He said he would pardon the January 6 felons “if I get in.” Of course, he would. They’re his people, the mob of his supporters that attacked the Capitol and assaulted police officers, putting more than 140 of them in the hospital. They’re cowards, just like he is. Afraid to take a stand by themselves, they took the cowards’ route: they did it in a mob, where they thought they could disappear in the chaos and not be held accountable.
I still cannot fathom why CNN gave airtime to the biggest traitor and coward in our nation's history-the guy who ok'd it said that they had to be 'centrist'.
I think the Board of Directors for CNN should fire him because he did the worst thing anyone can do with a coward, bully and traitor-give them free air time to be on TV to spew lies and filth.
I keep hoping against hope that someday I'll see or hear the words, "Donald Trump has died.", because it won't be a day too soon.
CNN did this town hall hate fest for$ ratings$.I did not watch any of it but heard a few clips of it today.His typical verbal garbage and lies, it could have been 2016 or 10 years before that because this verbal dysentery is what he has done all his life.I don’t think CNN realized it but he may have turned a few middle-of-the- roaders completely off. Sure wishing some more criminal indictments are coming his way soon.
in today's Guardian, that asshole Licht is patting himself on the back and congratulating his "team" for what he obviously considers to be a tremendous success. Ms. Collins (who was, to put it very gently, overparted from jump box) will probably get her prime-time show (at least for a while, until her incompetence becomes the only thing people see).
this guy Licht is a walking, talking Orwellianism.
everybody who weighed in on this disaster ahead of time predicted that it would be a disaster and it was WORSE than anyone was predicting.
why a Republican audience? not unlike a "rally."
where were the fact-checkers? the excerpts I've seen (and are just about all I can take) only prove that if you have a real love for evil, The Fat Fuck is the gift that keeps on giving. if the bar gets any lower, it'll be in a whole new circle of hell.
Yes, and the predictable indictments will raise the stakes even higher.
Trump seems to me, as a layperson who has studied a small amount of "real life examples" of psychopathology, and much more via literature and film, like a person
very close to a complete breakdown, as if "waking hallucinations" (and not temporary scares induced by anything from shadows to horror movies, or transient (but still possibly deeply troubling) drug-related ideation, no, the whole nine yards) are possible any time now.
Maybe a really experienced psychiatrist would, correctly and based on vastly more study and observation, disagree, maybe Trump's gargantuan ego will prevent that somehow or other, by rendering him so emotionally "dead inside"- apart from states of anger, self-hatred projected onto others, etc. -, that he will escape it? I.e., possibly he isn't even self-aware enough to "freak out" into having waking hallucinations!
His passing will precipitate another crisis (assuming he's not convicted of any crimes). What to do about the funeral of the worst president in the history of this country?
You mean any 'more' crimes, because from what I know, sexual assault of any form is a crime, even if it was charged under a civil motion.
The only reason E. Jean Carroll did it that way was the statute of limitations had been reached on her case. Thankfully the law was changed to allow her to do it later rather than never.
Hire extra security, that's one thing on the agenda.
Maybe Trump can be convinced to have a yuge funeral culminating in being shot into outer space to orbit his own asteroid, if it was an asteroid named after him, because it would be the greatest funeral ever, everyone would watch the televised ceremony, it would have the highest ratings ever, there could be endless reruns on a special channel dedicated just to Donald J. Trump and his asteroid...oh wait.
Trump would never agree if he found out about this:
"Ocasio-Cortez went to high school in Yorktown Heights.[18] She graduated in 2007.[18] In high school and college, she was known as "Sandy."[19] She came in second in the Microbiology category of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.[20] Her microbiology research project was about the effect of antioxidants on the lifespan of the nematode C. elegans.[20] MIT Lincoln Laboratory named a small asteroid after her because of her science project.[21][22"
You know, I just started laughing at the witticism, but imagine the kind of "trusts & estates & prenuptial agreements" food fight/blood sport that is going to be!
The Capitol Police are frequently assailed as weak for not stopping the mob. Even those of us who admire and sympathize with them can slip into a victim language which Fascists will always associate with weakness.
The fact of the matter is the Capitol Police showed remarkable restraint and incredible courage. Many nations would have met violence with violence. That restraint requires incredible strength and needs to be remembered in that context. They could have wasted the mob, they didn’t, we don’t do that. Sadly the mob knew the Police would act civilly, and like all weak men that abuse people whose professionalism requires patience, they abused their decency.
