The American media misses the true nature of the GOP threat -- but an international outlet nailed it

[UCmeNdc]

That such slander is so pernicious as to prevent most (white) Americans from seeing what might be obvious otherwise means there’s an opportunity for international media outlets to say what needs saying. Such is the case for The Globalist. Though based in Washington, the publication takes an international view of economics, politics and culture in order to inform readers “how the world hangs together.”


And as far as I know, editor Stephan Richter, who is German, and senior editor Alexei Bayer, who is Russian, are the only writers to connect the Republican Party and the Russian Revolution. In a piece posted this month, they said: “The parallels between the Leninist power usurpation in early 20th century Russia and the Trumpian brigades in today’s United States are becoming ever more eerie.”


It’s an imperfect analogy. Like I said, the GOP is mob rule arising from the right. It seeks to maintain, to the point of open warfare, the hierarchies of power by which rugged white individuals stand on top. Lenin and his revolutionaries were mob rule arising from the left. They sought to flatten Russian society to the point of wholesale murder.

That it takes, however, an international media outlet that sees American politics from a European perspective to point out the similarities between them is instructive. The right’s rhetoric of slander has such a hold on Americans, most can’t see what’s in front of them.

https://www.rawstory.com/republican-threat-to-democracy/

[AllaN01Bear]

1. i have always listend to international shortwave broadcasts as

mnay american " news" outlets dont cover things.

[Botany]

2. FWIW: Steve Bannon, Trump's Top Guy, Told Me He Was 'a Leninist'

Then we had a long talk about his approach to politics. He never called himself a “populist” or an “American nationalist,” as so many think of him today. “I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed.

Shocked, I asked him what he meant.

“Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Bannon was employing Lenin’s strategy for Tea Party populist goals. He included in that group the Republican and Democratic Parties, as well as the traditional conservative press.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/steve-bannon-trumps-top-guy-told-me-he-was-a-leninist

********

I don't know if the Lenninist stuff is true but Bannon, Trump, Fox News, Abbot, and DeSantis are pushing chaos theory big time
in the spread of C-19.

[MagickMuffin]

4. Grover Norquist is very very jealous

Poor thing he just didn't have the right candidates to get it done.

[elleng]

5. 'Interesting'

[PSPS]

6. Bannon himself described his method as "flood the zone with shit"

"The zone" refers to public discourse via all available media

[Dan]

9. Curious, what happens next?

[JHB]

3. Movement Conservatism has never lacked for a sneaking admiration of the Bolsheviks

Not the ideology, of course, but the ability of a small group of extremists to play all their rivals, ruthlessly turn the tables, and take absolute power.

[orwell]

7. The power behind the putsch...

...is the same as it's always been. Concentrated holders of wealth want to dismantle any government that stands in the way of Darwinian capitalism.

We used to call this "the church" or "the royal family". These "power covers" are presently being superseded by the new power, the capitalist autocrat.

It's the same old crap, with Facebook and the rest of "social media" as the bullshit catapults launching flaming "Q drops" over the palace walls.

It's working to perfection...

[Evolve Dammit]

8. MSM seems fine with it, don't they? They no longer are a "pillar", IMHO. Ratings exclusively. n/t

[whathehell]

13. Not at all..

I don't know what MSM you're listening to, but as I mentioned down thread, CNN & MSNBC talk about the threat all the time.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

10. RepubliQons will say "Aha! The Globalist! With a name like it has to be Deep State propaganda!". .nt

[FakeNoose]

11. The Russian Revolution was against a real "bad guy" - the oppressive Romanov Monarchy

Chump's tirades have all been against strawmen (including Hillary Clinton) because the true "bad guy" was always HIM.

[wnylib]

16. +1000.

[whathehell]

12. I.hear "the American media", i.e. MSNBC, CNN, talking about

this threat to Democracy all the time.

[tenderfoot]

17. A lot of people don't have cable

[whathehell]

19. Lol

Then maybe they should get it -- at least before they start false narratives like this one.

