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This weekend, the Denier Roundup had a rare chance to observe a concentrated group of people steadfastly refusing to acknowledge reality in the real world, instead of online. We didnt go looking for the circus, but when some thousands of them decided to come to DC, during another surge of the pandemic many of them refuse to even really acknowledge, with the express purpose of claiming their candidate won an election he very much lost we couldnt resist the call of duty.

By Climate Denier Roundup

The impetus for this somewhat impromptu gathering were the celebrations around the world as people spontaneously hit the streets to revel in Trumps loss and President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harriss win. In response, a smattering of publicity-seekers glommed on to an existing event permit in DC. It brought in the likes of racist Trump-orbiting speakers like Sebastian I swore a lifelong oath to the Nazi-collaborating Hungarian nationalist group Vitzi Rend, as indicated by my taking of v. as a middle initialandwearing its medal to Trumps Inauguration L v. Gorka. There was also a speaker who led the crowd in a chant of a Q-Anon slogan, and presumably some very fine (mostly) white people and of course Trump flags.

And thats the problem with this loser festival. Theyre not just pathetically incapable of accepting that Trump lost the 2020 election by both the popular vote and the electoral college; theyre also actively trying to delegitimize President-elect Biden, force their way into a second Trump term, and dismantle the entire notion of democracy.

Gorka, for example, was actively encouraging the assembled crowd of a few thousand maskless faces in front of the Supreme Court to lobby their local electoral college electors to disregard the legitimate election results, which they are told was rigged and manipulated by Democrats (despite key portions of multiple swing states election infrastructure being controlled by Republicans) and instead cast electoral ballots for Trump so that he could remain in power.

This wasnt just one last hit of the ol Trump Rally high, it was an incitement to overthrow the election, to ignore its results, and keep fighting for Trump. And while that may mean, for many of the attendees, simply continuing to feed his email marketing machine their social security checks, for some it was a much more literal message, and the mixing of those groups is what mainstreams fascism.

Because, along with the families and the alt-right media personalities that consider Fox News part of the lamestream media (because even Fox wont have them on), were groups like the Proud Boys, for whom political violence is aprerequisite for advancementwithin their organization. And they werent there to be nice, and celebrate four great years of owning the libs, they were there to intimidate the predominantly Black residents of DC, and to then pick fights with their perceived enemies: people who oppose fascism. This is not exaggeration or hyperbole. One Proud Boy leader, Kyle Chapman,actually resigned last weekbecause he thought the group that embraces western chauvanism as a euphemism for its age-old bigotry wasnt sufficientlyhomophobic, racist, and anti-semitic. Chapman is known by followers asBased Stickmanbecause of a picture that went viral of him attacking a Trump protestor with a leaded stick in 2017.

So, this wasnt just a bunch of Fox-fried Boomers throwing a politically impotent meme-fest, (though it was also definitely that). It was an attempt to radicalize the audience to do anything they could to overthrow the election an audience that included people for whom political violence is a proud rite of passage.

This was plain from the very start. The rallys visitors to DC, a (farfromperfect) liberal, multicultural, multiracial city, made forBlack Lives Matter Plazaas soon as they arrived on

Friday night. Their first order of business? Ripping down the memorial posters for Breonna Taylor and other victims of racist policing that had been adorned to the fence Trump had erected around the White House.

Nevertheless, many called for the people of DC to stay home, ignore the influx of fascists into the streets of our nations capital, to humor their little show and let them rally in peace. We should cede the public square, they implicitly advised their millions of Twitter followers, to let these fascists lick their wounds in peace, in public, by dominating the streets of DC.

But on Saturday morning, local organizations put out the call for those who could to show up, so that the people who fought for Black lives to matter could at least hold on to that space. Otherwise it would be bastardized by the very politically-cultivated racism and hatred that required the words BLACK LIVES MATTER to be written in 35-foot letters down 16th Street, as a reminder to the man currentlyoccupying the Peoples House, in the first place.

Ceding public spaces to election-denying fascists would do nothing to dissuade them from coming back, and preemptive surrender would only embolden them further to believe their violence is condoned by those who dont actively oppose it.

This big, white, cis-straight, able-bodied, right-down-the-street, masculine-presenting, Denier Roundup writer, got that call for help protecting BLM Plaza, so he masked up, and headed out

Tune in tomorrow for the thrilling conclusion!

(Originally appeared at DailyKos.)

