Archives for category: Fascism
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Miami Herald Endorses Crist for Governor

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2022 //
35

Ron DeSantis is a bully and a braggart. Under his autocratic rule, the people of Florida are “free” to do what he tells them to do. The Miami Herald endorsed his opponent Charlie Crist.

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Florida is a place of meanness. It’s a place where dissent is muzzled, where personal rights triumph over the greater good, where winning is more important than unity — especially if that victory moves him closer to a White House run.

That’s not the Florida we had four years ago. And it’s not a Florida that voters should tolerate for the next four years. There’s a far better choice in the Nov. 8 election: Democrat Charlie Crist.

DeSantis’ first term in office has been defined by stunt after stunt and made-for-Fox-News grandstanding as he claims successive wins in the culture wars created by the politics of division that he exploits for his own gain. Meanwhile, real crises such as the lack of affordable housing and property insurance are barely addressed.

There was the recent taxpayer-funded flight of Venezuelan asylum seekers from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. The migrants reportedly were duped into believing they would get jobs, but instead ended up on the Massachusetts vacation island, pawns in DeSantis’ thirst for attention. His willingness to upend the lives of vulnerable people for self-aggrandizing publicity appears to have also been behind his boastful announcement in August of the arrest of 20 people, ex-offenders he said voted illegally. However, those arrested have told the Herald that their county election supervisor’s office said they could cast ballots after Floridians approved the restoration of voting rights for some ex-felons.

DeSantis’ own administration was responsible for flagging ineligible voters, but didn’t. Friday, a Miami circuit court judge threw out a criminal case against one of the people DeSantis accused of committing election fraud in the 2020 election.

There’s DeSantis’ crusade to protect white Floridians from alleged reverse racism at the hands of so-called “woke” teachers and workplace diversity trainers. His targeting of drag queens and a Miami bar because a parent brought their child to a popular drag brunch. His use of “parental rights” to create a new culture war surrounding the teaching of LGBTQ+ issues at schools. His exploitation of the COVID pandemic and masking of children as political tools to proclaim Florida as the “free” state — as long as your version of freedom agrees with his.

LOYAL SUPPORTERS

Still, we can’t deny that DeSantis is a highly popular governor within the state and beyond, depending on one’s political leaning. He has loyal supporters; and he is a Trump-like figure without the buffoonery; and he can deftly play both sides against the middle.

While denigrating teachers at traditional public schools, for instance, the governor guaranteed $500 million to raise the minimum teacher salary and provide raises for veteran teachers and other instructional personnel; secured the highest-ever per-pupil spending totals at $7,793 per student; replaced standardized tests in schools; invested more than $124 million for Florida’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities; and gave parents an outsize voice in their children’s education — just one skirmish in his culture wars.

Similarly, he pushed to reopen the state during the COVID-19 pandemic sooner than many others and less safely. His reelection ads tie Florida’s fast economic rebound to his actions to reopen the state early. But, again, he used the pandemic as a political opportunity, pushing unproven treatment, instead of vaccines, to counter the omicron variant; initially refusing to release the names of facilities where long-term-care residents and staff have been exposed; overseeing a health department accused of undercounting the number of dead; downplaying vaccines while areas with his supporters got theirs first; handcuffing local officials from imposing stringent measures to fight the pandemic. And let’s not get into his threats against school districts that wanted to order mask mandates.

More than 80,000 Floridians have died of COVID, something DeSantis has rarely, if ever, acknowledged.

DeSantis, 44, is governor, yes, but with a broad streak of autocrat. He flaunts Florida’s “freedom,” but it’s granted only to a special few. He wants to control every aspect of how Florida functions. He targets people and communities who disagree with him. He pits Floridians against each other to reap political power. There’s no place for dissent — or even normal discussion — in the DeSantis administration, as demonstrated by his attacks against media to deflect potential governmental blame — even as Hurricane Ian’s victims were still being counted. He is an avenging governor, punishing Disney for supporting LGBTQ+ rights. The compliant Republican Legislature aids and abets him, cowed into compliance by his brutal style of politics.

HAS THE KNOW-HOW

Crist, 66, is seasoned, smart and reasonable. He treats people with courtesy, in contrast to DeSantis, who publicly snapped at high school students for wearing masks and accuse them of engaging in “COVID theater.”

Crist has detailed plans on how to tackle the affordable-housing crisis, one of the most important quality-of-life issues in the state. He’s a consensus builder, something we have missed since DeSantis took office, and he knows intimately how government works. There certainly are knocks against Crist. He’s been criticized as a career politician and political chameleon. And it’s true that he’s a former Republican governor-turned-independent-turned-Democratic congressman who is now running for governor again.

But he says the Republican Party left him, not the other way around, a realization shared by many traditional Republicans. But more than anything, Crist is what we need to return Florida to normalcy and common decency. He would stop the culture wars over made-up issues that have no bearing on Floridians’ everyday lives and get on with the business of governing.

And no matter how much Republicans try to paint Crist as a leftist or socialist, he’s not. Instead, he’s that rarely seen breed in the Florida politics of today: a moderate. As a Republican governor, he displayed independence when he vetoed a bill that would have forced women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion. And though he came under attack earlier this year from his Democratic primary opponent, Nikki Fried for his word-parsing when it comes to abortion rights, he has made it clear he will protect a woman’s right to choose by signing an executive order on his first day in office.

ABORTION RESTRICTIONS

DeSantis, on the other hand, has vowed to “expand pro-life protections” after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Republicans control the Legislature, and it’s very likely they will further restrict the 15-week abortion ban they passed this year. Make no mistake: Reproductive rights are at stake in this year’s gubernatorial election.

