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The Christian fascists and oligarchs gleefully handing Donald Trump his sharpie and executive orders are not making war on the deep state, the radical left or to protect us from “antisemites.” They are making war on verifiable fact, the rule of law and the transparency and accountability that is only possible with a free press, the right to dissent, a vibrant culture and a separation of powers, including an independent judiciary.
All of these pillars of an open society, as I detail in my book “Death of the Liberal Class,” were degraded long before Trump. The press, including public broadcasting, academia, the Democratic Party, a corporatized and banal culture, a judiciary that serves the billionaire class and a Congress bought by lobbyists, have been disemboweled. They are easily picked off. Few want to rise up to defend them. They sold us out. Let them die.
“The loss of the liberal class creates a power vacuum filled by speculators, war profiteers, gangsters, and killers, often led by charismatic demagogues,” I wrote in “Death of the Liberal Class” in 2010. “It opens the door to totalitarian movements that rise to prominence by ridiculing and taunting the liberal class and the values it claims to champion. The promises of these totalitarian movements are fantastic and unrealistic, but their critiques of the liberal class are grounded in truth.”
Fascism is birthed by a bankrupt liberalism that has surrendered its traditional role in a capitalist democracy. It no longer ameliorates the worst excesses of the ruling class and the empire by instituting incremental and piecemeal reforms. It scolds and moralizes the disenfranchised workers it betrayed.
Media outlets prioritize access to the powerful more than truth. They amplified lies and propaganda to propel us into a war on Iraq. They lionized Wall Street and assured us it was prudent to entrust our life savings to a financial system run by speculators and thieves. Life savings were gutted. They fed us the lies of Russiagate. They slavishly cater to the Israel lobby, distorting coverage of the genocide and university protests to demonize Palestinians, Muslims and student protestors. They dance to the tune of their corporate advertisers and sponsors. They render whole sections of the population, whose misery, poverty, and grievances should be the principal focus of journalism, invisible.
Universities have transformed into corporations. Senior administrators, who often have a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree, with little or no experience in higher education, along with sports coaches who have the potential to earn the university money, are highly compensated with salaries in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, with prized coaches and college presidents earning in the millions.
A little more than 10 percent of faculty positions are now tenure-track. Nearly 45 percent are contingent part-time employees or adjuncts. One in five are full-time, non-tenure-track positions. Universities, by radically reducing tenure-track and adequately paid positions, have become extensions of the gig economy. Adjunct professors and graduate workers are often forced to apply for Medicaid, take second jobs teaching at other colleges, driving for Uber or Lyft, working as cashiers, delivering food for Grubhub or DoorDash, walking dogs, house sitting, waiting on tables, bartending and living four or six to an apartment or camping out on a friend’s sofa.
A poorly paid faculty that lacks job security does not raise issues that challenge the dominant narrative, whether about social inequality, predatory corporations, the crimes of empire, Israeli genocide or our state of permanent war. If they do, they are dismissed. Senior university administrators, meanwhile, are awarded bonuses for “reducing expenses,” by raising tuition and fees, cutting staff and suppressing wages. This instability assures wealthy donors that the neoliberal ideology that is ravaging the country, along with enabling the genocide in Gaza, will not be questioned by academics fearful of losing their positions. The rich and the powerful are lauded. The working poor, including those employed by the university, are forgotten.
As Irving Howe pointed out in his 1954 essay “This Age of Conformity,” the “idea of the intellectual vocation —the idea of a life dedicated to values that cannot possibly be realized by a commercial civilization — has gradually lost its allure. And it is this, rather than the abandonment of a particular program, which constitutes our rout.” The belief that capitalism is the unassailable engine of human progress, Howe writes, “is trumpeted through every medium of communication: official propaganda, institutional advertising, and scholarly writings of people who, until a few years ago, were its major opponents.”
