Neo-McCarthyism threatens to spin out of control

Most Americans forget, or never learned, that McCarthyism actually started with the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1938. It was formed by Democrats for the purpose of persecuting leftists for their own political benefit.
Joseph McCarthy was just an opportunistic late-comer to the Red Scare who used an existing program of repression and turned it into an out-of-control monster.
History, who so often prefers to repeat herself, is once again clearing her throat.

“The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”
- President Obama publicly mocking Mitt Romney’s assertion that Russia was America’s “Number One geopolitical foe” in 2012

Not surprisingly, the Democratic-led Neo-McCarthyism began by Hillary supporters smearing Bernie Sanders in the spring.

Meanwhile, Clinton operative David Brock said “Sanders is a socialist” and “has got a 30 year history of affiliation with a lot of whackadoodle ideas and parties,” and pro-Clinton pundits linked Sanders to Communists through his 1980s praise of Castro and the Sandinistas. All of that culminated in Republicans like Lindsey Graham and National Review citing Sanders’ honeymoon in the Soviet Union as proof of his suspicious loyalties:

Then it was Jill Stein's turn to be smeared.

One Clinton-supporting blog – while also lying by claiming that “she only criticized the US” – attacked Stein for criticizing the U.S. while standing on dirty foreign soil (“with Red Square as her backdrop”), a long-standing trope used by the Far Right to attack liberals and Democrats for being unpatriotic by virtue of criticizing the U.S. while outside its borders. Commenting on that post, numerous Clinton supporters predictably denounced Stein as a traitor, saying “I don’t think it goes too far to suggest these are acts of sedition and possibly treason,” while the blogger himself dismissed objections over his “red-baiting” by saying “Putin is former KGB!” Journalists from major media outlets used all this to announce that Putin now has not one but (at least) two presidential candidates he controls:...
So that’s the Democratic Party’s approach to the 2016 election. Those who question, criticize or are perceived to impede Hillary Clinton’s smooth, entitled path to the White House are vilified as stooges, sympathizers and/or agents of Russia: Trump, WikiLeaks, Sanders, The Intercept, Jill Stein. Other than loyal Clinton supporters, is there anyone left who is not covertly controlled by or in service to The Ruskies?

The Neo-McCarthyism was officially launched this summer by corporate-centrist Democrats with purely short-term goals.

In their zeal to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president—a goal we share—representative voices of the liberal establishment have joined with the forces of neoconservatism to engage in what can only be described as McCarthyist rhetoric....
Over the past month alone, establishment voices like Franklin Foer, Paul Krugman, Jeffrey Goldberg, Josh Marshall, and Jonathan Chait, among others, have Kremlin-baited Trump in lieu of reasoned argument and factual critique. On July 21, The Atlantic’s Goldberg informed readers that “The Republican nominee for president, Donald J. Trump, has chosen this week to unmask himself as a de facto agent of Russian President Vladimir Putin.” Krugman followed this up on July 22 by asking in The New York Times: “If elected, would Donald Trump be Vladimir Putin’s man in the White House?” Krugman then answered his own baseless question: “Mr. Trump would, in office, actually follow a pro-Putin foreign policy, at the expense of America’s allies and her own self-interest.”

The smear campaign extended far beyond Trump and was "used to vilify anyone perceived to be an impediment to Clinton’s victory."
Once you've taken the McCarthyism genie out of the bottle, it's awfully hard to put it back, and Democrats haven't even tried.
In fact, Democrats have doubled-down.

A week ago, when the House approved by a 390-30 margin and sent to the Senate the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal 2017, Schiff praised “important provisions aimed at countering Russia’s destabilizing efforts — including those targeting our elections.” One of those “important provisions,” Section 501, sets up in the executive branch “an interagency committee to counter active measures by the Russian Federation to exert covert influence.”
This high-level committee could easily morph into a protracted real-life nightmare.
While lacking public accountability, the committee is mandated to ferret out such ambiguous phenomena as Russian “media manipulation” and “disinformation.” Along the way, the committee could target an array of activists, political opponents or irksome journalists. In any event, its power to fulfill “such other duties as the president may designate” would be ready-made for abuse.
The committee is to be selected by presidential appointees, including the director of the FBI — an agency with leadership that has all too often pursued covert and overt political agendas, from the times of J. Edgar Hoover to James Comey.
All in all, the provision is a gift for the next president, tied up in a bow by congressional Democrats.