More needs to be made of both those facts in tandem.
it was well that the law enforcement officers acted with restraint, held back as best as they could and retreated as they were being overwhelmed.
because, if they had fought back forcefully and violently with heavy reinforcement, the insurrectionists would have escalated their violence.
that is precisely what the seditious planners were hoping for.
there were organized squads in the mob who were set and ready to fight with weapons. a civil conflagration would have set in motion the opportunity for trump to declare a national emergency and use the power he still held that morning to stay in power.
if that had happened we today might be a wholly different country.
Agree 100%, and I'd add this: The Republicans have known all along -- at least since the reign of Newt -- that Democrats would act civilly, as if both parties were equally committed to civility and the democratic process, and they've exploited that to the max. Some of them have finally caught on, but these Third Way / Problem Solvers Caucus types still won't get it. I hope voters in their various districts started organizing two years ago.
Thank you Lucian, this is exactly who this whatever you want to call it is. A COWARD!!! I would love to see somebody, anybody say this to his orange face. Repeatedly COWARD!! I plan on spreading this far and wide.
Is Trump the disease or only a symptom? I worry more about the people who support him. I suppose it's a failure of imagination on my part to be so incapable of understanding why, WHY in the name of common sense do his followers support him? In 2016, I had the great good fortune to be working in an office full of women who had raised children and their opinion was nearly unanimous. "Any child of mine acted like that, I'd spank the skin on his ass!"
You are not a failure. A cult is a dangerous thing that most of us don't understand.
If you take people who feel like they are being forgotten or shortchanged somehow, and promise them you can deliver it even if you can't, they may believe you.
As for following the orange traitor, at this point after seeing what he is all about, you must be deranged or filled with hate. There can be no other reason, with the exception of stupidity.
Right-Wing Extremism Is Even More Common Than You Think
A scholar who studies white nationalism shares his data and insights on America in the age of January 6 and the Trump indictment.
by David Masciotra
April 10, 2023
{INTERVIEW WITH Anthony DiMaggio, Lehigh University}
"DM: It has become folklore that the MAGA movement emerges from financial insecurity, and your team’s research busts this myth. What have you found regarding the correlation, or lack thereof, between economic insecurity and support for authoritarian politics?
AD: The Trump-financial insecurity thesis has been significantly oversold. It’s pretty clear, looking at national surveys, including ours, that right-wing political values related to immigration, abortion, hostility toward religious minorities (including Muslims), and other sociocultural attitudes are stronger predictors of support for Trump compared to various metrics of financial insecurity. This isn’t to say that economic concerns are irrelevant. One thing I’ve found in my research is that white Americans who hold a second job or work overtime and who share negative views toward immigration and welfare recipients are more likely to support Trump. A plausible interpretation of this data is that much of the Trump base is angry about working harder to make ends meet in an era of rising inequality and that they are looking for scapegoats (the poor and immigrants). Generally speaking, though, Trump’s base is not more likely than the rest of the public to indicate that they are financially insecure. It is primarily comprised of middle to upper-class voters who feel aggrieved about the demographic shift of their country away from a white majority. Our poll finds that about two-thirds of Trump voters (63 percent) identify as middle, middle-upper, or upper class in background, and nearly six in ten (58 percent) say their finances are “somewhat” or “very good” compared to 60 percent of all poll respondents.
DM: Almost half of voters supported Trump. Are they all racists or extremists?
AD: Considering the evidence, it’s difficult to argue that racism—particularly the mainstreaming of white nationalist sentiment—is not central to the politics of the American right today. We know from polling during Trump’s term that more than a third of Americans and a majority of Republicans agreed with the sentiment that “America must protect and preserve its White European heritage.” Our poll’s white nationalism index looks at all types of questions, including some related to the Great Replacement theory—the fears that white voters are being “replaced” by immigrants—and that changing national demographics pose a threat to white Christian Americans and “their culture and values.” We also examine opinions about Confederate monuments as an important part of “our nation’s cultural history and heritage,” demands that the U.S. “prioritize and preserve its white European heritage,” and resentment that America’s “strength” is “diluted” by immigrants “who come from diverse ethnicities and cultures.”
Very few Americans self-identify as racists and extremists. Our survey finds that less than 1 percent of Americans identify as fascists, only 4 percent identify with neo-Nazis, and about one in 10 identify as white nationalists. Related to the last finding, our index reveals that white nationalism is much more common than people admit. Depending on the question examined, nearly half of Republicans signal support for the Great Replacement theory and for prioritizing a white national identity, and three-quarters think the effort to remove Confederate monuments from public places represents an attack on our nation’s cultural history and heritage. So, a sizable number of Republicans—about half to three-quarters—are susceptible to various white nationalist impulses. This doesn’t mean all Republicans are racist or extremist, but our findings suggest it’s a large and very significant number.
