US Elections | SabrangIndia News Related to Human Rights Wed, 23 Oct 2024 07:53:56 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2.2 https://sabrangindia.in/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Favicon_0.png US Elections | SabrangIndia 32 32 American Muslims’ dilemma: Harris or Trump? https://sabrangindia.in/american-muslims-dilemma-harris-or-trump/ Wed, 23 Oct 2024 07:53:56 +0000 https://sabrangindia.in/?p=38361 Should American Muslims be thinking only as members of a particular faith community? Or also as citizens concerned with what another four years of Trump will mean for all Americans and the rest of the world?

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]]> With the US Presidential poll weeks away, American Muslims are today faced with a dilemma somewhat similar to the predicament of Indian Muslims. For most Indian Muslims until now voting for their “khula dushman” (open enemy) — the communal BJP – has not been an option. The question that has nagged very many Muslims is about what to do with their chupa dushman (hidden enemy) – the self-professedly secular Congress. But 10 years of Hindutva’s undiluted hate politics – mob lynching, bulldozer raj, websites ‘auctioning’ Muslim women, unchallenged public calls for go-to-Pakistan, economic boycott, even genocide – forced Indian Muslims to put aside their reservations and vote overwhelmingly for the Congress (‘lesser evil’) in the general elections held in June this year.

For American Muslims the choice today is between the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris and the Republican, Donald Trump: both ‘khula dushmans’ of Muslims. There is, of course, a difference between the Indian and American Muslim contexts. The Indian Muslim response has been based on their own bitter experience as citizens of India. On the other hand, uppermost in the mind of many American Muslims today is not so much their personal experience as citizens of USA, but the hypocrisy and the blatant complicity of the Biden administration in the year-long ongoing Israeli genocide of fellow-Muslims in Palestine and now Lebanon too.

The Democratic Presidential aspirant, Harris unreservedly defends the Biden administration’s unstinted support to the immoral, illegal, outrageous massacre of Palestinian men, women and children. She has even asserted that the biggest enemy of the US is not Russia or China but Iran. Several steps ahead of her, Trump is goading mass murderer Netanyahu to “finish the job” in Gaza and Lebanon and even launch a full-scale war against Iran.

 So who should or will American Muslims vote for come November 5? Democrat Harris, Republican Trump, a third candidate with no chance of winning, or simply stay home on V-day?

Several influential voices among American Muslims are urging the community to go for Trump in order to teach Harris and the Democratic Party a lesson. Included among them, is a group of Imams in the US who an open letter quote the Quran while asking Muslims to shun Harris. A non-American analyst, Sami Hamdani has declared it is the “religious duty” of American Muslims to deny Harris their vote even if means victory for Trump.

The most brazen appeal to religion however has been made by the Green Party’s vice-presidential candidate in the coming polls, Buch Ware. Ware, a Muslim, has tweeted this dire warning: “The ‘Muslims’ that have come out in support of Harris, have inscribed their names on the tablets of eternity alongside that of Nimrod, Pharaoh, Caesar and Yazid. Every soul slain in Gaza has a claim against them on Judgement day. They better dress light – been hearing Hell is hot.”

The ‘Muslims’ in quotes clearly implies that Muslims who support Harris are nothing but fake Muslims who must await their fate come the Day of Judgement. Presumably Allah’s angels are keeping a close watch right now of what American Muslims are thinking and will record their deed on November 5.

Fortunately, there are saner voices too. The most compelling among them is that of the well-known journalist Mehdi Hasan. He ran his weekly ‘Mehdi Hasan Show’ on the American TV channel MSNBC until November 2023 when it was abruptly discontinued for his bosses could not stomach his bold coverage and commentary on the American complicity in the Palestinian genocide. He has since launched his own channel, Zeteo.

In a 9-minute long episode (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7vOzUmqv-s)

, Hasan challenges those who are asking fellow-Muslims to abandon Harris. He clarifies that as a journalist it is neither his job nor intention to canvass support for Harris. He is only asking Muslims not to succumb to pressure from fellow-Muslims, and think clearly of what is at stake in the coming elections before casting their votes. He questions the wisdom behind the three main propositions and assumptions of the no-to-Harris camp.

Proposition One: Weaponising of faith, introducing religion in essentially secular political disputes. “The increasing invocation of the Quran to tell people to vote the right way, (is) emotionally blackmailing them into not voting for the Democrats and the accompanying insinuation that you are not a good Muslim, or not a Muslim at all, if you think of voting the candidate who is the lesser of two evils”. Hasan rightly asks: who can claim knowledge of what is in another person’s heart, who has the right to judge another person’s faith? While he does not mention it, there is also this to consider: Will such weaponisation of Islam hinder or help Islamophobia not only in the US but globally?

Proposition Two: Humbling of Harris will compel the Democrats to introspect and American Muslims will emerge a force to reckon with. Hasan questions the sheer naiveté and ignorance of how American politics works. He points to the 2000 US polls when American Muslims voted en masse for George W Bush. What happened next was the invasion of Iraq and the killing of half-a-million Iraqi Muslims. He next refers to the 2020 elections when having seen four years of Trump, Muslims voted for Biden. This, of course, has not come in the way of Biden’s unstinted support to Netanyahu.

Proposition Three: Underestimating the implications of Trump’s victory. Hasan asks: If Biden is complicit in the ongoing genocide in Palestine and Lebanon, what about Trump’s complicity with the Saudis in the genocide of Yemeni Muslims during his first term as president?

In his new book, War, the Watergate reporter Bob Woodward maintains that Trump is far worse than Nixon and, ‘the most reckless and impulsive president in American history.’

American Muslims who have endured four years of Trump earlier will survive one more term of his presidency, argues the non-American Samdani. That begs the question: should American Muslims be thinking only as members of a particular faith community? Should they not also be thinking as American Citizens, ponder over what another four years of the pro-genocide, pro-Netanyahu, racist, anti-Muslim, sexual abuse and felony convict, increasingly unhinged Trump mean would mean for all Americans and the rest of the world?

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]]> Waiting for US election results? https://sabrangindia.in/waiting-us-election-results/ Fri, 06 Nov 2020 08:41:55 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2020/11/06/waiting-us-election-results/ Time to speak up for Indian migrant voters' rights too

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]]> Image Courtesy:indiatoday.in

Some Indians, mostly those privileged enough to share their opinions on social media now seem to be on an overdrive ‘teasing’ voters in America that the Election Commission of India (ECI) would have done a better, and quicker job in announcing the next President of the US. 

Over 102 million Americans took advantage of postal ballots that are still being counted. This led Indians to express pride over our electronic voting machines and claim that our “Election Commission could handle it very efficiently and with much less stress”. Of course the opinion was revised and explained as ‘sarcasm’ etc  as soon as the critics began.

 

However there were many many more who were not joking at all. 

 

 

 

 

Most of the ‘we love ECI’ and let’s “outsource US elections to ECI” cheerleaders are forgetting that the final results of the American elections are still awaited because each single vote needs to be acknowledged. 

Almost all of the cheerleaders from India have also not realised, or still chose to ignore, that there is a major population of Indian citizens who have the right to vote, but cannot do so. The lakhs of migrants miss casting their vote each election, in their home states and cities because they work away in other places and cannot take leave to come back and vote wherever they are registered. Migrant workers, by definition, migrate to wherever they can find work, and often do not have a permanent address even in the cities they have moved to.

The migrant’s right to vote in India, came under the spotlight soon after the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent national lockdown forced lakhs of migrant workers to head back to their native villages. While many workers took long journeys to get back home after being rendered unemployed and homeless, many others just wanted to be in the relative safety of rural India with their families, as densely populated cities became hotspots of the disease.

This was just months before several State Assembly polls as well as Parliamentary by-elections were scheduled to take place. Many these migrants are possibly being left out of the electoral process due to their forced relocation. Taking action, and lending support to the migrant workers rights Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) and like minded organisations such as Lok Shakti Abhiyan, Bangla Sanskriti Manch, All India Union of Forest Working People (AIUFWP) and Bharatiya Nagrik Adhikar Suraksha Manch, had sent  a memorandum to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to make provisions for migrant workers to be able to vote via postal ballot.

The memorandum stated: “We are writing this letter on behalf of ‘migrant laborers’ requesting their inclusion as ‘notified electors’ under Section 60(c) of the Representation of People Act, 1951 read with Part IIIA of the Conduct of Election Rules 1961, thereby allowing such migrant laborers access to the postal ballot.”  The entire memorandum may be read, shared, and downloaded from here. 

The CJP campaign for migrant workers’ Right to Vote, explained how postal ballots help empower this overlooked group of citizens. The CJP memorandum states: “We believe that by giving migrant labourers the right to cast their vote through the postal ballot, the Election Commission of India would be taking a step towards a more inclusive democracy, ensuring that every segment of the adult and eligible Indian population gets to cast their vote and is not excluded for reasons of exigencies of their profession.” The petition may be accessed here.

