Echoes Of Infamy

Trump’s promise to MAGA –as I’ve noted before, the only promise he has kept–was to Make America White Again, with all that promise entails. (It isn’t just skin color that marks some citizens as “Other”– just being female or practicing the “wrong” religion will remove you from MAGA’s “Real American” category…)

The administration’s hysterical war on DEI and “woke-ism” has been unrelenting, underscoring the belief of MAGA folks that efforts to reduce discrimination against women and/or minorities are really discrimination against White males–that “inclusion” of women and minorities is really just code for exclusion of White “Christian” men.

Historians tell us that the Nazis were inspired by Jim Crow, that they “borrowed” from the legal structures that disadvantaged Black folks in the American south to craft the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor– the Nuremberg Laws that laid the  groundwork for the persecution of the Jews during the Holocaust and World War II.

Imitation is said to be the sincerest form of flattery, and the Trump administration is now returning the favor.

As many of us have recognized–and as the New York Times has recently documented–the administration’s social media posts have increasingly adopted the terminology of Nazi racist propaganda. Its posts increasingly echo neo-Nazi literature, use terminology approving of ethnic cleansing and even QAnon conspiracies, and have “promoted lyrics from an anthem bellowed by the far-right militants of the Proud Boys.”

Their authors are not on society’s fringe. They are in the offices of the White House and the departments of Homeland Security and Labor, using official government accounts.

To some people, the administration’s posts sound patriotic. Others might sense at most a faint dog whistle to extremists. Some posts may just look odd. But those well-versed in the abstruse codes of right-wing extremism hear klaxons.

Some of us noticed this in the advertisements recruiting for ICE.  Ads on Instagram, Facebook and X all used an overlay with the words “WE’LL HAVE OUR HOME AGAIN.”

That’s also the name of a song, written by members of a self-described “pro-White fraternal order,” that has been embraced by the Proud Boys and other white-nationalist groups. Hundreds of explicitly neo-Nazi and white-supremacist accounts have shared the song on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app, since 2020. The white supremacist who killed three Black people at a Jacksonville, Fla., dollar store in 2023 included lyrics from the song in his writing.

Most Americans would miss the significance, but White Supremacists (and those who study them) understand the message.

I’ve posted previously about other ads and social-media posts that have included pictures and symbols associated with far-right extremist groups, and websites excluding previously pictured women and Blacks. The Labor Department has posted an image with the words “TRUST THE PLAN”– a central catchphrase of QAnon, and the White House’s X account has posted a photo of Trump and the word “remigration.” The Times article points out that “remigration” is a “decades-old European concept centered on the expulsion of nonwhite people and immigrants deemed unassimilated.”

Tens of thousands of Germans protested the concept two years ago after the country’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland party secretly met with neo-Nazis to discuss plans to implement it. (More than a dozen AfD politicians have reposted Mr. Trump’s “remigration” photo on X.)

The Labor Department has also posted a video captioned “One Homeland. One People. One Heritage,” a caption that clearly and ominously echoes a Nazis slogan from World War II, “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer,” or “One People, One Realm, One Leader.”

Experts cited in the Times article appeared confident that the apparent allusions were not accidental. One sociologist pointed to the use of “secret codes and numerological clues” in the ICE recruitment ads, which he believes have been designed to appeal to “a very specific segment” of Americans. These are “young men who live online and are disaffected by what they see as unwanted changes in American life.” The thuggish behavior of that cohort in Minneapolis would seem to confirm his conclusion.

Let’s be honest: this country has always had a significant number of Nazi and “Nazi-adjacent” citizens. In the 1930s, the the German American Bund had tens of thousands of members and held rallies with Ku Klux Klan members. In 1959, George Lincoln Rockwell founded the American Nazi Party; it employed a “White Power!” slogan and insisted that Nazism was “American patriotism.” The National Alliance, founded by the author of The Turner Diaries, spewed  white supremacy and antisemitism.

We’ve had bigots in the White House before, but never one who was such an enthusiastic descendant of those organizations.

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The Ten Commandments–Again

Indiana’s terrible legislature is at it again. Lawmakers have advanced revised legislation that would allow — but not require, as in the original proposal — public schools to post the Ten Commandments in school buildings and classrooms.

This effort pops up repeatedly, and each time it passes, it is predictably challenged in Court and found unconstitutional. So rather than writing about the current effort, I just went back into my archives and found what I’d written about previous attempts to force our legislative overlords’ version of religiosity on captive student audiences.