Even without a new HUAC being formed (yet), politicians are already taking pot-shots at easy targets.

Mike Rogers, the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has accused Snowden of working closely with Moscow...
On the vital question of whether Snowden worked with a foreign power when he was taking the documents he would eventually leak, the House investigation is a tease. There is a section titled "Foreign Influence." Yet all but two of its sentences, including supporting footnotes, are redacted.

Nevermind that Snowden isn't in Russia by choice.

Nevertheless, like the last Red Scare, it was only a matter of time before the hysteria escaped the control of it's originators.

Only two days after the alt-right convention in D.C., Turning Point USA launched Professor Watchlist, a website designed to call out college professors who “discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”

As Rebecca Schuman wrote for Slate, in other circumstances, these might be two unrelated events, but “as the president-elect’s surrogates cite Japanese internment as a ‘precedent’ for what may come, any ‘watch list’ of any sort is worrying.”

Turning Point’s founder and executive director Charlie Kirk wrote a blog to explain that the purpose of the list was to expose professors who are out of line: “Throughout the next 120 days, Turning Point USA will be running ads to make sure students, faculty, and administrators see that these professors made the Professor Watchlist.” The 22-year-old closes his post with the chilling phrase: “We believe these people need to be exposed.”
Each listing on the site — 200 professors so far — includes a photo. Clearly the website is less about documenting issues and more about public shaming and potentially targeting.

It isn't just Trump supporters copying the tactics of Hillary supporters. Trump is doing it himself.

True to this “leadership” model, the Trump transition team is now circulating a 74-question survey at the federal Department of Energy. Some of the questions are informational and seem designed to figure out how the department functions. Others promote the Trump agenda of privatizing government activities and commercializing federal agencies. But some are frightening and reminiscent of earlier “Red Scares“ when people were purged from government positions because they were critical of policies or where suspected of left-wing views or connections decades in the past.

Who could have possibly foreseen Republicans co-opting the Neo-McCarthyism smear tactics of Hillary supporters?
Oh, right. History, your stage is set for your encore.

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TDS

The country is in the throes of a major epidemic, with no known cure and some pretty scary symptoms. It's called Trump Derangement Syndrome, or TDS, and it’s rapidly spreading from the point of origin – the political class – to the population at large.

In the first stage of the disease, victims lose all sense of proportion.
...
The mid-level stages of TDS have a profound effect on the victim’s vocabulary: Sufferers speak a distinctive language consisting solely of hyperbole.
...
In the advanced stages of the disease, the afflicted lose touch with reality. Opinion is unmoored from fact. Life resembles a dark fairy tale in which the villain – Trump – is an amalgam of all the worst tyrants in history, past and present, while the heroes –Trump’s critics – are akin to the resistance fighters of World War II.

this reminds me of Obama's GOP critics

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I started college in 1950 at UC Berkeley, the year of the loyalty oath. A couple of the classes I wanted to take were cancelled because the professors had refused "to sign" The Loyalty Oath, which read, in part, "I a not now, and have never been a member of the Communist Party." Those who refused to sign, whether they had belonged to the Communist party or simply because they found such an oath to be an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, were forced to give up the professorships and could not teach.

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ramp up the Cold War in the USA and to rid academia, the news media, and entertainment of anyone left of center especially if they had a connection to CP USA.

The photo of MLK,Jr at his march - one of the two men who organized it was Bayard Rustin who was a Communist until WW2 when the party poured 100% of its efforts to the war and suspended civil rights work. Rustin joined the Socialist Party and the other prominent man in the photo, and co-organizer of the march, was A. Philip Randolph, a Socialist Party member. In my opinion it was those two that got MLK headed in the right direction from his initial "only wanting a fair share of the pie" stance.

