“Free speech” networks and anti-semitism… Ben Werdmuller spends some time on alternative social networks which have “free speech” policies, i.e., they don’t moderate content…

Mainstream social networks, particularly Facebook, are not off the hook here: banning anti-semitism does not absolve you of complicity in genocide elsewhere. Twitter also has its fair share of discoverable posts that espouse anti-semitic tropes. But these other networks are remarkable for their concentration: whereas these ideas are a tiny fringe on Facebook and Twitter, they’re how these other networks support themselves. You go to an alt network because you’ve been banned - or you’re worried you will be banned - from a traditional one. This concentration of extremists is why much of the insurrection was able to be openly organized on networks like Gab.

A Simple Guide to the Radical Art of Cecilia Vicuna

La Vicuña, 1977, oil on cotton canvas, by Cecilia Vicuña. Courtesy Cecilia Vicuña; Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London

… i like the mythological quality of this painting…

Born in 1948, the Chilean artist has been a pioneering voice on climate change, decolonisation and ecofeminism for decades. A poet, author, artist and activist, her work exists at the meeting point between art forms and means of communication. “My work dwells in the not yet, the future potential of the unformed, where sound, weaving, and language interact to create new meanings,” she says.

… more and more stories about Nazi Germany and how misinformation and propaganda fueled its rise…

How Hate-Fueled Misinformationa nd Propaganda Grew in Nazi Germany

… much of what is described below can be seen in nascent form in the United States Today… see my link to Ben Werdmueler’s post above…

Early in her reporting trip Thompson mailed a letter to Lewis, eager to share with her husband what she’d been witnessing in Germany. “It is really as bad as the most sensational papers report. . . . It’s an outbreak of sadistic and almost pathological hatred,” she wrote. “Most discouraging of all is not only the defenselessness of the liberals but their incredible (to me) docility. There are no martyrs for the cause of democracy.”

She said that Hitler’s Brownshirts were “perfectly mad” in their hounding of Jews and other quarry. “They beat them with steel rods, knock their teeth out with revolver butts, break their arms . . . urinate on them, make them kneel and kiss the _Hakenkreuz_ [the Nazi swastika]. . . . I feel myself starting to hate Germany. And already the world is rotten with hate.”

In May, books were burned. All thirty of Germany’s universities held pep rally-like events. In Berlin some forty thousand Nazis gathered in the public square near the opera house, where a bonfire worthy of a Viking funeral lit up the night sky. A band played martial music. A student wearing a Nazi uniform told the crowd “un‑German” works needed to be incinerated before they corrupted any more pristine minds.

… and this sounds familiar…

Through the Nazi rallies, boycotts, and book burnings, the world watched and waited. Did Hitler mean all the provocative things he’d said before taking office? Would he act upon them now, or would the responsibility of governing tame his tongue and temper his politics?

Two days after the April boycott of Jewish businesses, George Messersmith, the American consul general in Berlin, wrote to Hull about the accelerating climate of repression. “The point has been reached where it is really dangerous for the average individual to express an opinion which would not be favorable to the present regime. Even with his best friend the average German is unable to have free expression of opinion.”

… hmmm… i had not expected this… Nick Cave answering the question of what his favorite film of all time was, replies, Blonde

… my wife and i watched this movie on Netflix… H didn’t like it very much… i was so-so about it… noting that it had an NC17 rating, i had hoped there would be some juicy sex in it, yes, i like to watch, in a manner of speaking… i was disappointed on that score… not because there wasn’t any sex, but because when there was it was mostly a brutal sort that i didn’t find at all appealing… my wife thought the film one more exploitation of the woman and the myth that she didn’t deserve… but it’s based on the novel by Joyce Carole Oats and wasn’t intended to be a real representation of her life (a number of critical scenes in the book and movie never happened to the real MM as far as anyone knows)… it’s more an indictment of the patriarchy and it does a good job of portraying the absurd nature of male lust and misogyny… i set out to read a number of reviews of the movie and they were mostly unfavorable… this one in particular was a thorough critique of both the movie and the novel it is based on… to sum… both failed to paint the picture of a rather intelligent and successful young woman who was also a very good actress… both indulged in fictions that were not flattering (a dumb blonde who got what dumb blondes get) and therefore harmful to her and women in general… both failed to give the woman the credit she was due and traded on her mythology and dumb blonde myth for their own purposes… so, circling back to Nick Cave, i have huge admiration for him and especially for Red Hand Files, in which he is so often a comforting, sage and empathic responder to questions from his fans… he could almost be my spiritual leader… and then this… so… do i stop loving Nick Cave?… do i reassess my thinking about the movie because Nick Cave loves it?… do i take it as evidence that no human being is right all the time and resolve to be questioning of his answers when appropriate?… i think the last response would be the right one… still, i would love to know why he loves the movie… and so… i just posed the question to the man himself… why?… i am sure i won’t be the only one… let’s see if he answers one of us…

Letters from an American… the appalling history of racism and anti-labor sentiments…

… from a very long time conservatives have fanned the flames of fear of socialism and black and brown men… we have lived in a society of patriarchal white supremacy for the entire history of the country… we have reached a critical point in which minorities will soon overtake the patriarchal white majority in numbers… we are experiencing and existential reaction to that fact…

Beginning in 1871, they argued that they had no objection to their Black neighbors on racial grounds. What they objected to, they said, was that these folks, newly out of enslavement, were poor. White leaders claimed that the South remained in a recession not because India and Egypt had taken over the cotton market during the war, but because Black southerners were lazy and hoped to use their new political power to redistribute the wealth of white landowners into their own pockets.