This one was from 1997.

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If I believed passionately that everyone would be better off for reading my religion’s version of the Ten Commandments, what would I do?
I’d probably start by distributing leaflets containing the Ten Commandments everywhere I could–on street corners, at the grocery store, at sports and entertainment events.
I might ask local churches and individuals to erect replicas of the Ten Commandments on their lawns or porches.
I could ask local newspapers to reproduce them; if the papers wouldn’t do so as a contribution, I might try to raise the money to buy a paid advertisement.
I would certainly use the Internet to find others who agreed with me on the importance of widespread distribution, and would engage them in my project.
I might sell t-shirts printed with the Commandments.
I might hold a rally, and bring in people to speak about the importance of the Ten Commandments in their lives.
And of course, I would do my very best to live up to the principles of the Commandments and other great religious precepts. ( “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” comes to mind; there are many others.)
Every single one of those methods for promoting the Ten Commandments and righteous behavior is constitutionally protected.
If, however, all I really want is for my government to send a message that my particular beliefs are the proper ones, I wouldn’t bother with any of these time-consuming activities. I’d just petition my local officials to post the Commandments so that everyone visiting a public building will know who really belongs in this country and who doesn’t. It will be important that my document appear on government-owned buildings, so it will be very clear what my government approves–and by implication, what (and who) it doesn’t.
Unfortunately for those who wish to be more equal than others, the First Amendment forbids government from issuing such endorsements, just as it would forbid the passage of laws requiring the posting of the Bill of Rights in all churches. The First Amendment protects our right to advocate in the public square, but it forbids us to enlist the help of the 800 pound gorilla– government– aka the public sector.
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I saw no need to revise any of the foregoing…Indiana’s “Christian” soldiers are nothing if not repetitive and predictable.
Of course, our legislative culture warriors aren’t limiting themselves to their love affair with the Cecil B. DeMille version of the  Ten Commandments. Just in case they haven’t intruded into women’s healthcare sufficiently–while incidentally adding to the state’s brain drain and maternity-care deserts, and making it difficult for Indiana businesses to recruit women employees–they are intent upon passing a bill empowering individuals to sue companies that fill prescriptions of abortion-inducing pills.
As usual, these GOP “pro-life” warriors are supporting other measures that rather vividly demonstrate that they are actually  “pro-birth.” Once those babies are born, Indiana isn’t interested in either feeding them or providing them with medical care–Republican bills limiting poor families’ access to Medicaid and SNAP are likely to make it through the legislative process.

And Indiana wouldn’t be a “good Christian state” without a transgender bathroom bill targeting the vanishingly small number of transgender children whose very existence apparently contradicts their narrow and hate-filled theologies.

Forgive me for sounding like a broken record, but if it wasn’t for extreme gerrymandering, it is doubtful that Indiana’s legislature would be dominated by this wildly unrepresentative super-majority. (Polls regularly show that some 55 percent of Indiana voters are pro-choice, for example. And the absence of faux-religious iconography in our public school classrooms rarely if ever makes the list of Hoosier political concerns.)

Most Americans are currently and understandably fixated on resisting the neo-Nazi takeover of our national government, but if and when actual Americans regain control, Hoosiers really will need to do something about our undemocratic and unrepresentative state government.

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The Right Side Of History

In response to the growing, undeniable fascism of MAGA and the Trump administration,  good people have been asking an anguished question: What can I do?

For many of us, the answer is murky. We can–and. must–protest. We can–and must–refuse to sane-wash or ignore what is, after all, before our eyes. We can–and must–support candidates opposing the trashing of our constitution and the rule of law, by volunteering, voting and donating what we can.

But some people are in a position to do more. Some of the universities and law firms that have been targeted have “bent the knee” and opted to be on  the wrong side of history, but others have chosen non-compliance. And recently, that refusal to go along has gathered steam.

Some examples:

The Washington Post, among others, recently reported that Chris Madel, a Republican candidate for governor of Minnesota, dropped out of that race, posting to social media that ICE operations had been an “unmitigated disaster” and that he “could not support the national Republicans’ stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so.” He said that continuing to identify as a Republican would mean he could not look his young daughters in their eyes.

That high-profile rejection was important, but the resignations of scores of federal workers took even more courage, because many of these people are walking away from careers and financial security.