Pete Seeger was a hero at this bleak time. So were many others.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Pluto's Republic's picture

I think a main goal of McCarthyism, or Americanism, was to
ramp up the Cold War in the USA

You can check it out here: http://caucus99percent.com/comment/228059#comment-228059

I've been reading about the Nazis who fanned out across the Americas from Germany. The McCarthy era was perfect cover for the worst of them. They hated the communists to the point of insanity and didn't miss a beat using their Nazi propaganda techniques in the US. It kicked the Cold War off and was great cover for Nazis and Nazi-wannabes in the US. Obviously, it still is.

Does anyone one know what the bad thing is that Putin did to the US that is causing all this blood-vengance-revenge in American hearts? Or is it still all Nazi driven by the "Neocon" embeds who run the deep state at the Federal government?

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Azazello's picture

It's what got me reading about the Eastern Front. You mean the Germans were beat before D-Day even happened ? I hate being lied to.
What did Putin do ? He reasserted the state. Neoliberals hate governments. They like neo-feudalism where everything is privatized. Russia was a Neoliberal paradise under Yeltsin and Putin ruined it. That's why they hate him and why the Russian people love him.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

divineorder's picture

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

ggersh's picture

Nazi sympathizers, financiers. England had it's fair share also, after all the royal family is German. As you have found many Nazi's were brought to America after the war, many with the help of the OSS? the birthplace of the CIA which has many Bush ties.

My guess with Putin is SA wants a pipeline through Syria, Putin and Assad
said no, hence Assad is the new Gaddafi, while Putin supports him hence the red baiting becomes very convenient.

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

German-American Bund. There were mass rallies supporting the Nazis in major cities and authorities assisted more than hindered.

After war was declared on Germany, the FBI took little or no action against them. Those who fought the Nazis with the Abraham Lincoln brigade in Spain, and their supporters in the USA, were hounded and later denounced as "prematurely anti-fascist."

Many Nazis were welcomed into this country under Truman.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Explains it all. The goal is to prevent any ascending countries, from ascending, and prevent any markets where the USA can't act as a tollbooth from emerging in order to maintain a unipolar world.

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Solidarity forever

mimi's picture

and thus have missed German news coverage and documentations about the collapse of the Sovjet Union, the Wall in Berlin, the Reunification, the revelations of exactly what the STASI and the KGB did etc.

There is lots of material I never saw and knew about and I can watch it now here in Germany. It teaches me a lot, especially of how little one can imagine of how much a system with absolute power, like the STASI, can harm the lives of the little people, mostly implemented by just very few men. The political prisoners in former East Germany tell the story. It was not necessary to be against the regime, if you were not for it explicitly, you were a Staatsfeind, worse than any criminal and hunted and observed way longer than the regime was in power.

I hate manipulation and demagoguery and "Volksverhetzung" whereever I see it, against the Russians, against the Americans, against Obama, against Clinton, against Republicans in general or against the Democrats in general. etc. so my warning is just to be aware that any of us here can also be wrong about their beliefs and imaginations. You have to live it to understand it and you have to see everything in detail and in context. That's a lot considering that one is supposed to understand every conflict everywhere in the world. And it is difficult because identity loyalties will always overpower fairness and reason and empathy with your next neighbor in your thinking pattern.

I just would like to ask people to be careful to be too sure about anything. Chances are that one can be wrong more often than one is right and it takes mostly a life-time or at least whole generation to discover it, admit it and face it.

It is nice to see you here again from time to time, dharmasyd, and wish you all the best.

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Lookout's picture

to equate democracy with capitalism...because socialism/communism is bad.

In an earlier thread today CB posted this link which explains why Obomber might have the ass at Putin -
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-25/losers-malice-whats-behind-obam...