The provision has long lasting and wide-ranging ramifications for the broader issues related to the lives and voices of millions of Indians who have as much of a say in the functioning of the country as do their more privileged fellow citizens. Here are two citizens, Ram Gopal Yadav, a migrant worker from Bihar, and Jay Prakash Saav, a migrant worker from Jharkhand, who appealed to the government to facilitate measures for migrant workers to vote from their city of work. 

 

 

Secretary, Citizens for Justice and Peace, activist and journalist Teesta Setalvad, had also written a detailed article in Indian Express on the subject in July 2020. Setalvad wrote that the “Election Commission must ensure optimal conditions for exercise of this freedom.

While the US granted universal adult franchise incrementally, India moved from a restrictive 15 per cent of Indians having (limited) voting rights to universal adult franchise, driven by the transformative impetus of the national movement and the ideals of equality and non-discrimination that it threw up.”

She recalled B R Ambedkar’s clarity of vision that resulted in Article 326 of the Constitution, “which not only provided that elections be held on the basis of universal adult franchise, but ensured that elitist notions of qualifications — such as property ownership — did not exclude individuals from either voting or standing for elections” adding that Ambedkar had “emphasised that, ultimately, a democratic government was inseparable from the right to vote, and it was voting that would prove to be (one of) the harbinger(s) of political education.”

“India cannot look itself in the eye and explain how such a large section of its population — simply by virtue of its work definition, which is being away from home — is excluded from this basic constitutional right,” the article emphasised that “migrant labourers mostly hail from most poverty-driven rural areas and from among the most marginalised sections (SC/STs and OBCs, and other minorities, including Muslims). They are mostly uneducated, and lack assets including land.  Economic constraints disable a majority of them from voting as they cannot, in the midst of harsh work cycles, commute to their home states on the polling day. One survey shows that only 48 per cent of those surveyed voted in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, when the national average was 59.7 per cent. These patterns have stayed consistent. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, major sender states such as Bihar and UP had among the lowest voter turnout rates at 57.33 per cent and 59.21 per cent respectively, while the national average was 67.4 per cent.” In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, more than 28 lakh votes were received via postal ballots, “the Indian migrant worker deserves the secured right to have access to vote through a similar system.”

Months later, as America counts each vote before announcing who it chose to be its next President, the point is driven home once again.

 

 

Related:

Bihar Elections: Deconstructing the Muslim monolith
CPI(M) Central Committee reveals electoral plans for next state elections
CJP campaigns for migrant workers’ Right to Vote

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]]> No, this isn’t the 1930s – but yes, this is fascism https://sabrangindia.in/no-isnt-1930s-yes-fascism/ Thu, 17 Nov 2016 06:02:19 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2016/11/17/no-isnt-1930s-yes-fascism/ The spread of fascism in the 1920s was significantly aided by the fact that liberals and mainstream conservatives failed to take it seriously. Instead, they accommodated and normalised it. Image: PA/Roman Pilipey The centre right is doing the same today. Brexit, Trump and the far right ascendant across Europe indicate that talk of a right-wing […]

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]]> The spread of fascism in the 1920s was significantly aided by the fact that liberals and mainstream conservatives failed to take it seriously. Instead, they accommodated and normalised it.
Donald Trump
Image: PA/Roman Pilipey

The centre right is doing the same today. Brexit, Trump and the far right ascendant across Europe indicate that talk of a right-wing revolutionary moment is not exaggerated. And the French presidential election could be next on the calendar.

The shock felt by status-quo liberals and the anguish experienced on the left are matched only by the satisfaction of those on the extreme right that finally they are winning. The so-called “mature” liberal democracies have long managed to marginalise them. They have long seen themselves as vilified for speaking the common man’s unpalatable truths to out-of-touch elites. Now their champions are taking the political mainstream by storm.


The signs are there if you look for them. EPA

And amid the disbelief, heartbreak, and protest, centre-right politicians and commentators seek to normalise and reassure. They dismiss “whingers” and “moaners”. They tell us to “get over it” and brush off talk of a new fascism as unfounded scaremongering.

Even among historians, apparently – as the conservative British writer Niall Ferguson condescended to tell Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis – analogies with the 1930s are made only by the easily confused.

The circumstances of society, the economy and geopolitics are so different, we are told, that today’s right-wing populism cannot be called a fascistic revival. The mainstream centre right assures us that all will be well in the wake of Trump’s election. It did the same after the UK’s EU referendum, even as hate crime figures skyrocketed. Conservative politicians continue to insist that the real news is about the wonderful opportunities ahead.

But that is precisely where the real analogy with Europe in the 1920s and 1930s lies. The circumstances of 2016 are indeed very different to those against which militarised party shock troops fought street battles, and monarchists looked for a strong man to capture popular grievances and save them from Bolshevik revolution.

But historical circumstances, like individuals, are always unique and unrepeatable. The point of comparison is not to suggest that we are living though the 1930s redux. It is to recognise the very strong family resemblance in ideas shared by the early 20th century far right and its mimics today.


Mussolini in 1922. Wikimedia Commons

Discussion of fascism suffers from an excess of definition. That often, ironically, allows far-right groups and their apologists to disavow the label because of some tick-box characteristic which they can be said to lack. But just as we can usefully talk about socialism as a recognisable political tradition without assuming that all socialisms since the 1840s have been cut from one mould, so we can speak of a recognisably fascist style of politics in Europe, the US, Russia and elsewhere. It is united by its espousal of a set of core ideas.

The theatrical machismo, the man or woman “of the people” image, and the deliberately provocative, demagogic sloganeering that impatiently sweeps aside rational, evidence-based argument and the rule-bound negotiation of different perspectives – the substance of democracy, in other words – is only the outward form that this style of politics takes.

More important are its characteristic memes. Fascism brings a masculinist, xenophobic nationalism that claims to “put the people first” while turning them against one another. That is complemented by anti-cosmopolitanism and anti-intellectualism. It denounces global capitalism, blaming ordinary people’s woes on an alien “plutocracy” in a language that is both implicitly anti-Semitic and explicitly anti-immigrant, while offering no real alternative economics. In the US, that was perfectly exemplified in Trump’s closing campaign ad.

Trump’s view of the world.
A view of the world is presented that is centred on fears of “national suicide” and civilisational decline, in which whites are demographically overwhelmed by “inferior” peoples, minorities and immigrants. Today, this is the French far-right’s paranoid fantasy of le grand remplacement. Geopolitics are defined by latent religio-racial war. In the 1930s, this meant a death struggle with communism. Today, it looks to, and feeds abundantly on, Islamist extremism and Islamic State, abusively identified with “Islam” as a whole.

This is a new fascism, or at least near-fascism, and the centre right is dangerously underestimating its potential, exactly as it did 80 years ago. Then, it was conservative anti-communists who believed they could tame and control the extremist fringe. Now, it is mainstream conservatives, facing little electoral challenge from a left in disarray. They fear the drift of their own voters to more muscular, anti-immigrant demagogues on the right. They accordingly espouse the right’s priorities and accommodate its hate speech. They reassure everyone that they have things under control even as the post-Cold War neoliberal order, like the war-damaged bourgeois golden age last century, sinks under them.

The risk, at least for the West, is not a new world war, but merely a poisoned public life, a democracy reduced to the tyranny of tiny majorities who find emotional satisfaction in a violent, resentful rhetoric while their narrowly-elected leaders strip away their rights and persecute their neighbours. That might be quite bad enough.

This article was first published on The Conversation

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]]> US: Donald Trump urged to set aside appointment of Stephen Bannon as senior White House staff https://sabrangindia.in/us-donald-trump-urged-set-aside-appointment-stephen-bannon-senior-white-house-staff/ Wed, 16 Nov 2016 06:12:11 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2016/11/16/us-donald-trump-urged-set-aside-appointment-stephen-bannon-senior-white-house-staff/ Lawmakers said the president-elect's selection of his campaign chairman as his chief strategist ’sends the wrong message’ to harassers of minority communities.   United States president-elect Donald Trump has been urged to rescind the appointment of far-right, controversial media figure Stephen K Bannon as his chief adviser and strategist at the White House. “If Trump […]

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]]> Lawmakers said the president-elect's selection of his campaign chairman as his chief strategist ’sends the wrong message’ to harassers of minority communities.

US: Donald Trump urged to set aside appointment of Stephen Bannon as senior White House staff
 

United States president-elect Donald Trump has been urged to rescind the appointment of far-right, controversial media figure Stephen K Bannon as his chief adviser and strategist at the White House. “If Trump is serious about seeking unity, the first thing he should do is rescind his appointment of Steve Bannon,” said Democratic Senator Harry Reid.