DeSantis has done little, if anything, to address the exorbitant costs of buying and renting a home. Imagine if the governor dedicated only a fraction of the attention he’s devoted to bashing “critical race theory” to affordable housing. He has recommended lawmakers fully fund the state’s affordable-housing trust fund over the years. But he has never pushed his Republican allies in the Legislature to come up with comprehensive solutions to the issue — and actually signed a bill that enshrines into law lawmakers’ habit of raiding that trust fund for other purposes. Crist would expand down-payment assistance programs and appoint a “housing czar” to help local governments meet housing-affordability goals. In July, he told the Editorial Board that he wants a “Wall Street crackdown” on companies that “are buying huge tracts of land to flip and make a quick profit,” raising costs for working and middle-class families. Taking on those big companies will be a challenge with a GOP-controlled Legislature. As governor, Crist approved cuts to the Sadowski housing trust fund, but said that was necessary during the Great Recession. He now says he wants to fully fund it and would work to repeal the bill DeSantis signed.

We give DeSantis credit for spearheading the recovery in Southwest Florida from the ravages of Hurricane Ian with a billion-dollar price tag. He’s put on his boots — yes, those white ones — and launched a fast-moving recovery plan. For example, it only took the state a few weeks to repair a crucial bridge into Sanibel, not the months predicted. That’s what we would expect from any state’s executive leader. However, Crist has rightly criticized DeSantis for allowing the state’s other crisis, property insurance, to balloon. Hurricane Ian threatens to turn that crisis into a catastrophe. Under DeSantis’ leadership, the Legislature passed Band-Aid reforms during a hasty, three-day special legislative session. Since then, you hardly hear the governor talk about the issue, despite homeowners losing coverage or facing jaw-dropping premium hikes.

But there’s plenty of talk about those deviant drag queens. Crist has a seven-point plan to fix the state’s property insurance system. He would require, for example, that large companies that provide car insurance also provide homeowners. That would address the cherry-picking that insurers do — leaving many Floridians out in the cold. It’s a start, and we’d like to learn more.

WINS AND LOSSES

Crist’s political resume is hard to beat. He served in the Florida Senate, then as the state’s education commissioner, attorney general and Republican governor for one term — before winning the St. Petersburg congressional seat he has held since 2017. He has also lost elections: in 2010, to U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio and, in 2014, when he came within one point of ousting then-Gov. Rick Scott. All of that experience gives him a deep understanding of Florida and how the Legislature works.

▪ On issues of law and order, Crist wants the state to allow felons who have completed their sentences to vote — even while continuing to pay fines or restitution — as Florida’s Amendment 4 was supposed to do, before Republican lawmakers undercut it. Floridians voted to restore the voting rights of former felons, and they deserve a governor who will honor that intent. Though Crist was nicknamed “Chain Gang Charlie” in the 1990s for championing roadside prison work crews in Florida, when he became governor, he restored voting rights to 155,000 convicted felons, streamlining the clemency process and rejecting a policy rooted in the Jim Crow era — a stand-out accomplishment for civil rights, despite former Gov. Rick Scott’s subsequent decision to revoke the measure.

Crist would also seek to expunge marijuana possession charges and sentences, a measure that would fall in line with President Biden’s pardon this month of people convicted of marijuana possession charges under federal law. He supports legalizing recreational marijuana, saying any taxes on it could go toward raises for veteran teachers. ▪ On gun control, Crist said he supports a supports a ban on military-style rifles, saying they “shouldn’t be on the streets of America.” South Florida suffered through the Parkland school shooting. There is no question that we agree.

▪ Climate change and environmental issues are becoming an increasingly urgent in Florida, with Hurricane Ian as just the most recent example. Crist is the right choice to fight for environmental causes, even when facing pressure from business interests — and that’s based on his record. As governor, he hosted a climate change summit in Miami all the way back in 2007 — early days for that topic. He also clashed with Florida Power & Light on rate increases. He wants utility companies to have less control over the state agency that oversees them by allowing voters to decide whether to retain members of the the Public Service Commission, which has been notorious for going along with FPL’s requests. Crist came close to finalizing a historic $1.75 billion Everglades land deal to help restore the flow of water from Lake Okeechobee to the Everglades. Though most of the purchase fell through when the Great Recession hit, Crist understands that preserving Florida’s environment is critical, ultimately, a pro-business stance. Crist said he will work to attract technology and other clean industries to Florida, which would help reduce the state’s economic reliance on tourism. Crist is all-in on solar power, saying the state should lead the way. DeSantis, too, has been an ally of the Everglades and supports building a reservoir to clean and send more water south. Soon after taking office, he created an algae-bloom task force and appointed a chief resilience officer. He spearheaded the creation of a state program that helps communities pay for projects that mitigate the impacts of sea-level rise. He signed the “Clean Waterways Act” to minimize the impact of known sources of nutrient pollution. And for Miami-Dade, he announced a $20 million investment into the protection and preservation of Biscayne Bay, a joint funding initiative between the state for important infrastructure updates and new technology to help predict and prevent sanitary sewer overflows into the bay. But climate change and the state’s reliance on fossil fuels aren’t topics you hear the governor discuss, or even acknowledge.