And Al posted this way back - the 1949 movie - The Red Menace (1.5 hours)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KWHDNPdoCg
Here's a 3 min clip from the film showing commies in action
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWbIJC57rk0

How to spot a commie (2 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQVXHlMvOoU

There's tons of these film and clips on youtube...
and to be fair we need a little commie propoganda "The American Imperialist millionaire" 1963 (10 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jETJt_zbnKk

Thanks as always for your insightful well researched pieces, gjohn

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

mimi's picture

are movies made by filmmakers, who wanted to make a point, their point. They are not documentaries based on original film material. Why would I dwell in those movies? They may have been useful and entertaining in the past, especially to those, who have lived through those times for real and their children, but now are not going to help much the current generations.

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Lookout's picture

and the idea that governments do try to brainwash their citizens. You're right mimi the films and clips are terrible - I guess that was the point of posting them ...to remind us all that we are manipulated by the media.

Hope all is well across the sea with you and yours!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

edg's picture

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gulfgal98's picture

was also the requirement we had in Florida in the 1960's for all high school seniors had to take a class in Americanism versus Communism.

This type of new form of Mc Carthyism is very frightening.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Aside from learning the basics about capitalist economies we had an "isms" part comparing socialism, communism, and capitalism. We were expected to write a paper about how American capitalism was better than Soviet communism. So we wrote the standard things like levels of production of communal farms, etc. But there was one curious fact, which was pretty much in everybody's paper. Communism showed its inferiority to capitalism because in the Soviet Union 70% of the doctors were women. This was very early 70's.

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GreatLakeSailor's picture

GLS,

Sens. Elizabeth Warren & Chris Murphy will be in a strong position to shape debate over Russia policy in the next Administration. Elizabeth Warren will be on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Chris Murphy, the first Senator to publicly challenge the Obama Administration's support for the devastating Saudi war in Yemen, is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Unfortunately, some Democrats are planning to make common cause with John McCain & Lindsey Graham on Russia policy, pushing for a new Cold War that would likely jack up the already bloated Pentagon budget at the expense of domestic priorities like expanding Social Security, while undermining prospects for de-escalation of conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, and Yemen.

Urge Senator Elizabeth Warren & Senator Chris Murphy to stand up for diplomacy and against the Russia hawks by signing our petition at MoveOn.

Thanks for all you do to help make U.S. foreign policy more just,

Robert Naiman, Avram Reisman, and Sarah Burns
Just Foreign Policy

I can't really imagine Warren or Murphy doing anything against the Very Serious Beltway Democratic Elite, but it is encouraging to see that at least one (mostly useless) proggy group has noticed that the Dems aughtta reconsider where this is going.

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Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.

Warren has found her niche role within the democratic party as the economic reformer. On issues of war and peace and the military, I doubt she will be anti-war--she will follow the party line which the democrats have inherited from Clinton.

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GreatLakeSailor's picture

Warren plays the part of "reformer" on the you tube videos where she grills Wall Streeters and makes them feel uncomfortable for their greed and crimes, but when it counts she marches in lockstep with the rest of the Very Serious Beltway Democratic Elite.

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Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.

orlbucfan's picture

She was a Republican before she was a Democrat. Enough said. Rec'd!!

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Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.

SnappleBC's picture

Now some Democrats want to push for a new cold war? What happened to the hot war they've been pushing for? Have they given up because Trump is more peaceful than Obama?

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A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard

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Beware the bullshit factories.

the famous question?

McCarthy brought up the fact that a government attorney years before was affiliated with the National Lawyers Guild. That's what. The National Lawyers Guild is providing volunteer lawyers and expertise to the Water Protectors as part of the legal effort for justice there. It's the same National Lawyers Guild Eisenhower tried to put out of business and did do great harm to the guild.

For 80 years the NLG has defended people and groups the establishment wanted to persecute and they themselves were the object of persecution for standing up for the Bill of Rights.