Republicans’ fear of workers grew. Organized laborers “are agrarians, levelers, revolutionists, inciters of anarchy, and, in fact, promoters of indiscriminate pillage and murder,” the _Boston Evening Transcript_ charged. The _Philadelphia Inquirer_ insisted the redistribution of wealth through law appealed to poor, lazy, vicious men who would rather steal from the nation’s small farmers and mechanics than work themselves. _Scribner’s Monthly_warned in italics: “_the interference of ignorant labor with politics is dangerous to society_.”

Stephen King on What Authentic Maine Cuisine Means to Him

• Castle Rock Kitchen: Wicked Good Recipes from the World of Stephen King.
• Also of interest, Outlander Kitchen: To the New World and Back Again

When people think of Maine cuisine, they tend to think first of clams and lobster. Never cared for clams myself; they always looked to me like snot in a shell. Lobster is tasty, but I ate too much of it as a kid. My mom was on a perpetual budget, and she’d buy day-old (or two-day-old) lobster at the IGA in Lisbon Falls. Some of those bugs were still moving, but not that many. She made lobster rolls, and there was often a pot of lobster stew simmering on the stove. She’d hide it in the oven if someone came visiting because, in those days, lobster stew was “poor food.”

Eric Adams declares state of emergency amid migrant arrivals… mayor of NYC Eric Adams declaring a state of emergency over the influx of asylum seekers being bused up from border states… pleads with congress and state lawmakers to act and provide assistance… is the political theater of bussing asylum seekers north working?…

How Hitler’s Enablers Undid Democracy in Germany #nazism #fascism… this article about Hitler’s rise to power and how it compares to the current political situation in the U.S. is a must read…

… the big lie…

During its first four years, Weimar was under constant attack—above all, from the Big Lie that the republic was a totally illegitimate government because it owed its genesis to a “stab in the back” delivered on the home front.

… exploitation of the masses through the big lie…

Not just Hitler and the Nazis but the entire German right latched on to this message and promoted it. Two factors distinguished Hitler from the rest of the German right. First was his self-awareness and cool calculation in deploying the Big Lie. In _Mein Kampf_, published in 1925–26, he explained that “the masses _…_more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a little one,” and that even a propaganda claim “so impudent that people thought it insane” could ultimately prevail.

… failure to impose the appropriate consequences…

Most important, what both conservative politicians and a conservative judiciary in Bavaria failed to do was rid themselves of this dangerous agitator by expelling him from the country as an unwelcome convicted felon of Austrian citizenship. Instead, they—and eventually the old-guard establishment right throughout Germany—enabled his improbable political comeback.

… doesn’t that sound familiar?…

Hitler’s lesson from the failed putsch was that he needed to pursue revolution through “the politics of legality” rather than storm Munich City Hall. The Nazis would use the electoral process of democracy to destroy democracy.

… hmmmm…

By January 1933, Germany’s old guard saw that they were not remotely competitive in any election without the Nazi base, and opted to have Hitler legally appointed chancellor (or first minister). But because non-Nazi conservatives still held eight of 11 cabinet positions in the new government, they persisted in their delusion that they could control him—or, as some might say in today’s parlance, that they could preserve the “guardrails” that would contain him.

… double hmmmm…

Within five months, Germany was a one-party dictatorship and a police state.

… what author Christopher R. Browning goes on to say is that what the U.S. is most likely heading for, if the effort succeeds, is a managed democracy, an illiberal democracy ala Viktor Orban… he points to built-in vlunerabilities of the American political system… the Electoral College and the Senate both favor parts of the country where conservatives are strong… sophisticated gerrymandering, ruthlessly deployed, has given Republicans advantage in key states… and Trump plots revenge…

… and then there is this…

The GOP has now embraced an accelerated strategy of legal revolution to control the outcome of future elections. This fall, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear _Moore v. Harper_, which concerns the power of the judicial branch in North Carolina to protect the state constitution’s guarantee of free and fair elections by overturning a gerrymandered congressional redistricting map. The state-court ruling was stayed so that the Supreme Court could hear arguments and rule on the claims of the “independent state legislature doctrine,” according to which the elections and electors clauses of the Constitution vest sole authority in state legislatures to determine the manner in which federal elections are held and presidential electors selected (absent any specific mandate of federal law passed by Congress). A ruling in favor of the independent state legislature doctrine would leave gerrymandered state legislatures in total control over federal elections, unchecked by any other branch of state government.

Just as von Hindenburg and the rest of Weimar’s old guard chose complicity with Hitler’s Big Lie, dooming Germany’s interwar democracy, today’s Republican faithful are going along with Trump’s Big Lie, which casts Biden’s Democrats as the November criminals of 2020 and Trump himself as the patriotic defender of American freedom. America is not Weimar, Trump is not Hitler, Republicans are not Nazis, yet the fate of this republic hangs in the balance.