▪ On voting rights, Crist would push to reverse the limits on mail-in ballots imposed by the Legislature under DeSantis. He also wants to declare Election Day a state holiday, to allow more people to vote, and he would push the Legislature to move primaries from the slow middle of the summer — August — to the spring, when more voters are in the state. Those are common-sense changes that would encourage people to vote. Except for some high spots, DeSantis has deeply damaged our state in four years. Instead of bringing us together so that, united, we can confront and solve our biggest challenges, he has pushed us apart. Instead of working for the betterment of everyone, he has worked only for the betterment of himself and his drive for higher office. Instead of encouraging us to reach for our better selves, he has sown suspicion and scorn. He has marginalized, penalized and ostracized entire groups of people — his constituents — though he spurns them relentlessly. Four more years of this, and what will be left of civil society in Florida? We’ll become unrecognizable. Charlie Crist is the best choice. He’ll work to unite us — Democrats, Republicans and independents alike. He’s what Florida needs — now.

The Miami Herald Editorial Board recommends CHARLIE CRIST for Florida governor.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article267265987.html#storylink=cpy

Categories DeSantis, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Florida

Doug Mastriano is Dangerous to Democracy

By dianeravitch
October 30, 2022 //
13

Our reader Jersey Joe added this postscript from The Guardian about the Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania:

From the guardian, 10-24-22: quote – Doug Mastriano, a retired army colonel who has enthusiastically indulged Donald Trump’s fantasy that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, is the Republican candidate. If he wins, he plans to deregister every single one of Pennsylvania’s 8.7 million voters. In future elections, Mastriano would choose who certifies – or doesn’t – the state’s election results. [snip] As a state senator in Pennsylvania, he said women who violated a proposed six-week abortion ban should be charged with murder. Mastriano frequently attacks trans people, and has said gay marriage should be illegal, and that same-sex couples should not be allowed to adopt children. end quoteThe man is a far right wing nightmare determined to end democracy in this country. According to these maniacs, elections are fair and valid only if the GOP wins.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Fascism

Fiona Hill: Putin Is Using Elon Musk to Send a Message

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2022 //
17

Fiona Hill is a former diplomat who specializes in the study of Russia and Ukraine. She was a star witness in the first impeachment trial of Trump (the Former Guy).

She was recently interviewed by Politico. This is a fascinating discussion with a deeply informed expert. Please open the link and read it all.

In the early days of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Hill warned in an interview with POLITICO that what Putin was trying to do was not only seize Ukraine but destroy the current world order. And she recognized from the start that Putin would use the threat of nuclear conflict to try to get his way.

Now, despite the setbacks Russia has suffered on the battlefield, Hill thinks Putin is undaunted. She sees him adapting to new conditions, not giving up. And she sees him trying to get the West to accede to his aims by using messengers like billionaire Elon Musk to propose arrangements that would end the conflict on his terms.

“Putin plays the egos of big men, gives them a sense that they can play a role. But in reality, they’re just direct transmitters of messages from Vladimir Putin,” Hill says…

Whenever he has a setback, Putin figures he can get out of it, that he can turn things around. That’s partly because of his training as a KGB operative. In the past, when asked about the success of operations, he’s pooh-poohed the idea that operations always go as planned, that everything is always perfect. He says there are always problems in an operation, there are always setbacks. Sometimes they’re absolute disasters. The key is adaptation.

Another hallmark of Putin is that he doubles down. He always takes the more extreme step in his range of options, the one that actually cuts off other alternatives. Putin has often related an experience he had as a kid, when he trapped a rat in a corner in the apartment building he lived in, in Leningrad, and the rat shocked him by jumping out and fighting back. He tells this story as if it’s a story about himself, that if he’s ever cornered, he will always fight back.

But he’s also the person who puts himself in the corner. We know that the Russians have had very high casualties and that they’ve been running out of manpower and equipment in Ukraine. The casualty rate on the Russian side keeps mounting. A few months ago, estimates were 50,000. Now the suggestions are 90,000 killed or severely injured. This is a real blow given the 170,000 Russia troops deployed to the Ukrainian border when the invasion began.

So, what does Putin do? He sends even more troops in by launching a full-on mobilization. He still hasn’t said this is a war. It remains a “special military operation,” but he calls up 300,000 people. Then, he goes several steps further and announces the annexation of the territories that Russia has been fighting over for the last several months, not just Donetsk and Luhansk, but also the territories of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Putin gives himself no way out except to pursue the original goals he had when he went in, which is the dismemberment of Ukraine and Russia annexing its territory. And he’s still trying to adapt his responses to setbacks on the battlefield….

Reynolds: If Putin wants Ukrainian territory so badly, why is he raining down such destruction on civilian areas and committing so many human rights abuses in occupied areas?

Hill: This is punishment, but also perverse redevelopment. You cow people into submission, destroy what they had and all their links to their past and their old lives, and then make them into something new and, thus, yours. Destroy Ukraine and Ukrainians. Build New Russia and create Russians. Its brutal but also a hallmark of imperial conquest….

Reynolds: We’ve recently had Elon Musk step into this conflict trying to promote discussion of peace settlements. What do you make of the role that he’s playing?

Hill: It’s very clear that Elon Musk is transmitting a message for Putin. There was a conference in Aspen in late September when Musk offered a version of what was in his tweet — including the recognition of Crimea as Russian because it’s been mostly Russian since the 1780s — and the suggestion that the Ukrainian regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia should be up for negotiation, because there should be guaranteed water supplies to Crimea. He made this suggestion before Putin’s annexation of those two territories on September 30. It was a very specific reference. Kherson and Zaporizhzhia essentially control all the water supplies to Crimea. Crimea is a dry peninsula. It has aquifers, but it doesn’t have rivers. It’s dependent on water from the Dnipro River that flows through a canal from Kherson. It’s unlikely Elon Musk knows about this himself. The reference to water is so specific that this clearly is a message from Putin.