“The truly powerless people are those intellectuals — the new realists — who attach themselves to the seats of power, where they surrender their freedom of expression without gaining any significance as political figures,” Howe noted. “For it is crucial to the history of the American intellectuals in the past few decades — as well as to the relationship between ‘wealth’ and ‘intellect’ — that whenever they become absorbed into the accredited institutions of society they not only lose their traditional rebelliousness but to one extent or another they cease to function as intellectuals.”
The two ruling parties sold the con of neoliberalism to deindustrialize the country, impose punishing austerity, eradicate the freedoms to organize and gut regulations to protect the public from exploitation. They empowered corporations to pillage and consolidate their wealth and power, giving rise to monopoly capitalism and some of the greatest levels of income inequality and wealth inequality in American history. The banks, communications, oil, weapons, agricultural and food industries guarantee profits by fixing prices, skirting or even abolishing financial, health and environmental protections, and abusing their workers. This assault on New Deal regulations, soon to be entirely obliterated under Trump, disenfranchised the working class that in desperation voted in a demagogue to save them.
As funding for the arts dried up, artists, like public broadcasting which was designed to give a voice to those not tethered to corporate interests, were left searching for grants and corporate sponsors. The result was a withering away of artistic and journalistic integrity.
Friedrich Nietzsche in “Beyond Good and Evil” holds that only a few people have the fortitude to look into what he calls the molten pit of human reality. Most studiously ignore the pit. Artists and philosophers, for Nietzsche, are consumed, however, by an insatiable curiosity, a quest for truth and desire for meaning. They venture down into the bowels of the molten pit. They get as close as they can before the flames and heat drive them back. This intellectual and moral honesty, Nietzsche wrote, comes with a cost. Those singed by the fire of reality become “burnt children,” he wrote, eternal orphans.
Culture in a functioning democracy is radical and transformative. It expresses what lies deep within us. It gives words to our reality. It makes us feel as well as see. It allows us to empathize with those who are different or oppressed. It reveals what is happening around us. It honors mystery.
“The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through the vast forest,” James Baldwin wrote, “so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.”
The war on independent intellectual inquiry, art and culture is done to prevent us from looking into the pit, from making the world a more “human dwelling place.” The “burnt people” have been silenced or marginalized. Some 16,000 books were banned in schools and libraries before Trump took office, bans that are accelerating as more books are purged. Culture in authoritarian states celebrates an idealized past that never existed and a present that is self-delusional.
Mass culture feeds the human thirst for illusion, excitement, happiness and hope. It peddles a blind patriotism and the myth of eternal material progress. It urges us to build images of celebrities or ourselves to worship, especially on social media. The result has been a cultural decay whose apotheosis will be Trump’s Garden of Heroes and the lavish Christmas pageant being planned this winter at the Kennedy Center in Washington.
Politicians from the two ruling parties are funded by the dark money provided by billionaires and corporations. These politicians, in our system of legalized bribery, do the bidding of their owners in Congress. The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin called this form of government “inverted totalitarianism.” Inverted totalitarianism retains the institutions, symbols, iconography, and language of the old capitalist democracy, but internally corporations have seized all the levers of power to accrue ever greater profits and political control. It uses the international legal system to plunder resources in the developing world, including the overthrow of governments that challenge corporate dominance. It prioritizes profit over justice. It weakens labor laws and eviscerates workers’ protections and rights.
The dynamiting by the Trump administration of these decayed and corrupt institutions will mark the end of the American experiment and the shift from inverted totalitarianism to dictatorship. It will usher in a corporate dystopia, which will resemble, albeit in a much crueler form, China’s totalitarian capitalism with its pervasive state surveillance, draconian censorship, unelected and unaccountable ruling class and the crushing of popular movements including labor unions. We will descend into the world of magical thinking that is the hallmark of all despotisms, one where the language we use to describe ourselves and our society bears no relationship to reality.
