The Four Dictators

[Kid Berwyn]

Los cuatro dictadores (1962) by Eduardo Arroyo



Four European dictators, from left-to-right: Francisco Franco of Spain, Benito Mussolini of Italy, António Salazar of Portugal, and Adolf Hitler of Germany.

The reason I bring them up is to remind us of what Donald J Trump, former (hurts to type) President of the United States said about his own political philosophy:

(I want) “my people” to treat him the same way North Koreans treat that nation’s murderous head of state. “He’s the head of a country, and I mean, he’s the strong head, don’t let anyone think anything different,” Trump told Fox News. “He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”

SOURCE: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-generals-loyal-nazis-hitler-1393980/

Recently, Trump became irate when he heard that Gen. Mark Milley had expressed loyalty to the Constitution and not to him personally.

Trump Floats the Idea of Executing Joint Chiefs Chairman Milley

The former president is inciting violence against the nation’s top general. America’s response is distracted and numb.

By Brian Klaas
The Atlanti, September 25, 20223

Late Friday night, the former president of the United States—and a leading candidate to be the next president—insinuated that America’s top general deserves to be put to death.

That extraordinary sentence would be unthinkable in any other rich democracy. But Donald Trump, on his social-media network, Truth Social, wrote that Mark Milley’s phone call to reassure China in the aftermath of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.” (The phone call was, in fact, explicitly authorized by Trump-administration officials.) Trump’s threats against Milley came after The Atlantic’s publication of a profile of Milley, by this magazine’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who detailed the ways in which Milley attempted to protect the Constitution from Trump.

And yet, none of the nation’s front pages blared “Trump Suggests That Top General Deserves Execution” or “Former President Accuses General of Treason.” Instead, the post barely made the news. Most Americans who don’t follow Trump on social media probably don’t even know it happened.

CONTINUES...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/trump-milley-execution-incitement-violence/675435/

Richard Stengel, former TIME editor and Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs during the Obama Administration, was on Nicole Wallace's "Deadline: White House" on MSNBC Thursday, Oct. 5, and said:

"Violence is to Fascism what the Free Press is to Democracy."

Democracy should take a moment and thank Al Gore for the Internet and, by extension, DU! Then let's get back to kicking fascism in the ass! If we don't, Trump, the fascists and their toadies will get away with treason.

[2naSalit]

1. K&R

[Kid Berwyn]

3. Red Caesar

‘Red Caesarism’ is rightwing code – and some Republicans are listening

Argument for a ‘red Caesar’ to rule US may seem esoteric but conservative thinktank behind idea has connections to Trump

Jason Wilson
The Guardian, October

In June, the rightwing academic Kevin Slack published a book-length polemic claiming that ideas that had emerged from what he called the radical left were now so dominant that the US republic its founders envisioned was effectively at an end.

Slack, a politics professor at the conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan, made conspiratorial and extreme arguments now common on the antidemocratic right, that “transgenderism, anti-white racism, censorship, cronyism … are now the policies of an entire cosmopolitan class that includes much of the entrenched bureaucracy, the military, the media, and government-sponsored corporations”.

In a discussion of possible responses to this conspiracy theory, he wrote that the “New Right now often discusses a Red Caesar, by which it means a leader whose post-Constitutional rule will restore the strength of his people”.

SNIP...

The idea that the US might be redeemed by a Caesar – an authoritarian, rightwing leader – was first broached explicitly by Michael Anton, a Claremont senior fellow and Trump presidential adviser.

SNIP...

He gave Caesarism a passing mention in that essay, but developed it further in his 2020 book, The Stakes, defining it as a “form of one-man rule: halfway … between monarchy and tyranny”.

SNIP...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/01/red-caesar-authoritarianism-republicans-extreme-right

Fascism is the right's way of speeding the new feudalism. Guess who gets to be king? Guess who gets to be serfs?

[2naSalit]

4. Exactly.

[Hekate]

2. KnR

[Kid Berwyn]

5. "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." -- George Orwell

"Obamagate" and "Lock her up": Pointing the way toward "Heil Trump"

It’s not just a chant at Trump's rallies or lame wordplay in his tweets. It’s his call to fascist rule

By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV
Salon, May 20, 2023

EXCERPT...

That presaged by 24 hours his now-famous exchange with Philip Rucker of the Washington Post in the Rose Garden, when Rucker asked him, "What crime, exactly, are you accusing President Obama of committing?"

"Obamagate," Trump replied, refusing to define the "crime" or provide any specific evidence. So Rucker followed up: "What is the crime, exactly, that you're accusing him of?" Trump shot him what passed for an angry look: "You know what the crime is," Trump answered. "The crime is very obvious to everybody."

What was Obamagate, pundits asked each other with puzzled looks on their faces, as the week wore on? They should have known that it would have something to do with Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser, who lasted all of 24 days in the job before being fired for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his phone call with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in late December of 2016. Flynn was later charged with lying to the FBI, pled guilty twice, and has been awaiting sentencing for more than two years. Trump's Department of Justice, under the direction of Large Lickspittle Bill Barr, moved to drop the charges against Flynn last week, which generated a letter signed by 2,000 former Justice Department officials denouncing the motion filed by Little Lickspittle Timothy Shea, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. The judge in the case will hold hearings on the matter and has not yet issued a ruling.

SNIP...

But Trump loved Flynn. It had been Flynn who led the delegates at the 2016 Republican National Convention in chanting "lock her up" after mentioning the alleged criminal behavior of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. As with Trump's use of "Obamagate" as a shorthand for Obama's alleged corruption while in office, Flynn's allegations against Clinton were equally vague and shorn of specificity. Trump had already been encouraging his crowds to chant "lock her up" at his campaign rallies in 2016, and has continued the practice ever since. I don't know of a single rally Trump has held since he's been in office when the crowd didn't break into the "lock her up" chant, with Trump allowing the fascist bellowing to wash over him as he stands at the podium, smiling with approval at the crowd.

I use the words "fascist bellowing" on purpose, because that's what it is: Trump supporters at public events and rallies loudly endorsing official lawlessness. It's not a funny joke or clever verbiage. Trump and his followers have been routinely advocating the jailing of Trump's political opponents without an investigation, criminal charges, trial or conviction by a jury of their peers. This is the way fascist dictators dispose of their political opposition. Putin has jailed opponents of his regime. He has also arrested wealthy businessmen whose enterprises he wanted to seize, and of course he has ordered the murder of Russian citizens who he felt betrayed him.

CONTINUES...

https://www.salon.com/2020/05/16/obamagate-and-lock-her-up-pointing-the-way-toward-heil-trump/