Now, there are several reasons why Musk’s intervention is interesting and significant. First of all, Putin does this frequently. He uses prominent people as intermediaries to feel out the general political environment, to basically test how people are going to react to ideas. Henry Kissinger, for example, has had interactions with Putin directly and relayed messages. Putin often uses various trusted intermediaries including all kinds of businesspeople. I had intermediaries sent to discuss things with me while I was in government….

Putin plays the egos of big men, gives them a sense that they can play a role. But in reality, they’re just direct transmitters of messages from Vladimir Putin.

Reynolds: Putin is very comfortable dealing with billionaires and oligarchs. That’s a world that he knows well. But by using Musk this way, he goes right over the heads of [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian government.

Hill: He is basically short-circuiting the diplomatic process. He wants to lay out his terms and see how many people are going to pick them up. All of this is an effort to get Americans to take themselves out of the war and hand over Ukraine and Ukrainian territory to Russia….

Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014, exactly 100 years after Germany invaded Belgium and France — and just in the same way that Hitler seized the Sudetenland, annexed Austria and invaded Poland. We’re having a hard time coming to terms with what we’re dealing with here. This is a great power conflict, the third great power conflict in the European space in a little over a century. It’s the end of the existing world order. Our world is not going to be the same as it was before.

Categories Cruelty, Fascism, International

Timothy Snyder: The Coming Power Struggle in Russia

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2022 //
4

Timothy Snyder is a political scientist at Yale who has written incisive books about fascism. In this essay, he describes a scenario that will bring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to an end.

He does not believe that Putin will deploy nuclear weapons. He believes that the humiliating retreat of Russian soldiers on the battlefield will produce power struggles in Russia. The mercenaries that Putin has relied on from Chechnya and the Wagner Group (a neo-fascist militia) are unlikely to put their best troops at risk when the Russian military is retreating. The consequences will not be favorable for Putin.

Categories Accountability, Fascism, International

Paul Cobaugh: Will Putin Dare to Use Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine?

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2022 //
69

Paul Cobaugh is a retired Army veteran who served in special operations for 19 years. He now writes about military intelligence and narratives.

In his blog, “Truth about Threats,” he discusses whether Putin is likely to carry out his threats to use nuclear weapons. He indicates that there is some knowledge about Putin’s cognitive decline, which is worrisome.

But he is reassuring in his certainty that Putin and his advisors have been directly informed that any use of nuclear weapons will unleash a “devastating” response.

He writes:

Ever since Putin launched his unprovoked and disastrous war against his innocent, neighbor, Ukraine, he’s been either hinting at or overtly threatening the use of WMD, more specifically “nukes.” The sheer insanity of such threats is staggering but a closer look, just look may defang, some of our worst fears. Let’s give it a try. I will try to also avoid the legitimately complex language, of the arms control world.

First and foremost, a full-scale nuclear contest is what has long been termed, MAD, or “mutually assured destruction.” In simple terms, the absolute end to life as we know it. Putin knows this as well as anyone and is unlikely to commit suicide. This is not as unlikely as it was when the MAD doctrine became a routine assumption in the nuclear community but still, such a use would deny Putin, all that he is seeking with, “Putin’s War…”

Let’s not kid ourselves, Putin, who is soulless, has the propensity to gamble on a limited, tactical or similar deployment of these horrific weapons. He abides by no law, treaty of commitment. AS a result, there is virtually no reason to negotiate with him. Besides the historic, Russian paranoia of the west, baked into Russian identity, Putin has his own starkly personal version too. This coupled with reporting, since 2008 at least suggesting declining, cognitive abilities is not encouraging. Since reporting has taken this likely decline of Putin’s mental health, those in the US and allied nuclear forces have wisely focused on countermeasures. This should bolster everyone’s confidence somewhat.

Finally, the White House has done an excellent job managing Putin’s threats and in conjunction with our allies. Today’s statement by the NSA, National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, is blunt and to the point. Well done, WH. This statement includes public insight or two of the primary factors in managing Putin’s threats, deterrence and communication. This simply means that the WH, has made it expressly clear, with zero ambiguity that should Putin attempt to deploy any type of WMD, especially nukes of some sort that the response for him and Russia would be devastating. This clear understanding is the “deterrence…”

Okay, the above should help everyone breath a bit easier regarding a nuclear war of sorts and I hope that this helps you enjoy your weekend more than prior. I do want to just add a related note that is slightly less optimistic but still rather unlikely to occur.

There is a long list of WMD types, not just nuclear. Putin has, with his invasion, systematically adopted a scorched earth policy that leaves Ukraine incapable of surviving post war. This includes destroying Ukraine’s ability to be the breadbasket of Europe and much of the rest of the world with their immense and excellent agriculture industry. They have occupied and threatened radiological “dirty bombs” by allegedly having accidental explosions at nuclear power stations…

Let’s hope that cooler heads continue to prevail and that along with the support of the world’s good guys,” that Ukraine becomes the victor, sooner than later. Then comes the fight to force Russia to pay for reparations. We’ll get to that as we get closer to Ukraine’s victory. Remember, much of Russia’s $630bn of foreign exchange reserves is estimated to be held in the West. How about we freeze them now so they can be part of the reparations later? Hint hint.

Categories Evil, Extremism, Fascism, International

John Thompson: Will Oklahoma Schools Dare to Show Ken Burns’ Series on the U.S. and the Holocaust?

By dianeravitch
October 4, 2022 //
15

Oklahoma, like many other conservative states, passed a law to restrict teaching about racism and other controversial subjects. John Thompson, a historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, thinks that high school students should learn about and debate historical events. He wrote this post for the blog.