It is imperative to the authoritarian project that all independent institutions, no matter how weakened or decayed, be neutered. Trump, Axios reports, has been “lashing out” at “fake polls” showing his sinking approval ratings and calling for the news outlets that publish them to be “investigated for election fraud.” This is the sentiment of all dictators. Ban inconvenient facts. Once these institutions are silenced or captured, the cracks in the old edifice that allowed a muted dissent will be sealed. Fear will be the glue of social cohesion. Tepid criticism will be criminalized. Internal security, immigration enforcement and the military will be lavishly funded, creating Trump’s own version of an unaccountable deep state, while social programs will be defunded or shuttered.
Central to this project will be the great leader cult. The abject servility towards the great leader was on display at Trump’s celebration of his first 100 days with his cabinet, all of whom had navy blue and red baseball caps in front of them bearing the message “Gulf of America.” Attorney General Pam Bondi, in a typical display of sycophancy at the meeting, gushed: “Mr. President, your first 100 days has far exceeded that of any other presidency in this country ever, ever. [I’ve] never seen anything like it, thank you.”
Trump will get his birthday military parade, his two 100-foot high flag poles on the White House lawns, and perhaps, if the proposed bills in Congress pass, his face carved on Mount Rushmore, alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. He will see his birthday become a federal holiday, his face on new $250 bills and Washington’s Dulles International Airport renamed Donald J. Trump International Airport. He will build his National Garden of American Heroes. And of course, he will get the overturning of the 22nd Amendment to allow him to serve a third term. President-for-life.
“Children will be taught to love America,” the Svengali-like Stephen Miller intoned. “Children will be taught to be patriots. Children will be taught civic values for schools that want federal taxpayer funding. So as we close the Department of Education and provide funding to states, we’re going to make sure these funds are not being used to promote communist ideology.”
Trump’s vipers are snuffing out what is left of our open society, putting the finishing touches on the dirty work begun by billionaires and corporations. This is the end of a process. Not the start. Trump had a lot of help.
There is a word for those who did this to us.
Traitors.
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[Cue the typical, knee-jerk caterwauling about Hedges’s liberalism]
But seriously…
Classical liberalism was integral to making the west what it’s become. Some here look at that historical fact and consider it to have been a mistake.
Yet liberty is essential to the success of a society. It’s the only way sincerity and trust can be determined with any integrity.
Some here may point to various aspects of Trump they consider positive, yet when a president locks up a lawful resident for writing an anodyne op-ed, it’s like serving a glass of otherwise pure water with an indiscernible drop of urine. When you know it’s there, you just can’t drink it.
imho, the caterwauling will be over his use of christian fascists and oligarchs, mostly from 1488 fans, that take offense at muh fascism, being denigrated. to me the real issue, is his outright refusal, to accuse jewish supremacists and oligarchs.
here is an excellent opportunity to call out zionism itself, as well as zionist control of our government that allows, this pogrom against the palestinians, the nakba, that is the holocaust, carried out my these zionist jewish supremacists. here’s his great opportunity to point out that these crimes carried out against these almost defenseless people are in fact worse than the fate suffered by the jews, under nazi germany.
once again the myopia of this bespectacled, washed out out, pedo priest, prevents him form calling out the true victimizers of both the palestinians and the american people, who have lost the democracy they were promised but never received.
no, it’s all christian fascism that is to blame and trump is a white supremacist nazi, protecting the privilege of white slave owning k.k.k. members, parading down main street, in their hoods, leaving flaming crosses behind as a warning and a display of “white power”. you know the white supremacy, that we are told, by our letter agencies, is the single greatest danger to the america way.
his ability to overlook the jewish supremacy that is the true danger to our sovernity and constitution, is astounding and shows that he is actually the real “not-see” and it is this “not-seeism”, that is gaslighting and goose-stepping us into a full blown fascist police state, while good christian hedges, diverts out attention away from his masters, pointing his crooked finger of blame, towards whitey and his damned ingrained white supremacism.
why is good christian hedges so blind? when he was defrocked, did they find a 5 yo boy there, beneath his vestments? or is he only in it for the money and doesn’t want to insult his “sponsors”. whether or not he knows it, he’s doing the devil’s work. great job chris, keep up the good work.
