Hungary’s judiciary system. In 2018, a law was passed to set up courts overseen directly by the justice minister. Critics warned that the move would allow interference in judicial matters and further undermine the rule of law.

“[The law] is a serious threat to the rule of law in Hungary and runs counter to values Hungary signed up to when it joined the European Union,” said the rights group Helsinki Committee.

The same year, the European Parliament voted to impose sanctions on Hungary for flouting EU rules on civil rights, democracy and corruption. Hungary rejected the accusations. So far, the EU, which Hungary has been a member of for almost 20 years, has suspended around 20 billion euros in funding for Hungary due to concerns over democratic backsliding and rule-of-law violation.

Exploiting state-of-emergency laws

Just last week, Orbán secured parliamentary approval to extend his authority to govern by decree for another six months, extended until May 2025. Being able to legislate by decree can occur in democracies during periods of crises, and Orbán cited the ongoing state of emergency related to the war in Ukraine as such a crisis. In 2016, he declared emergency powers because of the migration crisis and did the same in 2020 during the Covid pandemic.

His continuing reliance on state-of-emergency laws has raised concern. Human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, have warned that state-of-emergency laws are being exploited to weaken checks and power balances, diminishing the role of other governing bodies with little connection to the emergency at hand.

A ‘heroic protector’?

To sustain his populist appeal, Orbán presents himself as a “heroic protector” of Hungary against external threats, particularly from the European Union.

He regularly uses ‘national consultation’ surveys to give the illusion of democratic inclusion, but which are really manipulative surveys designed to solicit public support for anti-EU sentiments. Critics argue these consultations serve as propaganda tools rather than genuine democratic engagement.

Hungary under Orbán has been described as a “hybrid regime of electoral autocracy,” where elections are held without adhering to fundamental democratic principles. A 2022 report by Members of the European Parliament concluded that Hungary is no longer a fully functioning democracy, attributing this decline directly to Orbán’s policies.

“There is increasing consensus among experts that Hungary is no longer a democracy,” the lawmakers said, citing a series of international indexes that have in recent years downgraded Hungary’s status.

In their resolution, MEPs blamed Viktor Orbán, and condemned his government’s “deliberate and systematic efforts” to undermine the EU’s core values.

“Everything has fallen apart in Hungary. The state essentially does not function, there’s only propaganda and lies,” said Peter Magyar, the leader of the Respect and Freedom, or TISZA, party, which has campaigned on promises to root out deep-seated corruption in the government. Magyar has been outspoken about what he sees as the damage Orbán’s “propaganda factory” has done to Hungary’s democracy.

“It might be very difficult to imagine from America or Western Europe what the propaganda and the state machinery is like here,” Magyar said in an interview before the European elections with the Associated Press.

Hardline position on immigration and LGBTQ+ rights

Orbán’s government has also faced criticism for its hardline position on immigration and LGBTQ+ rights. His administration has enacted controversial laws, including the ‘Stop Soros’ legislation, which criminalises assistance to asylum seekers and positions migrants as a threat to national identity, fuelling anti-immigrant sentiment within Hungary and beyond.

In 2018, Orbán called refugees “Muslim invaders” as he defended his country’s refusal to take part in the EU’s resettlement programme. He added that a large influx of Muslims “inevitably leads to parallel societies”. He claimed Christian and Muslim communities “will never unite”.

“Multiculturalism is only an illusion,” he said.In 2021, in a long-running row over Hungary’s migrant rules, the EU’s top court ruled that the nation’s law criminalising activists and lawyers who help asylum seekers was in breach of European law. Orbán said Hungary had no plans to change the controversial laws.

A UN report into the state of democracy in Eastern Europe found that democracy in Hungary under Orbán has deteriorated more than any other country in the region except Russia. The report noted that in 2022, Hungary was 43 percent democratic compared to 45 percent a year earlier, the report noted.

The report particularly denounces the conduct of the last parliamentary elections, which were marred by “irregularities, abuse of administrative resources and media distortions,” as well as “the Orbán regime’s growing intolerance for dissenting voices.”