(Nice picture of tail Gunner Joe - too bad the photo didn't have room for Roy Cohn, Joe's attack weasel.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Shockwave's picture

New Film Exposes Communist Roots of “Sustainability” Agenda

A powerful new documentary takes a fresh look at the global “green” agenda, often marketed under the misleading label “sustainable development,” and exposes it for the dangerous assault on human freedom that it is. Beyond that, the film shows how the so-called “sustainability” movement of today is little more than a poorly re-packaged version of the murderous “red” communist agenda that supposedly fell along with the Soviet Union — after killing hundreds of millions of people along the way. The film, It’s Easy Being Green When You Have No Choice: Sustainable Development and the End of History, provides a great deal of evidence and information that all supporters of liberty should be familiar with.

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The political revolution continues

thanatokephaloides's picture

Few indeed friendly, of course!

My fave:

Carbon Dioxide, clean water, organic & non- GMO food, equitable taxation, Democracy, Co-operatives and even the Givath-Brenner Kibbutz....all of it Communist in nature and belief. The answer...more weapons of mass destruction. Nuke the place and make a parking lot for consumers to buy more stuff.

When someone like the New American says "liberty", what is meant is "I've got mine, fuck you!" The equivalency should be autmatic and instinctual by now.

Wink

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

After reading a number of democratic party oriented sites, it is apparent that the base believes that Putin caused Hillary to lose, and that Russia is completely bad and any association with Russia is cause for jingoism and red-scare. I just don't see really beyond a rare voices, any dissent from the Putin/Russian narrative among democrats or many left leaning pundits. As Greenwald pointed out, just asking for proof of Russian interference for Trump gets you accused of being a Putin stooge.

I think on a particular site there is very much a concerted effort to keep Trump as Putin stooge narrative going--so there is always some diary or front pager pushing the theme.

Hedges guest either didn't understand his question about red-baiting Trump or she was a Hillary supporter who believes Putin did interfere. The red baiting is really with democrats against anybody not a Hillary supporter.

But in the main, we can expect to live with McCarthyism for a while. There was recently an article by David Corn or all people claiming that Trump was targeted by Russian intelligence over 5 years ago. No real proof. The hysteria will keep rising.

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Centaurea's picture

If there's any doubt that the Democratic Party -- both establishment and base -- is corrupt beyond repair and rotting from the inside out, the red-baiting and Russian hysteria ought to settle the matter.

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"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

TheOtherMaven's picture

but in the meantime there were some...interesting reactions. Perhaps the most legendary was James Cagney's. His name came up on one of those "Is he or isn't he...?" lists - his response, which shut all the queries up permanently, was "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (a flag-waving extravaganza very loosely based on the life of George M. Cohan, whom Cagney played to perfection, all the more so because he had once *been* a soft-shoe man).

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

would be the targets of "red baiting", since neither one of them are even Leftists, let alone Communists. The Dem Party's recent, mostly unfounded accusations appear to have little to do with ideology, but seem rooted in an irrational antipathy toward Russia itself. It's a bizarre and irrational hostility to maintain, almost like a kind of mania.

One might expect this kind of demonizing from US right-wing uber-patriots, but it seems to be coming instead, mostly from the center-left... which has previously enjoyed a reputation for having a moderate, more or less rational perspective.

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native

shaharazade's picture

Dem. centrist's were moderate. They are gung ho disaster cappies and war hogs who claimed to be moderates. I mean look at the Patriot Act with the super dupper secret sauce is that moderate? Obama's administration was anything but moderate it was chock full of banksters, privatizers, vulture cappies and war criminals. The Clinton's forget about it, what are they in the center of? the PNAC? The Davos crowd?

I found the Democratic convention where they anointed the gleaming white pant's suit to be terrifying. Patriotism, nationalism USA! USA! USA! and sword rattling on this level is scarier then shit. The good news is not enough people fell for or wanted this madness to support the Democratic overt fascist (Kissinger kisser) out of fear of the Putin loving reality show fascist.

Poll after poll shows that a majority of people actually support so called socialistic policy. I can only surmise that the partisan Democratic faithful are deranged to the point where they have convinced themselves that somehow the New Democrat's the third Wayer's are liberal both socially and in foreign policy. Their really is no gauge left to measure the old ideological breakdown of left/center/right. The pump don't work cause the vandals took the handles.

I think all this commie red baiting is to counter the global growing populism which is a reaction to this sick anti-democratic NWO. There has always been as constant 25-30%? of our population that are authoritarian, pig ignorant and do not like democracy in any form. On the other hand it's not like the rest of the country has embraced the suck. They may have been appalled at The Hairballs and Co. overt anti-democratic, nationalistic, racist, sexist campaign but not enough to come out in droves to support the Clinton's facistic version clothed in socially liberal glass ceiling busting fake feminism.

This isn't anything new since 9/11 and the economic meltdown the duopoly has gone into overdrive as far as destroying the rule of law. Hey were living in a global endless war on terror and now they have added the Russains are coming to their insane brew of fear. I take hope in the fact that a lot of people are aware of what's going down. I saw no yard signs for Trump, two for Hillary and a lot of BLM signs. Will this latest fear ploy work? Maybe but people all over the world are weary of this austerity and endless bloody war madness.

Will hysterical fear and meaningless partisanship keep these fuckers in power. Maybe for now but not if they keep it up and go too far which they seem to be doing. Color me an optimist but looking at this farce of an election neither side seemed able to convince the majority of American's that they were not screwed either way they voted. My favorite bumper sticker. "We're So Screwed 2016'. Time to resist outside the duopoly. Populism is not fascism despite all the hysteria being generated by Trump and his goons winning this rigged side show of an election.

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freaked me out too:

I found the Democratic convention where they anointed the gleaming white pant's suit to be terrifying. Patriotism, nationalism USA! USA! USA! and sword rattling on this level is scarier then shit.

Exactly. Right then and there I decided, I want no part of this. What the D Party has become is utterly intolerable.

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native

ZimInSeattle's picture

investigations in government agencies that lead directly to McCarthyism back then. Nice of the Dems to set the table again for the Rethugs. And they're doing it without presenting any evidence whatsoever. Here's a couple propaganda articles from the front page of the Seattle Times and the top of Huffington Post that not coincidentally I can't even push back on through the comments because of shadow banning.

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"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." - JFK | "The more I see of the moneyed peoples, the more I understand the guillotine." - G. B. Shaw Bernie/Tulsi 2020

it's impossible not to see them. They oblige a thoughtful reader to consider whether, or how, or by whom the propaganda campaign is being orchestrated. Whatever the case, I don't think it's going to be a very effective campaign. The US public is simply not buying into these msm narratives nearly as credulously as it once did.

Msm seem to be oblivious to the fact that by lying through their teeth about Russia, they are strengthening Trump's position, which is in fact the more rational one vis a vis US/Russian bilateral relations.

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native

Obama's Cold War: President kicks out 35 Russian 'spies' and accuses Putin of ordering hacking of Clinton's secrets in run-up to presidential election - as Kremlin promises revenge and mocks 'lame duck' leader

From the MailOnline

What can possibly be the point of this posturing? Obama looks for all the world like a petulant teenager having a temper tantrum. Good grief!

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native

lotlizard's picture

German public TV news (the ARD) is reporting Obama's sanctions as being "eine Reaktion auf die Hacker-Angriffe" (= "a reaction to the hacker attacks").

Note that it's not "the alleged hacker attacks" — it's just "the hacker attacks" — this unqualified "the" being an extremely common trick of phrasing that the Powers That Be use to slip things by everyone who is not paying very close attention, whenever they want people to accept something as already established fact without further question (let alone real proof).

I'm beginning to have more and more understanding of why the epithet "Lügenpresse" (= "lying press") is being used by populists to refer to the phenomenon where the established German media speak with one single Americanized, pro U.S.-NATO-EU neocon/neoliberal voice — right across a German political landscape that is supposedly diverse but hasn't genuinely included dissenting voices for many years now.

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