I know it pains some people, but if the election were held again today the results would be the same. Crazy bitch kamala would have opened the borders wider and would have done nothing on criminal illegals. There are numerous problems with Trump 2 but what ate the options that are better. DeSantis snorkels Israeli Wang just as hard if not harder than Trump
Moralizing. Is that the opposite of DEmoralizing?
Fair enough to point out that identitarian accusation is a double-edged sword, particularly when dealing in stale stereotypes, and yes, Zionists among Jews — representing a disproportionate influence upon our centers of power — constitute a far greater problem than do fascists among white folk.
Personally, I think Trump’s movement is going to lose steam fast during the coming recession.
Nothing spells doom for an American president like a bad economy — particularly one for which he’ll be held completely responsible.
Dead and starving civilians due to American support of Israel? Who cares?
Gouge my pocketbook? Goodnight, Donnie boy.
This article is what we face in our dystopia future–a weird mixture of truth and lies, fact and fiction, a bizarre incoherent word salad generated by our AI masters.
Lol.
Amen.
The “B.Q.” (the “Border Question”) makes all other issues irrelevant. The goal of the Left Democrats in illegally allowing, and even enabling, millions of aliens to simply walk into the US is, obviously, to: 1) Tilt all the Swing States (e.g., Texas) permanently Blue and thus win all future national elections, and 2) Assure an unending supply of cheap, off-the-books labor to force down wages.
Marx spoke of “the Reserve Army of the Unemployed”, ready and willing to be conscripted by the capitalists in the war against the unionized proletariat. Foreign invaders are the new “Reserve Army of the Unemployed” ready to pick the tomatoes our Hispanic Americans “won’t” pick. Odd, isn’t it, that Cesar Chavez opposed having aliens take farm jobs away from his California Chicano constituency.
America’s sickening decline goes far deeper than the current Steven Miller/Jasmine Crockett divide. Luigi Mangione is celebrated for shooting a man in the back by the same Left that firebombs Tesla dealerships and shields illegal aliens from ICE. Meanwhile, Insider Trader Pelosi and Supreme Court Justice Threatener Schumer piously intone that “nobody is above the law”. Trump rules by dictatorial “Executive Orders” and crams the Oval Office with gilt kitsch, coyly teasing an unconstitutional “third term” while digitally “dressing” in white silk papal semi-drag as a narcissistic joke.
People get it: America, the “Last, Best Hope of Mankind”, has failed. “Don’t let it bring you down; it’s only castles burning.”
Illegals are a smokescreen to get rednecks who do not understand the world to vote against their own interests for Zionists like Trump and DeSantis.
The fact is, if the border were to be totally closed this moment, whites will still be a minority in America headed for extinction. A couple showy deportations, which serve more to undermine the rights of Americans with the thunderous applause from your kin, will not change that. Especially not when Trump is deporting less than previous presidents overall thanks to the incompetence of his regime.
Maybe back in your boomer days, closing the border would have helped. Too late now. The barbarians are past the gates. Now we need a better solution and people who can address the problem. That’s not Trump. Trump is bought and paid for by the root of the problem.
Your claim that Trump would have still been elected after obliterating America’s credibility, crashing the dollar, imposing trillions in new taxes, declaring war on what remains of the constitution, and doing it all with the finesse and care of a retarded child me leads to one of two conclusions: you believe the election was rigged, or you are a moron.
The secret to Judeonazi power in the captive States of the West is that it is FORBIDDEN to notice it, let alone mention or, Heaven forfend, criticise it. As with the old Judaic injunction that any goy who reads the Talmud must be killed.
What are Hedges’ specific complaints against Trump?
