@SeanAloysiusOBrien "During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime's atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn't go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.

If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum."

*Parenti intensifies...*

#socialism #communism #anarchism #marxism #MichaelParenti #parenti #Chomsky #NoamChomsky #InventingReality #ManufacturingConsent

@TexasObserver

>You did a recent op-ed about mass deportations, and you talked about the economic costs, but you also wrote that those who will be affected “are our neighbors, our friends and our coworkers. They sit next to us at church and restaurants, and their children are friends with yours at school.” How have we gotten to where so many people, especially in Texas, have forgotten that?
>
>I think that [Governor Greg] Abbott and Operation Lone Star for Texas has set the stage. They were in … Eagle Pass, they pretty much set a stage of taking one very small piece of a very long border, and having the troops there, having the buoys there, and having constant daily media attention. It was like a movie set because if you went just a mile down the river, none of it was there. It was a stage that was set, and the media filmed that as a clip and used those clips for every freaking story, so that’s all people see is that one clip of that one piece of the river. Well, then you’re gonna start believing it, if you keep hearing it on national news. So after a while, unless there’s someone else bringing up the other side of the story, and we worked real hard to get out those positive stories, to show Dreamers saving people’s lives working at hospitals, being nurses … during the pandemic, they were giving of themselves, the Dreamers that are teachers and firefighters that work to save people’s lives during storms, but they’re always just little clips.

Textbook example of #InventingReality or #ManufacturingConsent.

@davidsirota

thanks for being on the fedi. getting everybody here and integrating it with all media could eliminate the power of money over attention. that would help fix things, right? #ManufacturingConsent #SocialWeb

Like many folks who study how fascist governments operate, I've been quick to warn people that given the blatantly illegal methods by which the Trump regime has targeted migrants, foreign visitors to the United States, and student anti-genocide protestors legally in the country, it was only a matter of time before Downmarket Mussolini tried to expand those tactics to target dissidents born in the United States. After watching the US Attorney General call Tesla vandalism "domestic terrorism" yesterday, and reading Trump's unhinged social media rants about shipping folks caught vandalizing Tesla cars or dealerships to El Salvador, I think it's safe to say we're already here.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-tesla-el-salvador

'Delusional' Trump Threatens to Send Tesla Vandals to Prison for 20 Years... in El Salvador

"People that get caught sabotaging Teslas will stand a very good chance of going to jail for up to twenty years, and that includes the funders," Trump stated overnight, adding in all caps: "WE ARE LOOKING FOR YOU!!!"

Several hours later, Trump took up the issue again on his TruthSocial platform, saying: "I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20-year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla. Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!"

Civil rights attorney Sherrilyn Ifill said the threat, which follows on Trump's highly controversial deportation of alleged gang members to El Salvador last week, should not be taken lightly.

"Remember that this is where his discussions with El Salvador began," said Ifill in response to Trump's rantings on Friday. "The migrant detentions there are the dry run. He wants to ship U.S. prisoners to El Salvador. We cannot sleepwalk through this."

Well folks, smoke 'em if you got 'em because I'm pretty sure this bloviating nazi windbag is serious. Given the pattern we've been observing by which Trump's musing are treated as "objective" reality by his fascist minions, and how the regime then transforms that (un)reality into enforcement action regardless of the law, I don't think it's a good idea to wave this off as 'Trump being Trump." Just yesterday regime Attorney General Pam Bondi was publicly making the argument that what is, legally speaking, mere vandalism, is actually a "wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties," and that line was then parroted by a variety of regime-loyal mouthpieces in the larger discourse. This process of laying the ground work to transform fascist unreality into a presumed mandate to act is precisely the tactic we saw the Trump regime employ to justify kidnapping student anti-genocide protest leaders residing legally in the United States, render over 200 prisoners to a slave labor dungeon in El Salvador without due process, attempting to either seize control of, or destroy Columbia University, manufacture consent to annex Canada, and even attempt to shutter the US Department of Education. Furthermore, given the regime's continued insistence that invoking the word "terrorism" is a magic spell that allows them to ignore US law and our constitutionally-protected rights, you'd have to be some kind of rube to assume Bondi's media performance yesterday, and Trump's late night social media rant, aren't a coordinated effort to manufacture consent to escalate the regime's war on resistance to include American protestors and dissidents opposing the administration's fascist fuckery.