The mainstreaming of white nationalism matters to politics. Our research finds that people who identify with white nationalist sentiments are significantly more likely to say they will vote for Trump in 2024, to say they’re sympathetic to the J6 participants and their concerns, to believe that Joe Biden didn’t win the 2020 election, to be hostile toward Mexican immigrants and Muslims, and to support the travel ban against Muslim-majority countries. It’s an even stronger predictor of people’s beliefs than is identification with the Republican Party. In an era when parties largely drive how people look at politics, white nationalism is an even stronger predictor of how people think. "
Excerpts from:
Right-Wing Extremism Is Even More Common Than You Think
A scholar who studies white nationalism shares his data and insights on America in the age of January 6 and the Trump indictment.
by David Masciotra
April 10, 2023
*****
"Anthony DiMaggio is one of the leading scholars studying the far right. A political scientist at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, he is the author of several works on extremists, including Rising Fascism in America: It Can Happen Here and a forthcoming examination of “fake news” and conspiracy theories in the United States. He joined colleagues at Lehigh to form a research team under the sponsorship of Lehigh’s Marcon Institute that scrutinizes right-wing extremism."
That was a very revealing article. I didn’t know anything about RFK Jr except that he’s an anti-vaxxer. A real nut case. The fact that Steve Bannon urged him to run for President tells us all we need to know.
Bannon, there's another one, he's dealing with alleged fraud stemming from his part in a "Build the Wall" foundation, one ex-partner has agreed to a plea deal, another has "mob ties" ("allegedly") - a seemingly never ending saga of greed, cowardice, subversion of basic values respected in one way or another by every society on earth - honest dealing, not stealing - and Bannon absolutely hates progressives because we don't need no stinking progress! etc.
So why not play on RFK, Jr's ego and grotesquely misguided moral fervor?! And it does essentially serve as that "dead giveaway" you suggest.
This is what the FBI has been telling Congress for years. Of course, half those sitting in Congress sympathize/overtly support white supremacists from the right so nothing gets done in Congress. You don't suppress your own voters , do you?
You're right to worry more about the people who support him. I worry about the people who are so obsessed with Trump that they can't see that without the MAGAts Trump would be a little blip on the timeline, and the Republicans in Congress wouldn't be scared to death of him.
As to understanding where the MAGAts come from -- well, it helps to be a longtime feminist who's learned a lot from civil rights, feminist, BLM, and labor organizers and from U.S. history. It helps to be skeptical of the blind devotion that so many accord to religion as promulgated by mostly white male preachers. At not quite 20 I attended a 1971 Carl McIntire March for Victory / Rally for America in Washington, D.C. It was terrifying. I would have been more terrified had I realized at the time that this was not an aberration or an anomaly. I didn't learn that till the advent of the Reagan administration.
That guy was especially unhinged, but you're right - it's a back-and-forth dialectic, "preacher and flock," all the back in real life and literature, from Elmer Gantry, back centuries more to Hester Prynne, to cite only too of the more famous characters from American literature.
In case you haven't seen this, some really good news for Trump's upcoming prosecutors:
I like the idea of CNN being strategic enough to count on this backfiring legally against Trump, but fear it was just a ratings bonanza they couldn't resist - either way JUST LOOK! at how self-sabotaging this
(%$#! Expletives/Invective/Stunned Laughter) is, and none of his attorneys or handlers can stop it, c'est incroyable!
"During another exchange, Collins asked Trump about his call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, demanding he "find" enough votes to swing the state's election.
Trump said he believed it was a "rigged election" and said he told Raffensperger "you owe me votes because the election was rigged."
"File this clip under new evidence for Fani Willis," tweeted Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State University law professor. "This sure sounds like an admission of corrupt intent to me."
During a discussion of the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Collins pressed Trump on how his supporters that stormed the Capitol that day "listen to you like no one else."
"I agree with that," Trump replied.
Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig, a CNN legal analyst, called it the "most important clip of the night."
"If you're thinking about prosecuting Donald Trump in relation to the effort to steal the election, you're gonna need to show that connection, that Donald Trump knew and understood that his words would be acted on. Knew and understood that people were listening to him and would actually do things because he said so, and stop doing things because he said so," he said, according to Mediaite. "I've never heard him so clearly admit that. Everything Donald Trump says is out there. It's fair game. It can be used, and I think if I'm a prosecutor watching last night, I'm circling that clip and I'm saying 'Here we go. We just filled that gap.'"