1. Proposed “Garden of Heroes.” Sounds kitschy, but something has to be done with all those statues that were torn down by BLM/Antifa or hidden away by Nikki Haley.
2. Lavish Christmas pageant – Oh, the horror!
3. Trump dynamiting “decayed and corrupt institutions.” Right. Instead, we should retain and support them.
4. Trump calling unfavorable polls fake. Maybe they are fake?
5. Trump calling for pollsters to be investigated for election fraud.
That might be a good idea. Fake polls that underestimate a candidate’s popularity can induce voters who would normally vote for that candidate to stay home.
6. Trump’s cabinet praising him lavishly. R-r-right. He couldn’t possibly deserve praise.
7. 100-foot flag poles flying the American flag on the White House lawn – Oh, the humanity! Can’t have that!
8. Stephen Miller saying the children should be taught to love America, be patriotic and reject communism. Oh, well now Trump has just gone way too far!!!!! LOL
Hedges’ crystal ball predictions:
Trump’s face will be carved on Mt. Rushmore. I say he should replace either Abraham Lincoln, who tore up the US Constitution, or Teddy Roosevelt, who turned the US into an empire (we all know what happens to empires …)
Trump’s birthday will be a federal holiday.
Trump’s face will be on $250 bills.
Dulles airport will be renamed Trump airport.
Trump will get a third term.
No, he’ll be president for life.
The horrors of fascism. How ever will we survive?
Hedges tries to turn this molehill into a mountain by devoting 80% of his article to bloviating about Nietzsche, underemployed college professors (sounds like a personal beef), what the leftist Jew Irving Howe wrote about capitalism in 1954, possible defunding of NPR (which hates white people), the loss of a “vibrant” (actually completely dead and stale) culture, “books” (porno) being banned in children’s libraries, “inverted totalitarianism”, etc. Thus does he create an emotional stew of negativity to con readers into thinking his attack on Trump actually has substance. Fruit of the poisoned tree and all that. I smell desperation here.
What the hell was she supposed to say? Bondi is simply another political whore (not sure about the other kind), trading temporary loyalty for current favor. Remember, it wasn’t that long ago she was campaigning for Mitt Romney, hoping to get a gig, maybe even VP, out of her endorsement.
Bondi will do what she’s told. At least until the next opportunity presents itself.
But not sure why Hedges is so anti-Bondi. After all, Bondi was the girl who appointed a special prosecutor to indict George Zimmerman, after the local police and DA ruled that George acted in self-defense. Then, when she couldn’t get a Grand Jury to indict George, Pam’s special prosecutor totally avoided that bit of due process, and brought charges anyway. So Chris, a big supporter of the ‘No Limit Nigga’, should at least give props to Pam for that. Remember, in 2015 Hedges wrote:
The remainder of this article is about what we expect from the author. Cliches and low-level analogies strung together, almost willy-nilly. Although linking Nietzsche to James Baldwin was pretty funny. Few would have had the keen insight and intelligence to do that.
Keep up the good work, Chris.
https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1919478257147130136
Hedges exposes himself as a fake intellectual by refusing to address honestly the Jewish question.
He does this all the time. Shifting blame from the Jews where it belongs.
You cannot be a true intellectual and be dishonest and a coward.
There is NO such person as ‘Ralph Baric’.
Hedges is a cliché Progressbyterian who can’t write a grocery list without condescending deflection about “Christian fascists and oligarchs.” But here he also has some worthwhile observations about how Trump is just the next step in the
Christian fascists and oligarchsEstablishment’sI smell desperation in your effort to obscure that.
“I smell desperation in your effort to obscure … [Hedges’] worthwhile observations about how Trump is just the next step in the Establishment’s ‘war on verifiable fact, the rule of law and the transparency and accountability that is [sic] only possible with a free press, the right to dissent, a vibrant culture and a separation of powers, including an independent judiciary.’”
