WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

Mr. Emory’s entire life’s work is avail­able on a 64GB flash dri­ve, avail­able for a con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more (to KFJC). (This is a new feature–the old, 32GB flash­drive will not hold the new mate­r­i­al. Click Here to obtain Dav­e’s 45+ years’ work, com­plete through fall/early win­ter of 2024 and con­tain­ing the Con­ver­sa­tions with Monte .)

“Polit­i­cal language…is designed to make lies sound truth­ful and mur­der respectable, and to give an appear­ance of solid­i­ty to pure wind.”

Mr. Emory has launched a new Patre­on site. Vis­it at: Patreon.com/DaveEmory

FTR#1353 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

FTR#1354 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

FTR#1355 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

FTR#1356 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

NB: Cor­rec­tion: The source for Hjal­mar Schacht being involved with Bernie Corn­feld and Robert Vesco’s oper­a­tions is not from Jim Hougan’s Spooks. Schacht does appear to have been very much involved with plans to devel­op the Bahamas.

Intro­duc­tion: These broad­casts con­tin­ue explo­ration of the evo­lu­tion of Domes­tic Stay-Behind Oper­a­tions and the ter­ror­ism and vio­lence that are the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the oper­a­tions of “Team Trump.”

(This line of inquiry was intro­duced in FTR#‘s 1347 & 1348.)

In addi­tion, we recap key aspects of our research into Covid-19 as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapon.

After Monte presents a “smok­ing gun” about the suc­cess­ful estab­lish­ment of “Domes­tic Stay-Behind” net­works, the broad­casts present infor­ma­tion about the ter­ror­ism appar­ent­ly com­ing from “Team Trump” being direct­ed at elec­tion offi­cials, mete­o­rol­o­gists, hur­ri­cane relief work­ers and civic offi­cials in places like Spring­field, Ohio.

In addi­tion, we present doc­u­men­ta­tion of the res­o­nance between Trump’s racist ide­ol­o­gy, eugen­ics and the social and polit­i­cal philoso­phies of Adolf Hitler.

1a. Monte presents doc­u­men­ta­tion of Allen Dulles de-brief­ing Robert Sur­rey. Sur­rey con­firms that doc­tri­naire fas­cists have suc­cess­ful­ly infil­trat­ed the Young Amer­i­cans for Free­dom.

1b. “Trump wasn’t in dan­ger from armed man at Cal­i­for­nia ral­ly, offi­cials say” by Joey Gar­ri­son; Paris Bar­raza; USA TODAY; 10/13/2024

A Las Vegas man was charged with pos­ses­sion of a loaded firearm and a high-capac­i­ty mag­a­zine on Sat­ur­day after deputies assigned to a ral­ly by for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in south­ern California’s Coachel­la Val­ley stopped him at a check­point.

…

The sus­pect, 49-year-old Vem Miller of Las Vegas, was stopped by deputies at 4:59 p.m. in a black SUV at a check­point at the inter­sec­tion of Avenue 52 and Cel­e­bra­tion Dri­ve, accord­ing to the River­side Coun­ty Sheriff’s Office.

Miller was found ille­gal­ly pos­sess­ing a shot­gun, a loaded hand­gun and a high-capac­i­ty mag­a­zine, local author­i­ties said. He was arrest­ed and booked at the John J. Benoit Deten­tion Cen­ter in Indio, Cal­i­for­nia.

Miller was released on $5,000 bail and awaits a court hear­ing.

River­side Coun­ty Sher­iff Chad Bian­co said that Miller approached the perime­ter of the ral­ly before the event start­ed and false­ly claimed to have VIP access as mem­ber of the press corps, which he was not. Deputies spot­ted a num­ber of “irreg­u­lar­i­ties” includ­ing a fake license plate, Bian­co said, prompt­ing addi­tion­al inves­ti­ga­tion.

In addi­tion to the firearms, deputies found mul­ti­ple pass­ports with mul­ti­ples names in Miller’s pos­ses­sion inside Miller’s vehi­cle as well as mul­ti­ple dri­vers licens­es with dif­fer­ent names, accord­ing to Bian­co. He said the vehi­cle was not reg­is­tered and the license plate appeared to be home­made, resem­bling those often used by mem­bers of anti-gov­ern­ment “sov­er­eign cit­i­zens” groups.

…

“The U.S. Attorney’s Office, U.S. Secret Ser­vice and FBI are aware of the River­side Sheriff’s Coun­ty Office’s arrest on Sat­ur­day,” the three fed­er­al agen­cies said in a joint state­ment. “The U.S. Secret Ser­vice assess­es that the inci­dent did not impact pro­tec­tive oper­a­tions and for­mer Pres­i­dent Trump was not in any dan­ger. While no fed­er­al arrest was made at this time, the inves­ti­ga­tion is ongo­ing.”

Bian­co spec­u­lat­ed that Miller’s inten­tion was to assas­si­nate the for­mer pres­i­dent.

“If you’re ask­ing me right now, I prob­a­bly did have deputies that pre­vent­ed the third assas­si­na­tion attempt,” said Bian­co, who is a staunch Trump sup­port­er and endorsed the Repub­li­can nominee’s pres­i­den­tial bid this sum­mer.

Trump spoke Sat­ur­day night to a crowd of sev­er­al thou­sand peo­ple at the Cal­houn Ranch in River­side Coun­ty, just out­side Coachel­la, at 5:30 p.m. – about half an hour after his remarks were sched­uled to begin.

1c. “Bust­ed: Armed man arrest­ed at ral­ly tied to Trump’s ‘sec­re­tary of ret­ri­bu­tion’” by Jor­dan Green; Raw Sto­ry; 10/14/2024.

The man arrest­ed with guns out­side Don­ald Trump’s ral­ly in Coachel­la, Calif. on Oct. 12 had spo­ken about assas­si­na­tion attempts against the for­mer pres­i­dent less than two weeks ear­li­er with a retired Army lieu­tenant colonel who calls him­self Trump’s “sec­re­tary of ret­ri­bu­tion.”

Vem Miller, a 49-year-old for­mer music video direc­tor who now pro­duces con­spir­a­cy-dri­ven doc­u­men­tary films, inter­viewed retired Lt. Col. Ivan Raik­lin, known for cir­cu­lat­ing a “Deep State tar­get list” against Trump’s polit­i­cal ene­mies. The inter­view was pro­duced for the Amer­i­ca Hap­pens Net­work, a com­pa­ny co-found­ed by Miller that describes itself as “the anti-the­sis of what the mock­ing­bird media has to offer.”

“You know, you inspire me,” Miller told Raik­lin dur­ing the inter­view, which was post­ed on the video plat­form Rum­ble on Oct. 1. “This episode’s actu­al­ly going to be called, ‘What are we going to do once they steal the elec­tion,’ because that’s cer­tain, 100 per­cent cer­tain­ty that they’re going to steal this. And we need to be pre­pared.”

“I already have a plan,” Raik­lin respond­ed. “I have the counter-strat­e­gy. I’ve already war-gamed basi­cal­ly their next 15 moves. I got 30 moves ahead of it. I’m doing worse-case [sic] sce­nario. And if worse-case [sic] sce­nario doesn’t hap­pen, we win, right? But I’m always plan­ning for the worse case [sic] sce­nario that they can do, both with­in their law, legal author­i­ty, and beyond of what they’re capa­ble of.

“So, the cat­e­gories of what they’re gonna do is they’re gonna con­tin­ue to try to assas­si­nate Trump,” Raik­lin con­tin­ued. “I already got a plan in response to that and what should take place.”

“Tell me that,” Miller inter­rupt­ed. “Say it.”

“No, no, no,” Raik­lin respond­ed. “I don’t need to put it out. Because if I put it out, peo­ple are going to think I’m try­ing to advo­cate for that to take place. I’m not. But you always have to have some­one plan­ning out worst case already in advance that has already thought through it, so that imme­di­ate action takes place. I’ve already thought through that delib­er­ate­ly. I got a response for that. It’s going to be worse for them if that takes place.”

Raik­lin added that he had already explained his think­ing dur­ing an appear­ance on InfoWars with con­spir­a­cy traf­fick­er Alex Jones in Feb­ru­ary 2024.

Dur­ing that exchange, Raik­lin told Jones: “This is a mes­sage direct­ly to every sin­gle per­son on the Deep State tar­get list. My assess­ment — Ivan Raiklin’s assess­ment that if you assas­si­nate any polit­i­cal pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, whether it’s RFK, whether it’s Trump, guess what? Amer­i­ca will do the fol­low­ing: Imme­di­ate­ly, they will respond in kind.

“If they do that, option 2 behind Trump is going to be so much bet­ter for us, and so much worse for them,” Raik­lin con­tin­ued.

“I was about to say, if they kill him that’s best-case sce­nario,” Jones agreed. “From a sick lev­el, from a sick lev­el medi­um, oh, please kill him. It’s so good after that.”

Raik­lin added: “It’s going to be the best cleans­ing and the fastest cleans­ing that we’ve ever seen in my life­time. I assess with almost cer­tain­ty, with the high­est lev­el of con­fi­dence, that if they assas­si­nate Trump, it is so game over for them.”

River­side Coun­ty Sher­iff Chad Bian­co, him­self a fer­vent Trump sup­port­er, told reporters dur­ing a press con­fer­ence that a deputy arrest­ed Miller when he stopped his vehi­cle at the inner perime­ter of the ral­ly. Miller had been allowed to dri­ve through the out­er perime­ter, Bian­co said, because it appeared that he was either a VIP or press.

…

Miller denied that he had any intent to assas­si­nate Trump, call­ing him­self “100 per­cent a Trump sup­port­er” in an inter­view with Fox News. He also denied that he is a sov­er­eign cit­i­zen or that he was car­ry­ing fake doc­u­ments.

Mindy Robin­son, one of Miller’s part­ners at the Amer­i­ca Hap­pens Net­work, angri­ly post­ed on X that Miller’s arrest was ret­ri­bu­tion from the “Deep State.” Miller and Robin­son released a six-hour doc­u­men­tary, which opens with an apoc­a­lyp­tic assess­ment of cur­rent events cen­tered on the first assas­si­na­tion attempt against Trump in But­ler, Pa. before mov­ing to its main sub­ject: the armed stand­off in 2014 that pit­ted the Bundy fam­i­ly and their sup­port­ers against the FBI.

“Vem just exposed a huge Deep State coverup involv­ing the feds and the Bundy ranch scan­dal,” Robin­son wrote on X on Sun­day. “So, I firm­ly believe this is 100% some kind of set­up in ret­ri­bu­tion for expos­ing it. That, or Trump’s secu­ri­ty team is a bunch of dips—s try­ing to make up for how bad­ly they failed in Penn­syl­va­nia with any kind of ‘win’ they can get, fake or not.

“There isn’t a uni­verse his inten­tion was to kill Trump,” Robin­son con­tin­ued. “He’s worked too hard in this move­ment to expose the Deep State and all the peo­ple against him. If he had guns in his car that were ille­gal, whooptie‑f—ing do As a pro-2A advo­cate, ask me if I give a s— about a good guy with a gun in an unsafe s—hole like Cal­i­for­nia. It doesn’t even make sense why his pass­es would be fake either when we’re both usu­al­ly invit­ed as media to these things.”

1d. “River­side Coun­ty Sher­iff Chad Bian­co, fre­quent New­som crit­ic, pon­ders a run to suc­ceed him” By Han­nah Fry; Los Ange­les Times; 06/08/2024.

River­side Coun­ty Sher­iff Chad Bian­co, a con­ser­v­a­tive fire­brand known for voic­ing law-and-order views and fierce crit­i­cism of Gov. Gavin New­som, is con­sid­er­ing a run for gov­er­nor in 2026.

Bian­co, who was first elect­ed as sher­iff in 2018 after a decades-long career at the River­side Coun­ty Sheriff’s Office, hasn’t for­mal­ly announced his can­di­da­cy. How­ev­er, he told The Times in an inter­view Fri­day that he’s dis­cussing with his fam­i­ly a run for the state’s top job.

“I live in the per­fect place. I have the per­fect job, and I would do this for the next 40 years if peo­ple would keep elect­ing me here in River­side Coun­ty,” Bian­co said. “So this is a huge thing for me to decide to just give up. The grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple that are try­ing to con­vince me to do this is a bug in my ear that, quite frankly, has giv­en me some­thing to think about.”

The sher­iff, who has called atten­tion to what he sees as defi­cien­cies in statewide pub­lic safe­ty laws, had a viral moment this month when he post­ed a video on Insta­gram — which he says was tongue-in-cheek — endors­ing Don­ald Trump’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. In it, the sher­iff, sit­ting in a car wear­ing his uni­form, says that after years of being crit­i­cal of poli­cies that have closed pris­ons or reduced jail sen­tences, he is “going to change teams.”

“I think it’s time we put a felon in the White House,” he says. “Trump 2024, baby. Let’s save this coun­try and make Amer­i­ca great again.”

Crit­ics called him out for advo­cat­ing for a can­di­date while wear­ing a tax­pay­er-fund­ed uni­form.

State Supt. of Pub­lic Instruc­tion Tony Thur­mond, who is run­ning for gov­er­nor, called for an inves­ti­ga­tion into Bianco’s actions and accused him of break­ing a state law that pro­hibits offi­cers or employ­ees of local agen­cies from par­tic­i­pat­ing in polit­i­cal activ­i­ties while in uni­form.

…

Bian­co told The Times he has “zero regrets” about post­ing the video and was dis­mayed that his detrac­tors failed to address the first por­tion of it, in which he points out the pub­lic safe­ty chal­lenges­fac­ing the state.

…

In 2021, Bian­co grabbed head­lines for vow­ing not to enforce vac­cine man­dates for Sheriff’s Office employ­ees, say­ing he believes vac­ci­na­tion is a per­son­al choice.

A month lat­er, Bian­co faced scruti­ny after it was revealed through a data leak that in 2014 he was a dues-pay­ing mem­ber of the Oath Keep­ers, a vio­lent far-right, anti-gov­ern­ment group whose ranks par­tic­i­pat­ed in the insur­rec­tion at the U.S. Capi­tol on Jan. 6, 2021.

At the time, he said in a state­ment that “like many oth­er law enforce­ment offi­cers and vet­er­ans who were mem­bers, I learned the group did not offer me any­thing and so I did not con­tin­ue mem­ber­ship.”

Last year, Bian­co was among a coali­tion of 90 sher­iffs across the coun­try who pub­licly endorsed the tough stance on bor­der secu­ri­ty tak­en by Flori­da Gov. Ron DeSan­tis, who was cam­paign­ing for the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion.

…

A coali­tion of sher­iffs across Cal­i­for­nia, the Repub­li­can Par­ty of River­side Coun­ty and a num­ber of cur­rent and for­mer law­mak­ers have called on Bian­co to run for gov­er­nor.

For­mer state Sen. Den­nis Hollingsworth, who is lead­ing a group called the “Draft Bian­co coali­tion,” said in a state­ment this week that the sheriff’s can­di­da­cy would pro­vide a “real alter­na­tive” for Cal­i­for­nia vot­ers.

“In the face of Sacramento’s fail­ures on issues like crime and home­less­ness, Sher­iff Bianco’s lead­er­ship has been an exam­ple for oth­er com­mu­ni­ties to fol­low across the state,” Hollingsworth said.

Bian­co would be the first high-pro­file Repub­li­can to enter the crowd­ed race to suc­ceed New­som, who terms out in 2027.

…

“I don’t want to be just the Repub­li­can run­ning for gov­er­nor. I want to be the leader that peo­ple want to fix this state,” Bian­co said.

“And if I can get men­tal­ly to a point where I believe that Cal­i­for­nia wants a leader to fix the state, then I will make the deci­sion to do it.”

2. “Don­ald Trump’s Hit­ler­ian log­ic is no mis­take” by Sid­ney Blu­men­thal; The Guardian; 10/07/2024.