There's more, including Trump's vicious "re-assaulting" of E. Jean Carroll, which her attorneys can use to strengthen their arguments in the appeal process.
Today, I talked to a 19 year old bright, enthusiastic young lady about the state of affairs in the country and mentioned that she should run for office. She said," I've been wondering what profession I should go into. Politics is something I would like to pursue,"
I told her I would donate to her campaign if she did!
An admirable vivisection of Lardass - who looked like hell last night, by the way, until I shitcanned CNN (forever).
I finally figured out that he cannot be regarded as a person of low morals and no values with whom we disagree. The pathology is too overwhelming. He is mentally unwell, and poisonous, and somehow got his hands on the country. Unlike a single bad actor, he appeals to God knows how many people. That this fat pig - in every sense of the word - has a large following is a disastrous sign that the great American Experiment has failed. But it took a very long time, and to be philosophical about it, nothing lasts forever. America, R.IP. 1776-2023. It was good while it lasted.
Unfortunately, many peoples minds are skewed by cable, TV and Internet websites that hijack their brains. The similar process happened in Germany in the 1930s Hitler took control of the radio and other media and stirred up resentment fear, and a yearning for greater Germany, after their humiliating defeat in 1918.
I agree that he'll be found guilty (of everything) and ruined, but I believe too many people think he's in the right for the country to return to its pre-crackpot/pre-authoritarian/pre-white supremacist days. When the body politic is so infected with bile, there's no coming back.
My own view is that those very same "too many people who believe in Trump's agenda," that is, the forces/elements/mobs/crackpots/authoritarians, are exactly who and what is most doomed to irrelevance, excised from without by an increasingly younger electorate, decaying and imploding from within.
Charlie Sykes called last night’s town hall reality TV, not journalism. Never give trmp a live MAGA audience and a moderator he can dominate. Keep to strong journalist standards to interview him on tape. Call him on his lies. Let Lucian interview him...
This is some of your best, thank you. Remarkable how close courage is to kindness, and more remarkable how far Trump is from either. I will never understand his appeal and I cannot feel anything but contempt for his supporters.
Thank you! He is the bigliest coward of all time. Never ever does he commit himself to the point where he could wind up being held responsible. He didn't sign that affidavit saying all the purloined government documents had been returned - that's what paid minions and cult-dults are for. I think CNN may finally have earned their "Collaborator Network News" moniker
Its all about the GOTV. The non-MAGAts outnumber the MAGAts, but they have to be stirred to vote. More young people will reach voting age by November 2024, which is a good thing. But it still requires grass roots efforts at the local level to be sure people actually go and vote or, where still allowed, vote by mail or absentee. A concerted effort at the local level is needed to overcome the GQP voter suppression measures put into place in many states, including important swing states.
If people on the Democratic side of the equation are each motivated enough to get even one relative, friend, or neighbor to vote who may not otherwise have done so, that hopefully will go a long way to re-electing Biden, and even more importantly, re-taking the House and securing a convincing majority in the Senate. It is asking a lot, but there is so much at stake.
This just in. A Salon writer said Trump's disgraceful perf last night gave new evidence for all three ongoing criminal cases. I'm a believer in retribution, and E. Jean Carroll has a strong case for suing him again. Fingers crossed. The thing with a loudmouth who believes himself to be the smartest guy in the room is such a jerk always fucks up. Always.
Vote as if our country depends on it.
Because it does.
I still cannot fathom why CNN gave airtime to the biggest traitor and coward in our nation's history-the guy who ok'd it said that they had to be 'centrist'.
I think the Board of Directors for CNN should fire him because he did the worst thing anyone can do with a coward, bully and traitor-give them free air time to be on TV to spew lies and filth.
I keep hoping against hope that someday I'll see or hear the words, "Donald Trump has died.", because it won't be a day too soon.
He's filth. Utter, rancid sexual abusing filth.
They’ll have to put a French drainage system around his grave to handle the effluent
I want to piss on it in the worst way
There will be a yuuuge line....
Including women.....
I'm in!