Why would I try to obscure a word salad of unsubstantiated charges?
Hedges provides no examples of Trump doing any of those things. There is nothing for me to try to obscure.
C. J. Hopkins used to be published on this website, but according to Ron Unz withdrew in order not to be persecuted in Germany for being associated with its other authors. This was a great loss to TUR, and he was subsequently charged there anyway for his own book critical of COVID authoritarianism.
Hopkins’ recent open letter comparing his mistreatment to that of Mahmoud Khalil (https://consentfactory.org/2025/04/12/an-open-letter-to-jay-bhattacharya-robert-f-kennedy-jr-and-j-d-vance/)
better elaborates than the preachy Hedges this example of Trump’s service to the Establishment war on dissent here in Exceptionalia.
I agree with the anti-Israel protesters. But non-citizens should not have the same rights as citizens. We’ve already suffered under a Supreme Court that has found that simply being a “person” in the US gives you the same rights as US citizens when it comes to receiving welfare benefits, free health care and free education.
The court made this finding in spite of the preamble to the US Constitution, which says, “We, the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
The Constitution then goes on to describe how people may become citizens in order to enjoy those “blessings of liberty.” That doesn’t mean just being a person who happens to be in the US.
If I were a globalist and an advocate of multiculturalism and multiracialism who wanted the US to have no sovereignty and no identity other than being Grand Central Station for the whole world, I would not take this view. But I am none of those things.
Hopkins talks about “democracy” being threatened. But if anything, democracy is being strengthened by not allowing outsiders to enjoy the same rights as citizens. The will of the people – the citizens – is what democracy is supposed to represent. The fact that it does not do this well does not mean that the basic principle should be thrown out.
For the last ten years, Trump has made it clear that he is a strong supporter of Israel. Biden called himself a Zionist and signed off on roughly $200 billion to help Israel exterminate Palestinians. In the 2024 election, no one was being deceived. Whether you voted for Biden or Trump, you knew what you were getting if you were paying any attention.
Likewise in Germany. I am a big fan of AfD. Germans had the opportunity to vote AfD into office, but didn’t. They could have freed themselves from being censored, but they didn’t.
As for Vance, Bhattacharya and Bobby Kennedy, there has never been any reason to think that they would agree with Trump on everything, and certainly no reason to think that they would be deciding on foreign policy or on what to do about foreign students and permanent residents participating in protests. So, C.J. Hopkins calling them hypocrites for not opposing Trump’s policy is grossly unfair. As Bismarck pointed out, politics is compromise: “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable – the art of the next best.”
Khalil is a citizen of Algeria. He can go back there and protest against Israel all he wants. He can write a book and find a publisher in the US. He can be interviewed by the world press. Removing him from the US does not eliminate his opportunities for protest. C.J. Hopkins is a US citizen. He can come back to the US and — as a citizen enjoying first amendment protection — write as many protest books as he wants.
We have problems we could be addressing. Instead, Unz is full of people who want to bloviate about pseudo-problems. I have no time for such nonsense.
Thanks for taking the time to read the Hopkins piece and posting a substantial reply. Your more statist perspective
is why we’re unlikely to reach an agreement. I read the First Amendment as prophylactic, forbidding Congress – and, thus, the entire government if one respects its other provisions – from sanctioning anyone’s speech. My natural right to read and hear what people like Ozturk write and Khalil say is being violated, too.
And you’re still unwilling to address the apparent process in play:
Do you really think that the Establishment intends to draw the line at citizens in the steady strangulation of dissent?
“Your more statist perspective …”
Statists call for centralized political, economic and social control. I don’t advocate those things, so I am not a statist. But globalists want centralized political, economic and social control. They don’t want nations to have control over their own borders and identities. They would be among the first to insist that a foreigner should have the same rights as a citizen.
“I read the First Amendment as … forbidding Congress … from sanctioning anyone’s speech.”