The for­mer pres­i­dent claims to have nev­er read Mein Kampf. But his use of blood and soil rhetoric is delib­er­ate

If geneal­o­gy is des­tiny, as Don­ald Trump believes, then “poi­son in the blood” – a phrase Trump repeat­ed­ly uses – deter­mines the fate of nations. By Trump’s log­ic, “blood” is the true and final mea­sure. Trump, like Hitler, appears to clas­si­fy peo­ple and coun­tries by “blood” on a scale of their innate racial char­ac­ter­is­tics. Those fea­tures define the essence of nations, which are them­selves delin­eat­ed on a racial pyra­mid, with the purest and whitest, the most Aryan, at the pin­na­cle. True to his doc­trine, the Nazis on his fam­i­ly tree must explain his pen­chant for Hit­ler­ian rhetoric.

“Poi­son in the blood” was the core of Hitler’s race doc­trine as well. Hitler, too, believed it explained the rise and fall of civ­i­liza­tions. “All great cul­tures of the past per­ished only because the orig­i­nal­ly cre­ative race died out from blood poi­son­ing,” stat­ed Hitler. It is also Trump’s fun­da­men­tal trope. “We’re poi­son­ing the blood of our coun­try, and you have peo­ple com­ing in, think of it, men­tal insti­tu­tions all over the world are being emp­tied out into the Unit­ed States,” he said on Fox News in March. “Jails and pris­ons are being emp­tied out into the Unit­ed States. This is poi­son­ing our coun­try.”

Just recent­ly, on 31 August, address­ing Moms For Lib­er­ty, a rightwing group devot­ed to book-ban­ning, he raised again the men­ace of “poi­son in the blood”: “But what’s hap­pen­ing to our coun­try, our coun­try is being poi­soned, poi­soned!”

At a ral­ly on 18 Sep­tem­ber, Trump elab­o­rat­ed: “They’re com­ing from the Con­go, they’re com­ing from Africa, they’re com­ing from the Mid­dle East, they’re com­ing from all over the world – Asia! A lot of it com­ing from Asia … And what’s hap­pen­ing to our coun­try is we’re just destroy­ing the fab­ric of life in our coun­try, and we’re not going to take it any longer, and you got to get rid of these peo­ple.”

“Blut und Boden” – blood and soil – was adopt­ed as an offi­cial slo­gan of the Nazi regime to express its ide­al of the nation root­ed in the authen­tic uni­ty of Aryan blood. The com­mu­ni­ty of its peo­ple – Volks­ge­mein­schaft – com­prised only those of shared eth­nic blood. Aliens cor­rupt­ing the blood, prin­ci­pal­ly Jews, but also Slavs, Poles and Roma, were described as dis­ease car­ri­ers and “ver­min” – Volksshadlinge – and posed an exis­ten­tial threat. Only those peo­ple of the blood belonged to the Heimat, a con­cept the Nazis cast as the racial­ly pure home, intrin­sic to Blut und Boden.

Jews were Heimat­los – a peo­ple sep­a­rate from the Heimat, with­out a true home, wan­der­ers, cos­mopoli­tans and glob­al­ists, a men­ace to the sanc­ti­ty of the cul­ture and the iden­ti­ty of the nation. They were not sim­ply out­siders, or the Oth­er. They were a dif­fer­ent species – sub­hu­mans, Unter­men­schen – and must be erad­i­cat­ed to pre­serve the blood of the race. “Although it has fea­tures sim­i­lar to a human, the sub­hu­man is low­er on the spir­i­tu­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal scale than any ani­mal,” instruct­ed a pam­phlet enti­tled Der Unter­men­schen, illus­trat­ed with dis­tort­ed pho­tographs of these low­er beings to depict the “bes­tial” nature of the sub­hu­man Jews and Slavs. Four mil­lion copies were pub­lished in 1942 under the direc­tion of Hein­rich Himm­ler, the head of the SS.

“In some cas­es, they’re not peo­ple, in my opin­ion,” Trump said this March. “But I’m not allowed to say that because the rad­i­cal left says that’s a ter­ri­ble thing to say. These are ani­mals, OK, and we have to stop it.” When they are removed, it will be, says Trump, “a bloody sto­ry”.

Friedrich Trump, Trump’s grand­fa­ther, was deport­ed from his native Bavaria as an unde­sir­able and had his Ger­man cit­i­zen­ship revoked in 1905. Born in the town of Kall­stadt in 1869, he dodged com­pul­so­ry mil­i­tary ser­vice and emi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States in 1885. In and around Seat­tle and the Yukon, he owned restau­rants and hotels that also did a brisk busi­ness as broth­els. He returned to Ger­many a well-to-do man, mar­ried Elis­a­beth Christ, and took her to New York. But his wife did not like Amer­i­ca and was home­sick.

He returned to Kall­stadt to set­tle, but the author­i­ties inves­ti­gat­ed him and ruled he should be ban­ished for dodg­ing mil­i­tary ser­vice. He wrote the Prince of Bavaria a let­ter beg­ging to stay. “Why should we be deport­ed? This is very, very hard for a fam­i­ly.” His plea was reject­ed. He was expelled. Upon his return to New York, in Octo­ber 1905, a son, named Fred, was born. The Trump fam­i­ly saga began.

The Trump and Christ fam­i­lies, with the excep­tion of Friedrich and Elis­a­beth Trump, remained in Kall­stadt. Many of them served in the Nazi army. Some were mem­bers of the Nazi par­ty. Two of these rel­a­tives of Don­ald Trump are now known to have fought and died for Hitler. It appears that they were involved in the ear­ly stage of the Holo­caust. (The research of a cer­ti­fied pro­fes­sion­al geneal­o­gist dis­tin­guished in the field dis­cov­ered these Trump Nazi sol­diers, but prefers to remain anony­mous to avoid ret­ri­bu­tion.)

If ‘blood’ is the bio­log­i­cal mark­er of indeli­ble per­son­al, racial and eth­nic char­ac­ter, by his own rea­son­ing Trump’s organ­ic link­age to Nazis must inex­orably explain his unapolo­getic Hit­ler­ian pol­i­tics

Ernst Christ, of the Christ branch of the fam­i­ly, a first cousin once removed of Don­ald Trump, the son of his great-uncle Johannes Christ, born in Kall­stadt, was a Nazi. Unterof­fizier Christ, a cor­po­ral, served in the 1st Com­pa­ny of the Panz­er­jager-Abteilung 670, an anti-tank unit that saw action on the west­ern front in Bel­gium and France before being trans­ferred to par­tic­i­pate in the inva­sion of Rus­sia.

In July 1942, Christ’s com­pa­ny occu­pied the town of Polodovi­toye, about 100 kilo­me­ters south of Stal­in­grad. The Nazi sol­diers round­ed up about 100 Jew­ish fam­i­lies who had fled there from through­out the region. Accord­ing to Yad Vashem, the Holo­caust research cen­ter in Jerusalem, “Jews were loaded onto trucks, sup­pos­ed­ly to be tak­en home. In fact, the vic­tims were tak­en out­side the vil­lage toward a ravine locat­ed 50 meters south of the vil­lage. There the vic­tims were shot or prob­a­bly severe­ly wound­ed and then doused with some high­ly flam­ma­ble liq­uid and then set on fire.” A month lat­er, on 13 August, Unterof­fizier Christ was killed in bat­tle.

Three days before, on 10 August, the Wehrma­cht reached the out­skirts of Stal­in­grad. On that day, Pri­vate Eduard Fre­und, born in Kall­stadt, was killed. He was the first cousin once removed of Don­ald Trump, the son of Donald’s great-aunt Elis­a­betha Trump and Karl Phillip Fre­und. Pri­vate Fre­und served in a secu­ri­ty unit, the fourth com­pa­ny of the Sicherungs-Bat­tal­ion 790, whose task of guard­ing sup­ply lines and police work quick­ly turned, like that of all such units, into the oper­a­tion of whole­sale bru­tal ter­ror. He was one of those sol­diers from “all walks of life” described in his­to­ri­an Christo­pher Browning’s Ordi­nary Men, who found them­selves occu­piers in east­ern Europe to exe­cute the regime’s poli­cies, often under the con­trol of the SS, where “mass mur­der and rou­tine had become one”, mur­der­ing par­ti­sans and civil­ians alike, and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly killing Jews. The pol­i­cy was jus­ti­fied in a phrase – Jude gle­ich Bolschewik gle­ich Par­ti­san, or “Jew equals Bol­she­vik equals Par­ti­san”.

If “blood” is the bio­log­i­cal mark­er of indeli­ble per­son­al, racial and eth­nic char­ac­ter, by his own rea­son­ing Trump’s organ­ic link­age to Nazis must inex­orably explain his unapolo­getic Hit­ler­ian pol­i­tics. On Fox News, in March, Howard Kurtz, the host of its show Media Buzz, inter­viewed Trump. “Why do you use words like ‘ver­min’ and ‘poi­son­ing of the blood’?” he asked. “The press, as you know, imme­di­ate­ly reacts to that by say­ing, ‘Well, that’s the kind of lan­guage that Hitler and Mus­soli­ni used.’” To which Trump replied, “Because our coun­try is being poi­soned.”

But anoth­er Trump rel­a­tive stands as a repu­di­a­tion of Trump’s the­o­ry. John G Trump, Fred’s younger broth­er, did not go into real estate. Instead, he earned a master’s degree in physics and a doc­tor­ate in elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing. He became a co-inven­tor of high-volt­age elec­tro­sta­t­ic gen­er­a­tors, which dur­ing the sec­ond world war he applied to advance­ments in radar. He served as the sec­re­tary of the microwave com­mit­tee cre­at­ed by the fed­er­al government’s new Nation­al Defense Research Com­mit­tee. After the war, he was appoint­ed direc­tor of MIT’s High-Volt­age Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry, whose work he used in can­cer research and on envi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tion.

His obit­u­ary in Physics Today in 1985 by a col­league paid trib­ute to his per­son­al virtues as well as his sci­en­tif­ic con­tri­bu­tions: “Trump’s remark­able per­son­al­i­ty mix con­tributed to all of this achieve­ment and suc­cess. He was remark­ably even-tem­pered, with kind­ness and con­sid­er­a­tion to all, nev­er threat­en­ing or arro­gant in man­ner, even when under high stress. He was out­ward­ly and in appear­ance the mildest of men, with a con­vinc­ing per­sua­sive­ness, care­ful­ly mar­shal­ing all his facts.” Fur­ther­more, wrote his eulo­gist, “He cared very lit­tle for mon­ey and the trap­pings of mon­ey.”

In oth­er words, John Trump was noth­ing at all like his bul­ly­ing, igno­rant and greedy nephew, who bears the mid­dle name “John”, the only appar­ent cor­re­spon­dence between them. The resem­blance, regard­less of genet­ics, is nil. Yet Trump cites him as proof of his intel­li­gence, a case pos­i­tive of “blood”. “I had an uncle who went to MIT who is a top pro­fes­sor. Dr John Trump. A genius,” Trump said in an inter­view with CNN in 2015. “It’s in my blood. I’m smart. Great marks. Like real­ly smart.” From time to time, he brings up his uncle as his fore­bear of his own “genius”. “Good genes, very good genes. OK, very smart.”

Through his dis­tort­ed lens, Trump’s uncle, who was the oppo­site of a nar­cis­sist, serves as a ratio­nale for his nar­cis­sism. He is held up as an exam­ple of Trump’s “blood” mania, though the sci­en­tist in the fam­i­ly had no use for the sort of malev­o­lent super­sti­tion the Nazis prop­a­gat­ed and his nephew mim­ics.

Trump des­ig­nates his blood as supe­ri­or and the blood of those he choos­es to demo­nize as infe­ri­or. “Well, I think I was born with a dri­ve for suc­cess,” Trump told CNN in 2010. “I’m a gene believ­er. Hey, when you con­nect two race­hors­es, you usu­al­ly end up with a fast horse. And I real­ly was – you know, I had a – a good gene pool from the stand­point of that.”

Trump des­ig­nates his blood as supe­ri­or and the blood of those he choos­es to demo­nize as infe­ri­or

“I have an Ivy League edu­ca­tion, smart guy, good genes. I have great genes and all that stuff, which I’m a believ­er in,” Trump informed a crowd in Biloxi, Mis­sis­sip­pi, in 2016. He had recent­ly called for a ban on all Mus­lims enter­ing the Unit­ed States.

“You have good genes, you know that, right?” Trump told anoth­er near­ly all-white ral­ly dur­ing his 2020 cam­paign in a Min­neso­ta town that had vot­ed against accept­ing refugees. “You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe? The race­horse the­o­ry. You think we’re so dif­fer­ent? You have good genes in Min­neso­ta.” He com­pared and con­trast­ed. “Every fam­i­ly in Min­neso­ta needs to know about sleepy Joe Biden’s extreme plan to flood your state with an influx of refugees from Soma­lia, from oth­er places all over the plan­et.”

“Why do we want all these peo­ple from shit­hole coun­tries com­ing here?” Trump bemoaned in a White House meet­ing in 2018. He point­ed to Haiti – “take them out” – El Sal­vador and the entire con­ti­nent of Africa. “We should have more peo­ple from Nor­way.”

This April, at a fundrais­er with donors at Mar-a-Lago, Trump proud­ly recalled his “shit­hole coun­tries” moment to elab­o­rate on his cat­e­gories of accept­able and unac­cept­able immi­grants. “And when I said, you know, ‘Why can’t we allow peo­ple to come in from nice coun­tries,’ I’m try­ing to be nice. Nice coun­tries, you know like Den­mark, Switzer­land? Do we have any peo­ple com­ing in from Den­mark? How about Switzer­land? How about Nor­way?”

Trump claims he has not read Mein Kampf. His first wife, Ivana Trump, said he “reads a book of Hitler’s col­lect­ed speech­es, My New Order, which he keeps in a cab­i­net by his bed”, Van­i­ty Fair report­ed in 1990. Trump explained it was a gift from a Jew­ish friend. Then, he told Marie Bren­ner of Van­i­ty Fair, “If I had these speech­es, and I am not say­ing that I do, I would nev­er read them.”

As Trump ginned up his third cam­paign, Hugh Hewitt, a rightwing radio talk­show host, tried to help cleanse Trump of taint from his “poi­son in the blood” incan­ta­tions. “Now, Mr Pres­i­dent,” said the def­er­en­tial Hewitt, “your crit­ics say that you are using Hit­ler­ian lan­guage that was used to dehu­man­ize Jews by say­ing that Jew­ish blood can­not be part of Ger­man blood. Do you have any­thing like that in mind when you say poi­son­ing our blood?”

“No, and I nev­er knew that Hitler said it, either, by the way,” Trump replied. “And I nev­er read Mein Kampf. They said I read Mein Kampf. These are peo­ple that are dis­in­for­ma­tion, hor­ri­ble peo­ple that we’re deal­ing with. I nev­er read Mein Kampf.”

Asked again by Hewitt, Trump answered, “First of all, I know noth­ing about Hitler. I’m not a stu­dent of Hitler. I nev­er read his works. They say that he said some­thing about blood. He didn’t say it the way I said it, either, by the way.” Then, after show­ing he was famil­iar with Hitler’s “blood” obses­sion that he had just said he did not know about, he repeat­ed his “poi­son” meme eight times.

“I know noth­ing” was the com­ic punch­line of Sergeant Schultz, the buf­foon­ish Nazi pris­on­er-of-war camp guard from the 1960s tele­vi­sion series Hogan’s Heroes. “I know noth­ing” has been a use­ful if trans­par­ent­ly false tac­tic of deflec­tion for Trump, from David Duke – “I don’t know any­thing about David Duke, OK?” – to the Proud Boys.

After the vio­lent neo-Nazi march in Char­lottesville in 2017, ring­ing with chants of “Jews will not replace us,” attend­ed by a num­ber of Proud Boys, Trump infa­mous­ly stat­ed, there were “very fine peo­ple on both sides”.

When Chris Wal­lace, the mod­er­a­tor of the 2020 CNN pres­i­den­tial debate, asked Trump if he would denounce white suprema­cists, he replied, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” a mes­sage to the neo-fas­cist para­mil­i­tary group that would be the shock troops in the attack on the Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6. After the debate, he told reporters, “I don’t know who the Proud Boys are.” Now, he has pledged to par­don those Proud Boys and oth­ers serv­ing prison terms for their actions in the insur­rec­tion of Jan­u­ary 6. He refers to them as “hostages”.