After Part I of Ken Burns’ The United States and the Holocaust was shown on PBS, I wrote a review calling for the documentary and its website to be taught in high school. As the three-part series progressed, I became more stunned by the information I had never been taught. Afterwards, conversing with neighbors and strangers, and ten lawyers, the virtually unanimous response I heard was a) The United States and the Holocaust must be taught in every Oklahoma high school, and b) because of HB 1775, educators won’t dare to do so.

I also tried to communicate with ten school systems and education institutions, but received no responses. In fairness, it is unlikely that districts would take a stand before studying the legal and political issues regarding the use of Burns’ work in the classroom.

Of course, I had known that Adolf Hitler patterned his crimes against humanity after America’s eugenics movement. But I hadn’t realized how much Hitler had studied its false claims that people of color were biologically inferior, as well as borrowed lessons from the genocide of Native Americans, the Ku Klux Klan, and Jim Crow. Similarly, I had read Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl and it seems unlikely that an Oklahoma teacher would be fired for violating HB 1775 by teaching about her the way it has normally been taught. But Burns tells the long story that has not been recognized. Even though the wording of HB 1775 doesn’t seem to ban The United States and the Holocaust from high school classrooms, it is widely assumed that teaching it would be too risky.

Burns tells how the United States State Department repeatedly tightened regulations designed to prevent Jews from escaping to the United States. The Frank family, like hundreds of thousands of Jews, was murdered after years of being excluded from the U.S.

A subsequent review by Diane Ravitch of Part II, explained how a million Jews were murdered by December, 1941 when the U.S. entered the war. She concluded, I believe correctly, that “This series should be shown to high school students in every school in the U.S.” In my first review, I concentrated on why and how Oklahoma educators and supporters of public schools should unite in teaching Burns’ film, and his standards-driven lessons. Part III further convinced me that the stakes are too high to allow Burns’ work to be pushed out of high schools. We must find a way to take a stand. All I know for sure, however, is that it will require careful planning and conversations between teachers and administrators; patrons; and political and community leaders.

We must make it clear that Burns affirms that there is plenty that is great about our democracy, and we must also focus on the heroism of anti-Nazi volunteers and key governmental leaders. He appropriately praises the military and other Americans for winning World War II, and thus putting an end to the Holocaust. Burns explains the logistics and technological limitations that would have made it hard to bomb the railroads to the concentration camps. But he also discusses the extreme anti-Semitism and how, in 1938, 2/3rds of Americans wanted to keep German, Austrian, and “other political refugees” out of the U.S., thus undermining President Franklin Roosevelt’s efforts to rescue as many as possible.

This piece will focus on two narratives that Burns uses to illustrate why this complicated history must be taught. And then it summarizes his belief that today it is doubly important that students are taught uncomfortable truths about the genocide of six million Jews.

First, Burns reviews the U.S State Department’s history of racism and its opposition to admitting Jews and Southern European immigrants, as opposed to the Northern Europeans they welcomed. For instance, in1939, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who would later be awarded the Nobel Prize, led the infamous effort to block the St. Louis, a German ocean liner trying to transport 936 Jews seeking asylum to America.

In 1940, Asst. Secretary of State Breckinridge Long “wrote that consular officers should “put every obstacle in the way [to] “postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of visas.” As it was later learned, Long tried to stop intelligence about mass murder from reaching the United States.

After the U.S. had been at war with Nazis for two years, and a grass roots effort by Americans putting their lives at risk when saving tens of thousands from genocide, the truth was clear. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. finally was able to prove to President Roosevelt that the State Department was lying, and Long had been hiding the facts and the plans for rescuing refugees through southeastern and southwestern Europe.

Long resigned and FDR created the Wartime Refugee Board (WRB). The hero of the rescues that the State Department had undermined, John Pehle, was named the WRB director. The WRB helped to save up to 200,000 Jews, but Pehle said their effort was “little and late.”

The second story was about the initiative General Dwight Eisenhower started in order to inform the world about what happened in the concentration camps. First, he required soldiers and German civilians to walk through the concentration camps and see the piles of bodies. He then asked General George Marshall to bring members of Congress and journalists to the newly liberated camps “so that they could convey the horrible truth about Nazi atrocities to the American public.” Within days, they began to bear witness to Nazi crimes in the camps.”

And that leads to the question that Burns’ website recommends, “Although the images and videos shown in the last clip are very challenging to watch, why do you think U.S. Army leaders said they needed to be shown to people in the United States and across the world?”

In the last five minutes, The United States and the Holocaust returns to the reason why Burns and his team started to make this film in 2015. This was before Charlottesville, the shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and at the supermarket in Buffalo, and before the January 6th insurrection. But they saw a similarity to “fragility of civilized behavior” that had existed in Germany. For instance, in the late 1920’s, Berlin was perhaps “the most open and cosmopolitan city in Europe” but only four years later, the Nazis were in charge.

This propelled Burns to reveal the full range of Americans’ actions and inactions. His research showed how quickly societies can spin out of control. Burns concluded that we must learn from the past in order to better deal with today’s “fragility of democratic civilization all over the world, not just here.”

Today, supporters of HB 1775 seem to argue that discussing today’s conflicts in the context of the dark chapters of American history is politicizing classroom instruction. Burns, however, rejects the practice of keeping students in the dark about past and present threats to democracy. Cross-generational conversations about The United States and the Holocaust could be a significant step towards bringing America together.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Cruelty, Democracy, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Injustice, Oklahoma

January 6, 2021: The Most Shameful Day in U.S. History

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2022 //
38

Time to take a break from Education News and Ukraine to reflect on the most shameful day in U.S. history. We dare not forget, especially as the numbers of anti-democratic, neo-fascist, militant groups surface, and the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down reasonable restrictions on gun control.