The threat of a broader resurgence of authoritarianism

As Europe’s far-right parties gain momentum, with Orbán’s Hungary serving as a model, the threat of a broader resurgence of authoritarianism is increasingly concerning, especially with Trump’s imminent return to the White House. While, as Magyar remarked, Americans and Westerners may struggle to comprehend the extent of propaganda and state machinery in Hungary, they may soon face similar challenges at home.

Like Orbán, Trump has long targeted the mainstream media. He has routinely labelled the press as ‘dishonest’ and ‘scum’ and has singled out individual news organisations and journalists. As well as a distrust in the media, both leaders share the same populist, nationalist, anti-immigration, centralisation of power, and cultural conservatism values

.

But what about in Britain, where, with Labour landsliding in July, the political landscape has diverged from the growing far-right momentum seen across Europe and now, in the US?

We might now have a centre-left government but admiration for Viktor Orbán is not absent in Britain. In 2023, three veteran Conservative MPs – Sir Edward Leigh, Ian Liddell-Grainger, and Sir Christopher Chope – were criticised for their close association with Orbán during a conference in Budapest, where they mingled with leaders from other far-right parties such as Belgium’s Vlaams Belang and Spain’s Vox. Leigh even tweeted a photo of the trio with Orbán, bragging they had been “learning about his country’s effective ways of combating illegal migration.”

In 2022, Nigel Farage, whose Reform UK party helped topple the Conservatives in July and who is of course a close friend of Trump, was among a number of right-wing speakers at America’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). The event, which took place in Hungary, also featured Viktor Orbán. Just days before it, Orban had made reference to the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory which claims that there is a liberal elite plot to replace the white populations of Europe and the US through immigration and demographic growth with non-white people.

The event marked the first time that CPAC was held in Europe, as was seen as part of wider efforts to cement bonds between far-right movements both in Europe and America.

Having exited the EU, and with Donald Trump’s impending return to the White House, Keir Starmer finds himself somewhat politically isolated on the global stage. Instead of the centre-left/social democratic alliance he may have dreamt of, Starmer faces a US administration that is not only ideologically distant but also openly hostile to Labour, which Trump’s campaign labelled as “far left.”

Meanwhile, Orbán’s authoritarian playbook, which Trump and his fellow MAGA Republicans seem to idolise, shows just how vulnerable democratic institutions are in the face of rising populism, and how quickly democratic models can be eroded. The need for a robust defence of democratic values has never been more critical.

“The great hope is that the ‘Budapest Playbook’ never becomes an international bestseller and eventually fades into irrelevance, even in Hungary,” wrote Tibor Dessewffy, a council member of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Right-wing media watch – Daily Mail accused of ‘rank hypocrisy’ after running to ECHR

If there’s one newspaper that has called the loudest for Britain to leave the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), it’s the Daily Mail.

‘Rishi Sunak leaves the door open to Britain quitting ECHR – as he ‘would choose UK’s security over being a member every single time,’ was a headline in January.

In February, Daniel Hannon, a columnist for the paper and staunch Brexiteer having co-founded Vote Leave, wrote: ‘If Euro judges block Rishi Sunak’s new plan to stop small boats, quitting the ECHR is the only way to protect our borders.’

And last month, the Mail shouted about Boris Johnson’s calls for the UK to have a referendum on its ECHR membership. Johnson is, of course, also a columnist for the Mail and vocal campaigner for quitting the Strasburg court.

This week, news emerged that the publisher of the Daily Mail has won a court battle in the ECHR, leading to cries of ‘rank hypocrisy.’

The publisher took the UK government to the court in Strasbourg about its own human rights, which it claims were breached by being forced to pay “success fees” to lawyers representing people it had paid damages to.

Associated Newspapers won the ruling opposing “excessive” costs incurred by claimants in privacy and defamation cases. The publisher argued that its right to freedom of expression, under Article 10 of the European Convention, had been breached.

It won on conditional fee arrangements (CFAs) and the UK was ordered to pay it €15,000 in costs and expenses. A further decision will be made on any pecuniary damages. But Associated Newspapers was not successful on the part of its case relating to After the Event (ATE) insurance premiums for two recent cases for which it had to pay the extra costs.

News of the hearing sparked disbelief, ridicule and calls of ‘hypocrisy.’