White suprema­cists, neo-fas­cists and neo-Nazis attach them­selves to Trump, some­times appear­ing as more than a fringe 

White suprema­cists, neo-fas­cists and neo-Nazis attach them­selves to Trump, some­times appear­ing as more than a fringe – includ­ing, recent­ly, the self-pro­claimed“Black Nazi” Mark Robin­son, the Repub­li­can can­di­date for gov­er­nor of North Car­oli­na, whom Trump called “Mar­tin Luther King on steroids.”

Neo-Nazis just seem to pop up weird­ly on Trump’s prop­er­ty. At Mar-a-Lago, on 22 Novem­ber 2022, Trump had a night to remem­ber: din­ner with the anti­se­mit­ic rap­per Kanye West, AKA Ye, and Nick Fuentes, a neo-Nazi, who was a leader at the Char­lottesville march and riot, present in the mob on Jan­u­ary 6, and has built an anti­se­mit­ic fol­low­ing he calls the “Groypers”. After­ward, when the press report­ed on the din­ner, Trump issued a state­ment that Ye brought “a guest whom I had nev­er met and knew noth­ing about”.

Trump’s foot­sie with Nazis min­gles nar­cis­sism with Nazism. But it is his belief in the far-right “replace­ment the­o­ry”, which is the cen­tral idea of his cam­paign, that pro­vides the great­est illu­mi­na­tion on what are more than over­lap­ping coin­ci­dences. The his­tor­i­cal lin­eage of poi­so­nous ideas, rather than “poi­son in the blood”, explains Trump’s doc­trine of a mas­ter race, whether Trump is aware or not of the ori­gins of his ven­om.

Trump’s embrace of the replace­ment the­o­ry may owe a good deal to its relent­less pro­mo­tion by its chief expo­nent, Tuck­er Carl­son, who also serves as an intel­lec­tu­al men­tor to JD Vance. On more than 400 shows when Carl­son was on Fox News, accord­ing to the New York Times, “he has ampli­fied the idea that a cabal of elites want to force demo­graph­ic change through immi­gra­tion”.

On his 2 Sep­tem­ber pod­cast, Carl­son inter­viewed a self-pro­claimed “non-racist fas­cist”, Dar­ryl Coop­er, whom he intro­duced as “the best and most hon­est pop­u­lar his­to­ri­an in the Unit­ed States”. For two hours, he held forth on Win­ston Churchill as the “chief vil­lain of the sec­ond world war” and the Holo­caust as an acci­dent forced on Hitler. Despite Carlson’s Nazi fas­ci­na­tion, his prin­ci­pal influ­ence has been as a recent pop­u­lar­iz­er of a doc­trine devel­oped more than a cen­tu­ry ago.

When Trump says immi­gra­tion, he means race. When he says crime, he means race. When he says com­mu­nism, social­ism, or Demo­c­rat, he means race

Trump’s replace­ment the­o­ry is deriv­a­tive of the nativism of eugeni­cists and “race sci­en­tists”, espe­cial­ly Madi­son Grant, whose 1916 book, The Pass­ing of the Great Race, warned against “the old stock being crowd­ed out” by “swarms of Pol­ish Jews” and oth­er aliens, who were push­ing aside “the Nordic man”, and fos­ter­ing “sui­ci­dal ethics which are exter­mi­nat­ing his own race”.

Grant served as an advis­er to the con­gres­sion­al mem­bers who wrote the Immi­gra­tion Act of 1924, which severe­ly restrict­ed immi­gra­tion of those eth­nic groups from east­ern and south­ern Europe that he deemed infe­ri­or, clos­ing out Ital­ians and Jews. He also helped write laws in the south ban­ning inter­ra­cial mar­riage.

Hitler regard­ed Grant’s book in his speech­es as sci­en­tif­ic proof and wrote him an admir­ing let­ter telling him it was his “Bible”. “It was Amer­i­ca, in spite of its enor­mous ter­ri­to­ry, that was the first coun­try to teach us by its immi­gra­tion law that a nation should not open its doors equal­ly to all races,” Hitler told the New York Times in an inter­view on 20 Decem­ber 1931, before he seized pow­er. “Let Chi­na be for the Chi­nese, Amer­i­ca for the Amer­i­cans and Ger­many for the Ger­mans.” In 1936 the Nazis pro­mot­ed The Pass­ing of the Great Race as essen­tial read­ing for Ger­mans.

“The irony is that by putting Madi­son Grant’s the­o­ries into prac­tice, the Nazis dis­cred­it­ed those the­o­ries for­ev­er,” wrote the his­to­ri­an Jonathan Spiro in his biog­ra­phy of Madi­son Grant, Defend­ing the Mas­ter Race.

That is, until Trump.

When Trump says immi­gra­tion, he means race. When he says crime, he means race. When he says com­mu­nism, social­ism, or Demo­c­rat, he means race. When he says Amer­i­ca is declin­ing, he means race. When he says “Amer­i­can First”, he means race. When he says blood, he means race. When he says poi­son, he means race.

When he says race, he means Black peo­ple. When he says race, he means His­pan­ics. When he says race, he means Mus­lims. And when he says race, he means oth­er white peo­ple, too, some less white, less pure, less clean, less accept­able depend­ing on their ances­tral ori­gin, than oth­ers. When he says race, he means the replace­ment the­o­ry.

Trump has Hitler on the brain in unknow­able ways until he lets his admi­ra­tion seep out. “Well, but Hitler did some good things,” Trump remarked to his White House chief of staff, Gen­er­al John Kel­ly. “Well, what?” asked Kel­ly. “Well, [Hitler] rebuilt the econ­o­my,” Trump replied. Kel­ly was out­raged. He told him, “Sir, you can nev­er say any­thing good about the guy. Noth­ing.” Kel­ly reflect­ed, “It’s pret­ty hard to believe he missed the Holo­caust, though, and pret­ty hard to under­stand how he missed the 400,000 Amer­i­can GIs that were killed in the Euro­pean the­ater,” Kel­ly told Jim Sciut­to, the CNN cor­re­spon­dent. “But I think it’s more, again, the tough guy thing” – Trump’s insa­tiable need to play­act.

On 17 Sep­tem­ber, Trump launched a new theme with an old echo. He made a prophe­cy about who should be blamed if he is defeat­ed in the elec­tion. “I’m not going to call this as a pre­dic­tion, but in my opin­ion, the Jew­ish peo­ple would have a lot to do with a loss,” he said. Then, he repeat­ed, “If I don’t win this elec­tion – and the Jew­ish peo­ple would real­ly have a lot to do with that if that hap­pens because if 40%, I mean, 60% of the peo­ple are vot­ing for the ene­my …” He com­plained that as “the most pop­u­lar per­son in Israel” he was not “treat­ed right” by Amer­i­can Jews.

Trump’s Jew­ish son-in-law Jared Kush­n­er, his con­vert­ed Jew­ish daugh­ter Ivan­ka, his Jew­ish grand­chil­dren, his Jew­ish advis­er Stephen Miller, who is poised to be the imple­menter of the replace­ment the­o­ry and depor­ta­tion of mil­lions, includ­ing legal immi­grants, and his Jew­ish sup­port­ers and donors are exempt from his con­dem­na­tion of “the Jew­ish peo­ple”. Trump’s fam­i­ly ties don’t give him pause from his obses­sion. His “blood” makes them kosher. In the case of an incon­ve­nient con­tra­dic­tion his nar­cis­sism pre­vails.

Trump’s blame game is his ver­sion of the Dolch­stossle­gende – the stab in the back leg­end – that Ger­many did not lose the first world war in bat­tle but was betrayed on the home front by Jews and left­ists. Hitler traced his polit­i­cal awak­en­ing to his under­stand­ing of the Dolch­stoss.

Now, after all Trump has done for the Jews, after all he has done for Israel, “the Jew­ish peo­ple” are ungrate­ful. Too many of them sup­port “the ene­my”. Trump is warm­ing up his myth of a scape­goat.

3a. “Trump sug­gests undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants who com­mit mur­der have ‘bad genes’” by Kate Sul­li­van; CNN; 10/07/2024

For­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on Mon­day sug­gest­ed undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants who com­mit mur­der have “bad genes,” in the lat­est exam­ple of the for­mer pres­i­dent using dehu­man­iz­ing rhetoric as he tries to stoke fears about those in the coun­try ille­gal­ly.

In a radio inter­view on “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” Trump again dis­tort­ed sta­tis­tics on immi­gra­tion and crime to attack Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris as he false­ly claimed she was “allow­ing peo­ple to come through an open bor­der, 13,000 of which were mur­der­ers.”

“You know, now, a mur­der­er, I believe this – it’s in their genes. And we got bad, a lot of bad genes in our coun­try right now,” Trump said.

…

It was the lat­est instance of Trump using dehu­man­iz­ing and dis­parag­ing rhetoric as he tar­gets undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants and vows mass depor­ta­tions if he’s reelect­ed. Trump has made curb­ing ille­gal immi­gra­tion a cen­tral part of his 2024 cam­paign mes­sage and reg­u­lar­ly uses inflam­ma­to­ry and degrad­ing lan­guage when describ­ing undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants.

Last fall, Trump said in an inter­view that undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants were “poi­son­ing the blood of our coun­try,” using lan­guage that is often employed by White suprema­cists and nativists in com­ments that drew rebuke from civ­il rights groups. Trump has also spread false con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about Hait­ian migrants eat­ing pets in Spring­field, Ohio.

Trump has also pre­vi­ous­ly invoked genet­ics on the cam­paign trail, telling sup­port­ers in Min­neso­ta at a cam­paign stop in 2020, “You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe? The race­horse the­o­ry. You think we’re so dif­fer­ent? You have good genes in Min­neso­ta.”. . .

3b. “Trump Just Intro­duced a New, Dan­ger­ous Immi­gra­tion Pro­pos­al” by Isabela Dias; Moth­er Jones; 09/17/2024.

Over the week­end, Don­ald Trump took to Truth Social to elab­o­rate on how he would “end the migrant inva­sion of Amer­i­ca.” The can­di­date for president—who has repeat­ed­ly vowed to con­duct the largest mass depor­ta­tion cam­paign in US history—exhumed the usu­al laun­dry list: He would “stop all migrant flights,” do away with the Biden administration’s Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion mobile app, and halt refugee reset­tle­ment. None of these pro­pos­als are new or sur­pris­ing com­ing from the Trump cam­paign.

But one part of the GOP nominee’s week­end post stood out. “[We will] return Kamala’s ille­gal migrants to their home coun­tries (also known as rem­i­gra­tion),” Trump wrote. For­mer White House senior advis­er Stephen Miller repost­ed it, say­ing “THE TRUMP PLAN TO END THE INVASION OF SMALL TOWN AMERICA: REMIGRATION!”

What did Trump and Miller mean by “rem­i­gra­tion”? Even sea­soned immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy ana­lysts had to look the term up:

Trump here uses the phrase “rem­i­gra­tion.” I was unfa­mil­iar with the term, so I googled it.

Wikipedia describes it as a “far-right and Iden­ti­tar­i­an polit­i­cal con­cept” large­ly used to describe the mass depor­ta­tion of non-white immi­grants and their descen­dants from Europe. https://t.co/i8K5yK0sPk pic.twitter.com/vECWjE1DVK
— Aaron Reich­lin-Mel­nick (@ReichlinMelnick) Sep­tem­ber 15, 2024

“Rem­i­gra­tion,” as a 2019 arti­cle about the rise of extreme anti-immi­grant lan­guage in Europe from the Asso­ci­at­ed Press explains, is the “chill­ing notion of return­ing immi­grants to their native lands in what amounts to a soft-style eth­nic cleans­ing.” The word stands in for a pol­i­cy that entails the forced repa­tri­a­tion or mass expul­sion of non–ethnically Euro­pean immi­grants and their descen­dants, regard­less of cit­i­zen­ship. With lit­tle fan­fare, Trump seems to be hint­ing at bring­ing an even more rad­i­cal idea into his immi­gra­tion pro­pos­als (to Miller’s all-capped cheers) that goes fur­ther than the mass depor­ta­tion of the undoc­u­ment­ed pop­u­la­tion.

…

The val­ue-neu­tral term “rem­i­gra­tion” has been employed in ano­dyne ways—for instance, in the con­text of Jews return­ing to Ger­many after World War II. But the word has been co-opt­ed by far-right groups, main­ly in Euro­pean nations, and is syn­ony­mous with these move­ments now.

In France, one-time far-right pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Éric Zem­mour pro­posed the cre­ation of a “rem­i­gra­tion min­istry.” Speak­ing at the Nation­al Con­ser­vatism con­fer­ence in Brus­sels this April, Zem­mour denounced the “Islamiza­tion of the con­ti­nent” as an exis­ten­tial threat to the Euro­pean civ­i­liza­tion.

Most notably, “rem­i­gra­tion” has gained a strong­hold in Ger­many. In 2023, a jury of lin­guists in the coun­try elect­ed rem­i­gra­tion the “non-word” of the year for its “delib­er­ate­ly ide­o­log­i­cal­ly” appro­pri­a­tion as an euphemism for the forced expul­sion of peo­ple to “achieve cul­tur­al hege­mo­ny and eth­nic homo­gene­ity.”

“The seem­ing­ly harm­less term rem­i­gra­tion is used by the eth­nic nation­al­ists of the [Alter­na­tive for Ger­many] AfD [par­ty] and the Iden­ti­tar­i­an Move­ment to con­ceal their true inten­tions: the depor­ta­tion of all peo­ple with sup­pos­ed­ly the wrong skin col­or or ori­gin, even if they are Ger­man cit­i­zens,” one guest juror said.

Last Novem­ber, mem­bers of the far-right AfD, neo-Nazis, and busi­ness­peo­ple report­ed­ly gath­ered in Pots­dam to dis­cuss plans for mass depor­ta­tion, includ­ing of “unas­sim­i­lat­ed cit­i­zens” with non-Ger­man eth­nic back­grounds. The man behind a mas­ter plan to relo­cate asy­lum seek­ers, for­eign­ers with law­ful sta­tus, and some Ger­mans of for­eign ori­gin to a so-called “mod­el state” in North Africa was the Aus­tri­an iden­ti­tar­i­an activist Mar­tin Sell­ner. (Even French far-right leader Marine Le Pen took issue with the secret meet­ing, express­ing “total dis­agree­ment” with the rem­i­gra­tion dis­cus­sions.)

More recent­ly, accord­ing to local reports, an AfD can­di­date in Stuttgart cam­paigned with the slo­gan “Rapid rem­i­gra­tion cre­ates liv­ing space,” a nod to the con­cept of Leben­sraum used by the Nazis to jus­ti­fy the geno­ci­dal expan­sion into East­ern Europe.

Trump’s men­tion of rem­i­gra­tion didn’t go unno­ticed. Sell­ner, who has been barred from enter­ing Ger­many and the Unit­ed King­dom and had his visa-free trav­el per­mit can­celed by US author­i­ties in 2019 over sus­pect­ed links to the Christchurch shoot­er, appeared to cel­e­brate on X the for­mer US president’s “calls for rem­i­gra­tion” as a vic­to­ry.

…

As I’ve writ­ten about here, anti-immi­grant sen­ti­ment has been at the cen­ter of the revival of the right glob­al­ly, includ­ing in the Unit­ed States. At the Nation­al Con­ser­vatism con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton, DC, this sum­mer, speak­ers repeat­ed some of the very beliefs ani­mat­ing the notion of rem­i­gra­tion, from an empha­sis on assim­i­la­tion to the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism as “anti-West­ern,” and calls to “decol­o­nize Amer­i­ca.” One anti-immi­gra­tion hard­lin­er float­ed the idea to send asy­lum seek­ers to Rwan­da.

The use of this kind of lan­guage fits the con­text of an esca­la­tion in dan­ger­ous rhetoric about immi­grants in the Unit­ed States. Late­ly, Trump’s run­ning mate, JD Vance, has played a key role in dis­sem­i­nat­ing false rumors about Hait­ian migrants in Spring­field, Ohio, abduct­ing and eat­ing pets, which Trump repeat­ed on the debate stage. The lies have result­ed in bomb threats and unleashed fear in the com­mu­ni­ty. (They are also seem­ing­ly delib­er­ate. When pressed by CNN’s Dana Bash on why he con­tin­ues to per­pet­u­ate the debunked claims, Vance said, “If I have to cre­ate sto­ries so that the Amer­i­can media actu­al­ly pays atten­tion to the suf­fer­ing of the Amer­i­can peo­ple, then that’s what I’m going to do.”)

If giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty, Trump and his acolytes could turn hate­ful dis­course into expul­sion poli­cies tar­get­ing all immi­grants. Last week, the for­mer pres­i­dent said he would start the mass depor­ta­tion oper­a­tions in Spring­field and Colorado’s Auro­ra, two cities caught in the vor­tex of right-wing anti-immi­grant con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. Most Hait­ian migrants in the Unit­ed States have received legal sta­tus under the Tem­po­rary Pro­tect­ed Sta­tus pro­gram or a Biden admin­is­tra­tion human­i­tar­i­an parole ini­tia­tive and are autho­rized to work.

But that would mean lit­tle to Miller, who has boast­ed of a poten­tial sec­ond Trump presidency’s move to take away people’s cit­i­zen­ship. “We start­ed a new denat­u­ral­iza­tion pro­gram under Trump,” he post­ed on X in Octo­ber of last year. “In 2025, expect it to be tur­bocharged.”

4. “Trump’s Hate” by Robert Reich; Substack; o9/23/2024.

Friends,

“The FBI is inves­ti­gat­ing the source of sus­pi­cious pack­ages sent to elec­tion offices in 21 states. Some elec­tion offices have been evac­u­at­ed; staff are fright­ened.”

Sus­pi­cious pack­ages, bomb threats, death threats, harass­ment, assas­si­na­tion attempts, and vio­lence are con­se­quences of the pol­i­tics of hate, now ema­nat­ing more fero­cious­ly than ever from Trump and his syco­phants.

Many expla­na­tions have been offered for why two assas­si­na­tion attempts have been made on Trump over the last two months. Some blame easy access to assault weapons; I’m sure that’s part of it.

But the real incite­ment to vio­lence in Amer­i­ca is hate­ful­ness — hate speech, fear­some lies, and dan­ger­ous, para­noid rumors — the epi­cen­ter of which is Trump.

Trump blames the inten­si­fy­ing cli­mate of vio­lence on Kamala Har­ris and the Democ­rats: “Their rhetoric is caus­ing me to be shot at,” he said. “Because of this Com­mu­nist Left Rhetoric, the bul­lets are fly­ing, and it will only get worse!” he wrote in a social media post. Trump’s cam­paign has cir­cu­lat­ed a list of so-called “incen­di­ary” remarks Democ­rats have made against Trump and post­ed video clips from top Democ­rats call­ing him a “threat.”

JD Vance says “we can­not tell the Amer­i­can peo­ple that one can­di­date is a fas­cist and if he’s elect­ed it is going to be the end of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy.”

Hel­lo? Call­ing Trump a fas­cist and a threat to democ­ra­cy is not incit­ing vio­lence; it’s telling the truth. Amer­i­can vot­ers need to be made aware, if they aren’t already.

Let’s be clear: The most sig­nif­i­cant cause of the upsurge in polit­i­cal vio­lence — includ­ing the two attempts on Trump’s life — is Trump him­self, along with his close allies Vance and Elon Musk, and oth­er cranks and crack­pots that have come along for the ride.

Trump’s pro­cliv­i­ty for vio­lence was evi­dent when he urged his fol­low­ers to march on the U.S. Capi­tol on Jan­u­ary 6, 2021, know­ing they were car­ry­ing dead­ly weapons.

He has urged sup­port­ers to beat up heck­lers; mocked the near-fatal attack on the hus­band of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic House speak­er; sug­gest­ed that a gen­er­al he deemed dis­loy­al be exe­cut­ed; threat­ened to shoot loot­ers and undoc­u­ment­ed migrants; warned of “poten­tial death & destruc­tion” if indict­ed in his New York crim­i­nal case; made the ludi­crous claim that “Babies are being exe­cut­ed after birth”; and pre­dict­ed a “blood­bath” if he’s not elect­ed in Novem­ber.

Trump has nev­er tak­en respon­si­bil­i­ty for the con­se­quences of his hate­ful­ness.

He still insists he was not respon­si­ble for the attack on the Capi­tol. Yet since the attack, he has sug­gest­ed the mob might have been cor­rect in want­i­ng to hang his vice pres­i­dent. And he has called for those arrest­ed in con­nec­tion with the attack to be released, cast­ing them as “hostages,” “polit­i­cal pris­on­ers,” and “patri­ots,” whom he will par­don if reelect­ed.

His incen­di­ary rhetoric about immi­grants — call­ing them “ver­min,” claim­ing they’re “poi­son­ing the blood” of Amer­i­ca, charg­ing that the Unit­ed States is “under inva­sion” from “thou­sands and thou­sands and thou­sands of ter­ror­ists” — is wors­en­ing the hate and vio­lence.

His base­less claims that Hait­ian immi­grants in Spring­field, Ohio, are eat­ing people’s pets con­tin­ues to gen­er­ate bomb threats and death threats there. Schools and gov­ern­ment offices have been closed. After more than 33 such bomb threats, Ohio’s gov­er­nor has pro­vid­ed state police to con­duct dai­ly sweeps of Spring­field schools.

“We did not have threats” before the claims, said Spring­field May­or Rob Rue, refer­ring to the accu­sa­tions made by Trump and JD Vance. “We need peace. We need help, not hate.”

When Trump was asked last week if he denounced the bomb threats, he said, “I don’t know what hap­pened with the bomb threats” and repeat­ed the lie that Spring­field had been “tak­en over by ille­gal migrants, and that’s a ter­ri­ble thing that hap­pened.” In fact, Hait­ian immi­grants are in Spring­field legal­ly.

The word “hate” has become Trump’s sig­na­ture utter­ance.

Dur­ing the pres­i­den­tial debate, he claimed that Pres­i­dent Biden “hates” Har­ris, that Har­ris “hates” Israel and also hates Arabs. After Tay­lor Swift endorsed Har­ris, he post­ed “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT” in cap­i­tal let­ters.

Hate is the sin­gle most pow­er­ful emo­tion Trump elic­its from his fol­low­ers. Hate fuels his can­di­da­cy. Hate gives Trump’s entire MAGA move­ment its pur­pose and mean­ing.

Trump’s clos­est allies are mag­ni­fy­ing Trump’s hate.

Vance has dou­bled down on the false claim that Haitians are eat­ing pets in Spring­field. He also says he’ll con­tin­ue to describe Hait­ian res­i­dents there as “ille­gal aliens,” although most have been grant­ed tem­po­rary pro­tect­ed legal sta­tus in the U.S. because of Haiti’s cri­sis.

Elon Musk post­ed to his 198 mil­lion fol­low­ers on X, just hours after the alleged assas­si­na­tion attempt on Trump, that “no one is even try­ing” to assas­si­nate Pres­i­dent Joe Biden or Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris. Musk has since delet­ed the post and said it was intend­ed as a joke, but mil­lions saw it — con­firm­ing that Musk is a threat to the nation’s secu­ri­ty.

Mean­while, Musk’s bla­tant refusal to mod­er­ate hate­ful lies on his X plat­form — and his descent into repost­ing many of them — is also con­tribut­ing to the rise of hate in Amer­i­ca and around the world.

Musk’s X blared out lies that caused race riots in the U.K. Musk him­self shared lies that the U.K. was going to open detain­ment camps for riot­ers. He claimed that the ex-first min­is­ter of Scot­land, Humza Yousaf, a Mus­lim, “loathes white peo­ple.”

When Europe’s Dig­i­tal Com­mis­sion­er Thier­ry Bre­ton remind­ed Musk of his legal oblig­a­tion to stop the “ampli­fi­ca­tion of harm­ful con­tent,” he respond­ed by tweet­ing out a meme: “Take a big step back and lit­er­al­ly, fuck your own face!”

Before Musk bought Twit­ter and turned it into X, Twit­ter had sus­pend­ed Trump from the plat­form “due to the risk of fur­ther incite­ment of vio­lence.” Musk has rein­stat­ed Trump.

Hate is a dan­ger­ous cor­ro­sive. It under­mines civil­i­ty, eats away social trust, dis­solves bonds of com­mu­ni­ty and nation.

A week ago Sun­day, even before the sec­ond attempt­ed assas­si­na­tion of Trump, the Lib­er­tar­i­an Par­ty of New Hamp­shire post­ed on X that “Any­one who mur­ders Kamala Har­ris would be an Amer­i­can hero.”

The par­ty delet­ed the post, but two days lat­er it post­ed on X a lengthy fol­low-up refer­ring to his­tor­i­cal instances of vio­lence sup­pos­ed­ly “nec­es­sary to advance or pro­tect free­dom,” includ­ing the assas­si­na­tion of “past tyrants like Abra­ham Lin­coln,” and stat­ing that “it’s good when author­i­tar­i­ans” (that is, “pro­gres­sives, social­ists, and democ­rats”) are made to “feel unsafe or uncom­fort­able.”

Trump, Vance, Musk, New Hampshire’s Lib­er­tar­i­an Par­ty, and the neo-Nazis they’ve attract­ed to Spring­field, Ohio show how infec­tious hate can be as its ven­om spreads through polit­i­cal bot­tom-feed­ers and the swamps of the Inter­net.

Those who wield hate for per­son­al ambi­tion are among the vilest of human beings. . . .

5a. “Mete­o­rol­o­gists Face Harass­ment and Death Threats Amid Hur­ri­cane Dis­in­for­ma­tion” by The New York Times; 10/14/2024.

Weath­er experts say the spi­ral­ing false­hoods, espe­cial­ly claims that the gov­ern­ment is cre­at­ing or con­trol­ling storms, have got­ten out of hand.

A mete­o­rol­o­gist based in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., was accused of help­ing the gov­ern­ment cov­er up manip­u­lat­ing a hur­ri­cane. In Hous­ton, a fore­cast­er was repeat­ed­ly told to “do research” into the weather’s sup­posed nefar­i­ous ori­gins. And a mete­o­rol­o­gist for a tele­vi­sion sta­tion in Lans­ing, Mich., said she had received death threats.

“Mur­der­ing mete­o­rol­o­gists won’t stop hur­ri­canes,” wrote the fore­cast­er in Michi­gan, Katie Nick­o­laou, in a social media post. “I can’t believe I just had to type that.”

Mete­o­rol­o­gists’ role of deliv­er­ing life­sav­ing weath­er fore­casts and explain­ing cli­mate sci­ence some­times makes them tar­gets for harass­ment, and this kind of abuse has been hap­pen­ing for years, weath­er experts said. But amid the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and false­hoods that have spi­raled online after Hur­ri­canes Helene and Mil­ton, they say the attacks and threats direct­ed at them have reached new heights.

“We’re all talk­ing about how much more it’s ramped up,” said Mar­shall Shep­herd, who is the direc­tor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Georgia’s Atmos­pher­ic Sci­ences Pro­gram and a for­mer pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Mete­o­ro­log­i­cal Soci­ety. There has been “a pal­pa­ble dif­fer­ence in tone and aggres­sion toward peo­ple in my field,” he said.

Dr. Shep­herd said the scruti­ny mete­o­rol­o­gists face is sharply ampli­fied dur­ing major weath­er events, and the back-to-back hur­ri­canes, com­bined with the polit­i­cal cli­mate and sec­ond-guess­ing of weath­er experts, may have cre­at­ed con­di­tions ripe for abuse.

Helene made land­fall as a Cat­e­go­ry 4 storm on Florida’s Gulf Coast in late Sep­tem­ber, tear­ing through the South­east and becom­ing the dead­liest storm to hit the U.S. main­land in near­ly two decades. Just two weeks lat­er, Mil­ton rapid­ly strength­ened and struck Flori­da as a Cat­e­go­ry 3 storm, result­ing in at least 14 deaths, seri­ous flood­ing and the destruc­tion of scores of homes.

Emer­gency work­ers have also been tar­get­ed with abuse. In the after­math of Helene, Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency per­son­nel received a sig­nif­i­cant amount of harass­ment, includ­ing false claims that the agency was steal­ing dona­tions and divert­ing dis­as­ter aid to Ukraine. Calls were made for res­i­dents to form mili­tias to defend against those work­ers, who also faced anti­se­mit­ic and misog­y­nis­tic threats.

The agency’s cur­rent admin­is­tra­tor, Deanne Criswell, told ABC in ear­ly Octo­ber that the rhetoric was “demor­al­iz­ing” and had cre­at­ed “fear in our own employ­ees.” She added in anoth­er inter­view that the dis­in­for­ma­tion was ham­per­ing relief efforts.

In a state­ment on Sun­day, FEMA said it had made some “oper­a­tional adjust­ments” for the safe­ty of its staff and storm sur­vivors.

“Dis­as­ter recov­ery cen­ters will con­tin­ue to be open as sched­uled, sur­vivors con­tin­ue to reg­is­ter for assis­tance, and we con­tin­ue to help the peo­ple of North Car­oli­na with their recov­ery,” the state­ment said.

Many of the false­hoods about the hur­ri­canes have been spread by con­ser­v­a­tives and sup­port­ers of for­mer Pres­i­dent Don­ald J. Trump, includ­ing a for­mer Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial and a Repub­li­can con­gress­woman.

Of all the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and dis­in­for­ma­tion that have cir­cu­lat­ed, mete­o­rol­o­gists say one false­hood that has espe­cial­ly got­ten out of hand is the claim that the gov­ern­ment is cre­at­ing or con­trol­ling the storms. Fore­cast­ers have been harassed for either fail­ing to pro­mote these claims or for dis­sem­i­nat­ing accu­rate infor­ma­tion that coun­ters them.

Matthew Cap­puc­ci, a D.C.-based mete­o­rol­o­gist for MyRadar and The Wash­ing­ton Post, said he received hun­dreds of com­ments and dozens of mes­sages dur­ing the storms about how the gov­ern­ment had mod­i­fied the weath­er and that accused him of help­ing cov­er it up. He said that the threats were “exas­per­at­ing” at a time when he was work­ing around the clock to track the hur­ri­canes.

“Part of me want­ed to say, ‘If you don’t trust my warn­ings, then stay in place,’” he said. “‘Just sit there and see what hap­pens.’”

Dr. Shep­herd said that such false claims about out­side forces con­trol­ling the weath­er have always exist­ed, recall­ing how sim­i­lar asser­tions emerged dur­ing Hur­ri­cane Sandy in 2012. “The dif­fer­ence is that they were always out there in ‘fringe-world,’ but now I’ve seen them become almost main­stream,” he said.

Dur­ing an inter­view on CNN as Mil­ton approached Flori­da, a reporter asked Dr. Shep­herd whether the storm was manip­u­lat­ed by peo­ple, refer­ring to a per­son he had just spo­ken to on the street who had made that claim. “It’s stun­ning that the reporter had to ask that ques­tion,” Dr. Shep­herd said.

The abuse direct­ed at mete­o­rol­o­gists can have seri­ous con­se­quences, they said, erod­ing trust in them when they issue crit­i­cal warn­ings, in addi­tion to tak­ing a per­son­al toll on them.

Last sum­mer, Chris Gloninger, the chief mete­o­rol­o­gist of a tele­vi­sion news sta­tion in Iowa, left his job after he received a string of harass­ing mes­sages — includ­ing a death threat — for his on-air dis­cus­sions of cli­mate change. He began incor­po­rat­ing the top­ic into his fore­casts after being stunned by Hur­ri­cane Sandy.

Matt Lan­za, a Hous­ton-based mete­o­rol­o­gist and edi­tor at The Eye­wall, a pub­li­ca­tion cov­er­ing Atlantic storms, said respond­ing to dis­in­for­ma­tion takes time away from explain­ing what peo­ple should expect dur­ing the storm.

Since Helene, he said that the harass­ment he has received has “reached a new stratos­phere,” and he’s con­cerned that the indus­try will start los­ing mete­o­rol­o­gists if it con­tin­ues.

“Noth­ing good comes of this,” he said.