The lawmaker made the appeal on Tuesday at the Senate, adding that incidents of hate crimes had spiked since the Republican defeated his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the US presidential elections on November 8. “The man who lost the popular vote by two million votes is now the president-elect,” Reid said, mentioning examples of Pakistani-American doctors he knew who had been harassed.

Democratic Congressman Michael Doyle also wrote to the president-elect on his appointment of Bannon to the senior White House post. “Mr Bannon’s appointment sends the wrong message to people who have engaged in those types of activities [harassment and intimidation], indicating that they will not only be tolerated, but endorsed by your administration,” Doyle said.

While another Democratic congressman, Frank Pallone, accused Trump of failing the key task of appointing competent White House staff, Senator Sherrod Brown said, “Bannon has promoted anti-Semitic, racist, misogynistic and dangerous views that have emboldened white nationalist forces,” calling for his appointment to be cancelled. According to Senator Dianne Feinstein, “Someone known for belittling minorities, immigrants and women has no place advising the president.”

Courtesy: Scroll.in

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]]> This New Deal, A Loss of Hope: Donald Tump’s Win in 2016 https://sabrangindia.in/new-deal-loss-hope-donald-tumps-win-2016/ Tue, 15 Nov 2016 07:29:51 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2016/11/15/new-deal-loss-hope-donald-tumps-win-2016/ Tens of millions of people around the world remember to this date, where they were and what they were doing when the twin towers fell. As they do when Mr. Barack Obama, a black man, became the most powerful man in the world. Strangers rejoiced on the streets of little towns around the world. Not […]

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]]> Tens of millions of people around the world remember to this date, where they were and what they were doing when the twin towers fell. As they do when Mr. Barack Obama, a black man, became the most powerful man in the world. Strangers rejoiced on the streets of little towns around the world. Not because they thought that their lives would be suddenly better, or that the complex political and economic systems that controlled their lives would suddenly be fairer or kinder, but because in his win the disenfranchised, around the world, saw a glimmer of hope. Every so often, humanity redeems itself. And it had done so then.

Trump Supporter

And once again, millions will remember this election night for a long long time to come. Thousands wept next morning, for themselves and for the their children, for the loss of hope. Whether Mr. Trump really believes in all he said is almost immaterial. He, and his party, have now made it okay to say those things. It is okay to be uncivil, to be unkind, to be insular and intolerant. It is okay to be selfish, okay to be deceitful, okay to lie, okay to cheat, okay to oppress, okay to divide, and okay to hate. To hate those different from us, to disrespect women, to despise the LGBT community and to mock the disabled. It is okay to be selfish. It is okay to not sacrifice. It is okay to trample and okay to destroy. The world is watching in horror as America becomes everything it had been accused of.

Paul Ryan’s dream for a unified government has come true. The next three Supreme Court appointees will seal the deal. This monolithic concentration of power is almost more worrisome than the platform on which the President-elect contested and won. The violence that such unbridled unchecked power will unleash is gut wrenching. There may not be a wall, and there may be no ban. But there will be misery – lots of it – foisted upon the most vulnerable. Time will tell whether this was a triumph of the disenfranchised or the bigoted or the misogynistic or them all. But one thing is certain – the oligarchs will run amok. The exploitative systems that make life a daily grind for millions are only likely to get worse. There is no reason to think otherwise. Whenever humans lose all checks and balances, we have shown an uncanny ability to tap into our darkest, most violent selves. We rapidly descend into an abyss. This week, it seems, we have only just jumped off the ledge.

It is okay to be selfish. It is okay to not sacrifice. It is okay to trample and okay to destroy. The world is watching in horror as America becomes everything it had been accused of.

America may see the rolling back of rights, the reversal of freedoms and the restriction of expression. And every assault will make public discourse more acrimonious and more frightful. But these insults are likely to be mere distractions from the ominous and insidious task underfoot – the extraction of labour, the siphoning of wealth and the pooling of resources to serve the few. Citizens United will be the norm for our generation, Roe v Wade may not. The government may not have a greater say in the personal lives of citizens – but it will ensure that corporations will.  The vast majority will have fewer resources – they will not have better schools, they will not have better healthcare, they will not longer parental leave, they will not have a bigger retirement fund. They will not have a better future. And those at the fringe will have no chance whatsoever. It is this disenfranchisement that we should be petrified of. What does America offer if it does not offer everyone a fighting chance? How is America different if your birth determines your fate? What is America if not the safest melting pot? Where should the tired, the poor and the huddled masses go if not to America’s shores? Should that brazen Colossus not stand forever?

The Koch Brothers Academy will continue their fear mongering and obfuscation, and unless those committed to a more perfect union are strategic in their response, all will be lost. Tens of thousands cast empty ballots. How did they reach a point of such self-destructive self-righteousness that this misguided act of supposed civil disobedience now risks them losing the nation? To dismiss the “uneducated white middle” as ignorant is patronizing. Those that voted for Mr. Trump are adults, and are responsible for the choices they made. Those that allowed them to be misguided, ill-informed, and manipulated, ie – the Republican establishment – should be held accountable.

If each of the 59 million people who voted for Hillary Clinton dedicated herself (or himself) to convincing one “other” — only one — in the next four years that the nation is stronger together, then America may have a chance to be great again. But this seemingly simple task requires strategic targeted planning. The isolated communities of the coasts will have to travel the nation, not fly over it, to get on a bus, and hitchhike across the country, to see what ails America’s heartland. And this means everyone – women, black, brown, gay, lesbian, the poor, the disabled, the Muslims and Jews — have to show those that cower their folly. The future of this grand experiment, the final frontier, is in their hands. They must reclaim America from the oligarchs and their unwitting foot soldiers. They must not let their guard down, they must hold every offie bearer accountable. They must organize and struggle, demand and agitate, march and protest. They must lift a lamp to the golden door again, lest this great nation plunges into long years of darkness. 

(The author is an ER physician in New York City, and fellow at Harvard’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. An immigrant, his first day of school in the United States was on September 11, 2001) 
 

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]]> Michael Moore’s “Morning After To-Do List” Facebook Post For Democrats Is Going Viral https://sabrangindia.in/michael-moores-morning-after-do-list-facebook-post-democrats-going-viral/ Thu, 10 Nov 2016 12:46:39 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2016/11/10/michael-moores-morning-after-do-list-facebook-post-democrats-going-viral/ For all you political junkies out there, you’re probably aware that there was a presidential election last night. The Republican candidate – Donald Trump – emerged the winner, but some people (like millions of them) are kind of terrified by this result. Perhaps that explains why filmmaker Michael Moore’s Facebook post today is currently going […]

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]]> For all you political junkies out there, you’re probably aware that there was a presidential election last night. The Republican candidate – Donald Trump – emerged the winner, but some people (like millions of them) are kind of terrified by this result.

Perhaps that explains why filmmaker Michael Moore’s Facebook post today is currently going crazy viral. His “Morning After To-Do List” is a challenge to citizens to reject fear and embrace the power we all have to get out there and actually do something that matters. 


Image: Michael Moore / Facebook

You can read the transcript of his post below or view it directly here:  
Morning After To-Do List:
1. Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people. They have failed us miserably.

2. Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn't let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must "heal the divide" and “come together.” They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off.

3. Any Democratic member of Congress who didn’t wake up this morning ready to fight, resist and obstruct in the way Republicans did against President Obama every day for eight full years must step out of the way and let those of us who know the score lead the way in stopping the meanness and the madness that's about to begin.

4. Everyone must stop saying they are “stunned” and “shocked.” What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren’t paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all “You're fired!” Trump’s victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that.
 
Read More here: https://www.good.is/articles/moore-five-point-plan

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]]> Inside the Invisible Government: War, Propaganda, Clinton and Trump https://sabrangindia.in/inside-invisible-government-war-propaganda-clinton-and-trump/ Tue, 08 Nov 2016 06:55:45 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2016/11/08/inside-invisible-government-war-propaganda-clinton-and-trump/ If the winner is Clinton, a chorus of commentators will celebrate it as a great step forward for women. None will mention Clinton’s victims: the women of Syria, Iraq and Libya. The American journalist, Edward Bernays, is often described as the man who invented modern propaganda. The nephew of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psycho-analysis, […]

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]]> If the winner is Clinton, a chorus of commentators will celebrate it as a great step forward for women. None will mention Clinton’s victims: the women of Syria, Iraq and Libya.

Clinton and Trump

The American journalist, Edward Bernays, is often described as the man who invented modern propaganda.

The nephew of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psycho-analysis, it was Bernays who coined the term “public relations” as a euphemism for spin and its deceptions.

In 1929, he persuaded feminists to promote cigarettes for women by smoking in the New York Easter Parade – behavior then considered outlandish. One feminist, Ruth Booth, declared, “Women! Light another torch of freedom! Fight another sex taboo!”

