Fascism, Censorship and Genocide: The New American Dream
When the myth of American and Western morality has no place left to hide
Despite the fact that many of my American friends seem quite content to ignore, deny or even support the actions of the Biden Administration and blame all the world’s evils on Trump - as if the United States had suddenly been snatched from the soft palm of heaven and tossed kicking and screaming into the fiery gates of hell - the rampant criminality, mass-murder, dehumanization and the dramatic and fascistic escalation of censorship and militarisation that was further normalised under Joe Biden continues to run rampant across the West. Trump will benefit from this and, as he does with all his business ventures, will gleefully use whatever tools and modes of behavior he can to get what he wants. He didn’t create this, but - like all presidents before him - he will further normalize aggressive, cruel and unjustifiable behavior. But if we forget or deny that it was politicians like Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush and the Clintons who helped pave the way and lay the groundwork for all of this, then we resign ourselves to the continuation of brutal, violent lawlessness, racism and suppression.
“Everything was put in place by the Democrats to begin with,” explains journalist, author and former New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief, Chris Hedges in his interview with Marc Lamont Hill for Al Jazeera. “The party of censorship is the Democratic Party. The Party of war is the Democratic Party. The Party of mass surveillance is the Democratic party. The party that turbocharged neoliberalism, whether it was NAFTA, the destruction of the welfare system, the deregulation of the FCC, the tearing down the firewalls between investment and commercial banks - Glass–Steagall - is the Democratic Party. All [Trump] has to do is flip a switch and he has an authoritarian State including, of course, all the executive orders. Those pre-date Trump.”
From brave and responsible journalists being tossed out of Antony Blinken’s final State Department briefing (outlined in my previous post) under the Biden Administration, to the arrest this week of Electronic Intifada journalist Ali Abunimah by Swiss authorities for the crime of journalism, the countries that proudly proclaim themselves Democracies and bastions of free speech, have taken the next leap forward into fascism. This is not because Donald Trump is in office. This is because the radical and cannabilistic ideology of corporate neoliberalism as embraced by the United States’ thuggish two-party duopoly has increased its goals, mission and means in a desperate attempt to strangle dissent in any form.
“Jimmy Carter began it, Reagan picked it up,” continues Hedges, “but the most seismic damage was done under Clinton, perpetuated by Bush, Obama, and everyone else… The Clinton Administration was pivotable where the Democratic party transformed itself into the Republican Party, and the Republican Party was pushed so far to the right it became insane and cultish.”
No longer able to hide comfortably behind the myth of freedom and democracy as they engage directly in a live-streamed genocide, the United States and the West have all but tossed aside the facade they hid behind for decades. Trump, for all intents and purposes, doesn’t dramatically alter the direction of the U.S. or the West, he simply puts a more honest face on it. Trump IS America and the West. Make no mistake. If you were fooled by the Liberal burlesque of Democratic elites, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris or even AOC, then that’s something you must contend with. No narrative of goodness or lesser evil will stop the snowball effect of fascism, authoritarianism and empiric collapse that our governmental system is currently in the throes of. It is a runaway train whose passengers are more concerned with what’s on the dinner menu or polite social discourse than with the collapsed bridge up ahead. No amount of denial or distraction will change this impending reality.
Laws are being altered, definitions of hate-speech, terrorism and anti-semitism are being rewritten daily to accommodate and morally justify genocide, regime change and the criminalisation of journalism. Our universities, once thought of as bastions of free-speech, have become militarised wastelands of violent political silencing. Students and journalists who dare to challenge, ask, confront, report or protest are systematically suppressed and outlawed. This was done under Biden and Democrats. Again, not to suggest that Trump and Republicans won’t further this anti-Democratic horror, they absolutely will, but they are not the ones who normalised it to this extreme. And Democrats - particularly under presidential nominee Kamala Harris - were openly committed to the continuation and escalation of these fascistic endeavours.