CNN did this town hall hate fest for$ ratings$.I did not watch any of it but heard a few clips of it today.His typical verbal garbage and lies, it could have been 2016 or 10 years before that because this verbal dysentery is what he has done all his life.I don’t think CNN realized it but he may have turned a few middle-of-the- roaders completely off. Sure wishing some more criminal indictments are coming his way soon.
in today's Guardian, that asshole Licht is patting himself on the back and congratulating his "team" for what he obviously considers to be a tremendous success. Ms. Collins (who was, to put it very gently, overparted from jump box) will probably get her prime-time show (at least for a while, until her incompetence becomes the only thing people see).
this guy Licht is a walking, talking Orwellianism.
everybody who weighed in on this disaster ahead of time predicted that it would be a disaster and it was WORSE than anyone was predicting.
why a Republican audience? not unlike a "rally."
where were the fact-checkers? the excerpts I've seen (and are just about all I can take) only prove that if you have a real love for evil, The Fat Fuck is the gift that keeps on giving. if the bar gets any lower, it'll be in a whole new circle of hell.
I take that back. it already is.
Yes, and the predictable indictments will raise the stakes even higher.
Trump seems to me, as a layperson who has studied a small amount of "real life examples" of psychopathology, and much more via literature and film, like a person
very close to a complete breakdown, as if "waking hallucinations" (and not temporary scares induced by anything from shadows to horror movies, or transient (but still possibly deeply troubling) drug-related ideation, no, the whole nine yards) are possible any time now.
Maybe a really experienced psychiatrist would, correctly and based on vastly more study and observation, disagree, maybe Trump's gargantuan ego will prevent that somehow or other, by rendering him so emotionally "dead inside"- apart from states of anger, self-hatred projected onto others, etc. -, that he will escape it? I.e., possibly he isn't even self-aware enough to "freak out" into having waking hallucinations!
"No metanoia for you!"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metanoia_(psychology)
His passing will precipitate another crisis (assuming he's not convicted of any crimes). What to do about the funeral of the worst president in the history of this country?
Who cares, as long as he goes. Maybe they'll bury the traitor on his golf course. Either way, he's pollution.
You mean any 'more' crimes, because from what I know, sexual assault of any form is a crime, even if it was charged under a civil motion.
The only reason E. Jean Carroll did it that way was the statute of limitations had been reached on her case. Thankfully the law was changed to allow her to do it later rather than never.
Hire extra security, that's one thing on the agenda.
Maybe Trump can be convinced to have a yuge funeral culminating in being shot into outer space to orbit his own asteroid, if it was an asteroid named after him, because it would be the greatest funeral ever, everyone would watch the televised ceremony, it would have the highest ratings ever, there could be endless reruns on a special channel dedicated just to Donald J. Trump and his asteroid...oh wait.
Trump would never agree if he found out about this:
"Ocasio-Cortez went to high school in Yorktown Heights.[18] She graduated in 2007.[18] In high school and college, she was known as "Sandy."[19] She came in second in the Microbiology category of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.[20] Her microbiology research project was about the effect of antioxidants on the lifespan of the nematode C. elegans.[20] MIT Lincoln Laboratory named a small asteroid after her because of her science project.[21][22"
simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez
Oh well, a man can dream, can't he?
Hold his funeral in Russia.
As a past President, he would be eligible to “lie” in state in the Capitol. Noooooo! They wouldn’t do that to us would they?
I'd rather he lie intestate.
You know, I just started laughing at the witticism, but imagine the kind of "trusts & estates & prenuptial agreements" food fight/blood sport that is going to be!
Join the crowd! ;-)
So that the populace can line up to spit on him. That’s the final farewell he deserves.
I could not have possibly said it better, Mary!!
Yes, vote! Like the sign I saw which said "Grab them by the ballot box!"
The Capitol Police are frequently assailed as weak for not stopping the mob. Even those of us who admire and sympathize with them can slip into a victim language which Fascists will always associate with weakness.
The fact of the matter is the Capitol Police showed remarkable restraint and incredible courage. Many nations would have met violence with violence. That restraint requires incredible strength and needs to be remembered in that context. They could have wasted the mob, they didn’t, we don’t do that. Sadly the mob knew the Police would act civilly, and like all weak men that abuse people whose professionalism requires patience, they abused their decency.
More needs to be made of both those facts in tandem.
it was well that the law enforcement officers acted with restraint, held back as best as they could and retreated as they were being overwhelmed.
because, if they had fought back forcefully and violently with heavy reinforcement, the insurrectionists would have escalated their violence.
that is precisely what the seditious planners were hoping for.
there were organized squads in the mob who were set and ready to fight with weapons. a civil conflagration would have set in motion the opportunity for trump to declare a national emergency and use the power he still held that morning to stay in power.
if that had happened we today might be a wholly different country.