Bernays’ influence extended far beyond advertising. His greatest success was his role in convincing the American public to join the slaughter of the First World War. The secret, he said, was “engineering the consent” of people in order to “control and regiment [them] according to our will without their knowing about it.”

He described this as “the true ruling power in our society” and called it an “invisible government.”

Today, the invisible government has never been more powerful and less understood. In my career as a journalist and filmmaker, I have never known propaganda to insinuate our lives and as it does now and to go unchallenged.
Imagine two cities.

Both are under siege by the forces of the government of that country. Both cities are occupied by fanatics, who commit terrible atrocities, such as beheading people.

But there is a vital difference. In one siege, the government soldiers are described as liberators by Western reporters embedded with them, who enthusiastically report their battles and air strikes. There are front page pictures of these heroic soldiers giving a V-sign for victory. There is scant mention of civilian casualties.

In the second city – in another country nearby – almost exactly the same is happening. Government forces are laying siege to a city controlled by the same breed of fanatics.

The difference is that these fanatics are supported, supplied and armed by “us” – by the United States and Britain. They even have a media centre that is funded by Britain and America.

Another difference is that the government soldiers laying siege to this city are the bad guys, condemned for assaulting and bombing the city – which is exactly what the good soldiers do in the first city.

Confusing? Not really. Such is the basic double standard that is the essence of propaganda. I am referring, of course, to the current siege of the city of Mosul by the government forces of Iraq, who are backed by the United States and Britain and to the siege of Aleppo by the government forces of Syria, backed by Russia. One is good; the other is bad.

What is seldom reported is that both cities would not be occupied by fanatics and ravaged by war if Britain and the United States had not invaded Iraq in 2003. That criminal enterprise was launched on lies strikingly similar to the propaganda that now distorts our understanding of the civil war in Syria.

Without this drumbeat of propaganda dressed up as news, the monstrous ISIS and al-Qaida and al-Nusra and the rest of the jihadist gang might not exist, and the people of Syria might not be fighting for their lives today.

Some may remember in 2003 a succession of BBC reporters turning to the camera and telling us that Blair was “vindicated” for what turned out to be the crime of the century. The US television networks produced the same validation for George W. Bush. Fox News brought on Henry Kissinger to effuse over Colin Powell’s fabrications.
 
The same year, soon after the invasion, I filmed an interview in Washington with Charles Lewis, the renowned American investigative journalist. I asked him, “What would have happened if the freest media in the world had seriously challenged what turned out to be crude propaganda?”

He replied that if journalists had done their job, “there is a very, very good chance we would not have gone to war in Iraq.”

It was a shocking statement, and one supported by other famous journalists to whom I put the same question — Dan Rather of CBS, David Rose of the Observerand journalists and producers in the BBC, who wished to remain anonymous.

In other words, had journalists done their job, had they challenged and investigated the propaganda instead of amplifying it, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children would be alive today, and there would be no ISIS and no siege of Aleppo or Mosul.

There would have been no atrocity on the London Underground on July 7, 2005. There would have been no flight of millions of refugees; there would be no miserable camps.

When the terrorist atrocity happened in Paris last November, President Francoise Hollande immediately sent planes to bomb Syria – and more terrorism followed, predictably, the product of Hollande’s bombast about France being “at war” and “showing no mercy.” That state violence and jihadist violence feed off each other is the truth that no national leader has the courage to speak.

 “When the truth is replaced by silence,” said the Soviet dissident Yevtushenko, “the silence is a lie.”

The attack on Iraq, the attack on Libya, the attack on Syria happened because the leader in each of these countries was not a puppet of the West. The human rights record of a Saddam or a Gaddafi was irrelevant. They did not obey orders and surrender control of their country.

The same fate awaited Slobodan Milosevic once he had refused to sign an “agreement” that demanded the occupation of Serbia and its conversion to a market economy. His people were bombed, and he was prosecuted in The Hague. Independence of this kind is intolerable.

As WikLeaks has revealed, it was only when the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in 2009 rejected an oil pipeline, running through his country from Qatar to Europe, that he was attacked.

From that moment, the CIA planned to destroy the government of Syria with jihadist fanatics – the same fanatics currently holding the people of Mosul and eastern Aleppo hostage.

Why is this not news? The former British Foreign Office official Carne Ross, who was responsible for operating sanctions against Iraq, told me: “We would feed journalists factoids of sanitised intelligence, or we would freeze them out. That is how it worked.”
 
The West’s medieval client, Saudi Arabia – to which the US and Britain sell billions of dollars’ worth of arms – is at present destroying Yemen, a country so poor that in the best of times, half the children are malnourished.

Look on YouTube and you will see the kind of massive bombs – “our” bombs – that the Saudis use against dirt-poor villages, and against weddings, and funerals.

The explosions look like small atomic bombs. The bomb aimers in Saudi Arabia work side-by-side with British officers. This fact is not on the evening news.

Propaganda is most effective when our consent is engineered by those with a fine education – Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Columbia — and with careers on the BBC, the Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post.

These organisations are known as the liberal media. They present themselves as enlightened, progressive tribunes of the moral zeitgeist. They are anti-racist, pro-feminist and pro-LGBT.

And they love war.
While they speak up for feminism, they support rapacious wars that deny the rights of countless women, including the right to life.

In 2011, Libya, then a modern state, was destroyed on the pretext that Muammar Gaddafi was about to commit genocide on his own people.  That was the incessant news; and there was no evidence. It was a lie.

In fact, Britain, Europe and the United States wanted what they like to call “regime change” in Libya, the biggest oil producer in Africa. Gaddafi’s influence in the continent and, above all, his independence were intolerable.

So he was murdered with a knife in his rear by fanatics, backed by America, Britain and France.  Hillary Clinton cheered his gruesome death for the camera, declaring, “We came, we saw, he died!”

The destruction of Libya was a media triumph. As the war drums were beaten, Jonathan Freedland wrote in the Guardian: “Though the risks are very real, the case for intervention remains strong.”

Intervention — what a polite, benign, Guardian word, whose real meaning, for Libya, was death and destruction.

According to its own records, Nato launched 9,700 “strike sorties” against Libya, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. They included missiles with uranium warheads. Look at the photographs of the rubble of Misurata and Sirte, and the mass graves identified by the Red Cross. The Unicef report on the children killed says, “most [of them] under the age of ten.”

As a direct consequence, Sirte became the capital of ISIS.

Ukraine is another media triumph. Respectable liberal newspapers such as theNew York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian, and mainstream broadcasters such as the BBC, NBC, CBS, CNN have played a critical role in conditioning their viewers to accept a new and dangerous cold war.

All have misrepresented events in Ukraine as a malign act by Russia when, in fact, the coup in Ukraine in 2014 was the work of the United States, aided by Germany and Nato.

This inversion of reality is so pervasive that Washington’s military intimidation of Russia is not news; it is suppressed behind a smear and scare campaign of the kind I grew up with during the first cold war. Once again, the Ruskies are coming to get us, led by another Stalin, whom The Economist depicts as the devil.

The suppression of the truth about Ukraine is one of the most complete news blackouts I can remember. The fascists who engineered the coup in Kiev are the same breed that backed the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Of all the scares about the rise of fascist anti-Semitism in Europe, no leader ever mentions the fascists in Ukraine – except Vladimir Putin, but he does not count.

Many in the Western media have worked hard to present the ethnic Russian-speaking population of Ukraine as outsiders in their own country, as agents of Moscow, almost never as Ukrainians seeking a federation within Ukraine and as Ukrainian citizens resisting a foreign-orchestrated coup against their elected government.

There is almost the joie d’esprit of a class reunion of warmongers.

The drum-beaters of the Washington Post inciting war with Russia are the very same editorial writers who published the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

To most of us, the American presidential campaign is a media freak show, in which Donald Trump is the arch villain.

But Trump is loathed by those with power in the United States for reasons that have little to do with his obnoxious behavior and opinions. To the invisible government in Washington, the unpredictable Trump is an obstacle to America’s design for the 21st century.

This is to maintain the dominance of the United States and to subjugate Russia, and, if possible, China.

To the militarists in Washington, the real problem with Trump is that, in his lucid moments, he seems not to want a war with Russia; he wants to talk with the Russian president, not fight him; he says he wants to talk with the president of China.

In the first debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump promised not to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into a conflict. He said, “I would certainly not do first strike. Once the nuclear alternative happens, it’s over.” That was not news.
Did he really mean it? Who knows? He often contradicts himself. But what is clear is that Trump is considered a serious threat to the status quo maintained by the vast national security machine that runs the United States, regardless of who is in the White House.

The CIA wants him beaten. The Pentagon wants him beaten. The media wants him beaten. Even his own party wants him beaten. He is a threat to the rulers of the world – unlike Clinton who has left no doubt she is prepared to go to war with nuclear-armed Russia and China.