Anyone working within the system must adhere to and pledge allegiance to the stated goals, viewpoints and needs of that system. Dissent, questioning, conversation outside of that narrow corridor will be met with swift repercussions. Careers will be destroyed and personas publicly libelled. To advance in our current political system, one must cast aside and denounce past core beliefs and adopt status quo talking points as holy writ. Take for example the Senate Intel Committee this week aggressively demanding - with the most vicious and unhinged attack coming from Democratic Senator Michael Bennet - that Tulsi Gabbard denounce journalistic hero Edward Snowden as a traitor if she wants their confirmation vote. She refused.
Or AOC’s pathetic degeneration from “Progressive” Squad member into Democratic Party lapdog as she embraced lie after lie to convince the public that Biden and Harris were working tirelessly for a ceasefire in Gaza and that voting for anyone else was tantamount to treachery. Or AOC towing the mythological and propagandistic line of Trump bad/Biden good by claiming she would not attend Trump’s inauguration because she doesn’t “support rapists.” I would greatly admire her stance if she hadn’t so vigorously promoted, defended and campaigned for Joe Biden, who has also been accused on more than one occasion of both gross sexual misconduct and rape. Many of these charges were conveniently swept under the rug during Biden’s two campaign runs, thanks to the likes of AOC and others who have chosen to smother their own beliefs, as well as their dignity, for political opportunism.
As recently pointed out by journalist, author and show host Glenn Greenwald in his interview with Political Science Professor and international relations theorist, John Mearsheimer, “[Harvard] agreed to adopt the radically expanded definition of antisemitism which the House of Representatives last year also voted to implement as part of anti-discrimination law in the educational context. It's a definition that Israel has pushed for and created that includes very concrete examples of things that if you say, you are now guilty formally of hate speech and antisemitism, including some things that you said in this very discussion with me, such as comparing the Israeli government and its actions in any way to anything that the Nazis have done. It prohibits people from talking about Israel being a racist entity, even though you can say that about any other country.
“We're talking here about academia, the place where free thought and free discourse is most supposed to thrive. That's the reason people have tenure and the like and there's clearly an attempt, and I think it goes back to that example that you made of that fear that the Israelis have of what happened to South Africa, where a lot of the activism was centered on college campuses. That was sort of a cause of that generation and college campuses. And they decided that it was crucial to curb political speech inside the United States and on campuses, specifically when it comes to criticism of Israel.”
These are the laws and actions that empower the least democratic among us. Where Obama was able to dramatically escalate illegal wars, drone strikes on civilians as well as unforeseen levels of mass-deportation because of the actions normalized by George W. Bush before him, Trump will now, thanks to Biden and Democrats, be able to normalise the idea of sending 30,000 migrants to an already existing detention facility at Guantanamo Bay under the guise of “criminality” and “potential criminality.” He will be able to demonize and revoke the student visas of thousands who dare speak out against genocide. He will attempt to complete the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians normalized and justified by the Biden Administration. He will continue - as Biden and Harris did - to threaten foreign countries with America’s lethality and economic might. Trump will also ensure that America’s wealthiest individuals get richer while the masses of workers and others struggle to feed their children and try and avoid becoming statistics in our nation’s rapidly increasing houseless epidemic. All of this thanks to Biden, Democrats, the powerful elites in both parties and the lawless impunity of their actions. All under the guise of “saving democracy” and ensuring “security.” It is a lie of the highest order. However, anyone who suggests as much will be dragged from the room, demonetized, criminalized, arrested, fired, censored and/or publicly vilified.
When this silencing is done in conjunction with the wholesale selling of conveniently manufactured narratives, people around the world can be sold any form of snake skin oil. We are all susceptible to these mythologies and their accompanying undertones of safety and security, not to mention virtuousness. As a result, “The West, in general, is incapable, I think, of believing that it contributes in any way to the start and outbreak of wars,” continues Greenwald, “that it's always just the West is the innocent victim and whatever country we happen to be against has turned psychotic or aggressive and we're there to protect the world. It's a very ingrained, propagandistic belief.”
Make no mistake, it is the United States that is directly responsible for the endless wars, military aggressions and existential threats escalating across the globe. If any country warrants the moniker of psychotic and aggressive, it’s the U.S. Much of the global South already understands this. It’s the citizens of the West - and of the United States in particular - who are disdainfully and ignorantly blind.
