It’s like a California Penal #187 tat, but with plausible deniability. 
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Except it’s not true that Trump has no ideology. It is very plain that he genuinely hates non-white people, women, the disabled, and so on. Ordinary gangsters might loot the country but they would have no reason to have the special attacks on “DEI” everything that you see this administration trying to spread around the world. Trump and his gang are racist, patriarchical thugs…and I’m with ChuckV that it’s giving fascists too much credit to think they are anything more than that.
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Hmm, Bragg’s point seems to be the opposite – that calling Tramp a fascist is giving a thuggish goon too much credit for thinking politically about what he’s doing.
I’m no political taxomony expert (perhaps @the_borderer could weigh in?), but Bragg is seeing fascism as a political “ideology,” and Tramp as an impilsive, bullying thug with no interest at all in aligning himself with a political ideology.
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Don’t think French corporations are any different than any other corporations. They’re going to do whatever makes them the most money.
For context, CMA CGM is the world’s third largest shipping company, and it’s French. Its billionaire owner visited Trump in the Oval Office for this announcement
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I see fascism as a political “ideology” that basically consists of belief in in-group supremacy plus impulsive bullying, which means a bigoted thug like Trump grasps it intuitively. And he does have tribunes pushing those policies – they just aren’t in congress because he doesn’t give a damn about congress, his whole thing is bypassing them in favor of his direct control because he’s a bigoted thug. Fascism is not philosophical, it’s the guy carrying the fascis doing whatever he wants because he’s hurting the “right people”.
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Sorry, no link to the article that was in. Posted here in case the thread gets updated with a source
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Left out “Christian religious leaders” but that number may be too high to easily count.
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Yeah, I wish Bragg had spelled out what he means by calling it an ideology. That would have made it more evident why he sees that difference as one worth spelling out.
@chenille, fair enough.
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Yeah, I see what he’s saying, but I also think that fascism has always been little more than gangsterism - rule by a strongman willing to use force to impose his will. I think to some degree, given the real world consequences of fascism, we’ve given it’s practitioners a historical veneer of cleverness that they just did not deserve. At the end of the day, the employed whatever haphazard worldview gained them power over the government, and used force to shore up their power. It turns out to be rather easy to get some people to turn on their neighbors in the right circumstances (economic downturns, institutions failing people, just the right scapegoat, etc), and to convince to give up their rights in order to join with the side of the gangsters.
Yeah, yeah…
I think people have been trying to pin that down since the second world war… Hannah Arendt probably did it better than anyone else, but even there, it feels like its not quite there… but maybe that’s always the problem of describing phenomenon in the first place. Maybe words are never entirely adequate for experiences?
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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/29/us/politics/trump-signal-michael-waltz.html
After the Signal thread leaked, someone shared on X a snippet of a 2016 video of Mr. Waltz, produced by a group primarily funded by the billionaire Koch brothers. Speaking as a military veteran, Mr. Waltz looked directly into the camera as he condemned Mr. Trump as a draft-dodger and said, “Stop Trump now.” That snippet drew attention from Mr. Waltz’s critics.
By contrast, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s job appears to be safe, even though he shared detailed information about strike times for the attack on Houthi militants in Yemen in the Signal thread. MAGA stalwarts like Charlie Kirk have defended him online.
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I received a heartbreaking email today: A paper in a special issue I’m editing is being retracted because one of its authors is afraid of losing their job and their legal status in the U.S. if they publish a scientific study on evolution. Yes, on evolution, nature’s engine of diversity.
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Trump’s Pick for Israel Ambassador Leads Tours That Leave Out Palestinians — and Promote End of Days Theology
…
… In his long career as a politician and media personality, Huckabee has made his views on the Israel–Palestine conflict well known. He believes that, according to the Bible, only Israel has legitimate claim to the Holy Land and that Palestinians who can’t accept this should leave. Now, if he can be confirmed by the Senate, where he faced his first hearing before the Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, Huckabee can bring his religious worldview to bear as the U.S. ambassador to Israel — and find allies in Trump’s White House.
Little attention has been paid to how Huckabee and others have inspired such fervent support for Israel among grassroots American evangelicals. Part of the answer lies in the cottage industry of evangelical pilgrimages to the Holy Land — led by religious leaders like Huckabee himself. …
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Wednesday April 2nd is “liberation day” according to the trump whitehouse. It’s the day that some large set of “global” tariffs are supposed to start - including something termed “reciprocal tariffs”. No one, certainly including trump has a clue what is actually going to occur …but the markets are likely going to drop precipitously starting monday:
“No one knows what the f**k is going on”: Trump to announce tariff plans on ‘Liberation Day’
Saturday, March 29, 2025 at 4:25:34p PDT
Accomplished Presidents run well-oiled administrations. The only thing well-oiled in the Trump administration is Pete Hegseth — although I suspect many Trump staffers are discovering the joys of alcohol this weekend. Why? Trump has been promoting next Wednesday, April 2, as “Liberation Day.” What does this entail? Nobody knows. Probably not even Trump. As one ‘White House ally close to Trump’s inner circle’ told Politico:
“No one knows what the fuck is going on.”
Adding: “What are they going to tariff? Who are they gonna tariff and at what rates? Like, the very basic questions haven’t been answered yet.”Politico reports that
Just days out from Trump’s April 2 announcement of global tariffs, which he has hailed as “Liberation Day,” even those closest to the president — from Vice President JD Vance to his chief of staff Susie Wiles and his own Cabinet officials — have privately indicated that they’re unsure exactly what the boss will do, according to three people who have spoken with them.
While some details of the administration’s plan for what Trump has dubbed “reciprocal tariffs” on global trading partners are starting to trickle out, the president has at times upended them or floated contradictory policies that are keeping everyone — even his inner circle — guessing.
The best guess is that Trump will say he is bringing ‘clarity’ to his tariff strategy. Although ‘Trump clarifying’ is a case study in oxymoron. He’s like a toddler with alphabet soup proudly announcing that she has organized random letters into ‘words.’ …
and this clown-show is what the entire republican party has utterly lost even the tiniest resistance toward, even while they are clearly losing most of the voters that put them in office. So much insanity in so little time
-sigh-
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Apparently I am dumber than that pilot. What does it mean?
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Fuck
Donald
Trump
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