Clinton has the form, as she often boasts. Indeed, her record is proven. As a senator, she backed the bloodbath in Iraq.  When she ran against Obama in 2008, she threatened to “totally obliterate” Iran. As Secretary of State, she colluded in the destruction of governments in Libya and Honduras and set in train the baiting of China.

She has now pledged to support a No Fly Zone in Syria — a direct provocation for war with Russia. Clinton may well become the most dangerous president of the United States in my lifetime –a distinction for which the competition is fierce.

Without a shred of evidence, she has accused Russia of supporting Trump and hacking her emails. Released by WikiLeaks, these emails tell us that what Clinton says in private, in speeches to the rich and powerful, is the opposite of what she says in public.

That is why silencing and threatening Julian Assange is so important. As the editor of WikiLeaks, Assange knows the truth. And let me assure those who are concerned, he is well, and WikiLeaks is operating on all cylinders.

Today, the greatest build-up of American-led forces since World War Two is under way – in the Caucasus and eastern Europe, on the border with Russia, and in Asia and the Pacific, where China is the target.

Keep that in mind when the presidential election circus reaches its finale on November 8th,  If the winner is Clinton, a Greek chorus of witless commentators will celebrate her coronation as a great step forward for women. None will mention Clinton’s victims: the women of Syria, the women of Iraq, the women of Libya. None will mention the civil defence drills being conducted in Russia.  None will recall Edward Bernays’ “torches of freedom.”

George Bush’s press spokesman once called the media “complicit enablers.”

Coming from a senior official in an administration whose lies, enabled by the media, caused such suffering, that description is a warning from history.

In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor said of the German media: “Before every major aggression, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically for the attack. In the propaganda system, it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons.”

This is adapted from an address to the Sheffield Festival of Words, Sheffield, England.     

John Pilger can be reached through his website: www.johnpilger.com

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

The post Inside the Invisible Government: War, Propaganda, Clinton and Trump appeared first on SabrangIndia.

]]> How the Alt Right is trying to create a safe space for racism on college campuses https://sabrangindia.in/how-alt-right-trying-create-safe-space-racism-college-campuses/ Wed, 02 Nov 2016 05:26:22 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2016/11/02/how-alt-right-trying-create-safe-space-racism-college-campuses/ Right-wing movements are repackaging ideas from white nationalism into a new, more middle-class culture by using the strategies and language of the left (4,500 words). This article first appeared in Waging Nonviolence. A Trump supporter at an April PSU Students for Trump event. Credit: WNV/ Shane Burley. All rights reserved. A murmur began in May […]

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]]> Right-wing movements are repackaging ideas from white nationalism into a new, more middle-class culture by using the strategies and language of the left (4,500 words).
This article first appeared in Waging Nonviolence.

trump supporter
A Trump supporter at an April PSU Students for Trump event. Credit: WNV/ Shane Burley. All rights reserved.

A murmur began in May around Berkeley and the surrounding Bay Area as posters appeared overnight on the sides of buildings and wrapped on poles. Adorned with images of statues of antiquity, these classical images of European men depicted as gods were intended to light a spark of memory in the mostly white faces that passed by them. With lines like “Let’s become great again” printed on them, the posters were blatant in their calls for European “pride,” clearly connecting romanticized European empires of the past to the populism of Donald Trump today.

The posters were put up by Identity Europa, one of the lesser-known organizations amid that esoteric constellation of reactionary groups and figures known as the “Alt Right.” They were part of a campaign around the country enticing college-age white people to join a new kind of white nationalist movement. While similar posters emerged elsewhere on the West Coast and Midwest, in central California they pointed toward a public event — one directed specifically toward the tradition of free speech at the University of California at Berkeley.

Shortly after the posters went up, a brief announcement came from Alt Right leader Richard Spencer and his think-tank, the National Policy Institute. They, along with Identity Europa and other white nationalist organizations, were planning to hold an “Alt Right Safe Space” in Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza on May 6. The “safe space” is a play on words for the Alt Right, using the phrase that many leftist-oriented facilities use for a code of conduct that bans oppressive or bigoted behavior. Instead, they intended to make a “safe space” for white racism, the public declaration of which has become unwelcome in most any space. The plan was to show up and publicly proselytize on the problems of multiculturalism and the need for “white identity.”

Identity Europa founder Nathan Damigo joined Spencer, along with Johnny Monoxide, a podcaster and blogger from the white nationalist blog The Right Stuff, which has become popular in Internet racialist circles (racialist being a term they use, since racist carries a negative connotation) for its internal lingo and open use of racial slurs. Alt Right media outlet Red Ice Creations teamed up with Monoxide to livestream the event, bringing the white nationalist crowd together with their international audience of conspiracy theorists, anti-vaccine activists and alternative religion proponents.

While live streaming to their crowd, they came ready to argue. “This guy’s anti-dialogical! He’s anti-white,” yelled Damigo when challenged on the racialist content of his talking points.

Race and identity.
For decades, both the institutional and radical left in the United States has relied on campus activism as a key part of its organizing base. From the antiwar movement of the 1960s to the development of feminist and queer politics to the growing youth labor and Black Lives Matter movement, colleges have been a center for political encounters and mobilizations. The radicalization of students has often leaned to the left because the left’s challenges to systems of power seem like a perfect fit for people expanding their understanding of the world.

Amid major shifts in U.S. politics, a space has opened for revolutionary right-wing politics that have not traditionally been accessible to those outside of the most extreme ranks of the white nationalist movement. Today, the Alt Right is repackaging many of the ideas normally associated with neo-Nazis and KKK members into a new, more middle-class culture by using the strategies and language traditionally associated with the left. This means a heavy focus on argumentation and academic legitimacy, as well as targeting campus locations (and millennials) for recruitment.

Until Hillary Clinton’s August 21 speech, most people had never heard of the Alt Right. However, it is a movement that has been growing for almost a decade in backroom conferences and racially-charged blogs. It is a kind of cultural fascism, one birthed out of the post-war fascist movements of Europe and given character by a culture of Twitter trolls and populist American anger. Yet, when it appears on campus, the Alt Right’s recruiting is hardly different from the Klan’s attempts to openly recruit members by leaving bags of leaflets and candy at people’s doorsteps.

While the Alt Right Safe Space was put together as a joint effort with several nationalist organizations, Identity Europa emphasizes focusing on the youth most of all. The name and branding of Identity Europa are new, but the organization was started years ago as the National Youth Front.

Nathan Damigo was an Iraq war veteran going to school at the University of California at Stanislaus when he took over the organization, shifting its ideological orientation from “civic nationalism” to “race realism,” the notion that whites have higher average IQ’s and a smaller propensity for crime than blacks. While Damigo notes that they have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it comes to gay members, he said that bi-racial and transgendered people would be turned away.

For Damigo and others who trade in white nationalist talking points like “race realism,” the differences between races are significant.

“Ethnic and racial or religious diversity can actually wreak havoc on a social system, and cause tons of problems,” Damigo said. “I do believe that there are differences between human populations … [T]he distribution of genes that affect behavior and intelligence are already known to not be equally distributed between all populations.”

Identity Europa then represents a sort of “fraternal organization” where “European-descended” people can meet and network, working their way towards a kind of campus activism that challenges discourse and educational plans embedded with multiculturalism and egalitarianism. Such organizations have a long history on the right, stretching back to the 19th century fencing clubs and fraternities that popularized the pan-German ideas of Georg Schönerer — an immediate influence on Nazism.

As organizers, however, Identity Europa do not follow the standard playbook for campus activism, which usually involves breaking broad political ideas into organized demands with reachable goals. Instead, they simply want to cultivate a subculture whose constituents will intervene in public discourse, thereby seeding their well-rehearsed talking points about racial inequality, white sovereignty and the return to heteronormative social roles. While Damigo brags about the growth of Identity Europa, it likely does not have membership beyond a few dozen people on campuses around the country at this point. However, there are reports of Identity Europa posters appearing at different places around the country almost weekly.

Outreach to millennials.
Through its brand of social interruption, Identity Europa intends to foment a revolutionary right-wing culture — precisely the goal shared by Richard Spencer and his National Policy Institute. Spencer has been in right-wing politics for years, first joining as an assistant editor at the American Conservative after an article he published on the Duke Lacrosse sexual assault scandal made him a minor star.

He later went to the controversial Taki’s Magazine, known for giving a voice to the shrinking paleoconservative movement and staffing dissident voices from the right who are regularly accused of racism. As he further cemented himself in this “dissident right” world, he developed the term “Alternative Right” to indicate the different strands that he saw uniting against multiculturalism, equality and American democracy.

It was in this climate that Spencer founded the website Alternative Right, giving voice to a growing white nationalist movement that built on fascist intellectual traditions in Western Europe and challenged the right-wing connection to the American conservative movement.