5b. “Wit­ness­es saw an armed group harass­ing Helene aid work­ers in a small Ten­nessee town, sher­iff says” by Kim­ber­lee Krue­si and Sarah Brum­field [Asso­ci­at­ed Press]; Yahoo News; 10/16/2024.  

Wit­ness­es report­ed see­ing a group of armed peo­ple harass­ing hur­ri­cane relief work­ers in a remote Ten­nessee com­mu­ni­ty last week­end, a sher­iff said Wednes­day as a man in North Car­oli­na appeared in court for alleged­ly threat­en­ing aid work­ers in that state.

Although there is no indi­ca­tion that the inci­dents are relat­ed, they come with the Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency fac­ing ram­pant dis­in­for­ma­tion about its response to Hur­ri­cane Helene, which came ashore in Flori­da on Sept. 26 before head­ing north and leav­ing a trail of destruc­tion across six states. Reports of threats to aid work­ers sparked a tem­po­rary shift in how FEMA was oper­at­ing in west­ern North Car­oli­na.

In Ten­nessee, Carter Coun­ty Sher­iff Mike Far­ley said that wit­ness­es report­ed Sat­ur­day that FEMA work­ers were being harassed by a small group of armed peo­ple in the remote com­mu­ni­ty of Elk Mills, not far from the North Car­oli­na bor­der. No arrests were made, but Far­ley said that the peo­ple who showed up were look­ing to cause trou­ble.

“It was a lit­tle hairy sit­u­a­tion, no guns were drawn, but they were armed,” Far­ley told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press.

Far­ley said his depart­ment was set­ting up a 24-hour com­mand post in Elk Mills because of what hap­pened. The region is still large­ly cut off from the rest of the state because Helene dam­aged and destroyed many bridges and roads.

“The com­mu­ni­ty in that area has been great to work with, but this group is try­ing to cre­ate more hate toward the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment,” Far­ley said.

Over the week­end, reports emerged that FEMA work­ers aid­ing the Helene efforts could be tar­get­ed by a mili­tia, but author­i­ties lat­er said they believed that a man who was arrest­ed and accused of mak­ing threats act­ed alone. FEMA has said oper­a­tional changes were made to keep per­son­nel safe “out of an abun­dance of cau­tion,” but work­ers were back in the field Mon­day.

Helene’s arrival three weeks ago in the South­east dec­i­mat­ed remote towns through­out Appalachia and killed at least 246 peo­ple, with a lit­tle over half of the storm-relat­ed deaths in North Car­oli­na. On Tues­day, North Car­oli­na Gov. Roy Coop­er said that a task force that has tak­en calls from con­cerned loved ones through­out the storm’s after­math still has a work­ing list of approx­i­mate­ly 90 peo­ple who haven’t been account­ed for.

William Par­sons, the man accused of mak­ing the threats in North Car­oli­na, said he believed social media reports that FEMA was refus­ing to help peo­ple, but that he real­ized that was­n’t the case when he arrived in hard-hit Lake Lure, a small com­mu­ni­ty about 25 miles (40 kilo­me­ters) south­east of Asheville.

Dur­ing a phone inter­view with WGHP-TV, the 44-year-old Par­sons read aloud a social media post he made that said “We the peo­ple” were look­ing for vol­un­teers on Sat­ur­day to “over­take the FEMA site in Lake Lure and send the prod­ucts up the moun­tains.”

Par­sons, of Bostic, explained that he believed FEMA was with­hold­ing sup­plies and that his post was a call for action, not vio­lence.

“So we were going to go up there and force­ful­ly remove that fence,” he said, but he found a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion than he expect­ed in Lake Lure. He said he wound up vol­un­teer­ing that day in the relief effort, but law enforce­ment offi­cers cast doubt on that claim Wednes­day.

Capt. Jamie Keev­er, of the Ruther­ford Coun­ty Sheriff’s Office, said in an email Wednes­day that a sol­dier called 911 on Sat­ur­day after some­one over­heard Par­sons mak­ing a com­ment that “he was going after FEMA and was not afraid of law enforce­ment or sol­diers.”

Keev­er said Par­sons was arrest­ed at a Lake Lure gro­cery store that was a site for a FEMA bus and a dona­tion site for relief efforts.

“It does not appear Par­sons was involved in any relief efforts at the time and if so why was he armed,” Keev­er said. “I think based off of his state­ment he was pre­pared to take action with his firearms and take the dona­tions.”

Par­sons had an AR-style rifle and two hand­guns, accord­ing to his arrest war­rant.

Sheriff’s offi­cials said Par­sons was charged with “going armed to the ter­ror of the pub­lic,” a mis­de­meanor, and released after post­ing bond. The sheriff’s office said ini­tial reports indi­cat­ed that a “truck­load of mili­tia” was involved in mak­ing the threat, but fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion deter­mined that Par­sons act­ed alone.

Par­sons told WGHP-TV that he had a legal­ly owned gun on his hip and his legal­ly owned rifle and pis­tol in his vehi­cle.

A pub­lic defend­er was appoint­ed for Par­sons dur­ing a court appear­ance Wednes­day, WYFF-TV report­ed. The pub­lic defend­er’s office did­n’t imme­di­ate­ly respond to a call seek­ing com­ment.

6. “Trump’s Clos­ing Argu­ment: Full-Throat­ed Fas­cism” by Robert Reich; Sub­stack; 10/17/2024.

Friends,

Last week, Trump claimed that Kamala Har­ris

“has import­ed an army of ille­gal alien gang mem­bers and migrant crim­i­nals from the dun­geons of the third world … from pris­ons and jails and insane asy­lums and men­tal insti­tu­tions, and she has had them reset­tled beau­ti­ful­ly into your com­mu­ni­ty to prey upon inno­cent Amer­i­can cit­i­zens.”

On Sun­day, Trump told Fox News host Maria Bar­tiro­mo that the biggest prob­lem on Elec­tion Day will “not be the peo­ple who have come in, who are destroy­ing our coun­try,” but, rather

“the peo­ple from with­in — we have some very bad peo­ple, sick peo­ple, rad­i­cal left lunatics. And it should be eas­i­ly han­dled by, if nec­es­sary, by Nation­al Guard, or if real­ly nec­es­sary, by the mil­i­tary.”

On Mon­day, he closed his remarks to a crowd in Penn­syl­va­nia by say­ing his polit­i­cal oppo­nents

“are so bad and frankly, they’re evil. They’re evil. What they’ve done, they’ve weaponized, they’ve weaponized our elec­tions. They’ve done things that nobody thought was even pos­si­ble.”

These are echoes of the Nazism that flour­ished in Europe 90 years ago.

Trump’s clos­ing argu­ment of the 2024 elec­tion is full-throat­ed fas­cism.

Retired Gen­er­al Mark A. Mil­ley, whom Trump picked to serve as chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned that for­mer pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is a “fas­cist to the core” and “the most dan­ger­ous per­son to this coun­try” in new com­ments voic­ing his mount­ing alarm at the prospect of the Repub­li­can nominee’s elec­tion to anoth­er term (accord­ing to a forth­com­ing book by Wash­ing­ton Post asso­ciate edi­tor Bob Wood­ward).

For­mer Repub­li­can con­gress­woman Liz Cheney sees “no rea­son to dis­agree with [Milley’s] assess­ment,” adding that “The peo­ple that stopped [Trump] from his worst desires last time around won’t serve again.”

On Mon­day, Hillary Clin­ton post­ed that Trump’s rhetoric now is “bla­tant­ly fas­cist.”

Trump has always had fas­cist ten­den­cies. But fas­cist thug­gery has now become the core of his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign.

Fas­cism — dif­fer­ent from and more dan­ger­ous than author­i­tar­i­an­ism — has five ele­ments,* all of which are now cen­tral fea­tures of what Trump is offer­ing vot­ers:

1. The rejec­tion of democ­ra­cy, the rule of law, and equal rights under the law, in favor of a strong­man.

“I am your voice.” (Trump, 2016)

“The elec­tion was stolen.” (Trump, 2020)

“I am your war­rior. I am your jus­tice … I am your ret­ri­bu­tion.” (Trump, 2023)

Fas­cist “strong­men” are assumed to be above the law — above any legal or con­sti­tu­tion­al con­straints — because they sup­pos­ed­ly give voice to the peo­ple.

2. The gal­va­niz­ing of pop­u­lar rage against polit­i­cal oppo­nents.

“The peo­ple from with­in [are] bad peo­ple, sick peo­ple, rad­i­cal left lunatics.” (Trump, 2024)

“We will root out the com­mu­nists, Marx­ists, fas­cists and the rad­i­cal left thugs that live like ver­min with­in the con­fines of our coun­try that lie and steal and cheat on elec­tions.” (Trump, 2023)

“Your ene­mies” are “media elites.” (Trump, 2016)

Fas­cists encour­age pub­lic rage at polit­i­cal oppo­nents for being the “ene­my with­in” the coun­try and seek revenge against them. In doing so, fas­cists cre­ate mass par­ties that often encour­age vio­lence.

3. Nation­al­ism based on a dom­i­nant “supe­ri­or” race and his­toric blood­lines.

“Migrants will ‘cut your throat’ … They have ‘bad genes.’” (Trump, 2024)

“Tremen­dous infec­tious dis­ease is pour­ing across the bor­der.” (Trump, 2015)

“Jew­ish peo­ple that vote for a Demo­c­rat [show] great dis­loy­al­ty.” (Trump, 2019)

“Get­ting crit­i­cal race the­o­ry out of our schools is … a mat­ter of nation­al sur­vival.” (Trump, 2022)

Fas­cism man­u­fac­tures fears of groups it con­sid­ers genet­i­cal­ly infe­ri­or — based on race, eth­nic­i­ty, reli­gion, or his­toric blood­lines — and whom it treats as sub­hu­man. Fas­cists wor­ry about dis­loy­al­ty and sab­o­tage com­ing from such groups with­in the nation. These “oth­ers” are scape­goat­ed, exclud­ed, expelled, some­times even killed.

Fas­cists believe schools and uni­ver­si­ties must teach val­ues that cel­e­brate the dom­i­nant race, reli­gion, and blood­line, and not truths that den­i­grate the dom­i­nant group (such as America’s his­to­ry of geno­cide and racism).

4. Extolling brute strength and hero­ic war­riors.

“You’ll nev­er take back our coun­try with weak­ness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong. (Trump, Jan­u­ary 6, 2021)

Fas­cists assert that a nation’s well-being depends on the lead­er­ship of the strongest and elim­i­na­tion of the weak­est. For the fas­cist, war and vio­lence are means of strength­en­ing soci­ety by culling the weak and iden­ti­fy­ing hero­ic war­riors.

5. Dis­dain of women and fear of non-stan­dard gen­der iden­ti­ties or sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.

“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do any­thing. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do any­thing.” (Trump, 2005)

“You have to treat ’em like shit.” (Trump, 1992)

“[I will] pro­mote pos­i­tive edu­ca­tion about the nuclear fam­i­ly … rather than eras­ing the things that make men and women dif­fer­ent.” (Trump, 2023)

Fas­cism is orga­nized around the hier­ar­chy of male dom­i­nance. The fas­cist hero­ic war­rior is male. Women are rel­e­gat­ed to sub­servient roles. In fas­cism, any­thing that chal­lenges the tra­di­tion­al hero­ic male roles of pro­tec­tor, provider, and con­troller of the fam­i­ly is con­sid­ered a threat to the social order.

Fas­cism seeks to elim­i­nate homo­sex­u­al, trans­gen­der, and queer peo­ple because they are thought to chal­lenge or weak­en the hero­ic male war­rior.

These five core ele­ments of fas­cism rein­force each oth­er:

The rejec­tion of democ­ra­cy in favor of a strong­man depends on gal­va­niz­ing pop­u­lar rage against per­ceived ene­mies, out­side the nation and with­in.

This pop­u­lar rage draws on big­otry direct­ed against sup­pos­ed­ly infe­ri­or, sub­hu­man groups, who are assumed to threat­en the “puri­ty” of the dom­i­nant group.

That big­otry is sup­pos­ed­ly jus­ti­fied by social Dar­win­ist sur­vival of the fittest, which is thought to strength­en the race or dom­i­nant group as a whole.

The dom­i­nant group main­tains itself through tests of its strength, as exem­pli­fied by hero­ic war­riors.

Strength, vio­lence, and the hero­ic war­rior are cen­tered on male dom­i­nance and the sub­ju­ga­tion of women.

All of these five core ele­ments find expres­sion in Trumpian fas­cism. All can also be found in the cur­rent Trump Repub­li­can Par­ty.

America’s main­stream media is by now com­fort­able talk­ing and writ­ing about Trump’s author­i­tar­i­an­ism. But in describ­ing what Trump is seek­ing to impose on Amer­i­ca, the media should be using the term “fas­cism.”. . . .

7.

“Let­ters From an Amer­i­can” by Heather Cox Richard­son; Sub­stack; 10/21/2024.

On Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 7, Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Don­ald Trump pre­dict­ed that his plan to deport 15 to 20 mil­lion peo­ple cur­rent­ly liv­ing in the Unit­ed States would be “bloody.” He also promised to pros­e­cute his polit­i­cal oppo­nents, includ­ing, he wrote, lawyers, polit­i­cal oper­a­tives, donors, ille­gal vot­ers, and elec­tion offi­cials. Retired chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Mil­ley told jour­nal­ist Bob Wood­ward that Trump is “a fas­cist to the core…the most dan­ger­ous per­son to this coun­try.”

On Octo­ber 14, Trump told Fox News Chan­nel host Maria Bar­tiro­mo that he thought ene­mies with­in the Unit­ed States were more dan­ger­ous than for­eign adver­saries and that he thought the mil­i­tary should stop those “rad­i­cal left lunatics” on Elec­tion Day. Since then, he has been talk­ing a lot about “the ene­my from with­in,” specif­i­cal­ly nam­ing Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Adam Schiff and for­mer House speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi, both Democ­rats from Cal­i­for­nia, as “bad peo­ple.” Schiff was the chair of the House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee that broke the 2019 sto­ry of Trump’s attempt to extort Volodymyr Zelen­sky that led to Trump’s first impeach­ment.

Trump’s ref­er­ences to the “ene­my from with­in” have become so fre­quent that for­mer White House press sec­re­tary turned polit­i­cal ana­lyst Jen Psa­ki has called them his clos­ing argu­ment for the 2024 elec­tion, and she warned that his con­struc­tion of those who oppose him as “ene­mies” might sweep in vir­tu­al­ly any­one he feels is a threat.

In a sear­ing arti­cle today, polit­i­cal sci­en­tist Rachel Bite­cofer of The Cycle explored exact­ly what that means in a piece titled “What (Real­ly) Hap­pens If Trump Wins?” Bite­cofer out­lined Adolf Hitler’s Jan­u­ary 30, 1933, oath of office, in which he promised Ger­mans he would uphold the con­sti­tu­tion, and the three months he took to dis­man­tle that con­sti­tu­tion.

By March, she notes, the con­cen­tra­tion camp Dachau was open. Its first pris­on­ers were not Jews, but rather Hitler’s promi­nent polit­i­cal oppo­nents. By April, Jews had been purged from the civ­il ser­vice, and oppo­si­tion polit­i­cal par­ties were ille­gal. By May, labor unions were banned and stu­dents were burn­ing banned books. With­in the year, pub­lic crit­i­cism of Hitler and the Nazis was ille­gal, and denounc­ing vio­la­tors paid well for those who did it.

Bite­cofer writes that Trump has promised mass depor­ta­tions “that he can­not deliv­er unless he vio­lates both the Con­sti­tu­tion and fed­er­al law.” To enable that pol­i­cy, Trump will need to dis­man­tle the mer­it-based civ­il ser­vice and put into office those loy­al to him rather than the Con­sti­tu­tion. And then he will purge his polit­i­cal oppo­nents, for once those who would stand against him are purged, Trump can act as he wish­es against immi­grants, for exam­ple, and oth­ers.

Nine­ty years ago, as Amer­i­can reporter Dorothy Thomp­son ate break­fast at her hotel in Berlin on August 25, 1934, a young man from Hitler’s secret police, the Gestapo, “polite­ly hand­ed me a let­ter and request­ed a signed receipt.” She thought noth­ing of it, she said, “But what a sur­prise was in store for me!” The let­ter informed her that, “in light of your numer­ous anti-Ger­man pub­li­ca­tions,” she was being expelled from Ger­many.