To fully understand what is at play here, we must come to terms with the reality that it was more than just Joe Biden supplying military aid to Israel that helped both normalise and justify genocide and senseless war. It was also his overt and graphic rhetoric of dehumanization. Propaganda takes many forms. It is nefarious, calculated, and when it is both embraced and enhanced by a compliant media, it becomes a weapon of immense power and sway. Joe Biden’s lies that he had seen photographs of babies beheaded by Hamas, or Kamala Harris repeating the evidence-free accusation of mass-rapes on October 7th, are the foundational ingredients of dehumanization that allow for human atrocities to be committed and embraced. Let’s not forget, Biden was able to sell his immensely racist 1994 crime bill by publicly fear-mongering (alongside Hillary and Bill Clinton) about the dangers of black men and youth coming to attack your white family members. This isn’t a new phase for Joe Biden or Democrats. This is more of the same playbook now being used to manufacture consent for genocide.
“It's about a narrative and how you shape a narrative while you're committing atrocities,” observes journalist, author and illustrator Joe Sacco in his interview with Chris Hedges. “There's the Israeli propaganda machine, and then there's the president of the United States embracing that and repeating the propaganda and pushing the propaganda even when the White House talked it back. He continued to say the same thing in subsequent speeches so, to me, he's embracing the dehumanization of Palestinians. I mean, Hamas committed atrocities, that seems like a reasonable charge, but to make up atrocities to conjure up what we would consider the lowest thing a human can do - beheading a baby - he is part of the dehumanization project. Dehumanization is the stepping stone to annihilation. So that's what I'm trying to get across… that's part of his legacy, too, is paving the way for genocide with those statements. We have to look at the fact that the United States has sent bombs, but then there's the rhetorical aspect, too, where they're not just emphasizing a narrative, but creating one out of whole cloth.”
I understand that people have been fooled - as I was for many years - by the seemingly kindlier and gentler rhetoric of those like Barack Obama or Joe Biden - but there comes a point - and I would suggest complicity in genocide firmly represents one of those points - where people have a responsibility to wake up. There is no way my Dem-loyalist friends and acquaintances are not - at the very least - hearing the whispers of disillusionment and dissent rising across the globe. One would have to construct quite a mighty barrier of cognitive dissonance to block out those millions of voices, not to mention the steady flow of violent and barbaric images streaming across social media and independent news outlets. By embracing a form of internal dishonesty, we pave the way for genocide, racism, imperialism, colonialism and ethnic-cleansing as a necessary part of a larger, more righteous mission. It’s not. But it is the goal and mission of the United States and much of the West to present it as such.
“America has just invented a kindlier, gentler genocide” continues Sacco, “because, if you want it both ways - you want to bomb them and you want to feed them - but the feeding part, the so-called humanitarian gestures, are the way of selling the genocide. It's part of the genocidal salesmanship is you say it's something else.”
Of course, America has been involved in genocide before. How Israel and the United States is treating Palestinians today isn’t new. We have embraced this approach to world dominance and white supremacy since our founding.
"Everything about Gaza is grotesque, disgusting. It is a genocide. It is war crimes every day. But it's not so different from many other things that the US has done,” shares political advisor, economics professor and bestselling author, Jeffrey Sachs in his interview with Matt Kennard. “It's shocking because we see it, and we see TikTok feeds of celebrating rabbis and IDF personnel, and so forth, gloating as they blow up a hospital or a university. Or we have the accounts of torture. But I'm telling you, it's not different. Napalming the Vietnamese, carpet bombing North Korea in 1951–52… there were no cameras there, but it was mass carpet bombing. What we did in Cambodia and Laos—I've seen a lot of these places post-war. To walk through Cambodia, there are still large places you can't go because there's still so much ordnance in the field and there are still unexploded mines—horrible things…”
“Everything we know about Hiroshima and Nagasaki took a long time to come out, but it was finally and definitively established that the official line—that the bombings were necessary to bring the war to an end sooner—was a pile of crap. This was after the Japanese begged to surrender. There was no reason to use the bomb except as a demonstration of American power. They used two of them, without even a second thought after Hiroshima, but Nagasaki went ahead on its bureaucratic schedule just a few days later.