The text of the first amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or restricting the free exercise thereof; or abridging freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
I see no reference to “anyone.” The only reference is to “the people.”
Which specific people? The preamble tells us: “ourselves and our posterity.” “Posterity” means descendants. The only other people the Constitution recognizes as enjoying constitutional rights are foreigners who have become naturalized citizens and former slaves. Not the US-born children of foreign diplomats. Not the US-born “anchor babies” of illegal aliens or foreign visitors. Not foreign students holding visas. Not foreign green card holders or non-citizen permanent residents.
“My natural right to read and hear what people like Ozturk write and Khalil say is being violated, too.”
No, it isn’t. There are any number of media outlets available to you that will promote their messages.
“Do you really think that the Establishment intends to draw the line at citizens in the steady strangulation of dissent?”
If you don’t want them to do that, you should stop reading things into the Constitution that aren’t there. Doing that puts you on the “Establishment’s” team as someone who has no respect for the Constitution.
Then it’s a little like Rome in 400AD.
True or False: You evaded that last question because it makes you uncomfortable about supporting Trump.
“True or False: You evaded that last question because it makes you uncomfortable about supporting Trump.”
False.
I have no problem answering your last question.
Unlike Biden — who you had nothing to say about at the time — Trump has not violated the free speech or due process rights of US citizens.
Therefore, I don’t expect him to violate those rights in the future.
I expect people like you and Biden’s minions in the Department of Justice who read things into the law and the Constitution that aren’t there to violate them.
Nice try, kid.
But wrong again: https://www.unz.com/isteve/what-exactly-is-the-legal-theory-here/#comment-5926291
What will you come up with when Trump signs the Antisemitism Awareness Act?
You claim to have criticized Biden for violating the constitutional rights of US citizens. But the example you cite doesn’t support that claim. The US citizens in question were not indicted for their political views. They were indicted for violating 18 USC 951 (a) and 18 USC 371.
Trump hasn’t signed the Antisemitism Awareness Act. It hasn’t even been passed by the Senate. Get back to me if and when it does pass and Trump signs it into law.
So what “Biden … violat[ions of] the free speech or due process rights of US citizens” were you referencing in #23?
One example of a due process rights violation would be Biden’s Justice Department withholding exculpatory evidence in the case of January 6 defendant Jacob Chansley showing that Chansley was escorted through the Capitol by the police. Chansley was sentenced to 41 months in prison and served most of that sentence.
See QAnon Shaman’s lawyer calls for sanctions against DOJ, prosecutors after his client’s early release: He says withholding exculpatory evidence led to an ‘egregious injustice’: “… Chansley’s lawyer, Albert S. Watkins, told the Washington Times that the federal prosecutors had a duty to turn over the video so lawyers could thoroughly defend their clients. ‘The DOJ created and implemented a systematically flawed discovery production protocol for which there is simply no excuse,’ he said. ‘The government had a duty to release material video footage, not just video footage that supported the government ‘s prosecutorial narrative.’ … When prosecutors fail to disclose exculpatory evidence, Brady motions can be filed with the court. The term refers to the Supreme Court’s holding in Brady v. Maryland. The 1963 landmark case held that prosecutors must hand over evidence to the defense that helps prove their potential innocence …” (Washington Times, May 30, 2023).
An example of an illegal attempt by the Biden Justice Department to punish ordinary citizens for exercising their right to free speech would its violation of Federal Rule 45 on allowable discovery requiring those issuing a subpoena to take reasonable steps to avoid imposing undue burdens and expense on the recipient. The subpoena issued against the Eagle Forum of Alabama demanded everything the nonprofit organization’s two employees and all of its volunteers had done or said for the last five years advocating in favor of Alabama’s Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act. (Heritage Foundation: This Should Terrify Every American: DOJ Harasses Citizens for Exercising Their First Amendment Rights, Sept. 22, 2022).