In the last two years of Trump’s term in office, I followed him on Twitter. It was a usually horrifying experience to read whatever rant he posted at 6 a.m. But it was necessary, I thought, to be informed, to know what bizarre rages were percolating in his head, unfiltered by senior staff or caution. I recall the tweet he wrote when he said, “come to DC on January 6. Will be wild.” I knew something awful was brewing.

My television was on that day, and I watched his speech to his adoring throng and felt the sense of menace in the air. Like millions of others, I watched in horror as the mob attacked the thinly-guarded Capitol, broke through the lines, began attacking police officers, broke a window, stampeded the entrance, and climbed the walls of that august building.

I couldn’t help but think of the many times I had visited the Capitol to meet with an elected official or staff. Entry to the building is tightly guarded. Visitors wait patiently in line, waiting their turn to put their bags through a scanning machine, then to walk single file through a metal detector.

And here were hundreds or thousands of people streaming through the doors and the windows, or scaling the exterior walls, then running unimpeded through the halls.

I wrote that day, in a state of shock, about what I and millions of others had witnessed: “an attempted coup,” terrorism inspired by Trump.

The next day, as the dust settled, I wrote about what happened and about Trump’s failure to defend the Capitol:

As the rampage continued, Trump was silent. After a few hours of lawlessness, he released a video telling them to go home. He reiterated his lie that the election had been stolen. In the video, he also praised the crowd, who broke into the Capitol, trashed its elegant interior, ransacked the offices of members, terrorized fleeing elected, stole items from its rooms and posed for photographs in the legislative chambers. “We love you,” Trump said. “You’re very special.”

Yeah, very special thugs, looters, and terrorists.

It didn’t occur to me at the time that Trump’s loyal supporters would claim that the mob was created by Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters. Why would Trump have told them that he loved them? Why would he have refused to send in help if he thought the mob was Antifa and BLM? Why would he say they were “special”? If he thought they were BLM and Antifa, I expect we would have seen a massive show of force, not silence.

It certainly didn’t occur to me that the Republican National Committee, to its eternal shame, would call the attack on the Capitol “legitimate political discourse.” Or that Republican members who rushed to safety and cowered in safe spaces would reflect on the day as just another protest or actually defend the insurrectionists as “patriots.”

On January 10, 2021, I wrote “Donald Trump Is a Traitor” and thought about what might have happened if the insurrectionists had succeeded.

What happened on January 6 was a failed coup. Many of Trump’s MAGA base joined the mob innocently.

But the mob was led by trained militia men, equipped to take hostages, prepared with flex cuffs, which police use to handcuff suspects.

The mob chanted “Hang Mike Pence.”

The mob knew the location of the secret Capitol offices of Democratic leaders.

They went looking for them.

Members of Congress exited the Chambers only a minute or two before the mob. If they had not escaped, there would have been mayhem.

The mob would have seized the leaders of Congress and VP Pence, handcuffed them, perhaps given them a show trial, perhaps executed them.

What then? Our democracy and our Constitution shredded. Would Trump declare himself President for Life?

What happened was terrifying. What might have happened would have been far, far worse.

Trump toadies are incorrigible. How to explain the members of Congress who emerged from their hiding place to vote to sustain Trump’s lies and to overturn a free and fair election? How to explain the perfidy of Senators Cruz and Hawley? How to explain the majority of House Republicans, who voted in support of a man who incited a coup against our democracy and our Constitution?

Now that I have watched the hearings of the January 6 Committee, I realize that the situation was even worse than I imagined on the day of the failed coup. I learned that Trump wanted to join the mob at the Capitol. Well, I’m sorry he didn’t, because there would now be no question about his culpability for inciting the insurrection, and he would be barred from ever seeking office again.

We learned that he watched the riot on television in his private dining room and did nothing to stop it for 187 minutes. He was hoping the mob would succeed and capture the Capitol. We know he did nothing to save the life of his Vice-President.

That led me to wonder: what if the mob had succeeded? There would have been no show trials. They would have executed Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi. They would have murdered AOC and the Squad. They would have murdered any member of Congress who stood in the way of their hero Trump. In the chaos, the mob might have murdered some of their Republican allies. Accidents happen.

We now know that the mob was only 40 feet from Pence as he fled. We now know that Officer Eugene Goodman lured the mob away from the floor of the Senate long enough for it to be evacuated. Even Republicans were terrified. We saw video of mob sympathizer Josh Hawley sprinting away from the insurrectionists whom he incited earlier with a raised fist.

January 6, 2021, was the worst day in American history. It was the only time that the seat of our government was attacked by our fellow Americans. It was a rebellion against the Constitution and the rule of law. If ever there was a Day of infamy, a Day of Shame, a day in which our Constitution and our democracy hung in the balance, it was January 6.

We must never forget.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Shame, Trump

Greg Brozeit: What Ken Burns Got Wrong

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2022 //
54

Greg Brozeit is a valued reader of the blog who is deeply knowledgeable about German history. In a private communication, he expressed to me his disappointment about Ken Burns’ “The U.S. and the Holocaust.” We agreed that Burns’s singular focus on Hitler’s Jewish victims slighted the other categories of people that he targeted for annihilation. They included Communists, socialists, trade unionists, the disabled, homosexuals, and Roma, as well as priests and nuns who opposed his monstrous regime. I invited Greg to write about his objections, and he did. Greg reminded me of the famous lines spoken by the German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemoller, who was initially a supporter of Hitler but turned against the Nazi regime as he realized Hitler’s murderous ambitions:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

—Martin Niemöller

Greg Brozeit wrote:

The story of the Holocaust is about how the “other” could be created and marginalized through inhumane policies and practices supported by large swaths of people.