Link:
Deniers In The Wild: A roundup from Saturday's racist-right rally denying Trump's loss - Red, Green, and Blue

Out of the blue

Hungarys sponsorship of the Geneva declaration put the country at the helm of a motley coalition of pro-life hardliners that reject any international obligation on the part of states to finance or facilitate abortion, the document reads.

Most of its 30-odd signatories make up the 20 worst countries around the world for women to live in, according to the Women, Peace and Security Index compiled by Georgetown University. Hungary, ranked 49th, is the third worst among all EU countries and ranks even below the likes of Mongolia and Kazakhstan.

None of the people on the list could care less about women, Gillian Kane from Ipas, an international safe access to abortion advocacy group, summed up for The Guardian newspaper.

The declaration is legally void and does not change any laws already in place. But Hungarys stamp on the family-touting document was still a rude awakening to many, even in the face of the governments years-long pursuit of a policy to spur procreation within predominantly middle-class families with the motif of jumpstarting population growth, Reka Safrany, who chairs the Hungarians Womens Lobby, told BIRN.

Though the governments mounting hostility toward reproduction rights was palpable, we didnt see [the Geneva Consensus Declaration] coming, Safrany added.

Since its return to power in 2010, Orbans government has introduced several obstacles to obtaining an abortion. It wasted no time in slotting language about protecting the foetus since its conception in the constitution, a first for Europe at the time.

Though abortion has remained legal, women can only request the procedure within a narrow set of circumstances, as in the case of grave damage to the foetus, when the mothers health is at risk or when the pregnancy is the result of a crime. Pregnancies can also be mandated by the womans precarious socio-economic situation, which provides a walkable trail for abortions within the public health system in spite of the laws limiting scope, Safrany explained.

The message is clear: if you choose abortion, the state wants you to have it the hard way.

Noa Nogradi, womens rights expert and political philosopher

Women are also subject to mandatory waiting periods and two counselling sessions that are deliberately intended to change minds and dissuade them from going ahead with an abortion. Yet according to research by the PATENT association, a reproductive rights watchdog, these counselling sessions only seem to add to the womens mental strain. Of the more than a hundred women we asked, not a single one came away from it dissuaded. But they all felt humiliated, expert Nogradi, who took part in the study, said.

And its getting harder to book an appointment, even though abortions are extremely time sensitive and you simply cant have the procedure without it, Nogradi added.

Permits for medical abortions that rely on pills have been revoked, leaving many women with surgery as their only option other than going abroad. Nogradi thinks this policy is tinged with ideology. The message is clear: if you choose abortion, the state wants you to have it the hard way.

The past two decades has seen a steady decline in the number of abortions carried out in Hungary. Last year, close to 26,000 pregnancies were surgically terminated in the country, half the tally from 15 years ago, according to the Central Statistical Office. Yet the governments anti-abortion tirade continues.

Minister of Human Resources Miklos Kasler famously blamed abortion for Hungarys population decline, brushing off data that showed the countrys death rate twice outstrips the number of abortions.

And Family Minister Novak has spoken out against abortion in an oft-cited interview with the alt-right website Breitbart. She branded the pro-choice movement as pro-killing and applauded Hungarys family-oriented mentality.

A state-sponsored schoolbook published at the outset of the past academic year reportedly contained several anti-abortion references.

This worldview is reflected in the governments family planning program that offers free in vitro fertilisation to couples in a bid to boost fertility rates. But the policy leaves many people behind, activist Safrany suggests, as its focused on middle-class families. Family planning is also about affordable contraception and adequate education. Why dont these programs have the same backing when many women lack the means to afford them?

The governments family-centric orientation is extreme, Judit Zeller from the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union told BIRN, and could lead to completely shutting out non-married couples or singles from fertilisation treatments.

Conscientious objections to abortions from doctors, often incentivised by government funding, are also on the rise. Yet even in the current legal framework, abortion is a right that should be upheld. After all, abortions are part of the specialists job, thats what they learn at university, Safrany said.

More:
Activists Fear Abortion at Risk in Hungary from Orban's Family-First Crusade - Balkan Insight

The 2020 U.S. presidential election brought into sharp relief the contrast between the American and Israeli Jewish communities, the two main centers of the Jewish world. According to post-election surveys, American Jewish support for the Democrats remains extremely high, at 77 percent (up from 70 percent in 2016). President Donald Trump was estimated to have received a mere 21 percent of the Jewish vote. In Israel, however, surveys have shown that Israeli Jews prefer Trump to Biden by 70 percent to 13 percent.