He eventually went on to take over the white nationalist think-tank, the National Policy Institute, or NPI, originally founded by William Regnery, using money inherited from the conservative publishing house, Regnery Publishing. The organization was meant to center on Samuel Francis, a former columnist with the Washington Times who was let go as he shifted further into white nationalism and associated with racialist organizations like American Renaissance and the Council of Conservative Citizens. Spencer took over the organization after Francis’s death, molding it into the intellectual core of the growing Alt Right movement.

Spencer’s goal has always been the creation of a “meta-political” movement rather than one founded on contemporary political wedge issues. He hopes to draw together ideas like “white identitarianism” — a term used to brand the movement as being about European heritage — and the eugenics-invoking “human biodiversity.” Both are terms fostered by the so-called “European New Right” and its leading ideologues.

What immediately distinguished Spencer’s role in the white nationalist movement from the older generation was his explicit focus on millennial outreach. For instance, his expensive NPI conferences are dramatically discounted for those under 30, and his new Radix Journal is marketed directly to an Internet culture of disaffected and angry white youths. He was an early proponent of podcasts as a main voice of the movement, a move that has given the Alt Right its conversational tone and made its ideas more accessible.

With Damigo, Spencer developed the Alt Right Safe Space idea to exploit the projection of free speech on college campuses, despite the movement’s general rejection of human rights.

“I think it’s symbolic as a way of saying, ‘we’re here,’” Spencer explained.

Identity Europa is discussing doing a mini-tour with Spencer in the fall to East Coast universities, though he would prefer to be invited into an auditorium rather than the front quad. This may be unlikely given the notoriety he has gained, as well as the fact that many of the racial ideas he propounds are considered abhorrent by today’s standards.

“It is very hard to find a student who will rent an auditorium or a classroom,”

Spencer pointed out. “You might get shut down by the administration, but there are ways of doing it so that you can get away with it. The only problem with it is that the students will have to take responsibility for it, and students are not willing to do that at this point. And I totally understand.”

Spencer has been shut down on campuses before — for example, when invited to speak by far-right campus groups like Youth for Western Civilization, or YWC, on issues like “anti-white discrimination” through affirmative action. YWC was known for riding on issues like immigration and gender rights, bringing radical right speakers like Bay Buchanan to campuses and naming extremist Colorado Congressmen Tom Tancredo as its honorary chairman. The group’s founder, Kevin DeAnna, went on to be a staff person with the evangelical Leadership Institute, which is ironic given that he had converted to a racialized form of Nordic paganism.

As the Alt Right grows and gains public recognition in this election cycle, it is becoming less and less likely that it will simply go under the radar as just another radical student group. Instead, Spencer and Damigo hope to express their radicalism publicly, and argue for their own space in public discourse.

Traditional racism.
While Spencer would like to show that the Alt Right is a relatively new ideological and organizational current, both NPI and other organizations in the Alt Right sphere have ties to many of the more traditional racist organizations that are better known among most Americans. The Traditionalist Youth Network, or TradYouth, and its political wing, the Traditionalist Workers Party, have stepped out in front of many of the other Alt Right organizations by targeting working-class and Southern areas with street activism.

Started by young white nationalist Matthew Heimbach, the project came about after he became a public figure in the Alt Right movement for the Towson University White Student Union. There he began night patrols looking for “black-on-white crime,” something that campus officials say was next to non-existent. With TradYouth he has protested the Conservative Political Action Conference and appearances by anti-racist author Tim Wise. Heimbach has also linked up with racialist organizations around the country such as the Aryan Terror Brigade. He was previously a student activist with YWC and has been interviewed on Richard Spencer’s podcast. His attempts at using the White Student Union model is not necessarily a new one, but it caught on incredibly well when Alt Right outlets like The Daily Shoah pushed the concept, resulting in Facebook pages for more than 30 university White Student Unions popping up in 2015.
TradYouth’s public rhetoric focuses on what they call “traditionalism,” the idea that white people need to return to socially stratified, racially homogenous societies. The group’s website names the “global Jew” as its primary enemy, and some members advocate the execution of homosexuals in accordance with their version of Orthodox Christianity. A focus on youth membership and campus recruitment has been a strong focus for TradYouth and the organizations that Heimbach ran before it. Heimbach brought Alt Right speakers to Townson University like American Renaissance founder Jared Taylor, who spoke to a packed house on the “perils of diversity.” Through his broad outreach he has created a concerted effort to provide youth recruits an introduction to diverging areas of the Alt Right and traditional white nationalism, including linking up with KKK organizations, neo-Confederate projects, neo-Nazi gangs, and the suit-and-tie crowd that makes up the Alt Right conferences.

On June 26, the Traditionalist Workers Party made headlines after trying to host an event at the California State Capitol along with SacTown Skinheads and Golden State Skinheads, both violent neo-Nazi organizations that have a long relationship with the populist radical right American Freedom Party. What stood out most among the less than two-dozen participants was their age: the demographic was skewing younger and including college-age participants who would normally not be associated with a tattooed crowd of neo-Nazi skinheads.

They were met by an opposition organized by Antifa Sacramento, a direct-action orientated anti-racist organization, and By Any Means Necessary, or BAMN, an organization founded to confront fascist organizing, as well as other contemporary issues like immigration reform, abortion access and police violence. The violent clashes that ensued sent over half a dozen anti-racist protesters to the hospital with stab wounds, after a member of the Traditionalist Worker Party pulled out a knife and began attacking the encroaching crowd.

“The goal today was to shut down the Nazi’s recruitment rally, and I want to congratulate everyone who came out today because we succeeded in doing that,” Yvette Felarca, a national organizer for BAMN, told reporters the day of the confrontation, while covering a bloody head injury with a bandage. Felarca, a Berkeley Unified School District middle school teacher, has since been suspended from her teaching post while community members, students and the teacher’s union stand by her side.

While the Traditionalist Workers Party attempted to claim victory, they have not been able to hold similar events, and they had to cancel their trip to the Republican National Convention after concerns that they would be a security threat. This has shifted the conversation in many venues, where Alt Right speakers are often seen as too much of a risk for violence. In August, for example, the National Press Club canceled the Alt Right Press Conference held by Richard Spencer.

Make America white again.
Donald Trump has moved from the fringes of the GOP to the frontlines of a new type of U.S. conservatism based on support in rural areas largely populated by the white working class and poor. That core has found strange bedfellows in a campus movement of people like Damigo and Spencer — affiliates of the Alt Right who are taking a vocal lead in Internet discourse and snarky campus confrontations.

The Alt Right, itself, prizes anonymity. Commentators on popular blogs, podcasts and message boards often use ironic avatars to hide themselves from retribution at home or at work. By embracing elements of the Alt Right along with xenophobia, economic populism, and rapprochement with Putin, however, Donald Trump normalizes their neo-fascist ideology, enabling them to step out of the shadows and into the popular political discourse by identifying as “Donald Trump Republicans.”

In the years before Donald Trump, there were few groups that walked the line between beltway conservative politics and the far right. One such group is Students for Liberty, a libertarian student group that has slid toward the Alt Right since Trump’s candidacy and is currently organizing a national conference to discuss the subject of anarchism and its potential for facilitating a left-right convergence. Since Trump’s campaign grew to prominence, however, similar groups have emerged in numbers. Chaired by Campbell University sophomore Ryan Fournier, the national student group Students for Trump came on the scene in an attempt to link up right-wing students with a viable presidential candidate. With 29,000 followers on Twitter and 59,000 on Instagram, Students for Trump takes on the roll of a larger, more legitimate YWC, stealing much of the “hip” appearance that libertarian campus groups had only a couple of years ago.

While much of the group toes the mainstream GOP line, sharing social media posts by Sean Hannity and Fox News, there is a significant amount of crossover into the Alt Right. In particular, Alt Right figure Milo Yiannopoulos, who calls Trump “daddy,” seems popular, getting shares from student leaders in the youth Trump campaign. Portland State University’s Students for Trump chapter has become possibly the most notorious.

In May, while Spencer and Damigo plotted out their Safe Space advance, Students for Trump went to battle with multicultural campus groups like the Portland State University’s Student Union. The PSU Student Union challenged the racialist rhetoric of PSU Students for Trump by bringing almost 10 times the number of Trump supporters to an event, overwhelming the discussion with examples of Trump’s racist policies and the problematic behavior of PSU Students for Trump members. With the conversation dominated by counter-protesters, Trump students were put on the defensive, and after words were exchanged the Trump students eventually gave up and left.

In response, Students for Trump opened up left-wing organizers to a slew of hateful online trolling from the Alt Right, and disrupted a Student Union demonstration against the arming of campus police while waving a banner reading, “Thug Lives Don’t Matter.” With a show of support from conspiracy theory magnate Alex Jones and his website Infowars, they confronted many anti-racist counter protesters in April in a heated clash of voices. The confrontational style found generous online support, as Students for Trump continued to resort directly to Alt Right memes on their social media accounts, regularly posting skewed race and crime statistics, as well as quotes from prominent neo-Nazis.
Recently, Identity Europa posters showed up on the PSU campus, indicating that the Alt Right students are attempting to make their presence a permanent one.