[Hortensis]

23. Agree. Moreover, BIG TIME in American PRINT media.

[Sherman A1]

14. American Media misses a whole bunch beyond

filling airtime between ads for drugs we never knew we needed. They are very good at doing that with manufactured drama, talking heads and mostly BS.

I gave up on them and get my news from foreign sources and have for a long time.

[agincourt]

15. Socialist Workers Party

the Jack Barnes cult, not the UK-SWP, are big fans of Trump and right-wing militias. They are rabidly anti-liberal and though they purport to be for the working class, supporting the right wing pork Reich comes first. What's frustrating is how they appropriate progressive issues for their own benefit. We had one of their candidates get 2500 votes in a local city council election running as a socialist, feeding people a load of shit about what they are for. They are socialist as in Stalinist state capitalist, and oh yes, they are a Bannon fan as well. Not to mention, they also thought the Rittenhouse verdict was a great victory for the "working class".

[Joinfortmill]

18. Agree

[pansypoo53219]

20. a while ago 'on the media' NPR had a long seggment showing election fraud isn't real. stealing

impossible last year maybe. i know i saved it. need to send it to trump believers.

[DFW]

21. I have long said that Lenin and Stalin are the gurus for today's Republicans

Lenin with his "a lie, shouted loud enough and often enough becomes the truth," and Stalin with his "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." No wonder the Republicans from the Soviet States of America follow their teachings so closely. The NSDAP only ruled for twelve years (the thousand year Reich got abbreviated somewhat). The Soviet Socialists ruled for 70 years before they fell apart.

The NSDAP adopted Lenin's observation and used it to their own advantage as well. Look up Göbbels' early writing about Hitler's "National Socialist" movement. He was just as fervent about socialism as he was about nationalism. He churned out the same kind of gobbeldygook as some of today's loudmouths.

Fox Noise etc. seems to have grasped the sequence from the beginning: get their attention, then get their minds. It obviously works. In any case, I predict that in 100 years, if climate change doesn't drastically alter mass access to food, shelter and water, there will still be a USA, a PRC, and a Russian Federation, and none of them will much resemble their current incarnations--just as today's versions bear little resemblance to the versions of 1920.

[Roisin Ni Fiachra]

22. The Russians were overthrowing a long established monarchy.

The orange POS and his goons are Nazis, attempting to overthrow a democracy and institute a fascist dictatorship.

[Hortensis]

24. How about Clarence Thomas when we talk about destroying the state?

A very well regarded new book, which has been discussed quite a bit in American print media, points out that Thomas has always been a black nationalist, believing in black self determination and separatism, easily seen in examination of his earlier writings and activities. This has been written about by others before, though, like one calling him "Clarence X." (Vox discusses Corey Robin's book at https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/10/15/20893737/clarence-thomas-supreme-court-corey-robin)

Thomas's angry, destructive thinking has always been that our current systems are so intended to abuse black people that they cannot be changed (even as they have been changing big time) and that programs designed to create equality create dependence of blacks on whites instead -- which, now that he's in a position to do it, is a dandy excuse for directing lifelong resentment and anger to taking down our government. Which he and the Republicans are doing -- from the extreme right.

Black nationalism is most often associated with LW extremism, but the short move from there to RW extremism is so commonly taken as to be normal. Many nation-destroyers straddle the two, taking from both as it suits them. Including socialist Lenin, including Mussolini, and including Hitler. According to him, including Steve Bannon.

Most comparisons are with Nazi Germany, though, for the obvious reason that (after using both fascism and socialism to build support, it threw the socialist cloak off and became openly extreme right, and of course the Republican Party has become extreme right, and Bannon is extreme right.

Also, as the OP says, Lenin may have wanted to use socialist class warfare to "flatten" Russian society, but there's no real indication Bannon does. His orientation, religious and secular, seems to be to destroy the western democracies and replace with far-right religious white nationalist, with strong, class-based hierarchies ruling.

[live love laugh]

25. That it's comparable to Russia is eerie knowing the connections.