Much has been written on the growing gap between American Jews and Israel in terms of values and Jewish identity. In particular, the entrenchment of the occupation and the growing authoritarianism of the Benjamin Netanyahu regime has provoked growing disillusionment with Israel, especially among young Jewish progressives in North America. On the one hand is Israels unmistakable shift to the nationalist right; on the other, American Jews commitment to liberal, pluralistic, and progressive ideals, exemplified by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The liberal icon symbolized for many the role that Jewish Tikkun Olam can play in the struggle for universal social justice.

Now, the two communities find themselves not only drifting apart, but also increasingly at loggerheads. Most American Jews see Trump as a clear threat, while most Israeli Jews view him as an ally who offers security and hope. This divergence has to do not only with the two communities different values, but also their structural positions.

For a relatively prosperous and largely white minority, the extent of American Jewish backing for the Democrats is striking. A 2015 study found that Jewish support for Democrats was 40 percent higher than that of non-Jews in similar socio-economic positions. And while some of it can be explained in Jewish levels of education and concentration in metropolitan areas, this is clearly far from the whole story.

The Democratic Partys model of inclusive citizenship fits American Jewish aspirations to cultivate a cultural and religious minority identity alongside civic participation. In such a model, Jewish particularism and universal American citizenship reinforce each other as two sides of the same coin. The Republican Partys overwhelmingly white Christian character, on the other hand, is far less accommodating in this regard. The GOPs strong Evangelical base, and its Christian-infused social conservatism, have dissuaded most Jews from considering it a political home.

In the last four years, Trumps connections with the extreme right have added an explicit antisemitic dimension to this equation. Trump has repeatedly refused to denounce white supremacist groups and the antisemitic QAnon conspiracy. GOP politicians routinely invoke conspiracies regarding the Hungarian Jewish financier George Soros, while using their support for Israel to deflect charges of antisemitism.

The Womens March on New York, January 21, 2017. (Gili Getz)

The shift in the GOPs rhetoric under Trump has revealed that the general assimilation of white Jews into whiteness has clear limits. Trumps comments to American Jews, in which he referred to Israel as your country and Benjamin Netanyahu as your prime minister, betrayed his understanding of U.S. Jews as not fully American, in keeping with his overall exclusivist notion of citizenship.

The 2018 deadly attack on the Pittsburgh synagogue by a white nationalist who subscribed to GOP-amplified conspiracy theories involving Soros and immigration, meanwhile, showed in the starkest terms the dangers of Trumps normalization of white supremacy. The place of Jews in a nativist America is far from secure, and it is clear why they reject overwhelmingly this political vision.

Israeli support for Trump is similarly rooted in structural realities, and is tied to the transformation of Israels political system in the last 20 years. The slow but sure demise of the two-state solution, and the effective incorporation of the occupied West Bank into Israel, mark the emergence of a one-state political system in which Jewish dominance is secured through the erosion of Israels democratic features. If American Jews are a minority, Israeli Jews are in the opposite position. They constitute a hegemonic group of about 50 percent of the population in Israel-Palestine.

As Raef Zreik recently wrote on +972 Magazine, the 2018 Jewish Nation-State Law spells out the new model of Jewish political dominance, with the downgrading of citizenship for Palestinians in Israel and commitment to Jewish settlement as a national value. As the permanence of the occupation becomes increasingly obvious, Israel can no longer maintain its democratic credentials and present itself as an island of liberalism in the Middle East.

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This explains why Israel has sought in the last decade to position itself as a strategic ally of the rising global authoritarian, revanchist, and Islamophobic right, headed by Jair Bolsonaro, Narendra Modi, Viktor Orbn and, of course, Trump. For now, this alliance appears to be working in Israels interests, in an increasingly illiberal world. Israeli right-wing commentators supportive of Trump have adopted alt-right rhetoric, and have spoken in disparaging and even antisemitic terms about U.S. Jews support for liberal values. Key Netanyahu surrogates have described J Street as Jew boys, referred to American Jews as suburban rich people with private police, and routinely circulated Soros conspiracies.

Could this change under a Joe Biden presidency? It is almost certain that Bidens White House will try to revert, at least rhetorically, to previous patterns. No doubt the administration, very much like the EU, will try to revive the charade of the peace process and two-state solution. This will not change any of the existing dynamics, but it would enable international actors to continue ignoring the reality of effective Israeli annexation of the West Bank. Yet it is doubtful that this could work for much longer.

For Israel, the global hard right is now a natural and perhaps inevitable choice. Israels preference for a Trumpist GOP is therefore a logical conclusion, while for most American Jews, Trumpism is an anathema and a threat. Under these conditions, the rift between the communities could deepen and become about much more than values or disillusionment. It represents the clash of radically different alignments, rooted in the political trajectories and positions of both communities. This is no longer only about the future of Israel, but also about the future of Jews in the United States.

Read the rest here:
The global right is threat to US Jews but a natural home for Israelis - +972 Magazine

Demonstrations promoted by right-wing conspiracy theorists and white nationalists are expected downtown Saturday. Will people come by the thousands, or dozens?

WASHINGTON There was intense trepidation that the 2018 Unite the Right 2 rally could live up to its namesake, serving as a sequel to Charlottesville and unleashing violence in the nations capital. Police prepared for hundreds of alt-right protesters, as the event garnered attention on social media channels and in the global press.

But ultimately, only a few dozen provocateurs boarded a train at the Vienna / Fairfax-GMU Metro station to begin their pilgrimage. When they alighted in Foggy Bottom, their bullhorns were drowned out by the jeers of a city that knew they were coming.

Far-right protesters were dwarfed in size and spirit on Aug. 12, 2018. What was supposed to conclude in a crescendo in Lafayette Park ended awkwardly without ceremony, in a whimper.

Could the same dynamic unfold on Saturday, when events promoted by conservative conspiracy theorists and white nationalists converge in Freedom Plaza?

The reason that was such a small number of people in 2018, versus the year before in Charlottesville, was the lawsuits and criminal charges that were pending related to the homicide of counter-protester Heather Heyer, retired FBI special agent Tom OConnor said. The people organizing the Unite the Right 2 rally were being sued civilly, and there was also internal strife within the organizations that brought the event together, which happens very often in extremist activity.

OConnor served for 23 years on the FBIs Joint Terrorism Task Force in the Washington field office, and now serves as principal consultant with FEDSquared Consulting LLC.

Faced with the preliminary details of the weekend events and a far-right social media ecosystem seemingly unwilling to accept President Trumps defeat, OConnor said the outcome of this weekend's demonstrations will be far more difficult to predict than the events of August 2018.

My fear is that, as we go forward through this cycle, moving towards the inaugural, the side that feels like theyve had this election stolen from them, youre going to have extremist elements in these groups, that could act out in lone offender violence, O'Connor said. That would be unfortunate for the country, but it is far from unlikely.

O'Connor stressed the careful balancing act federal and District law enforcement will be undertaking - protecting First Amendment assemblies while monitoring the main events and peripheries for potential violence.

"On the outsides of these protected activities, you're going to have fringe elements that have violence in their nature," he said. "And some of these groups you're hearing about have had individuals who pare off to do violent actions."

See original here:
Could MAGA protests in DC end like Unite the Right 2 rally, in a whimper? - WUSA9.com

November 15, 2020| By Kumar Sanjay Singh

This was the first election since 1992 when an incumbent president failed to win re-election for a second term. With over 75 million votes, Biden received the most votes ever cast for a presidential candidate, beating Barack Obamas record of 69.5 million votes from 2008.

The 2020 election saw a record number of ballots cast early and by mail, due to many states relaxing restrictions on mail-in voting in response to the COVID19 pandemic. As a result of a large number of mail-in ballots, some swing states saw delays in vote counting and reporting, leading to major news outlets not projecting a winner until four days later, on 7th November 2020.

Most significantly, Joseph R Bidens running mate Kamala Harris became the first coloured women to be elected as the Vice President of the United States.

Such achievements notwithstanding, mandate in the 59th presidential election was not as decisive and emphatic as was being anticipated by pollsters. Trump expanded the support for his policy, as reflected in the voting pattern between 2016 and 2020. In 2016, presidential election Trump polled 62, 984, 828 votes, which is approximately 46 % of the total votes cast. In 2020, votes polled in favour of Trump increased to 71,098,559, which is approximately 48% of the total votes cast. (At the time of writing approximately 93 % of the votes have been counted.)

It is apparent that despite the electoral defeat of Donald J Trump in the 59th presidential election, popular support for Trumpism has expanded.

The pyrrhic victory of the Democrats is underscored by the existing state of play in the US Senate election 2020. The Republican Party won 18 seats, thus having a tally of 48 seats in the US senate. The Democratic Party won 13 seats and holds 46 seats in the Senate. Two seats are held by the Independents. Requiring 51 seats to have a majority, the fate of the US Senate rests on the two runoff elections in Georgia, where neither party managed to secure 50% or more of the total votes cast.

Media analysts and pollsters are crediting Trumps carnivalesque campaign for the enthusiastic in-person voter turnout on November 3, for presidential election 2020.

Trumps success in eliciting overwhelming turnout of supporters is fundamentally a consequence of his connect with a subterranean ideology that has been a part of US politics since the inception of the US as a nation. That which we know as Trumpism is an amalgamation of deeply conservative dispositions, beliefs and ideas on, inter alia, race, gender, class and scientific temper. This neo-conservative ecosystem is certainly not Trumps creation, but he became the bridgehead for the intrusion of these ideas in mainstream politics.

The topography of neo-conservative politics is constituted by an ensemble of organizations and groups. It will be difficult to establish systematic ties between them; they adhere to widely different organizational principles and have little in common except for a filiation to the subterranean ideology. At one end of this ensemble of organizations are amorphous groups with no recognized leader, political centre or structured organization, QAnon is a typical example of such groups, at the other extreme are the clandestine, highly disciplined and hierarchically organized groups of white supremacists and right-wing militias and finally, there are radio talk shows, cable news and far-right websites such as Breitbart News, a website which is the platform for the alt-right.

This subterranean ideology and the groups affiliated to it, even when it provided a significant proportion of the votes cast for the Republican party, is neither a part of the party nor is within its control. The coupling of alt-right with the Grand Old Party is entirely the handiwork of Trump and his acolytes.

Herein lies the basis of the stranglehold that Trump seems to have over the Republican Party. It follows that electoral defeat notwithstanding; Trump and his trusted lieutenants would be firmly in the saddle of the party and it will be obligated to continue the collision course with the Democrats and other perceived enemies. In short, divisive politics that was the hallmark of the Trump presidency would persist even after his electoral defeat.

Any analysis of the increasing fragility of polity in the US of A will be incomplete without accounting for the significant mutations in the formal political parties of the USA. Significant fault lines have emerged within both the Republican and the Democratic Party.

Since the 58th presidential election 2016, the establishment of both the Republican and Democratic party is under the threat of being swamped by a radical wing. The Democratic party is facing a mounting challenge from the left that is growing increasingly impatient with the glacial pace of socio-political and economic reforms.

Bernie Sanders and The Squad Democrats (a group of four women elected in the 2018 United States House of Representatives elections, made up of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan) have been articulating the anxieties and aspirations of the left-wing of the Democratic party. This group has already mounted two unsuccessful challenges to occupy CenterStage of Democratic party. They have also been the motivating force behind movements of police, medical and educational reforms as well as an equitable and just wage structure.

The establishment in the Republican party has already been vanquished by the alt-right challenge mounted under the leadership of Trump and Stephen Kevin Bannon. It is a symptom of this capitulation of the establishment conservatives that Abraham Lincolns party has lately become the vehicle for the remnants of confederate ideology in US politics.

Establishment in both the parties has displayed ineptitude in addressing this challenge. Democrats pulled defeat from the jaws of victory in the 58th presidential elections owing to the mishandling of the left-wing of their party. That the conservative establishment had some role to play in Trumps electoral defeat is evident in the voting trends in the election of the Senate and the President in some important swing states.

Bidens victory in Arizona and Massachusetts had the weight of the Republican supporters -late John McCain and Mitt Romney. The upshot of this challenge is that while the Democrats are increasingly being pushed towards a left-wing agenda of reforms that alt-right is pushing the Republicans towards a politics of cultural wars.

In spite of the pious enunciation of Biden, this growing chasm in US domestic politics will be hard to plaster over. In fact, the burning questions that evoked unprecedented voter turnout even in the time of pandemic can hardly be ignored by the Biden administration. However, any decisive action by the Biden administration on COVID19 related public health measures, on police reforms, especially in the face of growing sensitivity on disproportionate police action on coloured communities, on relaxations of emigration norms are all capable of igniting passions and acrimonious street wars.

The founding fathers of the United States may have visualized it as a beacon of freedom for the world, a shining city on a hill; in the current turbulent times, it may be reduced to a house on fire.

Should this concern India or the South Asian sub-continent? One must speculate the impact of a divided US on its capacity to regain the leadership of multilateral institutions in the face of the rise of China as a potential hyperpower.

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Related Topics: Donald Trump, Joe Biden, United States of America

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Resilience of Trumpism and Fragmentation of American Polity in Biden Presidency - Sikh Siyasat News