Similarly, University of Michigan students formed Students Against Trump right as Alt Right posters began showing up on campus declaring that “Euro-Americans” were scared of their heritage. Using the Alt Right logo that Richard Spencer recently unveiled at an Alt Right press conference, they hope to plaster Alt Right branding over the traditional racist arguments used by neo-Nazis and KKK organizations.

As Nazi-affiliated groups like the Traditionalist Workers Party feel that they have the cultural cache to hold public rallies, a militant antifascist movement also grows in ranks.

“These groups basically come to campus to pick a fight with the student body,” said Daryle Lamont Jenkins, founder of the anti-fascist organization One People’s Project. Jenkins has been traveling around the country for over a decade, challenging Alt Right and white nationalist events and leaders and often shutting down their conferences before they even begin. According to Jenkins, successful tactics used against the Alt Right include pressuring school administration, exposing sympathetic students and mounting a large direct confrontation.

“With Richard Spencer coming in here to disrupt the regular function of campus, the school needs to be aware of that,” he said. “The school needs to take some measures against it.”

Jenkins helped organize a pressure campaign that had hotels pull the contracts of the Alt Right racialist American Renaissance conference in 2010 and 2011, appealing to support from the community and anti-racist leaders.

While the Alt Right is fighting for a platform, many on college campuses are taking the example of groups like the One People’s Project and are rallying community pressure to disallow Alt Right speakers regular access to collegiate forums. At DePaul University, Alt Right commentator and Gays for Trump founder Milo Yiannopoulos was brought by the College Republicans. Ahead of this, a petition began circulating, largely stemming out of the Black Student Union work, to push DePaul to do more about hate speech on campus. Protesters disrupted the event by getting on stage and preventing him from speaking, functionally ending it. The college later canceled Yiannopoulos’s second scheduled speech, citing his provocative rhetoric as the reason. Protesters later attempted to disrupt a debate-watching party where Trump student supporters had congregated to root for their candidate.

Much of the work the Black Student Union has done at DePaul echoes the broad-based anti-racist work happening on campuses around the country, where organizations are confronting incidents of racism on campus that may get overlooked. A wave of this kind of action was sparked by the protests happening at the University of Missouri where the campus group Concerned Student 1950, named for the year that integration began at the university, put pressure on the president to resign after failing to address incidents of white supremacist intimidation. This has helped to present a model that is now confronting the growth of the Alt Right in campus settings, where the work to confront those groups is done in tandem with the larger goals of challenging systemic racism and violence. Movements like TAMU Anti-Racism at Texas A&M are following suit to pressure the administration to include explicitly anti-racist curriculum and to create penalties for racist discourse being seen from Alt Right organizations.

When it comes to the crossover potential of the Donald Trump campaign, the reaction has been largely the same. After shutting down a Trump rally in Chicago on March 11, the intensity of demonstrations against Trump appearances have only escalated — from Albuquerque to San Jose to San Diego. In Portland, Oregon, Trump canceled two separate events in May and June, respectively, as venues proved difficult to find and the threat of protests loomed. In a recent appearance at the Xfinity Arena in Everett, Washington, Trump presented a kinder, gentler version of his law-and-order stance, insisting that people of color in the United States should support him before launching into his usual anti-immigration and economic-populist screeds. Speculation that he was entering into the general election on a more moderate platform dissipated, however, when he exchanged harsh words with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, over the proposed extension of the U.S. border wall.

On campuses there has essentially been a shift in conservative politics, with groups like the University of Connecticut’s Campus Republicans refusing to endorse Trump after saying he has empowered the voice of the Alt Right.

Confrontations looming.
Even with growing opposition, the Alt Right is bringing in an unprecedented number of young converts for white nationalist organizations. From David Duke to Holocaust denier David Irving and many others, numerous notorious white nationalists got their start in college, so this new tendency remains worrying to anti-racists. Furthermore, the Trump campaign has energized the Alt Right at lightning speed, leaving many on the left puzzling over how to build movements with the capacity to confront these groups as they surface.

Some of the largest neo-Nazi organizations in the country, such as the National Alliance, started as youth movements trying to pick people out of the chaotic campus atmosphere of the 1960s. More recently, organizations like the Pacifica Forum at the University of Oregon have tried to use wedge issues and conspiracy theories to manipulate left-wing discourse, a move that created brief windows for Holocaust denial at major universities. However, on campuses today, the process of confronting such activism means creating organizing strategies to confront a far-right campus culture not seen since the 1960s heyday of Young Americans for Freedom, a parafascist youth group created by mob lawyer and Tump associate Roy Cohn, among others.

At the same time, there is an additional challenge of tactical adaptation, since groups like Identity Europa and Portland State’s Students for Trump are relatively new to the United States and may have more in common with a European model of small, inter-related political organizations known as “far right groupuscules,” rather than conventional U.S. campus organizations.

The most notorious example of such groupuscules is the Sorbonne Law School’s Groupe Union Défense, or GUD, which emerged in 1968 to engage in revolutionary, ultranationalist propaganda campaigns while violently combating left-wing groups on campus and forming larger political networks like the Troisième Voie (Third Way). Significantly, Troisième Voie’s pioneering efforts in “entryism,” the attempted infiltration and sabotage of left-wing groups, remains a key strategy for the Alt Right. One of Troisième Voie’s founders, Christian Bouchet, would go on to found groupuscules like Nouvelle Resistance, which joined with the GUD to form Unité Radicale.

After a member of Unité Radicale attempted to assassinate French President Jacques Chirac, the group split up with several of its members forming the fascist group, Bloc Identitaire, from which Identity Europa draws much of its ideology. Bouchet has since become a leading member of the populist radical right party, National Front, which was also created in part by the GUD, while the leading identitarian ideologue, Guillaume Faye, has pioneered relations between the Alt Right and the European fascist movement at conferences chaired by Richard Spencer.

What Damigo hopes for with Identity Europa is that instead of successful organizing campaigns, it will develop a right-wing culture that will later manifest socially. The trajectory of groupuscules like the GUD shows that a political organization does not need to have many members to make a huge impact on international politics.

“The change has to come in people’s minds first,” said Spencer, channeling Faye’s favoring of culture over tangible gains. “Social and political change has to take place in the mind before it takes place in reality.”

Trump has been such a boon to Spencer’s organizing because the campaign is forcing his white base to identify as “working class white people” rather than members of a broader, multi-racial and cross-class conservative social grouping. The Alt Right thrives on this identitarian fracture between white people and a multicultural society that is actively making strides to undo racism, sexism and heteronormativity. That is why Spencer wants to double down on educated millennials, who he sees as possibly further insulating this “white culture” from both academic criticism and street-level opposition.

“[They come to college campuses for] the same reason all recruiters come to college campuses: for political outreach,” said Chip Berlet, a researcher who tracks neo-fascist movements. “It’s a place where you have people who are open to new ideas generally, and it’s also a place where there’s a reluctance on the part of the administration to do anything about people who are recruiting on campus.”

While the left has dominated college campuses for decades, a certain shift will have to take place to counter this identitarian right-wing culture that the Alt Right hopes to foment. For the left, this means not only confronting the appearances of fascist politics in its shape-shifting form, but also focusing on exactly where these fascist politics exist, both under the surface and embedded deeply within U.S. culture.

(Shane Burley is a journalist whose work has been featured in ThinkProgress, In These Times, Labor Notes, Make/Shift, and many other publications.  Find him at ShaneBurley.net or on Twitter at @shane_burley1)

(Alexander Reid Ross is a journalist and researcher based in the Pacific Northwest who edited the anthology Grabbing Back: Essays Against the Global Land Grab (AK Press, 2014). He is currently a lecturer in the Geography Department at Portland State University.)

This article was first published on Open Democracy

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]]> Ahead of US poll, Hindu American group sends booklet on Hinduism to candidates – and a questionnaire https://sabrangindia.in/ahead-us-poll-hindu-american-group-sends-booklet-hinduism-candidates-and-questionnaire/ Fri, 21 Oct 2016 05:52:46 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2016/10/21/ahead-us-poll-hindu-american-group-sends-booklet-hinduism-candidates-and-questionnaire/ The advocacy group wants to help voters make an 'informed choice' in the November 8 US elections, it said. What is the red dot that many Hindu women wear on their forehead? Do Hindus have Commandments? What is the meaning of the swastika? The answer to these and other such queries are part of the […]

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The advocacy group wants to help voters make an 'informed choice' in the November 8 US elections, it said.

