Notices by Alexander Karn (xankarn@mastodon.online), page 7

“Time to move on.” The battlecry of the morally vanquished.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/21/us/politics/trump-jan-6-pardons-republicans.html

Vaclav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless”

Honestly, everyone should read it.

https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-power-of-the-powerless-vaclav-havel-2011-12-23

"To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights."

--T. Snyder (2017)

"Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. it falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing."

--V. Havel (1978)

Fascism isn’t culture.

It may have certain cultural expressions (a dumb haircut, eg), but it’s a political ideology. A violent, sadistic one at that.

Storming the Capitol and tasing the police officers there isn’t culture.

Mowing down peaceful protestors with your car isn’t culture.

Foiled kidnapping plots aren’t culture.

Synagogue shootings aren’t culture.

Don’t let anyone tell you fascism is culture or that you’re intolerant of “difference.”

False equivalence is fascist gold.

In case you've somehow forgotten how good @jensorensen is.

Culture War. Polarization. Free Speech.

These are terms that have been deployed to conceal what's really happening to our politics.

Don't get it twisted.

https://thenib.com/culture-war-hawks/

Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa has warned about the “Philippin-ization” (Filipinization) of American politics.

What does it mean?

It means the normalization of political violence and extrajudicial “punishments.” It means the politics of vengeance and retribution. It means the weaponization of government and law. It means strong man politics and a culture of fear and intimidation. It means an assault on truth and the violent stupidity that fills the void.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-maga-fascist-violence/tnamp/

Paul Kramer (Vanderbilt) published this in 2017 not long after Trump's first inaugural. The overarching question is still relevant:

What role [can] historians play in countering authoritarian politics?

Engaged historians have these three "knacks," according to Kramer:

1. They disrupt narratives of inevitability.
2. They excavate lost alternatives.
3. They exercise our capacity for empathy.

Worth re-reading.

#histodons @histodons

https://www.chronicle.com/article/history-in-a-time-of-crisis/

Defense Secretary nominee with Christian nationalist tattoos wants you to know:

Removing the names of Confederate generals from US military bases is political.

Changing them back isn’t.

MAGA wants so badly to capture the military and security forces. If they succeed, we will see the end of liberal democracy in the US for several decades at least.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/13/politics/pete-hegseth-confederate-generals-military-bases/index.html

For some context, Britannica.com has compiled a list of "race riots" and race-based massacres in the U.S., which dates back to 1863 and includes US military massacres of Native-Americans.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/list-of-race-riots-and-massacres-in-the-United-States

“Systematic. Coordinated.”

DOJ releases Tulsa Race Massacre report more than 100 years later.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/10/tulsa-race-massacre-report-doj

For the free speech whiners and stop woke absurdists:

“The demand for neutral inquiry is philosophically incoherent. No wonder that such demands invariably, and hypocritically, mask political agendas. […] The ideal of the ‘view from nowhere’—that humans can be perfectly neutral or objective—is both false and the basis for cynical attacks on education.”

—Jason Stanley (2024)

Also the guy who walked off with boxes of papers which he was compelled by law to provide to the National Archives.

BTW, Judge Cannon, who dismissed the documents case, today ruled that special counsel Jack Smith is barred from releasing his investigative report, so that’s tidy.

No facts, no truth, no democracy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/07/us/politics/trump-documents-case-jack-smith-report.html?unlocked_article_code=1.nU4.g_AL.kbskdq1wU-aH&smid=url-share

Fascism aims to control truth and reality. That starts with manipulating sources and keeping tight control over records.

Trump is, after all, the guy who tears up and flushes the papers and memos that would incriminate him or make him look incompetent.

A once great newspaper masthead had it right: Democracy dies in darkness.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/06/us/politics/trump-national-archives.html?unlocked_article_code=1.nU4.833X.YVwRUVDlspC9&smid=url-share

@breadandcircuses

We have a consumer economy that’s mostly built on addiction and dopamine hacks: sports books, alcohol, vaping, caffeine, sugar/salt/fats, porn, one-click purchasing, buy now/pay later, gamification, etc.

I’m FAR from being an off the grid type or a neo-puritan, but every day I’m looking for ways to steer clear and stay free. Sometimes it’s as simple as tuning in to the things that can’t be bought and sold.

#ResistMuchObeyLittle

@RevXenoFact @breadandcircuses

For me, that’s the main insight and value of all “Eastern” philosophy: getting to grips with desire and finding the mental space that’s necessary to be somewhat less of its plaything.

In Nazi Germany, attacks against Jewish bodies and businesses were typically punctuated by acts of theft. Smash and grabs. Looting. Spoliation and Aryanization of property. Jews who sought to escape paid exorbitant “exit” taxes and had most of their property seized/confiscated.

“Mass deportation now” isn’t only about terrorizing and removing people or “purifying” the body politic.

There are already within the MAGA clique many who rub their hands in anticipation of ill-gotten gains.

Students in my War and Holocaust course were surprised to learn that the last Japanese-American internment camps were not closed until March 1946 (seven months after Japan’s surrender).

They were doubly surprised to learn that the Guantanamo Bay detention center remains open TODAY (23 yrs after 9/11) with 30 individuals still held there without criminal charges or recourse to any legal trial.

Once erected, systems of detainment/internment can be very hard to dismantle.

#RMOL

@JoshuaHolland

Get ready for a wave of capitulation. People and institutions will show us who they are. And, frankly, that’s useful information.

What’s necessary now is for the rest of us to make a thorough moral inventory and be ready to build partnerships with others who are like minded.

Trump and Musk shenanigans have begun. It’s a joke, really—that anyone would take these two sad narcissists for public servants—but, then again, it’s not.

Resist much. Obey little.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/01/america-misogyny-gender-politics-trump/680753/