She was the first Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist expelled from Nazi Ger­many, and that expul­sion was no small thing. Thomp­son had moved to Lon­don in 1920 to become a for­eign cor­re­spon­dent and began to spend time in Berlin. In 1924 she moved to the city to head the Cen­tral Euro­pean Bureau for the New York Evening Post and the Philadel­phia Pub­lic Ledger. From there, she report­ed on the rise of Adolf Hitler. She left her Berlin post in 1928 to mar­ry nov­el­ist Sin­clair Lewis, and the two set­tled in Ver­mont.

When the cou­ple trav­eled to Swe­den in 1930 for Lewis to accept the Nobel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture, Thomp­son vis­it­ed Ger­many, where she saw the grow­ing strength of the fas­cists and the appar­ent inabil­i­ty of the Nazi’s oppo­nents to come togeth­er to stand against them. She con­tin­ued to vis­it the coun­try in the fol­low­ing years, report­ing on the rise of fas­cism there, and else­where.

In 1931, Thomp­son inter­viewed Hitler and declared that, rather than “the future dic­ta­tor of Ger­many” she had expect­ed to meet, he was a man of “star­tling insignif­i­cance.” She asked him if he would “abol­ish the con­sti­tu­tion of the Ger­man Repub­lic.” He answered: “I will get into pow­er legal­ly” and, once in pow­er, abol­ish the par­lia­ment and the con­sti­tu­tion and “found an author­i­ty-state, from the low­est cell to the high­est instance; every­where there will be respon­si­bil­i­ty and author­i­ty above, dis­ci­pline and obe­di­ence below.” She did not believe he could suc­ceed: “Imag­ine a would-be dic­ta­tor set­ting out to per­suade a sov­er­eign peo­ple to vote away their rights,” she wrote in appar­ent aston­ish­ment.

Thomp­son was back in Berlin in sum­mer 1934 as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Sat­ur­day Evening Post when she received the news that she had 24 hours to leave the coun­try. The oth­er for­eign cor­re­spon­dents in Berlin saw her off at the rail­way sta­tion with “great sheaves of Amer­i­can Beau­ty ros­es.”

Safe­ly in Paris, Thomp­son mused that in her first years in Ger­many she had got­ten to know many of the offi­cials of the Ger­man repub­lic, and that when she had left to mar­ry Lewis, they offered “many expres­sions of friend­ship and grat­i­tude.” But times had changed. “I thought of them sad­ly as my train pulled out,” she said, “car­ry­ing me away from Berlin. Some of those offi­cials still are in the ser­vice of the Ger­man Gov­ern­ment, some of them are émi­grés and some of them are dead.”

Thomp­son came home to a nation where many of the same dark impuls­es were sim­mer­ing, her fame after her expul­sion from Ger­many fol­low­ing her. She lec­tured against fas­cism across the coun­try in 1935, then began a radio pro­gram that reached tens of mil­lions of lis­ten­ers. Hired in 1936 to write a reg­u­lar col­umn three days a week for the New York Her­ald Tri­bune, she became a lead­ing voice in print, too, warn­ing that what was hap­pen­ing in Ger­many could also hap­pen in Amer­i­ca.

In an echo of Lewis’s best­selling 1935 nov­el It Can’t Hap­pen Here, she wrote in a 1937 col­umn: “No peo­ple ever rec­og­nize their dic­ta­tor in advance…. He always rep­re­sents him­self as the instru­ment for express­ing the Incor­po­rat­ed Nation­al Will. When Amer­i­cans think of dic­ta­tors they always think of some for­eign mod­el. If any­one turned up here in a fur hat, boots and a grim look he would be rec­og­nized and shunned…. But when our dic­ta­tor turns up, you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for every­thing tra­di­tion­al­ly Amer­i­can.”

In less than two years, the cir­cu­la­tion of her col­umn had grown to reach between sev­en and eight mil­lion peo­ple. In 1939 a reporter wrote: “She is read, believed and quot­ed by mil­lions of women who used to get their polit­i­cal opin­ions from their hus­bands, who got them from [polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor] Wal­ter Lipp­mann.” The reporter likened Thomp­son to First Lady Eleanor Roo­sevelt, say­ing they were the two “most influ­en­tial women in the U.S.”

When 22,000 Amer­i­can Nazis held a ral­ly at New York City’s Madi­son Square Gar­den in hon­or of Pres­i­dent George Washington’s birth­day on Feb­ru­ary 20, 1939, Thomp­son sat in the front row of the press box, where she laughed loud­ly dur­ing the speech­es and yelled “Bunk!” at the stage, illus­trat­ing that she would not be muz­zled by Nazis. After being escort­ed out, she returned to her seat, where stormtroop­ers sur­round­ed her. She lat­er told a reporter: “I was amazed to see a dupli­cate of what I saw sev­en years ago in Ger­many. Tonight I lis­tened to words tak­en out of the mouth of Adolf Hitler.”

Two years lat­er, In 1941, Thomp­son returned to the issue she had raised when she mused about those gov­ern­ment offi­cials who had gone from thank­ing her to expelling her. In a piece for Harper’s Mag­a­zine titled “Who Goes Nazi?” she wrote: “It is an inter­est­ing and some­what macabre par­lor game to play at a large gath­er­ing of one’s acquain­tances: to spec­u­late who in a show­down would go Nazi,” she wrote. “By now, I think I know. I have gone through the expe­ri­ence many times—in Ger­many, in Aus­tria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democ­ra­cy itself has cre­at­ed, the cer­tain-to-be fel­low-trav­el­ers. And I also know those who nev­er, under any con­ceiv­able cir­cum­stances, would become Nazis.”

Exam­in­ing a num­ber of types of Amer­i­cans, she wrote that the line between democ­ra­cy and fas­cism was not wealth, or edu­ca­tion, or race, or age, or nation­al­i­ty. “Kind, good, hap­py, gen­tle­man­ly, secure peo­ple nev­er go Nazi,” she wrote. They were secure enough to be good natured and open to new ideas, and they believed so com­plete­ly in the promise of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy that they would defend it with their lives, even if they seemed too easy­go­ing to join a strug­gle. “But the frus­trat­ed and humil­i­at­ed intel­lec­tu­al, the rich and scared spec­u­la­tor, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fel­low who has achieved suc­cess by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a cri­sis,” she wrote. “Those who haven’t any­thing in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t—whether it is breed­ing, or hap­pi­ness, or wis­dom, or a code, how­ev­er old-fash­ioned or how­ev­er mod­ern, go Nazi.”

In Paris fol­low­ing her expul­sion from Berlin, Thomp­son told a reporter for the Asso­ci­at­ed Press that the rea­son she had been attacked was the same rea­son that Hitler’s pow­er was grow­ing. “Chan­cel­lor Hitler is no longer a man, he is a reli­gion,” she said.

Sug­gest­ing her expul­sion was because of her old arti­cle dis­parag­ing Hitler, in her own arti­cle about her expul­sion she not­ed: “My offense was to think that Hitler is just an ordi­nary man, after all. That is a crime against the reign­ing cult in Ger­many, which says Mr. Hitler is a Mes­si­ah sent by God to save the Ger­man peo­ple…. To ques­tion this mys­tic mis­sion is so heinous that, if you are a Ger­man, you can be sent to jail. I, for­tu­nate­ly, am an Amer­i­can, so I mere­ly was sent to Paris. Worse things can hap­pen….”

7a. “What (Real­ly) Hap­pens If Trump Wins?” by Rachel Bite­cofer; The Cycle; 10/21/2024.

Jan­u­ary 30th 1933 dawned cold and clear in Berlin as Adolph Hitler took his oath of office and promised Ger­mans he would uphold the con­sti­tu­tion. It would ulti­mate­ly take him less than 30 days to dis­man­tle it.

By March, Dachau con­cen­tra­tion camp was opened with its inau­gur­al pris­on­ers: mem­bers of the Com­mu­nist and Social Demo­c­rat par­ties and oth­er promi­nent Hitler crit­ics. includ­ing some mem­bers of the Reich­stag which Hitler’s allies would join with the Nation­al Social­ists to vol­un­tar­i­ly dis­solve to give Hitler near total pow­er.

From the Holo­caust Ency­clo­pe­dia:

“Nazi per­se­cu­tion of polit­i­cal oppo­nents exact­ed a ter­ri­ble price in human suf­fer­ing. Between 1933 and 1939, the crim­i­nal courts sen­tenced tens of thou­sands of Ger­mans for “polit­i­cal crimes.” If the police were con­fi­dent of a con­vic­tion in court, the pris­on­er was turned over to the jus­tice sys­tem for tri­al. If the police were unsat­is­fied with the out­come of crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings they would take the acquit­ted cit­i­zen or the cit­i­zen who was sen­tenced to a sus­pend­ed sen­tence into pro­tec­tive deten­tion and incar­cer­ate him or her in a con­cen­tra­tion camp.”

Source: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/political-prisoners

Bot­tom of Form

By April, Jews had been purged by from the civ­il ser­vice, barred from prac­tic­ing law in Ger­man courts and oppo­si­tion par­ties were ille­gal.

Here is what liv­ing through this was like for Ger­man Jews:

Aside from the dai­ly vio­lence and the dai­ly threats and men­aces of more per­se­cu­tions to come, which the high­est offi­cials have open­ly said, we can report that the most dan­ger­ous threat of all which over-hangs Ger­man Jews is as fol­lows: (my report is very con­densed and stress­es the sit­u­a­tion of the intel­lec­tu­al work­ers, since my hus­band is a physi­cian).

All Jews exer­cis­ing so-called free voca­tions as lawyers, physi­cians, artists, etc. are placed under what is called “excep­tion rules.” In plain words, that means that Jew­ish lawyers are not allowed to plead cas­es before Ger­man law courts, that Jew­ish doc­tors have been removed from the staffs of hos­pi­tals and coop­er­a­tive health insti­tu­tions more or less vio­lent­ly, and the actors and orches­tra lead­ers are no longer per­mit­ted to act or to lead.

A high­ly orga­nized boy­cott sys­tem is being car­ried out against Jew­ish trades­men of all kinds so that our core­li­gion­ists in Ger­many find it absolute­ly impos­si­ble to earn a liv­ing.

In our coun­try the same move­ment is spread­ing rapid­ly and we can fore­see a coali­tion with the same Ger­man sys­tem in the near future.

I beg of you, dear cousin Sev­er­na, to hand this S.O.S. com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the author­i­ty you think should see it. For the sake of cau­tion I am not men­tion­ing my address in this let­ter. Should you be unable to find it, I am sure your father will have it. I will not write you any per­son­al news for we feel so depressed and down­heart­ed that I could only repeat the theme of this let­ter.

Ever yours affec­tion­ate­ly
Steffy

P.S. When reply­ing, please be very care­ful not to be too explic­it and keep in mind the fact that the let­ter will pos­si­bly be opened and read by offi­cials.

Source: Night Falls, Ger­man Jews React to Hitler’s Rise

By May labor unions were dis­solved and stu­dents across the coun­try were burn­ing banned books.

That said, for aver­age Ger­mans the day that start­ed with Hitler’s swear­ing in end­ed the same way as the day before it and the after it. Jobs were worked, errands were run, din­ners were cooked, peo­ple went to the movies, and life car­ried on with lit­tle inter­rup­tion.

Still, even for gen­tile Ger­mans who bliss­ful­ly ignored pol­i­tics, change was going to come.

With­in the year, reg­u­lar Ger­mans would begin to cur­tail pub­lic crit­i­cism of Hitler and his Nazis, even­tu­al­ly cod­i­fy­ing it with the “Law against Mali­cious Attacks on State and Par­ty” in Decem­ber 1933.

Here is the Law against Mali­cious Attacks on State and Par­ty, which the Nazis set up spe­cial courts to pros­e­cute.

At first they would do so in social set­tings. Lat­er, they would do so in their own homes for fear that their own chil­dren, even­tu­al­ly con­script­ed into either the Hitler Youth or the League for Ger­man Girls, might denounce them.

“Alfons Heck, then a mem­ber of the Hitler Youth, recalled the effects of the law. In 1938, he was liv­ing with his grand­par­ents when his father came to vis­it.

In ret­ro­spect, I think it was the last time my father railed against the regime in front of me. . . . He wasn’t much of a drinker, but when he had a few too many, he had a ten­den­cy to shout down every­one else, not a small feat among the men of my fam­i­ly. “You mark my words, Moth­er,” he yelled, “that god­damned Aus­tri­an house­painter is going to kill us all before he’s through con­quer­ing the world.” And then his bale­ful eye fell on me. “They are going to bury you in this god­damned mon­key suit [his Hitler Youth uni­form], my boy,” he chuck­led, but that was too much for my grand­moth­er.

“Why don’t you leave him alone, Du dum­mer Narr [you stu­pid fool],” she said sharply, “and watch your mouth; you want to end up in the KZ [the Ger­man abbre­vi­a­tion for con­cen­tra­tion camp]?”

He laughed bit­ter­ly and added: “So, it has come that far already, your own son turn­ing you in?” My grand­moth­er told me to leave the kitchen, but the last thing I heard was my father’s sar­cas­tic voice. “Are you peo­ple all blind? This thing with the Jews is just the begin­ning.”

In think­ing about the inci­dent, Heck wrote:

My grand­moth­er had every rea­son to warn him about talk­ing loose­ly, for his clas­si­fi­ca­tion as “polit­i­cal­ly unre­li­able” sure­ly would have sent him to a KZ had any­one report­ed his remarks, even with­in the fam­i­ly. But there were also two of our farmhands at the table, and Hans, the younger of the two, had recent­ly announced his deci­sion to apply for par­ty mem­ber­ship. He had ambi­tions to attend an agri­cul­tur­al school and knew full well [that] par­ty mem­ber­ship would help him get in. Per­haps luck­i­ly for my father, Hans was get­ting pret­ty drunk him­self, although I doubt he would have report­ed my father had he been stone sober. Despite the fact that I lat­er attained a high rank in the Hitler Youth, which required me to be espe­cial­ly vig­i­lant, I nev­er con­sid­ered my father to be dan­ger­ous to our new order. I mere­ly thought him a fool who had long since been left behind.”

Source: https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/spying-family-friends

Denounce­ments became lucra­tive, both in terms of mate­r­i­al ben­e­fits that come from see­ing the orig­i­nal own­er being cart­ed off to a con­cen­tra­tion camp, but also in the even more valu­able social cap­i­tal that came from being use­ful to the Nazis.

A quick glance over the shoul­der to see who might be lis­ten­ing became famous as “the Ger­man look.” The Gestapo was every­where.

Com­pli­ance became very pop­u­lar. Even Ger­mans who didn’t vote for Hitler’s par­ty start­ed to real­ize they had two options in Hitler’s Ger­many. They could either com­ply with the new regime and sign what­ev­er loy­al­ty oath was required of them, or they could be unem­ployed or worse yet, in a con­cen­tra­tion camp.

The choice for thou­sands of police, lawyers, judges, jour­nal­ists, civ­il ser­vants, and oth­er aver­age Ger­mans was clear: starve or go along to get along.

Very few peo­ple chose to risk their own fam­i­lies and for­tunes for the greater good.

If Don­ald Trump returns to pow­er, Amer­i­cans should be pre­pared for cat­a­stroph­ic change.

In addi­tion to his explic­it admis­sions that he prefers dic­ta­tor­ship over democ­ra­cy, Trump has cen­tered his 2024 cam­paign strat­e­gy of mass depor­ta­tions that he can­not deliv­er unless he vio­lates both the Con­sti­tu­tion and fed­er­al law to do so.

He and his sur­ro­gates at Amer­i­ca First and Project 2025 have also made clear that purg­ing the civ­il ser­vice of trained pro­fes­sion­als and replac­ing them with par­ti­san hacks is a Day One goal of the Trump regime. In order to sus­pend or ignore the Con­sti­tu­tion Trump can’t have a mer­it-based civ­il ser­vice. Instead he will need one that is loy­al to him per­son­al­ly, not to the Con­sti­tu­tion.

