Turning Fascism Into Entertainment
Once we understand Trump and his flunkies will do three awful things a day, we can return the focus on how to stop his criminal regime
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Fresh Hell
When Prague-based technologist Josef Holy told the Bette community that Trump and the pack of criminals he calls an administration will do three awful things a day, I began to look for it. Once you can spot the strategy, it takes away the shock.
This allows me to return focus to how to oust this criminal regime — other sitting criminal leaders faced and are facing prosecution. Yesterday, for example, the International Criminal Court rejected Rodrigo Duterte’s appeal for release, confirming they have jurisdiction to prosecute the former president of the Philippines for extrajudicial murders in his so-called war on drugs.
To examine the pattern of ‘three awful things’ — a sort of daily fresh hell — I documented yesterday’s events. There were at least six shock events on April 22, but three embody Holy’s thesis.
RACIST RANT: On the heels of acting AG Todd Blanche and FBI director Kash Patel’s presser announcing an 11-count indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center, Trump attacked Supreme Court Justice Ketani Jackson — a double Harvard graduate and the first Black woman on the Supreme Court — as “that new, Low IQ person, that somehow found her way to the bench.” The “low IQ” slur, while obviously a lie, is rooted in overt racism. That his screed came a day after the indictment agains the SPLC reveals his “clickbait fascism” scriptwriters are increasing the volume on racist attacks.
PENTAGON CHAOS: The Pentagon announced that the Secretary of the Navy, John Phelan, was leaving the administration “effective immediately,” with reports suggesting he was fired — another chaotic and significant turnover in an already chaotic regime. Just three weeks ago, the Army’s top officer, General Randy George, was forced out, all this in the middle of an illegal war benefiting Putin and sabotaging the US.
MAKE AMERICA SICK AGAIN: As weekend anchor Pete Hegseth announced on Twitter that he removed mandatory flu vaccine requirements for the US military, anti-vaxxer and Health and Human Services secretary Robert Kennedy Jr — intent on making Americans sick again as evidenced in the return of measles epidemic — put on his tin foil hat to do bad maths and spread conspiracies while being questioned by Congress about vanity projects.
Turning Fascism Into Entertainment
I have written a lot about clickbait fascism and how the illegal war in Iran is the world’s first kayfabe war.
Those watching RFKj at the Congressional hearing, got to see him shirtless, in provocative stances, the appearance of winning, even as he’s being grilled. The point is, the propaganda is further spread, and people like me who have investigated RFKj understand he is another Russian propaganda superspreader but instead of that takeaway, he is given a platform to blather on about how AI will save us and to lie about fiscal and scientific reality.
The most egregious example of this type of provocative fascist strategy is Kristi Noem posing in front of shirtless prisoners.
So I return often to a quote by NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen:
“Clown car hearings exploit a weakness in mainstream journalism’s source code, which gives no clear instructions for how to report truthfully on events that are themselves false, meaning they spring from a propagandistic intent and taking them seriously just furthers the scam.”
He was writing during the era of QAnon Marge-led hearings over Hunter Biden, which were done clearly for provocation. Making media’s wall to wall coverage complicit in the scam.
I’ve been developing and refining this theme for years.
But when Josef Holy tipped us off on how we can follow the daily deluge of awful in threes, it disables the shock value to see it as cold strategy.
So what to do about a regime that turns fascism into entertainment?
Apply pressure to international law to indict Trump and his regime of criminals for their myriad crimes against humanity.
Even they would find that a more pleasant alternative to Old West justice or the guillotine.
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