US Hindu Group

What is the red dot that many Hindu women wear on their forehead? Do Hindus have Commandments? What is the meaning of the swastika?

The answer to these and other such queries are part of the booklet titled More Answers to Real Questions about Hinduism, educational material put together by an advocacy group and sent on Tuesday to the presidential candidates for the upcoming US elections. So should Republican candidate Donald Trump seek clarity on when Raksha Bandhan is celebrated, or Democrat Hillary Clinton wonder whether Hindus believe in heaven and hell, they need not fret – the answers are within easy reach.

Not just this, the crash course of sorts also features information about the Hindu scriptures on the Vedas, and concepts of dharma (moral and religious law) and karma (actions).

The booklet, first released by the Hindu American Foundation, a non-profit advocacy group, in September 2010 (as a follow-up to the Short Answers to Real Questions about Hinduism, released in 2007) was sent to all four presidential candidates – Trump, Clinton, Jill Stein of the Green Party and Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party. The spokesperson said the materials were sent with a broad educational intent.

The material was distributed days after Trump, at a fund-raising event organised by the Republican Hindu Coalition in Edison, New Jersey on October 15 said, “I am a big fan of Hindu, and I am a big fan of India. Big, big fan,” seemingly conflating the religion with the entire nation.

Though it did not comment on Trump’s statement, it is perhaps misconceptions such as these that the Hindu American Foundation wants to clear. “While the Hindu American community is growing in America in numbers and importance, it still remains very much a minority faith,” Mat McDermott, director of communications of the Foundation, told Scroll.in via email. “We hope the materials we’ve sent prove educational, and clear up any misunderstandings about the beliefs and practices of Hindus that may be out there.”

Big community, small voice

The US has more than two million Hindus, a group that has traditionally favoured Democrats. According to McDermott, though, the New Jersey event in support of Trump “shows that the Hindu American community is as diverse in their political beliefs as the greater public in the United States, and that you can’t take for granted Hindus voting for one political party or another."

He added, however, that "despite the turnout at the recent Trump event, we believe the stats show the majority of Hindus supporting the Clinton campaign.”

In a Pew Research Centre survey of the American public in 2014, Hindus received “neutral ratings” – falling in the middle – lower than the “warm ratings” for Jews and Catholics but higher than the ratings for atheists and Muslims.

The Hindu American Foundation claims that it seeks to serve Hindu Americans across the divide of class, gender, age and the like. It aims to create a better understanding about the religion among people and advocate the Hindu American community’s needs and interests to decision makers.

On its website, the group has an interactive learning space called Hinduism 101. A link to it and other printed materials, including the More Answers to Real Questions… booklet have been sent to all the presidential candidates. “With growing numbers comes an increasing awareness of a place in American dialogue and the need for the accurate portrayal of the faith in line with its beliefs and practices,” said a prologue to the question-and-answer format booklet.
 

Tacking stock

A crucial part of the correspondence is a questionnaire from the Foundation, seeking the responses of each candidate on questions affecting the Hindu American community. Among other things, the candidates have been asked how they propose to deal with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan where ethnic and religious minorities are discriminated against and been questioned on the technical aspects of visas issued to Hindu priests entering the country. Candidates can choose from the given options or then write a “free response”. They have been requested to send their responses by November 1, so that voters can make an informed choice when they go to polls on November 8.

“The collective responses, hopefully from all campaigns, will better inform our constituency and those who are dedicated to our mission of Promoting Dignity, Mutual Respect, and Pluralism as to which candidate they believe best serves these objectives,” said the letter from Suhag A Shukla, Hindu America Foundation executive director and legal counsel, to the candidates.

This is the first time the Foundation has undertaken such an outreach exercise, though they have published voter guides in the past. “With all the rhetoric in this year’s election cycle vis a vis immigration, etc and with the possibility of having up to four Hindu Americans in Congress after the election, we felt it was an appropriate time to ask the candidates their views directly, for the record,” said McDermott. Several Indian Americans are in running for the Congress this year.

The Foundation says it does not endorse or support any political candidate. “We do not seek to editorialise or place judgment on the responses that you provide,” said the letter. “We will simply post your responses on our website for public consumption with no commentary from HAF [Hindu American Foundation] or its leaders. We intend to publish any responses received as they are submitted to us.”

Though the Hindu American community has prominent names in several fields in the US, their representation in the political space so far has been limited. In 2012, Hawaiian-born Tulsi Gabbard of the Democratic Party became the first Hindu to be elected to Congress.

This article was first published on Scroll.in

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]]> Hindutva Backs Donald Trump https://sabrangindia.in/hindutva-backs-donald-trump/ Sat, 27 Aug 2016 08:09:51 +0000 http://localhost/sabrangv4/2016/08/27/hindutva-backs-donald-trump/ Donald Trump is a main guest at the Republican Hindu Coalition's "Humanity Against Terrorism" Charity Event!  Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, chastised even by Republican supporters for his extreme, some even call them racist views, has agreed to deliver remarks at a charity event next month hosted by the Republican Hindu Coalition, sending a clear message he’s looking to expand outreach to […]

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]]> Donald Trump is a main guest at the Republican Hindu Coalition's "Humanity Against Terrorism" Charity Event! 

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, chastised even by Republican supporters for his extreme, some even call them racist views, has agreed to deliver remarks at a charity event next month hosted by the Republican Hindu Coalition, sending a clear message he’s looking to expand outreach to ‘minority’ voting blocs.
 
“It’s Trump being Trump,” said Indian-American business person and co-founder of the RHC, Shalli Kumar. “He’s just misunderstood. He is just as color, religion, race-blind as anyone could be. He’s a business person.”
 
Shalli Kumar  Indian born Indian American industrialist Shalabh “Shalli” Kumar donated a whopping $898,800 for the campaign of the Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump. Shalli Kumar has also been an unashamed supporter of Narendra Modi, dubbed one of Modi’s most influential supporters there. He was the one organised the high-profile March visit to Gujarat by three US lawmakers, and the videoconference between Modi and former speaker and one-time presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich,

Kumar made his more than significant contribution at the Republican National Convention held in Cleveland, where Donald Trump was announced the presidential candidate of the Republican Party through his wife’s account, as he reached the ceiling of the maximum amount transferable by a person – $449,400, reported The Hill.

Taking into account Trump’s association with Republican Hindu Coalition (RHC), a not-for-profit organization founded by Kumar, he thinks that the common perception about Trump as a racist is wrong. Kumar is the head of RHC, which also supports Donald Trump.

Here are some of Trump’s most controversial statements that have earned him criticism across the board; he has not spared Indians from his peculiarly virulent brand of hate speech:

Donald Trump: I hate Indians, Muslims, will throw H-1B visa workers into detention camps

Donald Trump: ban all Muslims entering US

Donald Trump's tirade on Mexico's 'drugs and rapists' outrages US Latinos

Trump campaign: 'Nothing wrong' with banning Muslims from entering US

Donald Trump says 'I. Don't. Care' about hate speech: tell the world #WeDoCare

However, for Shalli Kumar, Trump remains a misunderstood politician. “The goal is to unite Hindu-American community with conservative values together and expand the RHC and at the time same time help the victims of terror throughout the world.”
 
The event, hosted by Hindtuvawaadi organisations this weekend, that will take place , titled “Humanity United Against Terror,” will take place in Holmdel, N.J. and was personally chosen by Trump, Kumar said. It will take place just two days before the GOP presidential hopeful will meet Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton on the debate stage in nearby Hempstead, N.Y. Kumar says the funds raised through ticket sales will go to victims of terror around the globe, like the Kashmiri Pundits, and not the Trump campaign.
 
Trump will meet with members of his campaign’s Indian American Advisory Board at the event. Bollywood stars and major ‘Hindu spiritual leaders’ –also businessmen like Ramdev– are also scheduled to attend. Kumar believes the four hour spectacle will attract 25,000 to 30,000 people, featuring surprises he does not want to disclose yet. The event is just one part of the effort the GOP is making to appeal to America’s most affluent and educated ethnic minority.
 
“When the Republican party leaders launched the Republican Hindu Coalition, they had a purpose to expand Republican outreach to India, Indian-Americans in particular along the lines of Jewish Americans,” said Kumar.
 
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich serves as the group’s honorary chair and continues to be Trump’s top ally and adviser. Gingrich has been on record for a number of years encouraging his fellow members of the GOP to reach out to Indian-American voters through matters such as national security.
 
When asked if this event and the ‘Hindu Republican’ Coalition’s effort overall would be considered divisive or anti-Muslim, Kumar reflected that “some of [his] best friends are not only Muslim, Indian Muslims, but Pakistani Muslims. There is nothing against Muslims. This is not anti-Muslim. Just proud to be Hindu. That’s all.”
 
For Shalli Kumar, clearly Trump is the United State of America’s Modi Moment!


 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

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