“Daily Mail wins ECHR case against ‘success fees’ paid to lawyers, well well. Daily Mail having slagged off ECHR (Court) endlessly for clickbait…goes “bleating” to the court Funny how their “human rights” matter to the Mail when money is involved!” Carol Vorderman posted on X.

“Beat this for rank hypocrisy. The Daily Mail has been calling for the UK to leave the ECHR for years, yet when they think their human rights have been breached what do they do?…” wrote Leeds for Europe in a Facebook post.

Another reader simply asked:

“Just how hypocritical can you get?”

Smear of the Week – Right-wing press continue its absurd campaign to paint Starmer as an antisemite

It seems we’re witnessing something of a (watered-down) replay of 2019, when the right-wing media used every vitriolic headline in the book to present Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite.

Fast forward five years, and the same media outlets are now targeting Keir Starmer with similar accusations. Having regularly expressed solidarity with Israel and whose formula of moderation and caution about the Gaza conflict and lack of speed in pressing for a ceasefire, has upset many on Labour’s left, you would think that Starmer would be absolved from such accusations.

But that’s not been the case.

In an article headlined: “Starmer accused of allowing anti-Semitism in Britain to ‘deteriorate,’ the Telegraph describes a “string of “performative” policies which “only serve to satisfy an extreme cadre” of ultra-left-wing groups.”

Jewish Labour members, according to the article, assert that Starmer’s actions have emboldened “increasingly aggressive” pro-Palestinian protests and have “added to a climate of intolerance and hate” faced by British Jews.”

The Telegraph cites Labour Against Antisemitism (LAAS), a grassroots group of predominantly Jewish party members, who criticise government actions such as the embargo on arms sales to Israel and the resumption of funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA) after claims of its members’ involvement in the October 7 attacks.

The irony of the article did not go unnoticed.

Posting the article on X, children’s author Michael Rosen wrote: “Poor old Starmer. He purges the Labour Party of antisemites, he says he a Zionist, he says Israel has the right to defend itself, he says he ‘does Friday nights’ with his Jewish wife, and yet… he’s still dodgy.”

The latest feeble attempt to associate Starmer with antisemitism, follows absurd claims in September when the PM made a slip during his conference speech, inadvertently calling for a “return of the sausages” when addressing the subject of Gaza.

The gaffe was seized upon by Allison Pearson – described by comedian Stewart Lee as Britain’s worse columnist – who suggested that it proved that Starmer doesn’t care about Israel.

“If the Labour leader can’t make a minor slip in a speech without being accused of being anti-Israel, no wonder he’s retreated to Arsenal’s corporate box,” Lee mocked.

Ultimately, smear articles like these only serve only to blur the lines between credible, fact-based journalism and right-wing ‘news’ opinion and misinformation. They degrade political discourse and distract from meaningful debate, revealing more about the smearers than their targets.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch


Related posts:

Viktor Orbán is taken apart in European Parliament and told he’s the ‘useful idiot of Russia and China’

Suella Braverman to speak alongside far-right Viktor Orban at Conservative event

Labour can’t afford complacency about the ethnic minority vote

‘Brexpress’ accused of stooping to ‘new low’ for column moaning about resignation of far-right Hungarian Brexit sympathisers

The Plague of Disaster Nationalism

Review of Disaster Nationalism: The Downfall of Liberal Civilization by Richard Seymour (Verso, 2024)

By Chris Green
November 13, 2024
Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.

In case you have not heard, Donald Trump was just elected President of the United States for a second time. The United States is in for some extremely difficult months and years ahead. The situation is made worse by the narrow vision and cluelessness of mainstream liberals pooh poohing legitimate voter concerns about the cost of living increases which played a major role in securing Trump’s victory. At their worst, these liberals have argued that the Biden economy was absolutely marvelous and anyone disagreeing was brainwashed by right wing propaganda. They have cited strong economic indicators achieved under Biden’s presidency but are oblivious to the fact that all too many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, barely keeping their heads above water. It is foolish to think that Trump will do anything but make the affordability crisis of health care, child care, transportation, housing and groceries worse. But the Democrats have been feeble in offering their own solutions to these problems. 

From mainstream media analysis in recent years it has been easy to get the impression that Trump is a populist with a “white working class” base but that is misleading. As political scientist Anthony Dimaggio and others have shown, the core of the MAGA base is in the middle and upper middle classes. In this year’s election, 37% of the eligible voting population did not participate. Trump was elected with the votes of only 29% of the eligible electorate. Poor and working class people are significantly overrepresented among non-voters, the largest group among the electorate in this and every presidential election in recent memory. 

Nonetheless, as this year’s election showed, Trumpism has a visible foothold in the working class. Exit polls indicate he won 45% of union voters, 53% of voters with household incomes between $30,000 and $50,000 and 51% with household incomes between $50,000 and $100,000

Richard Seymour’s Disaster Nationalism

How did we get to this point? Is there anything we can do to effectively defeat Trumpism? Some heavy food for thought on these questions is provided by the book Disaster Nationalism: the Downfall of Liberal Civilization, published late last month. 

The book’s author, Richard Seymour, is a highly impressive intellectual with an interesting life story. He had a troubled childhood in Northern Ireland but eventually achieved a PhD in sociology at the London School of Economics. He rose to public notice in the 2000s as the proprietor of a blog called Lenin’s Tomb and as a luminary in the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP). In 2013, being of courageous and independent minded character, Seymour made a public break with the SWP’s leadership after revelations emerged that the party had covered up multiple sexual assaults by a leading party member. He has published numerous books on subjects such as British politics, social media, the history of American anti-imperialism and the intellectual decline of the late Christopher Hitchens. These days his main publishing forum is a Patreon page. Along with the noted Marxist fiction writer China Mieville, he is a member of the editorial collective of Salvage, a UK based radical left journal of fiction, sociological and political essays. He also periodically writes for The Guardian. 

In Disaster Nationalism, Seymour seeks to understand the far right populism that has become ascendant in the United States and around the world. He attaches the term “disaster nationalism” to these movements. For Seymour, disaster nationalism has not yet reached outright fascist proportions–although he allows that in many cases it has made significant strides towards that end. 

For example, he observes that during the George Floyd summer of 2020, MAGA took on the characteristics of an outright counterrevolutionary insurgency. Trump was faced with mass protests–which had significant popular support, at least initially–seeking fundamental progressive transformation of US law enforcement. The response by MAGA officialdom at the national level and among local police was to cooperate with violent, far right thugs like the Proud Boys. They embraced the vigilante murderer Kyle Rittenhouse and seemingly quietly approved of the dozens of vehicular assaults by vigilantes on BLM protestors. Meanwhile, federal law enforcement agents, operating secret police style in unmarked vehicles, started snatching BLM activists from the streets of Portland, Oregon, and in Washington state, local police deputized as US Marshals conducted an apparent extrajudicial execution of Michael Reinoehl, an antifascist activist accused of murdering Proud Boy Aaron Danielson. 

Seymour suggests that among Trump’s global allies, Israel governed by Netanyahu and India under Narendra Modi’s premiership have reached the farthest on the road to facism. Netanyahu, of course, is currently waging a literal war of extermination in Gaza. Modi’s Hindu fundamentalist government has imposed a regime of outright totalitarian terror in Kashmir and actively eroded citizenship rights for India’s Muslim minority, while police terror and mob violence against the latter has soared under his watch. For example, since Modi rose to power in 2014, hundreds of Indian Muslims have been lynched by Hindu vigilantes enforcing government laws banning the slaughter of cows and consumption of beef.

Modi, of course, is most famous for being the chief minister of the Indian state of Gujarat in 2002, leading the incitement of Hindu mobs that–with police complicity–massacred hundreds, perhaps thousands of Muslims. Seymour devotes a few paragraphs to describing the gruesome methods through which many of those Muslims were murdered. Another major Muslim pogrom overseen by Modi was the Delhi riots of February 2020, incited by politicians of Modi’s BJP party in response to mass protests against the erosion of the citizenship rights of the country’s Muslims. As Seymour observes, this pogrom occurred concurrently as Modi–-making the ultimate symbolic statement–received his friend Trump on an official state visit, just a few miles from the central area of the violence. 

Disaster Nationalism: Fascist or Prefascist?

Seymour is reluctant to label disaster nationalist movements as outright fascist: he states that, at the moment, they show predominantly prefascist characteristics. None of the movements Seymour studies have fundamentally destroyed preexisting institutions of bourgeois democracy. None of them have the ideological coherence of Hitler or Mussolini and none of them–Modi’s BJP is perhaps an exception–are able to mobilize the sort of political and social organizations with deep and widespread roots among ordinary people that Hitler and Mussolini could.. Unlike the movements of Hitler and Mussolini (to say nothing of the neoconservatives ascendant during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush), adherents of disaster nationalist movements like MAGA show no particular fervor for global military expansionism. Unlike Hitler and Mussolini, leaders like Trump and Modi have made no pretense of eliminating the economic stratification produced by unregulated capitalism. Trump, Modi and their ilk worldwide accept the fundamental inequalities produced by neoliberal capitalism–although they have sometimes offered rhetoric criticizing aspects of that capitalism. 

Seymour notes there is another major difference between the disaster nationalists of today and the classical fascists of yesteryear. First and foremost, ruling classes of both Germany and Italy backed fascist politics as their primary method in destroying vibrant radical left and labor movements that were ascendant in both countries. In contrast, disaster nationalists in the United States and around the world face a political landscape where radical left movements and labor unions have been in serious long term decline. 

Unlike classical fascists, disaster nationalists are notable for a complete lack of rationality. There is no organized group or political current that presents any serious threat to overturn existing social and economic hierarchies in the United States (or practically anywhere else in the world). However, the minds of MAGA adherents are often filled with the most idiotic paranoia and fantastical conspiracy theories about George Soros, Antifa, undocumented immigrants, pro-transgender teachers, Chinese communists and similar malefactors imminently poised to completely destroy American institutions and traditions. Many adherents of disaster nationalist movements like MAGA–in their capacity as political thinkers and activists–are profoundly stupid people. The irrationality and ineptitude of MAGA followers led to a serious setback for their movement on January 6th and we can only hope that there will be more cases of them self-destructing. 

For Seymour, a prime illustration of disaster nationalist idiocy and irrationality is the spread of the rumor during the Summer of 2020 that wildfires in eastern Oregon were set by Antifa activists. Scores of armed MAGA sympathizer vigilantes spread out in the region, setting up checkpoints on roads and in other ways harassing people in order to hunt down the mythical Antifa malefactors. Seymour observes that the actual primary trigger for the wildfires was climate change. 

At the same time, as noted above, Seymour is willing to allow that modern disaster nationalism does share characteristics with classical fascism. Obviously, leaders like Trump and Modi-as with Hitler and Mussolini before them–use racist demagoguery, scapegoating of alleged subversives–immigrants, Muslims and political progressives in the case of Trump and Modi– to mobilize their base. Seymour predicts that destruction caused by climate change in the years and decades ahead will provide further opportunities for fascist style politics. He points out that this is already the case in the Indian state of Assam where Modi’s regime has been inciting violence and conducting terror against Muslim Bangladeshi refugees who have fled climate disaster in their native country. 

Although modern disaster nationalists lack the fervor for state economic intervention of HItler and Mussolini, they often call for governments to adopt industrial policies that will supposedly reverse deindustrialization (for example Trump’s fervor for imposing tariffs on Chinese imports). Like Hitler and Mussolini, disaster nationalists often adopt a populist tone, posing as the champion of a “deserving” (i.e. white) working class whose hard-earned income has supposedly been siphoned off for welfare payments to undocumented immigrants and who have been abused and exploited by “woke” big business. 

Seymour notes that a region like eastern Oregon is particularly vulnerable to far right propaganda. Its key industries of fishing and logging in long term decline at the time of the Great Recession in 2008, the region was hit with particularly severity by the meltdown and has not recovered since. In connection to this dynamic of social and economic disintegration, Seymour quotes a 2020 statistic that 12% of the population of Oregon overall were alcoholics. 

Similar to the fascism of Hitler and Mussolini, the disaster nationalism of Trump has gained its initial core support among middle class elements fearful of downward mobility in the midst of economic and social breakdown caused by neoliberal economic policies.Seymour observes that this core support rooted in the middle class–in the case of both classical fascism and modern day disaster nationalism–eventually makes inroads into other economic classes, including the working class. 

Seymour writes that in spite of Trump’s promise to provide material bounty for American workers, “average incomes under Trump grew more slowly than under his predecessor, and the rich gained far more than anyone else.” What really has drawn masses of Americans to Trump’s movement is not material improvement but what Seymour calls the “psychological surplus offered by nationalist renewal” and “the ethic of popular war against national enemies” e.g. undocumented immigrants, Antifa, “wokeness,” etc. 

Seymour notes that this dynamic of a charismatic demagogic leader enchanting masses of ordinary people and inciting them to their worst instincts of hatred and cruelty was clearly on display in the Philippines after the election of Rodrigo Duterte as president in 2016. By the time Duterte left office in 2022 he was the most popular head of state on the planet, gaining an almost unanimous approval rating from all economic classes of Filipinos–in spite of the fact that poverty in the already deeply impoverished country steadily increased under his presidency. As president, Duterte incited regular police and private vigilantes to form death squads that murdered tens of thousands of alleged drug addicts and street criminals. This anti-crime campaign served as a convenient cover for a reign of terror against Duterte’s political dissidents, particularly those on the left. 

Marx and Freud

Seymour’s argument that demagogues like Trump and Duterte divert ordinary peoples’ attention from the injustices caused by economic elites with the device of demagogic scapegoating of society’s weakest groups–or that they pretend to be populist while actually serving economic oligarchy–is not particularly original. What is original are the tools of analysis he brings, fusing Marxist analysis with psychoanalysis. At some point, perhaps 7 or 8 years ago, references to the psychoanalytic theory of the likes of Sigmund Freud and Jacque Lacan started to appear in his writings–to the distaste of a few of his Marxist admirers. He latched onto psychoanalysis at least in part as a way of understanding his own childhood traumas–but also in order to mine it for insight into the human mind that might facilitate the revolutionary socialist goal of achieving the full flowering of human freedom. Like a true revolutionary socialist, Seymour argues that the best antidote to the disaster nationalism of Trump & company is the creation of conditions for the full flowering of what Karl Marx called the “species-being”: the fundamental needs of humans to create, live, work, love and play, without coercion and in solidarity with other people. 

There is one point in the book where Seymour’s laborious psychoanalytic dissection of the motivations of followers of disaster nationalist movements has me a little lost. It is in the book’s chapter where he makes an argument, which I find unconvincing, relating to persons who believe the conspiracy theory that the Covid vaccine contains a microchip which allows Bill Gates to spy on persons receiving the vaccine. In holding such beliefs, according to Seymour, people are really attempting to unconsciously suppress “erotic fantasies of bodily penetration.” I think he is on stronger ground when he applies this same Freudian analysis to fans of Andrew Tate, the American-British, pro- Trump misogynist influencer and reputed sex trafficker. Tate, who has achieved an alarmingly wide influence among young males in the UK, has heavily implied publicly that he would be willing to rape women if he felt like it. In defending Tate’s stance–that he deserves to get away with rape because he is a “top G”–Seymour posits that the influencer’s “extremely suasible male fans” are really displaying an unconscious openness to being raped by Tate himself, should their hero desire it. 

One of a Kind

I fully admit that I don’t always follow some of Seymour’s Freudian analysis or fully understand all of his theoretical arguments, at least upon first reading. As when I read essays on his Patreon page, Disaster Nationalism had me periodically resorting to the proverbial dictionary (Google) because the author sometimes peppers his prose with advanced vocabulary (for example, detumescence and misprision). I can report that the author’s use of such vocabulary didn’t derail my understanding of his fundamental arguments. 

I also believe that Disaster Nationalism (and his other writings) show Richard Seymour to be an extremely intelligent person with whom I never fail to feel intellectually stimulated after I’ve read him. In Disaster Nationalism, I particularly recommend chapter 6, which features Seymour applying his concept of disaster nationalism to Israel’s current genocide in Gaza. It is the best part of the book. It contains really first rate writing and analysis. 

In the breadth of his knowledge, intellectual curiosity and intelligence, Seymour, in important ways, is comparable to the late Mike Davis. He is a treasure amongst the English speaking Marxist left.