Tracee Mergen, a supervisor in the FBI’s Minneapolis field office resigned after she was pressured by higher-ups in D.C. to abandon a civil rights investigation into the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good. The call for her to end her inquiry came from aides to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

Lawyers, I am relieved to note, have been prominent among the resigners. Several career lawyers had already fled the Department of Justice, in reaction to Trump’s remake of that department, but resignations from DOJ increased after the murders in Minnesota. Six career prosecutors in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced they are leaving the department in response to the administration’s edict that there would be no civil rights probe into the fatal shooting of Renee Good.

These resignations come from people who have chosen to be on the right side of history. So has David Jolly, a  former Republican who is now a Democratic candidate for governor of Florida, who abandoned traditional political “civility” in a speech that should be echoed by every Democrat (and by the few Republicans who, like Jolly and Madel, have chosen to put country before party).

I am cutting this post short in hopes that readers will click through and watch Jolly’s speech. It deserves widespread distribution.

The bottom line is that we can all do something to be on the right side of history. Increasingly–and thankfully– the people who can do more, the people who can refuse to bend the knee or obey in advance, are doing it. It’s a welcome sign.

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Christian Nationalists Are At It Again

At the base of all policy disputes is a foundational question: What is government for? What sort of decisions are properly within the remit of the state, and which must be left to individuals exercising their own beliefs? The nation’s founders answered that question with the Bill of Rights, which is properly read as a list of things that government is prohibited from doing.

Those amendments answer a fundamental question: who decides, and that makes it an impediment to the “Christian” warriors who want to dictate how the rest of us should live. As most Hoosiers are aware, a lot of those warriors– beneficiaries of Indiana’s extreme gerrymandering–have been elected to Indiana’s embarrassing legislature.

You would think–okay, hope–that this year’s short session would curtail efforts to violate citizens’ individual rights, but you’d be wrong. The Indiana Citizen has recently reported on several bills that would, if passed, advance the desires of those “Christian” nationalists for control over Hoosier behaviors.

One of those is SB 88, which has passed out of committee “with all of the committee’s Republicans supporting the bill and the Democrats who were present opposing it.” It will be heard by the full Senate.

The Citizen tells us that the bill’s author, Sen. Gary Byrne, did strip some of the bill’s most controversial elements ahead of the vote, including a requirement that middle school civics courses teach the meaning and significance of “historic” documents like the Ten Commandments, and another that would have restricted how civics teachers could address race, gender identity and issues of inequality.

In its current form, SB 88 would add something called the Classic Learning Test to the list of college entrance exams state colleges and universities are required to accept. (Like the ACT and SAT.) The Classic Learning Test is described as “a conservative-backed standardized exam that emphasizes classical literature and Christian thinkers.”  SB 88 would also expand the statutory definition of “good citizenship” instruction, requiring schools to teach students a version of “good citizenship” that includes graduation from high school, holding a full-time job, and waiting until marriage to have children.

(And here I thought “good citizenship” meant things like civic literacy, jury duty and voting…these days, I’d expand that definition to include protesting and when appropriate, civil disobedience.) As several Democrats noted, the bill would impose (some people’s) moral instruction under the guise of civics education.

The inability of Indiana’s GOP to distinguish between America’s legal structure and their carefully cherry-picked bible lessons is a common hallmark of Christian nationalism. A recent post from Lincoln Square highlights a recent publication from the Heritage Foundation, a follow-up to that organization’s Project 2025.

Do you believe that husbands should be in charge of their wives? Do you think that women who get a divorce ought to be ineligible for government benefits? Are you against gay marriage? Well, I’ve got good news for you!

The Heritage Foundation’s new report, Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years, reads like a white Christian Nationalist fever dream.

There are legitimate disagreements among legal scholars about the intent/meaning of several constitutional provisions. There are legitimate disputes over the application of provisions of the Bill of Rights to contemporary realities the Founders could never have envisioned. But there is absolutely no credible scholarship supporting the notion that government should mandate behavior approved by a religious sect–or impose legal sanctions on behaviors that a given religion disapproves.

There is no historical basis for creating an American Christian theocracy.

Most religions–and most non-believers–share broadly-held views that are also moral: against murder, against theft, against aggressions of various kinds. Our government can and does forbid those behaviors–not because they violate some religious tenets, but because they violate the libertarian premise upon which our government was founded. That premise, articulated by Enlightenment philosophers and endorsed by America’s Founders, was simple and profound: Individuals should be free to pursue their own ends–their own life goals–so long as they do not thereby harm the person or property of someone else, and so long as they are willing to accord an equal liberty to their fellow citizens. Government’s role is to protect our individual liberties while keeping the strong from abusing the weak.

