THIS JUST IN: I’ll Be On The Thom Hartmann Program at 11 am PT to Discuss ‘Breaking the GOP Death Grip’

So many fronts, so little time, my latest in Byline Supplement to be discussed on Thom Hartmann’s show at 11 am PT today

***Just a quick note to those who are viewers of The Thom Hartmann Program, I am returning to his show at 11 am PT to discuss this report below. Thanks as always for supporting my work with a membership.***

Breaking the GOP ‘Death Grip’

My latest investigation in Byline Supplement takes a global view to see what other countries are doing to defy authoritarianism, offering clues on what the US can adopt — from ejecting propagandists, to nationwide protests against right-wing extremism, to showing up to ensure proper transitions of power, to shutting down disinformation threats, and making social media platforms pay if they don’t remove online harms. There is so much we could be doing.

Breaking the GOP Death Grip - What Other Countries Defying Authoritarianism Can Teach the US

One Byline Supplement reader — a historian — just sent me this note:

“The crucial battle is to stop Trump, and RFKj, whose anti-science campaign can draw support away from Biden. Biden is having to fight too many fronts at once. The key issue is how to take out MAGA, which is the opposite of what is being sold to the American voter.”

As always, if you can afford to take out a subscription to support a small global team of reader-funded investigative reporters, we would be grateful.

If you are unable to do so at this time and would like to read the full report, please reach out to me directly at bettedangerous/gmail.

Here is an excerpt:

There is an unsettling feeling in the US of a weary nation obeying in advance. We’re exhausted. Those in the trenches exposing information warfare for the past seven years are admittedly tired. We see the same plays over and over again. We expose them as Russian active measures trafficked by cells of white supremacists over and over again. 

And each time, it’s like groundhog day, as another cynically staged horror event grabs the headlines. Americans then predictably divide between the shocked and the cheering, while a gal like me exposes the Kremlin-US Putinists pulling the strings.

Two years ago, I wrote about how the push for California to secede from the rest of the US was an operation run out of Moscow and championed by Russia’s favorite Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who also looped in the bad boys of Brexit Nigel Farage and Arron Banks.

And last year, I reported on the rolling insurrection, how Putin is waging a covert war against the West. It should be obvious by now, but our infospheres are so fragmented — divided between the mainstream and myriad rabbit holes — that we have no shared narrative of truth.

This is further complicated by the merger of the MAGA cult with the QAnon cult — a visit to Truth Social will clarify this point.

And as I write, Republican governors across the US are ramping up their war rhetoric against the Biden administration, as Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced he will defy the US Supreme Court by continuing his installation of concertina wire at the US-Mexico border.

US support of Ukraine has been throttled by the GOP, which has refused to back continued aid to Ukraine by weaponizing immigration and border security policy, while rejecting policy offers by Democrats.

And of course, all this chaos benefits Vladimir Putin, whose war of annihilation in Ukraine is approaching its second year.

“It’s fascist theater,” said Jim Stewartson, the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show on disinformation.

“White nationalists are hijacking foreign policy,” said Terrell Jermaine Starr, a US journalist based in Kyiv and Brooklyn, at a recent meeting of historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Lucid group.

What should be the nation’s headlines — a strong economy, low unemployment, ongoing investments in infrastructure — are continually drowned out  by loudening dog whistles for civil war.

Right-wing media is escalating civil war rhetoric in coordinated fashion after the Supreme Court ruled against Texas in the razor wire case. And on the extremist platform Rumble, the chatter of civil war is also escalating, according to data researchers.

America is a hot mess as social and legacy media appear to be in lock step with the GOP’s enabling of authoritarianism. 

And yet, zooming out for a global view, it’s refreshing to see how other countries are offering examples of what the US could be doing to mobilize people in the direction of democracy.

Germany Protests

Last week, we saw massive protests in multiple countries. 

In Germany, huge crowds of protesters in multiple cities called for a ban on the extremist far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), after people learned AfD leaders discussed a “master plan” to deport migrants. 

Such language harkened back to the Nazi era and people protested in Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Cologne, Leipzig, and Dresden, throwing AfD leadership into chaos.

Slovakia Protests

In Slovakia, thousands of people joined burgeoning street protests across the country to show their defiance of pro-Russian Prime Minister Robert Fico’s move to abolish the special prosecutor’s office which oversees cases of corruption, organized crime and extremism — reminiscent of moves made by Putin when he came to power.

Poland’s Clean Sweep                                                               

Author Thom Hartmann wrote that progressive Polish politician Donald Tusk is making good on his promise to clean up that country with an “iron broom.”

“He’s actually doing it,” Hartmann told Byline Supplement. “He recently unplugged a toxic populist public television station, according to international reports, and arrested two of the top rightwing politicians in Poland for abuse of power during the previous regime.

“The US can learn from this. Dislodging the death grip the GOP has on American politics will be more difficult than in Poland, in large part because five corrupt Republicans on the US Supreme Court legalized political bribery with their Citizens United decision. But we have to start somewhere and we’re already late.”

…Here we are in 2024, a US election rapidly approaching, and we’re still not having the proper conversation.

Keir Giles, the author of Russia’s War On Everybody, told me on an episode of my podcast RADICALIZED Truth Surives this week that one of the things that is strikingly absent from the political debate in the United States is “that anyone who looks at Russia for a living and looked at the last Trump presidency was in absolutely no doubt that Trump worked on behalf of Moscow.”

“Everything he did was actually furthering what Russia wanted for the United States and was very damaging to the US,” said Giles. “And now he says he’s learned from the previous instance and will be able to outwit and overcome those democratic checks and balances that prevented him from doing worse damage. And yet nobody in the United States appears to be talking about this, about an agent of a hostile power that wants to take power and finish the job on behalf of Moscow.”

But Greg Abbott is doing performative political theater with Tucker Carlson on X, ensuring rubbernecking of the staged border crisis, while white nationalist militias are doing fundraisers to finance their convoys to Texas.

Admittedly, I am tired of these reruns.

I have been revisiting the election interference of 2016 and the same Trump allies who trafficked stolen goods from the GRU are the same people escalating violent talk of civil war…

Yes, I am tired of these reruns. But I’m not going anywhere.

I’m glad you are here.

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More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter/producer, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.

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Begin each day with a grateful heart.

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