I have read sev­er­al “what-ifs” about a poten­tial Trump win, all of which seem to assume the Con­sti­tu­tion will be there to reign him in. Indeed, I heard Zoe Lof­gren of the Jan­u­ary 6th com­mit­tee com­plete­ly reject the idea she is vul­ner­a­ble even though Trump has direct­ly threat­ened to come after the committee’s mem­bers because it would be “uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.”

My four year study into total­i­tar­i­an­ism gen­er­al­ly, and fas­cism specif­i­cal­ly, has taught me two valu­able lessons. The first is that the com­mon thread among democ­ra­cies that col­lapse into dic­ta­tor­ship is that no one pan­icked until the threat was already in pow­er and it was too late. That is why I have con­tin­ued to pound my Paul Revere-style “the fas­cists are com­ing!” cam­paign.

The sec­ond thing I learned is that the constitution/law can only pro­tect you if all par­ties agree to adhere to it.

All you need to end a democ­ra­cy is a leader will­ing to sus­pend or end the Con­sti­tu­tion and a sup­port­ing cast large enough to allow him to do it.

Repub­li­cans have both.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/20/politics/trump-enemy-from-within-schiff-pelosi/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/13/politics/trump-military-enemy-from-within-election-day/index.html

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-am-cbf2afd0-6dc1-11ef-b9a6-4f5491137b64.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/10/trump-gop-support-jd-vance-2024/679564/

https://www.historynet.com/encounter-dorothy-thompson-underestimates-hitler/

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/07/woman/

https://time.com/archive/6895071/germany-little-man/

https://time.com/archive/6761718/the-press-cartwheel-girl/

https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/Dorothy-Thompson_Cott.pdf

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/nazi-town-usa-dorothy-thompson-most-famous-female-journalist/

https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/

https://lithub.com/a‑good-journalist-understands-that-fascism-can-happen-anywhere-anytime/

“Oust­ing Mys­ti­fies Dorothy Thomp­son,” New York Times, August 27, 1934, p. 8, at https://www.nytimes.com/1934/08/27/archives/ousting-mystifies-dorothy-thompson-american-writer-says-in-paris.html

Dorothy Thomp­son, “Dorothy Thomp­son Tells of Nazi Ban,” New York Times, August 27, 1934, p. 8, at https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1934/08/27/93763926.html

9a. “The Amer­i­ca of Trump’s Father” by Wayne Mad­sen; The Scoop; 10/08/2019.

The Amer­i­ca of Trump’s Father: an Aspi­ra­tional Fas­cism Reigned in New York

. . . . On May 31, 1927, Fred Trump was arrest­ed by police while par­tic­i­pat­ing in a Ku Klux Klan march in his home bor­ough of Queens in New York. The elder Trump was pub­licly known to be a racist and he refused to rent his apart­ments in Queens and Brook­lyn to African Amer­i­cans. In 1927, there were few orga­ni­za­tions for far-right extrem­ists like Fred Trump to join. One was the KKK, which had its roots in the post-Civ­il War Recon­struc­tion South. Anoth­er was Ital­ian leader Ben­i­to Mussolini’s over­seas “Fascisti,” which was pri­mar­i­ly com­posed of Ital­ian immi­grants to the Unit­ed States. By the ear­ly 1930s, far-right wingers in the Amer­i­can North were fast to embrace the Nazis and Kuhn’s Bund was able and ready to answer the call and begin recruit­ing to its ranks. Fred Trump’s FBI file – which includes the 1927 arrest at the KKK march – appears to be miss­ing his pre-war and imme­di­ate post-war year activ­i­ties. The file does not resume until the 1960s, when the FBI began mon­i­tor­ing the elder Trump’s asso­ci­a­tion with Mafia syn­di­cates in New York.

It is known that “Old Man Trump,” the appel­la­tion giv­en him by folk singer Woody Guthrie in a 1950 song by the same title, con­tin­ued his racist ways after the war. Guthrie, who had the mis­for­tune of rent­ing a unit in the Trump-owned Beach Haven Apart­ments in Brook­lyn, penned the fol­low­ing lyric: “Beach Haven is Trump’s Tow­er. Where no black folks come to roam. No, no, Old Man Trump! Old Beach Haven ain’t my home!” It is also inter­est­ing that after the war, Trump insist­ed that he was of Swedish descent. In fact, Old Man Trump’s father, Fred­er­ick Trump, was an immi­grant from Kall­stadt, Bavaria. It was famed avi­a­tor Charles Lind­bergh, a Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er, who stressed his Swedish descent to defend against charges that he was a sup­port­er of Hitler. How­ev­er, in both cas­es – Old Man Trump and Lind­bergh – there was no ques­tion of their sym­pa­thies to the racial poli­cies of Hitler and the “New Ger­many.”

Old Man Trump’s home and busi­ness­es sat in the midst of Bund activ­i­ties and busi­ness­es that sup­port­ed the Bund. One of the most pop­u­lar news­pa­pers among the Ger­man Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty in New York and New Jer­sey was the Bund’s “The Free Amer­i­can and Deutsch­er Weck­ruf,” pub­lished from 1935 to 1941 in both Eng­lish and Ger­man.

The news­pa­per served to ral­ly the Nazi cause in New York and New Jer­sey. The paper adver­tised New York the­aters like the Tobis, 86th Casi­no, 79th Street, and Bijou that screened pro­pa­gan­da films fresh from the stu­dios of Nazi film­mak­er Leni Riefen­stahl. Nazi Germany’s cul­tur­al inun­da­tion of the Unit­ed States was a per­son­al project of Pro­pa­gan­da Min­is­ter Joseph Goebbels.

In 1933, Trump opened the Trump Super Mar­ket in Queens at the cor­ner of 78th Street and Jamaica Avenue. Since it was the first store of its type in Queens, it was an imme­di­ate suc­cess. Con­sid­er­ing Old Man Trump’s polit­i­cal view­points, it is very like­ly that he pur­chased whole­sale prod­ucts, includ­ing meats from Bund butch­ers and Ger­man baked goods from Bund bak­ers, of which there were sev­er­al in New York City for his store. Sev­er­al Ger­man Amer­i­can-owned area busi­ness­es, includ­ing Maier’s Pork Store and Ehmer’s Pork Store, both on “Dritte Avenue” (Third Avenue) in Man­hat­tan, and dairies like Karsten’s Milch of The Bronx and Asto­ria in Queens and Erb’s Ger­man Sweet Shop in Man­hat­tan, kept the adver­tis­ing-depen­dent “The Free Amer­i­can and Deutsch­er Weck­ruf” flush with ad rev­enue. Even large cor­po­ra­tions like Philco, a man­u­fac­tur­er of radios, Tex­a­co, Olympia Type­writer, and Sim­mons Mat­tress Com­pa­ny adver­tised in the Nazi news­pa­per. Nazi pro­pa­gan­da in Ger­man was broad­cast on Tues­days, Thurs­days, and Sat­ur­days from the stu­dios of WBNX, first locat­ed in The Bronx and then moved to New Jer­sey.

Old Man Trump rent­ed thou­sands of his apart­ment units in Jamaica Estates in Queens and Brook­lyn to white Amer­i­cans only. Bund sup­port­ers cheered Hitler for refus­ing to shake the hand of black Amer­i­can Olympian Jesse Owens after he won four gold medals in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Con­sid­er­ing Old Man Trump’s pre­vi­ous mem­ber­ship in the KKK, he was undoubt­ed­ly cheer­ing Hitler’s snub of Owens, along with the Bund in New York. Old Man Trump also sus­pi­cious­ly vol­un­teered, after dodg­ing the World War II draft, to con­struct Navy bar­racks and gar­den apart­ments in at least three high­ly sen­si­tive Navy ports in Chester, Penn­syl­va­nia; and Nor­folk and New­port News, Vir­ginia. All three ports saw thou­sands of Amer­i­can and Cana­di­an troops embarked for com­bat in North Africa and Europe. Some of these troop ships fell prey to Ger­man U‑boats, which received intel­li­gence on the Allied ship move­ments from Nazi agents in the very same port areas where Old Man Trump so “gen­er­ous­ly” bid on con­struc­tion con­tracts with the Navy. . . .

. . . .  Just as oth­er Nazis, includ­ing Adolf Eich­mann in Argenti­na, tried to assume benev­o­lent post-war pro­files – even liv­ing among expa­tri­ate Ger­man Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties – Old Man Trump became a close friend of Binyamin Netanyahu and oth­er top Israelis and New York Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers. . . .

9b. In our series about the Covid-19 out­break and its mul­ti-dimen­sion­al man­i­fes­ta­tions, we have termed it a “bio-psy-op.” An aca­d­e­m­ic paper pro­duced by a Fed­er­al Reserve econ­o­mist posits the socio-polit­i­cal effects of the 1918 flu pan­dem­ic as a fac­tor con­tribut­ing to the rise of Nazism in Ger­many.

Cit­ed by numer­ous pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing The New York Times, Bloomberg News and Politi­co, the study under­scores some of our asser­tions con­cern­ing the fas­cist and extreme right-wing ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the pan­dem­ic.

This time­ly and very impor­tant study will be ref­er­enced in future dis­cus­sion of the psy­cho­log­i­cal, soci­o­log­i­cal and socio-eco­nom­ic aspects of the Covid-19 out­break.

Kris­t­ian Blick­le’s analy­sis under­scores points we have made about the demo­graph­ic, eco­nom­ic and psy­cho­log­i­cal dev­as­ta­tion the pan­dem­ic is hav­ing on the body politic.

“A new aca­d­e­m­ic paper pro­duced by the Fed­er­al Reserve Bank of New York con­cludes that deaths caused by the 1918 influen­za pan­dem­ic “pro­found­ly shaped Ger­man soci­ety” in sub­se­quent years and con­tributed to the strength­en­ing of the Nazi Par­ty.

“The paper, pub­lished this month and authored by New York Fed econ­o­mist Kris­t­ian Blick­le, exam­ined munic­i­pal spend­ing lev­els and vot­er extrem­ism in Ger­many from the time of the ini­tial influen­za out­break until 1933, and shows that ‘areas which expe­ri­enced a greater rel­a­tive pop­u­la­tion decline’ due to the pan­dem­ic spent ‘less, per capi­ta, on their inhab­i­tants in the fol­low­ing decade.’ . . .

“. . . . The paper’s find­ings are like­ly due to ‘changes in soci­etal pref­er­ences’ fol­low­ing the 1918 out­break, Blick­le argues — sug­gest­ing the influen­za pandemic’s dis­pro­por­tion­ate toll on young peo­ple may have ‘spurred resent­ment of for­eign­ers among the sur­vivors’ and dri­ven vot­ers to par­ties ‘whose plat­form matched such sen­ti­ments.’ The con­clu­sions come amid fears that the cur­rent coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic will shake up inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics and spur extrem­ism around the world, as offi­cials and pub­lic health experts look to pre­vi­ous out­breaks for guid­ance on how to nav­i­gate the months and years to come. . . .”

“Fed Study Ties 1918 Flu Pan­dem­ic to Nazi Par­ty Gains” by Quint Forgey; Politi­co; 5/05/2020.

A new aca­d­e­m­ic paper pro­duced by the Fed­er­al Reserve Bank of New York con­cludes that deaths caused by the 1918 influen­za pan­dem­ic “pro­found­ly shaped Ger­man soci­ety” in sub­se­quent years and con­tributed to the strength­en­ing of the Nazi Par­ty.

The paper, pub­lished this month and authored by New York Fed econ­o­mist Kris­t­ian Blick­le, exam­ined munic­i­pal spend­ing lev­els and vot­er extrem­ism in Ger­many from the time of the ini­tial influen­za out­break until 1933, and shows that “areas which expe­ri­enced a greater rel­a­tive pop­u­la­tion decline” due to the pan­dem­ic spent “less, per capi­ta, on their inhab­i­tants in the fol­low­ing decade.”

The paper also shows that “influen­za deaths of 1918 are cor­re­lat­ed with an increase in the share of votes won by right-wing extrem­ists, such as the Nation­al Social­ist Work­ers Par­ty” in Germany’s 1932 and 1933 elec­tions.

Togeth­er, the low­er spend­ing and flu-relat­ed deaths “had a strong effect on the share of votes won by extrem­ists, specif­i­cal­ly the extrem­ist nation­al social­ist par­ty” — the Nazis — the paper posits. “This result is stronger for right-wing extrem­ists, and large­ly non-exis­tent for left-wing extrem­ists.”

Despite becom­ing pop­u­lar­ly known as the Span­ish flu, the influen­za pan­dem­ic like­ly orig­i­nat­ed in the Unit­ed States at a Kansas mil­i­tary base, even­tu­al­ly infect­ing about one-third of the glob­al pop­u­la­tion and killing at least 50 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide, accord­ing to the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion.

Ger­many expe­ri­enced rough­ly 287,000 influen­za deaths between 1918 and 1920, Blick­le writes.

The paper’s find­ings are like­ly due to “changes in soci­etal pref­er­ences” fol­low­ing the 1918 out­break, Blick­le argues — sug­gest­ing the influen­za pandemic’s dis­pro­por­tion­ate toll on young peo­ple may have “spurred resent­ment of for­eign­ers among the sur­vivors” and dri­ven vot­ers to par­ties “whose plat­form matched such sen­ti­ments.”

The con­clu­sions come amid fears that the cur­rent coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic will shake up inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics and spur extrem­ism around the world, as offi­cials and pub­lic health experts look to pre­vi­ous out­breaks for guid­ance on how to nav­i­gate the months and years to come.

9c.  “Gift­ed Lives: What Hap­pens when Gift­ed Chil­dren Grow Up” by Joan Free­man; Google Books.

“ . . . . Bog­dan Daszak had lived a life of extra­or­di­nary brav­ery and deter­mi­na­tion. He had man­aged the extra­or­di­nary feat of reach­ing Eng­land from the Ukraine in World War II. When he was about 16, in March 1944, the Ger­mans had occu­pied his coun­try. They cap­tured him by going round the vil­lages and threat­en­ing to shoot the fam­i­lies unless the sons joined the Ger­man army. At that time, the boys hat­ed the Rus­sians even more, and so were half-will­ing to join the Ger­mans who were fight­ing the Rus­sians. But since the Rus­sians had become Allies of the British, the boys became ene­mies of the British. Many who had been bad­ly treat­ed, ran off and escaped. Bog­dan, though, was an edu­cat­ed town boy, not a peas­ant like the oth­ers, so he was used for paper­work in a camp.

One day, he too escaped dur­ing a hail of heavy fight­ing, flee­ing into near­by moun­tains. . . .”

9d. Peter Daszak on Twit­ter

10. Next, we present an encap­su­lat­ed pre­sen­ta­tion of the evi­dence that Covid was pro­duced by the U.S. This is from FTR#1256:

The key arti­cles from this analy­sis:

• “Bats, Gene Edit­ing and Bioweapons: Recent DARPA Exper­i­ments Raise Con­cerns Amid Coro­n­avirus Out­break” by Whit­ney Webb; The Last Amer­i­can Vagabond; 1/30/2020.
• “Peter Daszak’s Eco­Health Alliance Has Hid­den Almost $40 Mil­lion In Pen­ta­gon Fund­ing And Mil­i­ta­rized Pan­dem­ic Sci­ence” by Sam Hus­sei­ni; Inde­pen­dent Sci­ence News; 12/16/2020.
• “The Lab-Leak The­o­ry: Inside the Fight to Uncov­er Covid-19’s Ori­gins” by Kather­ine Eban; Van­i­ty Fair; 6/3/2021.
• “Munich Re & In-Q-Tel Select Metabio­ta to Gain Deep­er Insights into Epi­dem­ic Risk and Glob­al Pre­pared­ness for Infec­tious Dis­eases;” org; 8/22/2017.
• “EXCLUSIVE: Hunter Biden DID help secure mil­lions in fund­ing for US con­trac­tor in Ukraine spe­cial­iz­ing in dead­ly pathogen research, lap­top emails reveal, rais­ing more ques­tions about the dis­graced son of then vice pres­i­dent” by JOSH BOSWELL; Dai­ly Mail [UK]; 3/25/2022.
• “We Can Pro­tect the Econ­o­my From Pan­demics. Why Didn’t We?” by Evan Ratliff; Wired; 06/16/2020.
• “A call for an inde­pen­dent inquiry into the ori­gin of the SARS-CoV­‑2 virus” by Neil L. Har­ri­son and Jef­frey D. Sachs; PNAS [Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences]; 05/19/2022

Con­tin­u­ing analy­sis of a fright­en­ing con­sor­tium of insti­tu­tions appar­ent­ly linked to the delib­er­ate gen­e­sis of Covid-19, this pro­gram reit­er­ates ele­ments of analy­sis from FTR#‘s 1254 & 1255, pre­sent­ing the infor­ma­tion in a dif­fer­ent sequence for increased under­stand­ing and reten­tion.