Of course it almost goes without saying that what Trump is proposing here, the rendition of American citizens to a slave labor prison in El Salvador for the high crime of vandalizing some cars, is highly illegal and a blatant violation of our legally-enshrined civil rights, but that hasn't really stopped the Trump administration from plowing ahead with its war on protest and resistance so far. Furthermore, decades and decades of bipartisan demonization of "criminals" and protestors, particularly those engaging in direct action, likely ensures that many Americans aren't going to notice this fascist repression, or care very much if they do. Naturally, the Trump regime is relying on that attitude prevailing in the larger public consciousness, which is why they're employing a boiling frog strategy of going after people they say are "gang members," "terrorists," "illegals," "antisemites," "troublemakers," and "criminals," first.

As I've noted in the past, whether or not the Trump administration is *successfully* able to get away with blatant violations of the law while enacting his fascist war on our civil rights is unknowable in the present, but the pre-existing pattern of regime behavior in the Trump 2.0 era makes it pretty clear that if Trump says it, he at least means to *try* and do it; which makes all of this an ominous warning for everyone.

#Trump #Fascism #Musk #Tesla #CivilRights #ElSalvador #PamBondi #Protests #ManufacturingConsent #Gulag #USConsitution

And now, it turns out that Der Führer himself, Donald Trump is just blurting out that the Canadians are right, and Trump is dead serious about conquering Canada:

https://archive.is/PlxBr

Trump Reveals Stunning Reason Why He’s Bullying Canada

"In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, the president claimed that the reason he’s so tough on America’s northern neighbor is because it’s “meant to be our fifty-first state.”

“You’re tougher with Canada than you are with our biggest adversaries. Why?” asked Laura Ingraham.

“Only because it’s meant to be our fifty-first state,” Trump said, when Ingraham attempted to interject. “No, no but listen to this for a second.”

“We need their territory. They have territorial advantage. We’re not going to let them get close to China, right?” pressed the Fox host.

“Look, I deal with every country—directly or indirectly. One of the nastiest countries to deal with is Canada,” Trump said about the longtime U.S. ally."

I know I used the phrase "blurted out" above, but make no mistake my friends, this was absolutely a calculated attempt by both president Trump and the bootlicking fascist news network that supports his every ambition, to manufacture consent for seizing control of Canada. Trump appears on Fox News to talk directly to his base, and the interviewers in this segment are completely aligned with his agenda. By taking on the role of the confused fascist everyman wondering why Trump has such a hard on for seizing Canada, they're allowing Downmarket Mussolini to seed the idea that this is a vital policy goal, and make the case that MAGA movement fascists should get behind that goal. This is effectively a declaration of his intention to make war, on Canada.

Trump keeps saying he wants to conquer Canada in increasingly more direct ways, in increasingly more public settings because this is the art by which all American presidents have manufactured consent for war; it doesn't happen overnight, but folks who've lived through incidents like the US invasion of Iraq, the US invasion of Afghanistan, and the US invasion of Panama will be quite familiar with the process and how it turns random musings and conspiracy theories into a presumed, typically bipartisan, mandate for war.

Trump is faking it till he makes it, and the "it" in question here is definitely the conquest of Canada. It would probably be good if Americans at large started taking him seriously, and working towards stopping him; in the halls of government, on your TV, and if necessary, in the streets.

#Trump #Fascism #Canada #ForeignPolicy #Annex #ManufacturingConsent #Imperialism