An example of another illegal attempt by the Biden administration to deny free speech was senior Biden administration officials pressuring Facebook to censor Covid-19 content, including humor and satire. (PBS, Zuckerberg says the White House pressured Facebook to censor some COVID-19 content during the pandemic, Aug. 27, 2024).
Yet another example of an attempt by the Biden administration to chill free speech was the FBI raid it carried out on Mark Houck and his family over a minor scuffle with a pro-abortion activist who was harassing Houk’s 12-year-old son. See National Catholic Register, Sept. 8, 2023: Mark Houck and Wife Sue DOJ for Malicious Prosecution: “… Houck and his wife … filed lawsuits against the FBI and DOJ for malicious and retaliatory prosecution, abuse of process, false arrest and assault … Though Houck and his attorneys had previously offered to cooperate with any federal investigation, his home was nonetheless raided months after making the offer …”
Then there was the treatment of J6 defendants locked up in the DC “gulag” and denied medical treatment, subjected to brutal beatings and unsafe and unsanitary conditions, and denied the ability to confer with their lawyers. See Congressman Troy E. Nehls, press release, July 1, 2024: DC DOC Bodycam Video Confirms J6 Detainee Was Pepper-Sprayed in the Face Twice, Raising ‘Serious Questions and Concerns: “… Former DOC employee Lieutenant Crystal Lancaster allegedly sprayed Ronald McAbee with the chemical munitions after he removed his face mask … In his lawsuit, McAbee said he had removed his face mask to take oral medication. ‘Defendant Lancaster knowingly, maliciously, and sadistically administered the chemical agent directly to Mr. McAbee’s face from less than four feet away,’ the suit says. After the chemical attack, jail staff ‘placed him a shower with only very hot water, which amplified the burning sensation of the chemical spray,’ the lawsuit states. ‘Mr. McAbee was not provided an opportunity to decontaminate thoroughly.’ McAbee was then ‘placed in solitary confinement for three days, still with no opportunity to decontaminate himself despite multiple requests. During that time, the chemical agent reactivated and caused Mr. McAbee intense burning pain,’ the suit states. McAbee suffers ‘continued physical and emotional trauma nearly two years later’ from the Sept. 5, 2022, attack at the D.C. jail, according to the suit. The government ‘used Defendant Lancaster’s attack against Mr. McAbee to argue for an increased sentence for Mr. McAbee on the grounds that Mr. McAbee had ‘an altercation with jail personnel while awaiting trial,’ the lawsuit alleges … The former [sheriffs] deputy spent almost two years in jail awaiting trial.”
This is how J6ers were treated by the Biden Administration: Denied their right to a speedy trial and brutally punished even though they had not been convicted of anything. Biden encouraged these abuses by calling Trump and his supporters a threat to the nation: “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic …” (Biden nationally televised speech outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Sept. 1, 2022).
See my post re Biden’s free speech and due process rights violations (I forgot to address it to you, but it’s there).
But what of your claim above that I “had nothing to say about [these] at the time”? Did you bother to search my archive (try “Epps” and “privatize” for starters) concerning any of them?
Rather than acknowledge your subordination of free speech principles and intellectual honesty to support for Trump, you caricatured me as your opposite to fling whatabout like an insecure child.
You haven’t backed up your claim that I’ve subordinated my “free speech principles and intellectual honesty” to my support for Trump, so why should I go searching in your archive to find evidence that you’ve criticized Biden?
I already asked you to provide an example of you criticizing Biden for violating the constitutional rights of US citizens, and all you came up with was Biden’s DOJ charging some Negroes with violating 18 USC 951 and 18 USC 371.* LOL
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* 18 USC 951: ” (a) Whoever, other than a diplomatic or consular officer or attache, acts in the United States as an agent of a foreign government without prior notification to the Attorney General if required in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both. (b) The Attorney General shall promulgate rules and regulations establishing the requirements for notification …”
18 USC 371: “If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof, in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.”