It is not government’s job to prescribe our prayers or to dictate when, how or whether we should procreate, and it’s none of government’s business who we may choose to love. Laws imposing the religious beliefs of these performative “Christians” on the rest of us are unconstitutional and profoundly unAmerican.

Majority members of Indiana’s General Assembly need to take a remedial civics course.

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Cutting Through The C**p

If I see another “study” attempting to describe the different motives of those who support Donald Trump, I will once again engage my (not-so-inner) potty-mouth.

The most recent example I’ve come across was a description of a study purporting to describe four different varieties of Trump voter. Here’s the crux of the study’s “scholarly” conclusion:

About 29 percent of 2024 Trump voters are what we call the “MAGA Hardliners.” These are the fiery core of Trump’s base, mostly composed of white Gen Xers and Baby Boomers, who are animated by the belief that God is on their side in America’s existential struggle between good and evil. Then there are the “Anti-Woke Conservatives” (21 percent): a more secular and affluent group of voters deeply frustrated by what they perceive as the takeover of schools, culture, and institutions by the progressive left. Another 30 percent are the “Mainline Republicans”: a more racially diverse group of middle-of-the-road conservatives who prioritize border security, a strong economy, and cultural stability. Finally, we have the “Reluctant Right” (20 percent). Members of this group, unlike the other three, are not necessarily part of Trump’s base; they voted for him, but have ambivalent feelings toward him. Only half identify as Republicans, and many picked Trump because he seemed “less bad” than the alternative.

Any reasonable look at those “differences” will note the common thread that unites them, the overwhelming grievance that allows them to ignore–or even cheer–Trump’s ignorance and venality, his increasing dementia, and his destruction of America’s constitution at home and influence abroad. 

That common thread is a deep-seated racism. 

Let’s look at all four of those categories. The first, the MAGA Hardliners, are described politely; they are rather clearly White “Christian” nationalists. Project 2025 mapped out their preferred society–a society where God has installed  White males in positions of authority, where women are returned to the kitchen and bedroom, and people of color who are allowed to remain in the country are properly subservient.

“Anti-woke conservatives” are assigned to a second, presumably separate category. Everything we need to know about them is in the “anti-woke” descriptor. They are only different from the White “Christian” nationalists because they don’t attribute their racism to a god. They may be more educated and more secular, they may even be more circuitous when expressing their hatreds, but they are every bit as racist as the MAGA Hardliners.

Calling the third group “Mainline Republicans” is a slur on those who could formerly have been described that way– genuinely traditional “mainline” Republicans have mostly departed from today’s GOP, leaving the “mainline” moniker to those who were formerly on the fringe. They are, according to the description, concerned with “border security, a strong economy, and cultural stability.” Border security and “cultural stability” are the give-aways here: securing the border means “keep Black and Brown folks out of the U.S.” “Cultural stability” is code for keeping White Christian male status dominant.

And that fourth group–the voters who chose to give the nation’s nuclear codes to a clearly unfit buffoon who had been found guilty of multiple felonies and rape because he was the “lesser of two bad choices?” Come on! Kamala Harris was only a lesser choice to people who could not bring themselves to vote for a Black woman (a Black woman married to a Jew, no less!)

These aren’t different constituencies. At most, they’re different varieties of racists.

And credit where credit is due: the one promise Trump has kept is his promise to emulate the Nazis. He hasn’t brought down the price of eggs or other groceries, hasn’t kept America out of foreign military engagements, and certainly hasn’t made America great. He and Stephen Miller and the assortment of clowns, misfits and outright psychopaths he has assembled have pursued an unrelenting attack on DEI, on “wokeness,” on accurate history, and on anyone perceived as an enemy of the would-be King of (some) White folks.

Now, Trump’s administration has unleashed its very own Gestapo–directed at cities in Blue states that failed to vote for him. Actually, Trump has gone one better than Hitler– Gestapo thugs didn’t wear masks.

Sane-washing takes lots of forms. For far too long, the media has tried to portray insanity and corruption as just one set of political positions, while academics have attempted to “slice and dice” MAGA supporters into more and less reprehensible categories. Those efforts are another kind of mask–one that keeps us from seeing the extent of the fascism we face.

Purveyors of “making nice” need to cut the crap and face up to the very ugly evidence of where we are right now.

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