Those insti­tu­tions are: Eco­Health Alliance, Metabio­ta, In-Q-Tel and Munich Rein­sur­ance.

Tak­en togeth­er, a num­ber of points of infor­ma­tion high­light­ed here go a long way to prov­ing the legal con­cept of “con­scious­ness of guilt,” the guilt being intent to cre­ate the pan­dem­ic and knowl­edge that such a thing was done.

(The infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed here should be tak­en in con­junc­tion with infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in–among oth­er pro­grams–FTR#‘s 1251, 1252 and 1253. In turn, those pro­grams are devel­op­ments of doc­u­men­ta­tion pre­sent­ed in our many pro­grams about Covid-19.)

Of para­mount impor­tance in eval­u­at­ing the mate­r­i­al here and in the oth­er broad­casts about Covid-19 is the devel­op­ment of syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy and the man­ner in which it enables bio­log­i­cal war­fare: “ . . . Advances in the area mean that sci­en­tists now have the capa­bil­i­ty to recre­ate dan­ger­ous virus­es from scratch; make harm­ful bac­te­ria more dead­ly; and mod­i­fy com­mon microbes so that they churn out lethal tox­ins once they enter the body. . . In the report, the sci­en­tists describe how syn­thet­ic biol­o­gy, which gives researchers pre­ci­sion tools to manip­u­late liv­ing organ­isms, ‘enhances and expands’ oppor­tu­ni­ties to cre­ate bioweapons. . . . Today, the genet­ic code of almost any mam­malian virus can be found online and syn­the­sised. ‘The tech­nol­o­gy to do this is avail­able now,’ said [Michael] Impe­ri­ale. “It requires some exper­tise, but it’s some­thing that’s rel­a­tive­ly easy to do, and that is why it tops the list. . . .”

Going a long way toward prov­ing con­scious­ness of guilt are:

1. The clas­si­fi­ca­tion of infor­ma­tion about the nature of the bio­log­i­cal agents involved with the CDC’s clo­sure of the Unit­ed States Army’s Med­ical Insti­tute of Infec­tious Dis­ease in ear­ly August of 2019, on the eve of the pan­dem­ic.
2. The behav­ior of Peter Daszak and col­leagues in “gam­ing” the Lancet state­ment on the “nat­ur­al” ori­gin of the coro­n­avirus (Dasza­k’s Eco­Health Alliance–funded and advised by the nation­al secu­ri­ty establishment–is impli­cat­ed in the cre­ation of the SARS COV‑2.)
3. The reac­tion of gov­ern­ment offi­cials to Trump admin­is­tra­tion fig­ures into the ori­gins of the virus, advis­ing would be inves­ti­ga­tors that such inquiries would open a “can of worms,” or “a Pan­do­ra’s Box” because it would should light on U.S. fund­ing of the projects.
4. Metabiota–partnered with Eco­Health Alliance–was net­worked with In-Q-Tel (the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty’s ven­ture cap­i­tal arm) and Munich Re to pro­vide pan­dem­ic insur­ance. Their 2018 busi­ness mod­el direct­ly fore­shad­owed the pan­dem­ic. In 2018, as well, Eco­Health Alliance pro­posed a “nov­el coro­n­avirus” for syn­the­sis by DARPA. Although there is no evi­dence that DARPA syn­the­sized the virus, the U.S. did syn­the­size close­ly relat­ed virus­es. With the genome of that nov­el virus hav­ing been pub­lished, it may well have been syn­the­sized either by DARPA or some­one else, giv­en the con­tem­po­rary tech­nol­o­gy. Again, this, also was in 2018.
5. Many aspects of the SARS COV‑2 virus, includ­ing its curi­ous FCS site and insti­tu­tion­al­ized obfus­ca­tion of aspects of the pan­dem­ic it caused sug­gest delib­er­ate cov­er-up. Why would the NIH redact 290 pages of a doc­u­ment request­ed by an FOIA suit!! Why were sequences of bat coro­n­avirus genomes removed from pub­lic view.
6. Why did Lawrence Tabak–the act­ing head of the NIH–delete viral sequences from a nation­al data­base? “ . . . . Act­ing NIH Direc­tor Lawrence Tabak tes­ti­fied before Con­gress that sev­er­al such sequences in a US data­base were removed from pub­lic view. . . .”

It’s remark­able just how damn­ing our begin­ning arti­cle is.

Co-author of the let­ter to the Pro­ceed­ings of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences and for­mer chair­man of the Lancet’s com­mis­sion on the ori­gins of the pan­dem­ic, Sachs is some­one in a posi­tion to bring real pub­lic atten­tion to this top­ic, if he choos­es to do so. The authors make a com­pelling case for an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion, and who would be in a bet­ter posi­tion than Sachs to make this case pub­licly after he dis­band­ed his Lancet Com­mis­sion over these kinds of con­cerns? That’s all part of what is going to make this a sto­ry to watch.

This arti­cle has some remark­able points of infor­ma­tion to be con­sid­ered and it is alto­geth­er wel­come and impor­tant that some­one of Dr. Sachs’ high pro­fes­sion­al pro­file and pres­tige has come for­ward:

• “ . . . . The NIH could say more about the pos­si­ble role of its grantees in the emer­gence of SARS-CoV­‑2, yet the agency has failed to reveal to the pub­lic the pos­si­bil­i­ty that SARS-CoV­‑2 emerged from a research-asso­ci­at­ed event, even though sev­er­al researchers raised that con­cern on Feb­ru­ary 1, 2020, in a phone con­ver­sa­tion that was doc­u­ment­ed by email (5). Those emails were released to the pub­lic only through FOIA, and they sug­gest that the NIH lead­er­ship took an ear­ly and active role in pro­mot­ing the ‘zoonot­ic hypoth­e­sis’ and the rejec­tion of the lab­o­ra­to­ry-asso­ci­at­ed hypoth­e­sis. . . .”
• “ . . . . The NIH has resist­ed the release of impor­tant evi­dence, such as the grant pro­pos­als and project reports of EHA, and has con­tin­ued to redact mate­ri­als released under FOIA, includ­ing a remark­able 290-page redac­tion in a recent FOIA release. . . .”
• “ . . . . Act­ing NIH Direc­tor Lawrence Tabak tes­ti­fied before Con­gress that sev­er­al such sequences in a US data­base were removed from pub­lic view. . . .”
• “ . . . . Spe­cial con­cerns sur­round the pres­ence of an unusu­al furin cleav­age site (FCS) in SARS-CoV­‑2 (10) that aug­ments the path­o­genic­i­ty and trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty of the virus rel­a­tive to relat­ed virus­es like SARS-CoV­‑1 (11, 12). SARS-CoV­‑2 is, to date, the only iden­ti­fied mem­ber of the sub­genus sar­be­covirus that con­tains an FCS, although these are present in oth­er coro­n­avirus­es (13, 14). A por­tion of the sequence of the spike pro­tein of some of these virus­es is illus­trat­ed in the align­ment shown in Fig. 1, illus­trat­ing the unusu­al nature of the FCS and its appar­ent inser­tion in SARS-CoV­‑2 (15).From the first weeks after the genome sequence of SARS-CoV­‑2 became avail­able, researchers have com­ment­ed on the unex­pect­ed pres­ence of the FCS with­in SARS-CoV‑2—the impli­ca­tion being that SARS-CoV­‑2 might be a prod­uct of lab­o­ra­to­ry manip­u­la­tion. In a review piece argu­ing against this pos­si­bil­i­ty, it was assert­ed that the amino acid sequence of the FCS in SARS-CoV­‑2 is an unusu­al, non­stan­dard sequence for an FCS and that nobody in a lab­o­ra­to­ry would design such a nov­el FCS (13). . . .”
• “ . . . . In fact, the asser­tion that the FCS in SARS-CoV­‑2 has an unusu­al, non­stan­dard amino acid sequence is false. . . . (The one non-human non-great ape species with the same sequence is Pip­istrel­lus kuh­lii, a bat species found in Europe and West­ern Asia; oth­er bat species, includ­ing Rhi­nolo­phus fer­rume­quinem, have a dif­fer­ent FCS sequence in ENaC a [RKAR’SAAS]). . . .”
• “ . . . . We do know that the inser­tion of such FCS sequences into SARS-like virus­es was a spe­cif­ic goal of work pro­posed by the EHA-WIV-UNC part­ner­ship with­in a 2018 grant pro­pos­al (“DEFUSE”) that was sub­mit­ted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) (25).The 2018 pro­pos­al to DARPA was not fund­ed, but we do not know whether some of the pro­posed work was sub­se­quent­ly car­ried out in 2018 or 2019, per­haps using anoth­er source of fund­ing. . . .”
• “ . . . . We also know that that this research team would be famil­iar with sev­er­al pre­vi­ous exper­i­ments involv­ing the suc­cess­ful inser­tion of an FCS sequence into SARS-CoV­‑1 (26) and oth­er coro­n­avirus­es, and they had a lot of expe­ri­ence in con­struc­tion of chimeric SARS-like virus­es (27–29). In addi­tion, the research team would also have some famil­iar­i­ty with the FCS sequence and the FCS-depen­dent acti­va­tion mech­a­nism of human ENaC (19), which was exten­sive­ly char­ac­ter­ized at UNC (17, 18).For a research team assess­ing the pan­dem­ic poten­tial of SARS-relat­ed coro­n­avirus­es, the FCS of human ENaC—an FCS known to be effi­cient­ly cleaved by host furin present in the tar­get loca­tion (epithe­lial cells) of an impor­tant tar­get organ (lung), of the tar­get organ­ism (human)—might be a ratio­nal, if not obvi­ous, choice of FCS to intro­duce into a virus to alter its infec­tiv­i­ty, in line with oth­er work per­formed pre­vi­ous­ly. . . .”
• “ . . . . Of course, the mol­e­c­u­lar mim­ic­ry of ENaC with­in the SARS-CoV­‑2 spike pro­tein might be a mere coin­ci­dence, although one with a very low prob­a­bil­i­ty. The exact FCS sequence present in SARS-CoV­‑2 has recent­ly been intro­duced into the spike pro­tein of SARS-CoV­‑1 in the lab­o­ra­to­ry, in an ele­gant series of exper­i­ments (12, 30), with pre­dictable con­se­quences in terms of enhanced viral trans­mis­si­bil­i­ty and path­o­genic­i­ty. Obvi­ous­ly, the cre­ation of such SARS‑1/2 “chimeras” is an area of some con­cern for those respon­si­ble for present and future reg­u­la­tion of this area of biol­o­gy. . . .”
• “ . . . . Infor­ma­tion now held by the research team head­ed by EHA (7), as well as the com­mu­ni­ca­tions of that research team with US research fund­ing agen­cies, includ­ing NIH, USAID, DARPA, DTRA, and the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, could shed con­sid­er­able light on the exper­i­ments under­tak­en by the US-fund­ed research team and on the pos­si­ble rela­tion­ship, if any, between those exper­i­ments and the emer­gence of SARS-CoV­‑2. . . .”

Recap­ping infor­ma­tion from our “Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy” series, we note that Trump offi­cials who were look­ing to tout the Chi­nese “lab-leak” hypoth­e­sis were told to avoid the top­ic, lest it cre­ate prob­lems for the U.S.

Note, as well, that both Peter Daszak and Ralph Bar­ic, asso­ci­at­ed with Eco­Health Alliance, were engaged in dubi­ous maneu­ver­ing to eclipse atten­tion on the pos­si­ble U.S. spon­sor­ship of the SARS COV‑2 gain-of-func­tion manip­u­la­tions.

1. ” . . . . It soon emerged, based on emails obtained by a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion group called U.S. Right to Know, that Daszak had not only signed but orga­nized the influ­en­tial Lancet state­ment, with the inten­tion of con­ceal­ing his role and cre­at­ing the impres­sion of sci­en­tif­ic una­nim­i­ty. . . .”
2. ” . . . . In one State Depart­ment meet­ing, offi­cials seek­ing to demand trans­paren­cy from the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment say they were explic­it­ly told by col­leagues not to explore the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virology’s gain-of-func­tion research, because it would bring unwel­come atten­tion to U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ing of it. . . . because it would ‘open a can of worms’ if it con­tin­ued.’. . .”
3. ” . . . . As the group probed the lab-leak sce­nario, among oth­er pos­si­bil­i­ties, its mem­bers were repeat­ed­ly advised not to open a ‘Pandora’s box,’ said four for­mer State Depart­ment offi­cials inter­viewed by Van­i­ty Fair. The admo­ni­tions ‘smelled like a cov­er-up,’ said Thomas DiNan­no . . . .”

Next, the pro­gram reviews an excerpt­ing of a Wired Mag­a­zine arti­cle about the Metabiota/Munich Rein­sur­ance project.

Bear in mind that In-Q-Tel, the ven­ture cap­i­tal arm of the CIA and the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, is greas­ing the wheels of this project with financ­ing.

We high­light two key points of infor­ma­tion:

• The busi­ness suc­cess of the pan­dem­ic insur­ance would nec­es­sar­i­ly incor­po­rate analy­sis of the “fear fac­tor” of poten­tial pan­dem­ic pathogens: ” . . . . As sophis­ti­cat­ed as Metabiota’s sys­tem was, how­ev­er, it would need to be even more refined to incor­po­rate into an insur­ance pol­i­cy. The mod­el would need to cap­ture some­thing much more dif­fi­cult to quan­ti­fy than his­tor­i­cal deaths and med­ical stock­piles: fear. The eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of a scourge, the his­tor­i­cal data showed, were as much a result of society’s response as they were to the virus itself. . . . The Sen­ti­ment Index was built to be, as Oppen­heim put it, ‘a cat­a­log of dread.’ For any giv­en pathogen, it could spit out a score from 0 to 100 accord­ing to how fright­en­ing the pub­lic would find it. . . . Mad­hav and her team, along with Wolfe and Oppen­heim, also researched the broad­er eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of dis­ease out­breaks, mea­sured in the ‘cost per death pre­vent­ed’ incurred by soci­etal inter­ven­tions. ‘Mea­sures that decreased per­son-to-per­son con­tact, includ­ing social dis­tanc­ing, quar­an­tine, and school clo­sures, had the great­est cost per death pre­vent­ed, most like­ly because of the amount of eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tion caused by those mea­sures,’ they wrote in a 2018 paper. . . .”
• More sin­is­ter, still, is the fact that Metabio­ta had ana­lyzed the sce­nario of a nov­el coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic two years before it hap­pened. This appears to be the 2018 paper referred to above. Do not fail to note that, at the time that Metabio­ta was run­ning this sce­nario, they were part­nered with Eco­Health Alliance, which was using Pen­ta­gon and USAID mon­ey to research and per­form gain-of-func­tion on these types of coro­n­avirus­es!! Do not fail to lose sight of the fact that Eco­Health Alliance has David Franz as a pri­ma­ry advi­sor. Franz was the for­mer com­man­der of the USAMRIID, which has a decades-long part­ner­ship with what Mr. Emory calls “The Oswald Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy.” ” . . . . As the human and eco­nom­ic dev­as­ta­tion mul­ti­plied in tan­dem across the globe, Metabiota’s employ­ees sud­den­ly found them­selves liv­ing inside their own model’s pro­jec­tions. Just two years ear­li­er, the com­pa­ny had run a large set of sce­nar­ios fore­cast­ing the con­se­quences of a nov­el coro­n­avirus spread­ing around the globe. . . .”

11. We con­clude with Dr. Jef­frey Sachs’ state­ment about Covid, since delet­ed from X, nee Twit­ter.