Agree 100%, and I'd add this: The Republicans have known all along -- at least since the reign of Newt -- that Democrats would act civilly, as if both parties were equally committed to civility and the democratic process, and they've exploited that to the max. Some of them have finally caught on, but these Third Way / Problem Solvers Caucus types still won't get it. I hope voters in their various districts started organizing two years ago.
They were outnumbered by the insurrectionists.
Thank you Lucian, this is exactly who this whatever you want to call it is. A COWARD!!! I would love to see somebody, anybody say this to his orange face. Repeatedly COWARD!! I plan on spreading this far and wide.
A variation on the good ole "Shame! Shame! Shame" chants, nice!
Is Trump the disease or only a symptom? I worry more about the people who support him. I suppose it's a failure of imagination on my part to be so incapable of understanding why, WHY in the name of common sense do his followers support him? In 2016, I had the great good fortune to be working in an office full of women who had raised children and their opinion was nearly unanimous. "Any child of mine acted like that, I'd spank the skin on his ass!"
You are not a failure. A cult is a dangerous thing that most of us don't understand.
If you take people who feel like they are being forgotten or shortchanged somehow, and promise them you can deliver it even if you can't, they may believe you.
As for following the orange traitor, at this point after seeing what he is all about, you must be deranged or filled with hate. There can be no other reason, with the exception of stupidity.
POLITICS
Right-Wing Extremism Is Even More Common Than You Think
A scholar who studies white nationalism shares his data and insights on America in the age of January 6 and the Trump indictment.
by David Masciotra
April 10, 2023
{INTERVIEW WITH Anthony DiMaggio, Lehigh University}
"DM: It has become folklore that the MAGA movement emerges from financial insecurity, and your team’s research busts this myth. What have you found regarding the correlation, or lack thereof, between economic insecurity and support for authoritarian politics?
AD: The Trump-financial insecurity thesis has been significantly oversold. It’s pretty clear, looking at national surveys, including ours, that right-wing political values related to immigration, abortion, hostility toward religious minorities (including Muslims), and other sociocultural attitudes are stronger predictors of support for Trump compared to various metrics of financial insecurity. This isn’t to say that economic concerns are irrelevant. One thing I’ve found in my research is that white Americans who hold a second job or work overtime and who share negative views toward immigration and welfare recipients are more likely to support Trump. A plausible interpretation of this data is that much of the Trump base is angry about working harder to make ends meet in an era of rising inequality and that they are looking for scapegoats (the poor and immigrants). Generally speaking, though, Trump’s base is not more likely than the rest of the public to indicate that they are financially insecure. It is primarily comprised of middle to upper-class voters who feel aggrieved about the demographic shift of their country away from a white majority. Our poll finds that about two-thirds of Trump voters (63 percent) identify as middle, middle-upper, or upper class in background, and nearly six in ten (58 percent) say their finances are “somewhat” or “very good” compared to 60 percent of all poll respondents.
DM: Almost half of voters supported Trump. Are they all racists or extremists?
AD: Considering the evidence, it’s difficult to argue that racism—particularly the mainstreaming of white nationalist sentiment—is not central to the politics of the American right today. We know from polling during Trump’s term that more than a third of Americans and a majority of Republicans agreed with the sentiment that “America must protect and preserve its White European heritage.” Our poll’s white nationalism index looks at all types of questions, including some related to the Great Replacement theory—the fears that white voters are being “replaced” by immigrants—and that changing national demographics pose a threat to white Christian Americans and “their culture and values.” We also examine opinions about Confederate monuments as an important part of “our nation’s cultural history and heritage,” demands that the U.S. “prioritize and preserve its white European heritage,” and resentment that America’s “strength” is “diluted” by immigrants “who come from diverse ethnicities and cultures.”
Very few Americans self-identify as racists and extremists. Our survey finds that less than 1 percent of Americans identify as fascists, only 4 percent identify with neo-Nazis, and about one in 10 identify as white nationalists. Related to the last finding, our index reveals that white nationalism is much more common than people admit. Depending on the question examined, nearly half of Republicans signal support for the Great Replacement theory and for prioritizing a white national identity, and three-quarters think the effort to remove Confederate monuments from public places represents an attack on our nation’s cultural history and heritage. So, a sizable number of Republicans—about half to three-quarters—are susceptible to various white nationalist impulses. This doesn’t mean all Republicans are racist or extremist, but our findings suggest it’s a large and very significant number.