Or, if they were not supporters, they had been conditioned over years to live in fear and had little-to-no sense of civic duty or civil courage. That is a complex story in which Jews were specifically targeted, the most numerous of many contrived “groups” of victims. A large number of those classified as German Jews, who were eliminated or driven out of the country, viewed themselves as Germans first and Jews second. Both identities were equally important to many of them. The distinction was lost and later imposed on them.

I often cite the diaries of Victor Klemperer for one reason -they are the only personal, contemporary observations of what actually happened by someone who was “fortunate” to be last on the list of Jews who were to be eliminated in the
final solution. He was one of the latter; one thing few Americans know and his publishers do their best to hide from Americans is that Klemperer returned to Dresden and became a professor and loyal citizen of East Germany until his death. It would have been interesting to read his view of the Berlin Wall had he lived long enough to witness it. He knew he was persecuted by Nazis because they imposed the definition of Jew on him, one he never internalized. He was almost a victim of the Holocaust, but he would have classified himself as not being Jewish long before others would make him a Jew.

After watching the PBS/Burns program on the U.S. and the Holocaust, I was disappointed that he missed so many opportunities to tell a larger story. Burns rarely veered from the “Holocaust = six million Jews” argument and consequently undermined the message that I (and perhaps the producers) had hoped for. The term “Holocaust” is also used for political, not humanitarian or historical, purposes—the definition Burns’ narrative (naively or intentionally) underscored. And therein lies my problem. A casual viewer might easily get the impression that from the 1930s to the end of WW II, Jews were the only victims of the Holocaust. The actual history is more complex.

By focusing only on Jews we risk serious dishonor to the memory of the six million—a view confirmed in my mind after reflecting on the title of Malcolm Nance’s book, “They Want to Kill Americans.”

Nazis claimed they were eliminating Jews and other undesirables to strengthen Germany. They started out by killing Germans: communists, trade unionists, social democrats, writers, artists, ethical conservatives, Protestants, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Scientists, gays and lesbians, persons with developmental disabilities, political opponents, those who weren’t acquiescent to the new order, AND Jews, both those who identified themselves so and those who did not. Focusing almost exclusively on any one of these groups risks breeding resentment and isolation. It certainly diminishes the broad inhumanity of the Holocaust.

An accurate recounting would never gloss over the genocidal priority the Nazis tragically bestowed upon Jews, but neither would it underplay the fate so many others were consigned to in this tragedy. And in fairness, Burns occasionally hinted at this reality. In the film’s final hour a doctor who took pride in the T4 program to eliminate persons with developmental disabilities was highlighted.

But the narrative all too quickly returned to the storyline of “aggressions against only Jews.” While Burns gives an excellent introduction to US policy on Jews and the Holocaust, the series title, “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” is misleading and inevitably expands (and eventually disappoints) the expectations and hopes for viewers who are not novices. The real story of the wide compass of inhumanity subsumed under the Holocaust is a profound lesson relevant to our present circumstances. Sadly, the program missed this larger opportunity.


Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, International, Media

UN Investigators Conclude that Russia Committed War Crimes in Ukraine

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2022 //
114

The Guardian reported today that an investigative team from the United Nations documented numerous war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine. Putin announced that he is calling one million men to active duty, and thousands of men are attempting to flee Russia before they are forced into combat. (It is illegal in Russia to call the invasion of Ukraine a “war.”) Protests have erupted in Russian cities, and more than 1,000 protestors have been arrested. Russia is conducting sham referenda in conquered Ukrainian territories, which will enable them to treat their conquests as Russian soil. Putin has said that any attack on Russia will allow him to use nuclear weapons in defense. This is a dangerous moment, to say the least.

The United Nations has said its investigators have concluded that Russia committed war crimes in Ukraine, including bombings of civilian areas, numerous executions, torture and horrific sexual violence.

The UN has made the investigation of human rights violations in the war a priority and in May its top human rights body mandated a team of experts to begin work in the country.

Since then, UN investigators, have risked their lives to collect evidence of crimes perpetrated against civilians, including in areas still threatened by enemy forces or laid with mines.

The team of three independent experts on Friday presented their first oral update to the UN human rights council, after it launched initial investigations looking at the areas of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy regions, adding that it would broaden its inquiries.

Speaking a day before the seven-month anniversary of Russia’s invasion of its neighbour, Erik Mose, the head of the investigation team, told thecouncil that, based on the evidence gathered by the Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, “it has concluded that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine”.

The team of investigators visited 27 towns and settlements, as well as graves and detention and torture centres; interviewed more than 150 victims and witnesses; and met with advocacy groups and government officials.

Mose said the team had been especially “struck by the large number of executions in the areas that we visited”, and the frequent “visible signs of executions on bodies, such as hands tied behind backs, gunshot wounds to the head, and slit throats”.

He added it was investigating such deaths in 16 towns and settlements, and had received credible allegations regarding many more cases that it would seek to document. The investigators had also received “consistent accounts of ill-treatment and torture, which were carried out during unlawful confinement”, the council was told.

In the settlements of Bucha, Hostomel and Borodianka, occupied for about a month by Russian troops, Ukrainian investigators found dozens of mass graves where the bodies of civilians, tortured and murdered, had been buried.