“No, in this sense, Gaza is not different. It makes me sick. It's something that my kids are seeing vividly for the first time. But since I've now become not only someone who has lived through these other wars but also someone who has spent the last 20 years trying to understand all of this better, it's not qualitatively different."
Meanwhile, Democrats continue to accuse countries like Russia and China (Russiagate, TikTok) of U.S. election interference, political manipulation and influence within American society and the highest government offices, as well as a desire for vast and bloody military expansion, but the reality is that those are not the countries posing such threats to our nation, our laws, our elections, our elected officials or our conversations around such subjects. Right now, that influential and destructive body is Israel and the lobby groups that own our political and media centers of power.
“The incestuous intermingling of US imperialism and Israeli Zionism makes them both part of the same whole,” writes human rights lawyer and former UN official, Craig Mokhiber. “They are by now institutionally indistinguishable. The handle and head of the same oppressive hammer. But the almost complete capture of official US institutions by these forces is by now evident to all, stripping away all nuance, and it must be challenged.”
Under Joe Biden and his self-proclaimed Zionism and blind allegiance to Israel, we have seen a sweeping and further eradication of an already anaemic and crumbling democracy.
“It would be one thing to lose our core free speech rights because our own government in our own country has decided that we are in too much of a crisis to permit free speech,” points out Glenn Greenwald, “but to lose our free speech rights because some foreign country on the other side of the world is insisting that they not be criticized within the United States is something that is appalling and remarkable to watch. And yet that's exactly what's happening and these institutions, one after the next, are acquiescing to it under great pressure. It's hard to overstate how threatening it is.”
The underlying ideology of American society, its colonial roots, its imperialistic intent alongside its decades-long neoliberal decimation of regulations and once-protected fail safes have left us not only vulnerable, but inescapably in the path of utter destruction. Neoliberalism has failed, it is dying. Capitalism - particularly the form we live with today which has been deregulated and sold for profit by the likes of Bill Clinton and Joe Biden - is flatlining. Our colonial past and present are exactly what allow us to justify and enact criminal and humanitarian atrocities today. When those atrocities come home to roost - as they always do - it is we, ourselves, our nation and the leaders we continue to empower, who have actively engaged in the boomerang effect of inviting that devastation, that humanitarian horror, onto our own soil to burrow and infest the minds and bodies of our children, loved ones, friends, family and neighbours. We have normalised death and dehumanization, embraced it, corralled around it, warmed our hands on its embers. Israel, Biden, Harris, Trump, Democrats, Republicans… They are all slightly modified versions of the same beast, the same mindset and ideology. The United States and much of the West is ruled by the worst of humanity. The least among us. The most destructive, dysfunctional and cruel. They are the eyes we view the world through. The arms and fingers of our actions. Their face is our face. Hence, we bear the bulk of responsibility both at home and abroad. It is our mission, our duty, to stop these individuals and institutions and dramatically alter course. This cannot, in my opinion, be accomplished by joining forces with them or trying to change the system from within. It requires a complete rejection of the ideologies and methods enforced and espoused by the current governmental system as a whole.
“Hitler is actually the same as the European humanist, the only difference is that he applied his genocidal tactics within Europe whereas the rest of the humanists applied them in their colonial geographies. You don't get the Jewish Holocaust if you didn't have that Colonial violence.” - Human rights attorney, Associate Professor at Rutgers University and author, Noura Erakat, How to End A Genocide, Bad Faith podcast.
I highly recommend watching Briahna Joy Gray’s interview with the two journalists, Max Blumenthal and Sam Husseini, who were silenced and thrown out of Blinken’s final State Department briefing:
I also recommend watching Ali Abunimah’s breakdown on the Electronic Intifada of the events surrounding his arrest by Swiss authorities:
And finally, I recommend watching Glenn Greenwald’s breakdown of Tulsi Gabbard’s Confirmation Hearing, with special focus on Democratic Senator Michael Bennet’s unhinged attack:
*Please support independent media and journalism by clicking on the many links in the article above and visiting those sites. If you are moved to do so, please consider subscribing to those podcasts, shows, and writings that are so essential to free speech and whose continued existence depends on viewer, reader, and listener support.