Friday, July 26, 2024
Friday, July 12, 2024
Tuesday, July 9, 2024
How To Stop The U.S. from Falling Into Fascism
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Robert Reich,
Some of us have families and live in communities that agree with us about the profound danger of another Trump presidency. But some of you have close relatives — a parent, child, sibling, even a spouse — who supports Trump. You feel dismayed by what has happened to them.
Others of you live in a town or city where there are many Trump supporters, or in a red state, or in a neighborhood where you see lots of Trump lawn signs and bumper stickers. You feel isolated and fearful.
Some of you are confused about whether Biden is the strongest candidate to take on Trump, and you’re worried about what Biden and the Democrats will decide.
I can’t sugarcoat this. It is dismaying, frightening, and worrying. We have already endured four years of Trump, and another term could tip America and the world into full-throated fascism. Trump has become even more unhinged and vindictive, and more knowledgeable about how to get horrendous things done.
Here are 11 suggestions for what you can do in the 118 days before Election Day:
Try not to allow issues such as whether Biden should resign, or his degree of responsibility for Gaza, to get in the way of your determination not to let Trump back into the White House. Regardless of our differences over these issues, they pale compared to the threat Trump poses.
For the same reason, please don’t decide to leave the top of the ticket blank or to vote for a third party or not to vote at all. All make it easier for Trump to win. Instead, make sure you and everyone you know and trust is registered to vote, and votes for Joe Biden or whomever is the Democratic candidate for president.
Don’t become so upset with politics that you drop out, stop reading the news, or give up on activism. The stakes are just too high. Even if you cannot take much time out of your normal life, you need to help organize, mobilize, and energize others.
Focus your time and energies on convincing people who still have open minds, to oppose Trump. Mobilize those who don’t normally vote, to vote. Organize get-out-the-vote efforts in your community. Get young people involved.
Counter lies with truth. When you hear someone repeating a Trump Republican lie, correct it.
Do not tolerate bigotry and hate. Call it out. Stand up to it. Denounce it. Demand that others denounce it, too.
Do not resort to violence, name-calling, bullying, or any of the other tactics that Trump followers may be using.
Be compassionate toward hardcore followers of Trump, but be firm in your opposition. Understand why someone may decide to support Trump, but don’t waste time and energy trying to convert them.
Don’t waste your time and energy commiserating with people who already agree with you, or criticizing Democrats for failing to communicate more effectively. None of this will get you anything except an upset stomach.
Demonstrate, but don’t confuse demonstrating with political action. You may find it gratifying to stand on a corner in Berkeley with a sign asking drivers to “honk if you hate fascism” that elicit lots of honks, but it’s as politically effectual as taking a warm shower.
Finally, don’t let any sensationalized news of the day divert your eyes from the goal: protecting American democracy during one of the greatest stress tests it has had to endure, fueled by one of the worst demagogues in American history.
I cannot overstate how critical the outcome of the next 118 days will be to everything you and I want for America and the world.
Be well and be strong.
Saturday, July 6, 2024
How to Stop Fascism -Timothy Snyder
How To Stop Fascism. Timothy Snyder.
Those who wish to preserve the American constitutional republic should also recall the past. A good start would be just to recall the five basic political lessons of 1933. Recalling history, we act for a future that can and will be much better.
As the United States hovers at the edge of fascism, the history of Germany can help.
To be sure, Americans have other histories to ponder, including their own. Some American states, right now, are laboratories of authoritarian rule (and resistance). The American 1860s and American 1930s reveal tactics authoritarians use, as well as the weaknesses of the American system, such as slavery and its legacy. At those times, though, Americans were lucky in their leadership. Lincoln and Roosevelt were in office at the critical moments. And so we lack the experience of the collapse of the republic.
We can certainly learn from contemporary authoritarian success, as in Russia and in Hungary, which I have written about elsewhere. Yet the classic example of a major economic and cultural power collapsing into fascism remains Germany in 1933. The failure of the democratic experiment in Germany led to a world war as well as the Holocaust and other atrocities.
….The lessons from Germany that I present below are not at all new. We have been trained by digital media to believe that only what happens right now matters. But the people who intend to destroy the American constitutional republic have learned from the past. One of the basic elements of Project 2025, for example, is what the Nazis called Gleichschaltung: transforming the civil service into a fascist nest.
Those who wish to preserve the American constitutional republic should also recall the past. A good start would be just to recall the five basic political lessons of 1933.
1. Voting matters. Hitler came to power after an election which enabled his appointment as head of government. It is much easier for fascists to begin from within than to begin from without. Hitler’s earlier coup attempt failed. But once he had legitimate power, inside the system as chancellor (prime minister), he could manipulate it from within. In the American system, “voting” means not just going to the polls yourself, but making donations, phone-banking, and knocking on doors. We are still, happily, at the stage when unglamorous actions can make the difference.
2. Coalitions are necessary. In 1932, in the crucial German election, the far left and the center left were separated. The reasons for this were very specific: Stalin ordered the German communists to oppose the German social democrats, thereby helping Hitler to power. To be sure, the American political spectrum is very different, as are the times. Yet the general lesson does suggest itself: the left has to hold together with the center-left, and their energies have to be directed at the goal rather than at each other.
Read more:
https://snyder.substack.com/p/how-to-stop-fascism
Monday, July 1, 2024
How We Get From Corporate Personhood to bad air, water, health care, and more.
Robert Reich,
For years, conservatives have railed against what they call the “administrative state” and denounced regulations.
But let’s be clear. When they speak of the “administrative state,” they’re talking about agencies tasked with protecting the public from corporations that seek profits at the expense of the health, safety, and pocketbooks of average Americans.
Regulations are the means by which agencies translate broad legal mandates into practical guardrails.
Substitute the word “protection” for “regulation” and you get a more accurate picture of who has benefited — consumers, workers, and average people needing clean air and clean water.
Substitute “corporate legal movement” for the “conservative legal movement” and you see who’s really mobilizing, and for what purpose.
**
I spent four years as policy director at the Federal Trade Commission, advising the commissioners on how best to protect the public from corporate excesses. I spent four more years as secretary of labor, protecting American workers from the depredations of big American corporations.
Most large corporations I dealt with obeyed laws and regulations designed to protect the public, but they spent a great deal of money trying to prevent such laws and regulations from being created in the first place and additional efforts contesting them through the courts.
Last week, the Supreme Court made it much harder for the FTC, the Labor Department, and dozens of other agencies — ranging from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Food and Drug Administration, Securities and Exchange Commission, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and National Highway and Safety Administration — to protect Americans from corporate misconduct.
On Thursday, the six Republican-appointed justices eliminated the ability of these agencies to enforce their rules through in-house tribunals, rather than go through the far more costly and laborious process of suing corporations in federal courts before juries.
On Friday, the justices overturned a 40-year-old precedent requiring courts to defer to the expertise of these agencies in interpreting the law, thereby opening the agencies to countless corporate lawsuits alleging that Congress did not authorize the agencies to go after specific corporate wrongdoing.
In recent years, the court’s majority has also made it easier for corporations to sue agencies and get public protections overturned. The so-called “major questions doctrine” holds that judges should nullify regulations that have a significant impact on corporate profits if Congress was not sufficiently clear in authorizing them.
Make no mistake: Consumers, workers, and ordinary Americans will be hurt by these decisions. Big corporations — especially their top executives and major investors — will make even more money than they’re already making because of them.
**
These rulings are the consequence of a corporate strategy launched 53 years ago.
In 1971, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, then a modest business group in Washington, D.C., asked Lewis Powell, then an attorney in Richmond, Virginia, to recommend actions corporations should take in response to the rising tide of public protections (that is, regulations).
Powell’s memo — distributed widely to Chamber members — said corporations were “under broad attack” from consumer, labor, and environmental groups.