Since the Russians withdrew from the area, a group of young volunteers worked tirelessly to exhume the bodies and send them to forensic doctors who have been collecting evidence of crimes perpetrated by Russian troops.

Some of the victims had told the investigators they were transferred to Russia and held for weeks in prisons. Others had “disappeared” after such transfers. “Interlocutors described beatings, electric shocks and forced nudity, as well as other types of violations in such detention facilities,” Mose said.

Mose said the team had also “processed two incidents of ill-treatment against Russian Federation soldiers by Ukrainian forces”, adding that “while few in numbers, such cases continue to be the subject of our attention”.

He said investigators had also documented cases of sexual and gender-based violence, in some cases establishing that Russian soldiers were the perpetrators.

“There are examples of cases where relatives were forced to witness the crimes,” he said. “In the cases we have investigated, the age of victims of sexual and gendered-based violence ranged from four to 82 years.”

The commission had documented a wide range of crimes against children, Mose added, including children who were “raped, tortured, and unlawfully confined”.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Evil, Fascism, International

Dana Milbank: Hail Julius Caesar Trump!

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2022 //
21

Dana Milbank knows that the Republican Party is morphing into an authoritarian stance, but they prefer not to called fascists. No, he says, their brand of authoritarianism goes back about two thousand years.

He writes:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears: They have come to resurrect Caesar.


MAGA Republican leaders take umbrage at being accused of “semi-fascism,” which is understandable: Twentieth-century dictators such as Mussolini and the German guy with the mustache gave fascism a bad name. But the MAGA crowd isn’t disavowing totalitarianism, per se. It’s just their taste in authoritarian figures skews toward the classics. They’re old-school — 1st century B.C. old. “Hail, Caesar” goes down so much easier than “Heil Hitler.”


J.D. Vance, the Republican Senate nominee in Ohio, is one resident of this newly platted Caesarian section, as a recent profile in the Cleveland Plain Dealer showed. It referred to a year-old interview Vance gave on a far-right podcast in which he spoke approvingly of Curtis Yarvin, a self-proclaimed monarchist who argues for an American Julius Caesar to take power.

“We are in a late republican period,” Vance said, referencing the era preceding Caesar’s dictatorship. “If we’re going to push back against it, we’re going to have to get pretty wild, and pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.”
The podcast’s host, Jack Murphy, endorsed this sentiment, discussing possible “extra-constitutional” remedies to be taken “if we want to re-found the country.” (He told Vance he thought voting an “ineffectual” way to “rip out this leadership class.”)


Vance, who said he had been “radicalized” by the actions of “malevolent and evil” political opponents, described what “wild” actions he had in mind at another point in the podcast. He wants to “seize the institutions of the left” and purge political opponents with “de-Nazification, de-Ba’athification.”

Vance suggested that former president Donald Trump, once elected in 2024, should fire all civil servants and replace them with “our people,” defy court orders blocking such an illegal action, and then “do what Viktor Orban has done,” referring to the Hungarian dictator’s bans on certain topics from school curricula. Vance justified such “outside-the-box” authoritarian actions by reasoning that the United States is “far gone” and not “a real constitutional republic” anymore.
Hail, Caesar!


Vance is far from the only emperor-curious MAGA leader. Former Trump White House adviser Peter Navarro called Mike Pence a “traitor to the American Caesar of Trump” because the former vice president refused to help overturn the 2020 election. Another former Trump adviser, Michael Anton, hosted a Claremont Institute podcast with Yarvin about the desirability of an “American Caesar.”


Meanwhile, various tactics that would qualify as “extra-constitutional” have been proliferating on the MAGA right.


This week, Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee confirmed during the lame-duck Republican Congress after the 2020 election, turned the bedrock American principle of equal justice on its head. Cannon, granting Trump’s request for a “special master” to shield the government documents hoarded at his residence, said Trump’s need for protection from “stigma” was “in a league of its own” because of his “former position as president.” A judge granting extraordinary legal powers to the man who appointed her to spare him “reputational harm”? Hail, Caesar!

Last week, the House Jan. 6 committee wrote to Trump ally Newt Gingrich, outlining how the former House speaker encouraged Trump TV ads promoting false election-fraud claims, and how he suggested a “call-to-action” to intimidate election officials. “The goal is to arouse the country’s anger,” Gingrich wrote to Trump advisers, at a time when election officials desperately feared violence. Hail, Caesar!


Some MAGA Republicans have a novel solution to resolve pesky constitutional restraints: Rewrite the Constitution. As Carl Hulse reports in the New York Times, Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Tex.) introduced legislation seeking to compel Congress to call a constitutional convention — the first since the framers wrote it — to overhaul the United States’ founding document. The effort likely isn’t going anywhere, but it shows the contempt MAGA Republicans have for the constitutional order. Hail, Caesar!


Others in the MAGA movement simply reinterpret the Constitution to their own liking. County law-enforcement officials self-styling as “constitutional sheriffs” have assigned themselves power to decide what the law is, according to their own politics. One such sheriff in Michigan sought warrants in July to seize vote-counting machines to try to validate Trump’s false claims of voter fraud, Reuters reported last week. Armed lawmen going rogue to undermine elections? Hail, Caesar!


A few weeks from now, the Supreme Court will open its new term, in which it will decide whether to use a North Carolina case to allow state legislatures to redraw election maps — and potentially to overturn the outcome of elections and to disregard state constitutions — without any review by state courts. The high court blessing a radical legal theory that mocks the will of the voters? For MAGA Republicans, all roads lead to Roman imperialism.


Hail, Caesar!

Categories Extremism, Fascism, History, Humor, Republicans, Trump
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »