Monday, November 5, 2018

Allan Nairn: The U.S. Is Facing Incipient Domestic Fascism, But Rightist Revolution Can Be Stopped

A critically important interview. — Molly
 
*****
 
"We are now in an emergency situation,” says journalist Allan Nairn, a longtime critic of the Democratic Party. “You have to be tactical. You have to, at this moment, vote in the warmongers who will preserve democracy to block the warmongers who would abolish it.”
 
The 2018 U.S. midterm elections mark a critical point in the era of President Donald Trump, as the potential Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives has unleashed a torrent of white supremacist vitriol in the run-up to November 6. In the past week alone, a militant Trump supporter was accused of mailing three pipe bombs to CNN and 12 bombs to people Trump frequently criticizes; two African-Americans were murdered by a white supremacist outside Louisville, Kentucky; and 11 Jewish worshipers were massacred in a Pittsburgh synagogue by a white supremacist who railed on social media against Jews who help refugees. Both the gunman and Trump have called immigrants “invaders.” Meanwhile, Trump has sharply escalated his attacks on immigrants, threatening to send as many as 15,000 U.S. troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and to rewrite the Constitution to revoke birthright citizenship. We speak with investigative journalist Allan Nairn, who says that fascism is on the rise in the U.S. Nairn has been a fierce longtime critic of the Democratic Party and its support for war and neoliberal policies, but he is calling for the public to mobilize to elect Democrats in the midterm elections.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: The 2018 U.S. midterm elections mark a critical point in the era of President Donald Trump. The potential Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives has unleashed a torrent of white supremacist vitriol that is without precedent in recent years. In the past week alone, a militant Trump supporter was accused of mailing three pipe bombs to CNN and 12 bombs to people Trump frequently criticizes, including the Obamas and the Clintons; two African Americans were murdered by a white supremacist outside Louisville, Kentucky, after he unsuccessfully tried to enter a predominantly African-American church; and 11 Jewish worshipers were massacred in a Pittsburgh synagogue by a white supremacist who railed on social media against Jews who help refugees, or “invaders,” as he and Trump call them.
AMY GOODMAN: This comes as President Trump has sharply escalated his attacks on immigrants. So far this week, Trump has threatened to send as many as 15,000 U.S. troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and to rewrite the Constitution to revoke birthright citizenship. He and the right-wing media are also continuing to fixate on a caravan of Central American migrants that’s more than a thousand miles from the U.S. border. On Wednesday, Trump posted an explicitly racist ad on his Twitter feed suggesting Democrats are letting immigrant murderers into the country.
And Trump also has escalated his attacks on the media, despite the recent Saudi murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Turkish Embassy—in the Saudi Embassy in Turkey and the recent bombs sent to CNN.
To talk about what’s at stake on Tuesday, we’re joined by longtime investigative journalist Allan Nairn. For decades, he has covered U.S. foreign policy across the globe, including in Indonesia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Haiti, past winner of the George Polk Award.
Allan Nairn, welcome back to Democracy Now!
ALLAN NAIRN: Thanks. Good to be with you.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the state of affairs in this country right now.
ALLAN NAIRN: Well, this midterm election, this is it. The U.S. is facing incipient domestic fascism. The rightist revolution that Trump dragged to power has a chance to consolidate itself. The way to stop it is to vote the Democrats into control of at least one, and preferably both, houses of Congress.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s interesting you say that, because you’ve been a fierce critic of Democrats.
ALLAN NAIRN: Yeah. I mean, for years, I’ve been documenting how many of the senior Democrats are complicit in war crimes, how they belong in prison. But we are now in an emergency situation in which there is a huge, fundamental difference between the Democrats and the Republicans at this moment. The Republicans would abolish democracy. They’re looking—because that’s the only way they can perpetuate their power. They have a minority of the votes. They have to rig the system so they can stay in power, as their minority of votes diminishes over time. The Democrats, their interest is in maintaining, even expanding, democracy, because that will help bring them to power. In addition, Trump personally—
AMY GOODMAN: You’re talking about voter suppression there—
ALLAN NAIRN: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: —and expanding the vote.
ALLAN NAIRN: Well, all sorts of things—voter suppression, gerrymandering—the tactics that the Republican rightist revolution is using to maintain its hold in power, even though they can’t win a straight-up vote.
Secondly, there is the element that Trump personally has brought to power. When he dragged the Koch brothers and the Paul Ryans and the American oligarchs to power, he did it with a two-pronged platform. One was punching the elites in the nose, as the banker Jamie Dimon put it. The other was racism. Without the element of punching the elites in the nose, the Republicans could never have won the election. Romney tried running on the elitist platform of giving tax breaks to the rich, getting rid of Social Security, Medicare. He lost. They can’t win with that. But Trump presented himself as someone who, A, will support social justice and who, B, had the capacity to unleash the beast within white America.
And so he dragged the American rich into power. They came with a preprogrammed plan to make an even more massive shift of government resources and taxpayers’ money to the richest people in the country. You know, there are just three individuals now whose wealth is equal to that of the bottom 50 percent of the American population. I mean, it’s already insane, but the Republican core value is to make it worse. And, secondly, he did it by unleashing these fascistic forces in the American population, in the American grassroots.
And there are many good Democratic candidates in this election, people who, in one way or another, will represent a breakthrough for social justice, who all have essentially pledged to support Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, Medicaid, when the Republicans would abolish it. But also, many of these, or a substantial number of these, Democrats are arguably war criminals—not as big as the war criminals on the Republican side, but still war criminals. And they belong in prison.
But we are facing such a crisis in this country at this moment that you have to use your head. You have to be tactical. You have to, at this moment, vote in the warmongers who will preserve democracy to block the warmongers who would abolish it—and then, the day after the election, go back to the deeper work of creating real, better, more constructive political alternatives and also helping the base of the Democratic Party take back the party from the consultants, from the rich donors. But that’s for the day after the election is completed, and maybe the runoffs in Georgia and Mississippi, if they happen, after those are completed. Right now, the task is to stop the incipient fascism that Trump and the rightist revolution represents. And you can’t really say that you were working toward an anti-fascist goal if you’re not mobilizing for the Democrats right now. That’s the urgent reality that we’re living.

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