“We sent in the U.S. Marshals. It took 15 minutes [and] it was over. They knew who he was.** They didn’t want to arrest him**, and in 15 minutes that ended.”
Wow! I was gonna question Trump admitting this, but he fucking did.
This article lays out the frightening history beautifully: Bush starts the drone assassins, Obama expands them and kills US citizens on foreign soil, now Trump's killing US citizens on US soil. The creeping right of the US executive branch to kill whoever they want whenever they want, zero mainstream media scrutiny. You could also throw in JSOC into this history - they're essentially US military assassin squads, from reports from Afghanistan they shoot people and then cut the bullets from their bodies with knives to conceal any evidence of their involvement.
TL;DR This is about the US Marshals murdering Michael Reinoehl, the guy who shot and killed a Patriot Prayer member in Portland - who I'm pretty sure was trying to mace him on video, though I haven't kept up with the story afterwards.
How can he be a fascist? His dead son died to death from deathitis and he's compassionate despite his political career and history of rape saying otherwise. Do fascists like ice cream? Answer me because you're the real fascist in my opinion.
edit: he likes ice cream you contrarian
Honestly, you're just being a needlessly divisive drone reductionist. Do you want republicans to take back the house? Do you want to face a crackdown on progress you antisemitic brocialist scum?
are caricatures characteristics? :thinkin-lenin:
not gonna hold my breath on the competence.
Didn't Obama also do this with drone strikes? It's pretty much become normalized at this point regardless who is president. We move closer and closer towards full blown fascism with the authoritarian state.
Yeah I'm not saying it's an important distinction, just that it's a distinction the article is making.
I don't think Obama's calling drone strikes anymore but maybe I'm wrong.
the u.s president calls for violence, the violence occurs, he crows about it, and uses the threat of further violence as a bully club in an attempt to silence dissent. in a word: terrorism.
this isnt the first time this sequence of events has occured.
the u.s president is a terrorist, by definition, with a history of such attacks carried out in his name, which he has always embraced.
and the media has never called it what it is.
so it isnt exactly a surprise.
edit: and to be clear, this is not exclusive to trump. the office of u.s president is that of a terrorist
By his explicit support of the Contras alone (really, the Contras were just a mercenary arm of the CIA, so "support" isn't strong enough), by the numbers Reagan was a bigger terrorist than Osama Bin Laden.
What can even be done about this? Retaliation would just open the door even further for them to continue gunning people down in broad daylight. Well over half the people in this country either don't know, don't care or are actively cheering them on.
when fascists murder people and the people retaliate, the fascists commit more murders.
when fascists murder people and the people do nothing, the fascists commit more murders.
:bean-think:
The problem with revolutionary violence is eventually you run out of fascists.
Well, there's electoralism - get someone like Sanders in office who's at least honest enough and committed enough to a social program to freeze the growth of the security state, who might appoint enough honest people that the culture of the permanent bureaucracy (i.e., the deep state) will begin to change.
Then mass movements that are willing to commit more civil disobedience and suffer more casualties, which could destroy the reputation of a sitting government and again allow for someone like Sanders (or better) to get swept into power.
Either way that requires leftists to organize aggressively, build structures of popular power.
A violent uprising won't work in the US. The security state is too effective and the middle class too well-fed and complacent (and too trusting of media and authority). A successful guerrilla war needs a weak enough state and a strong enough people, a united enough people. Getting armed and thus presenting a passive threat/being harder for right-wingers to kill might be part of the greater strategy, but it's not enough by itself. If you get a group the size of the Black Panthers together, they'll just false flag and murder you and put you on TV and say you were terrorists - well before you're an actual threat.
That's cool, electoralism is not everyone's cup of tea =). It's one of the options though. Please elaborate on the options you consider superior.
I think one of the principle problems with engaging in electoralism is that it rapidly takes over the entire movement. Opposition to it is coming from a place of trying to get people away from the electoralism that is the obsession of liberals and into the much more effective actions of organising.
That's not to say that I disagree. I do agree that some electoralism plays a role in an overall movement. But active opposition to it is a healthy way of repeatedly keeping the movement separate from liberalism and focused on growth through organising.
Same thing always to be done: act proactively rather than reactively so we're powerful whether or not they are