The mainstreaming of white nationalism matters to politics. Our research finds that people who identify with white nationalist sentiments are significantly more likely to say they will vote for Trump in 2024, to say they’re sympathetic to the J6 participants and their concerns, to believe that Joe Biden didn’t win the 2020 election, to be hostile toward Mexican immigrants and Muslims, and to support the travel ban against Muslim-majority countries. It’s an even stronger predictor of people’s beliefs than is identification with the Republican Party. In an era when parties largely drive how people look at politics, white nationalism is an even stronger predictor of how people think. "
Excerpts from:
Right-Wing Extremism Is Even More Common Than You Think
A scholar who studies white nationalism shares his data and insights on America in the age of January 6 and the Trump indictment.
by David Masciotra
April 10, 2023
*****
"Anthony DiMaggio is one of the leading scholars studying the far right. A political scientist at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, he is the author of several works on extremists, including Rising Fascism in America: It Can Happen Here and a forthcoming examination of “fake news” and conspiracy theories in the United States. He joined colleagues at Lehigh to form a research team under the sponsorship of Lehigh’s Marcon Institute that scrutinizes right-wing extremism."
washingtonmonthly.com/2023/04/10/right-wing-extremism-is-even-more-common-than-you-think/
Thank you for posting this.
I ran across it while looking for something bearing on why "prominent right-wingers" are praising RFK, Jr. --- check this out:
www.thebulwark.com/the-democrats-trump-wannabe/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
That was a very revealing article. I didn’t know anything about RFK Jr except that he’s an anti-vaxxer. A real nut case. The fact that Steve Bannon urged him to run for President tells us all we need to know.
Bannon, there's another one, he's dealing with alleged fraud stemming from his part in a "Build the Wall" foundation, one ex-partner has agreed to a plea deal, another has "mob ties" ("allegedly") - a seemingly never ending saga of greed, cowardice, subversion of basic values respected in one way or another by every society on earth - honest dealing, not stealing - and Bannon absolutely hates progressives because we don't need no stinking progress! etc.
So why not play on RFK, Jr's ego and grotesquely misguided moral fervor?! And it does essentially serve as that "dead giveaway" you suggest.
This is what the FBI has been telling Congress for years. Of course, half those sitting in Congress sympathize/overtly support white supremacists from the right so nothing gets done in Congress. You don't suppress your own voters , do you?
You're right to worry more about the people who support him. I worry about the people who are so obsessed with Trump that they can't see that without the MAGAts Trump would be a little blip on the timeline, and the Republicans in Congress wouldn't be scared to death of him.
As to understanding where the MAGAts come from -- well, it helps to be a longtime feminist who's learned a lot from civil rights, feminist, BLM, and labor organizers and from U.S. history. It helps to be skeptical of the blind devotion that so many accord to religion as promulgated by mostly white male preachers. At not quite 20 I attended a 1971 Carl McIntire March for Victory / Rally for America in Washington, D.C. It was terrifying. I would have been more terrified had I realized at the time that this was not an aberration or an anomaly. I didn't learn that till the advent of the Reagan administration.
That guy was especially unhinged, but you're right - it's a back-and-forth dialectic, "preacher and flock," all the back in real life and literature, from Elmer Gantry, back centuries more to Hester Prynne, to cite only too of the more famous characters from American literature.
In case you haven't seen this, some really good news for Trump's upcoming prosecutors:
www.salon.com/2023/05/11/he-is-confessing-on-live-tv-legal-experts-say-trumps-cnn-town-hall-could-badly-backfire-in/
^^^^^^
I like the idea of CNN being strategic enough to count on this backfiring legally against Trump, but fear it was just a ratings bonanza they couldn't resist - either way JUST LOOK! at how self-sabotaging this
(%$#! Expletives/Invective/Stunned Laughter) is, and none of his attorneys or handlers can stop it, c'est incroyable!
"During another exchange, Collins asked Trump about his call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, demanding he "find" enough votes to swing the state's election.
Trump said he believed it was a "rigged election" and said he told Raffensperger "you owe me votes because the election was rigged."
"File this clip under new evidence for Fani Willis," tweeted Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State University law professor. "This sure sounds like an admission of corrupt intent to me."
During a discussion of the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Collins pressed Trump on how his supporters that stormed the Capitol that day "listen to you like no one else."
"I agree with that," Trump replied.
Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig, a CNN legal analyst, called it the "most important clip of the night."
"If you're thinking about prosecuting Donald Trump in relation to the effort to steal the election, you're gonna need to show that connection, that Donald Trump knew and understood that his words would be acted on. Knew and understood that people were listening to him and would actually do things because he said so, and stop doing things because he said so," he said, according to Mediaite. "I've never heard him so clearly admit that. Everything Donald Trump says is out there. It's fair game. It can be used, and I think if I'm a prosecutor watching last night, I'm circling that clip and I'm saying 'Here we go. We just filled that gap.'"
There's more, including Trump's vicious "re-assaulting" of E. Jean Carroll, which her attorneys can use to strengthen their arguments in the appeal process.
You are my hero, never afraid to take a stand. Thank you.
Cowards and losers. Never forget what losers Trump and his army of deplorables are.
A catholic college hosting a serial sexual abuser...hmmm :(
Lisa, Catholicism is a power trip and they are secretly bragging about their conquest by abuse when they confess to a priest.
Today, I talked to a 19 year old bright, enthusiastic young lady about the state of affairs in the country and mentioned that she should run for office. She said," I've been wondering what profession I should go into. Politics is something I would like to pursue,"
I told her I would donate to her campaign if she did!
I call that a productive day!! VOTE and/or RUN!
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
An admirable vivisection of Lardass - who looked like hell last night, by the way, until I shitcanned CNN (forever).
I finally figured out that he cannot be regarded as a person of low morals and no values with whom we disagree. The pathology is too overwhelming. He is mentally unwell, and poisonous, and somehow got his hands on the country. Unlike a single bad actor, he appeals to God knows how many people. That this fat pig - in every sense of the word - has a large following is a disastrous sign that the great American Experiment has failed. But it took a very long time, and to be philosophical about it, nothing lasts forever. America, R.IP. 1776-2023. It was good while it lasted.
Because many of his followers are just like him. Really. If not in reality, that's what they fantasize about all the time-being just like him.
Which shows how what kind of people they are.
Just like him-traitors, liars and criminals in mind if not in deed.
Just like him: an obese, ignorant, rapist, traitor.
Unfortunately, many peoples minds are skewed by cable, TV and Internet websites that hijack their brains. The similar process happened in Germany in the 1930s Hitler took control of the radio and other media and stirred up resentment fear, and a yearning for greater Germany, after their humiliating defeat in 1918.
On the contrary, America's best days are yet to come, and watch the slew of indictments awaiting Trump, too!
I agree that he'll be found guilty (of everything) and ruined, but I believe too many people think he's in the right for the country to return to its pre-crackpot/pre-authoritarian/pre-white supremacist days. When the body politic is so infected with bile, there's no coming back.
Ok, we will have to agree to disagree!
My own view is that those very same "too many people who believe in Trump's agenda," that is, the forces/elements/mobs/crackpots/authoritarians, are exactly who and what is most doomed to irrelevance, excised from without by an increasingly younger electorate, decaying and imploding from within.
Charlie Sykes called last night’s town hall reality TV, not journalism. Never give trmp a live MAGA audience and a moderator he can dominate. Keep to strong journalist standards to interview him on tape. Call him on his lies. Let Lucian interview him...
Now THERE is a brilliant idea! I will not, however, hold my breath until that interview happens.
This is some of your best, thank you. Remarkable how close courage is to kindness, and more remarkable how far Trump is from either. I will never understand his appeal and I cannot feel anything but contempt for his supporters.
Thank you! He is the bigliest coward of all time. Never ever does he commit himself to the point where he could wind up being held responsible. He didn't sign that affidavit saying all the purloined government documents had been returned - that's what paid minions and cult-dults are for. I think CNN may finally have earned their "Collaborator Network News" moniker
Its all about the GOTV. The non-MAGAts outnumber the MAGAts, but they have to be stirred to vote. More young people will reach voting age by November 2024, which is a good thing. But it still requires grass roots efforts at the local level to be sure people actually go and vote or, where still allowed, vote by mail or absentee. A concerted effort at the local level is needed to overcome the GQP voter suppression measures put into place in many states, including important swing states.
If people on the Democratic side of the equation are each motivated enough to get even one relative, friend, or neighbor to vote who may not otherwise have done so, that hopefully will go a long way to re-electing Biden, and even more importantly, re-taking the House and securing a convincing majority in the Senate. It is asking a lot, but there is so much at stake.
Coward. Nailed it. 💯.
(A sniveling coward with cash and a very big megaphone)
This just in. A Salon writer said Trump's disgraceful perf last night gave new evidence for all three ongoing criminal cases. I'm a believer in retribution, and E. Jean Carroll has a strong case for suing him again. Fingers crossed. The thing with a loudmouth who believes himself to be the smartest guy in the room is such a jerk always fucks up. Always.