by Ramin Mazaheri and cross-posted with PressTV
For months the United States’ corporate-dominated media has terrified everyone with promises of right-wing militias taking to the streets, but here’s the thing: the pressures currently being put on 70 million Trump supporters is exponentially raising the possibility of that actually occurring, not reducing it.
It is ghastly illuminating to see just how quickly – and with such disregard for modern human rights – both the elite and the highly partisan citizens of the United States are attacking those who refuse to fall at the feet of Joe Biden, and even before all the votes are counted in a very narrow and highly-disputed election.
It is not an exaggeration, as I will list them below, but the tactics being used to push Biden into office are akin to wartime, yet the US is most emphatically not at war – all this derangement is over merely trying to vote as equals. I am not reporting from 1917 USSR, or 1949 China, or 1959 Cuba, or 1979 Iran – there are no foreign armed forces meddling in a revolution/civil war.
“Bidenism” is most emphatically not a revolutionary force. It is openly and proudly the exact opposite: a return to the “normalcy” embodied in the 2015 status quo. Nor is the US at civil war, but it seems some never-trumpets are actually hell-bent on starting one rather than do what every nation does: rely on a calm judicial review when there is a contested and very narrow vote. There is simply no other way out for the US than to follow normal democratic procedures, even if their electoral process is routinely called the worst among the Western core democracies by Harvard think-tanks.
(The US goes one step too far, as usual – other nations at least wait until the votes are actually mostly counted until a candidate declares victory, unlike Donald Trump and Joe Biden.)
If this does turn out to be the “Biden presidential(-elect) era” the world can easily grasp what a terrible, very Trumpian start it is. Americans, I think, cannot.
It’s just very unclear what Americans in 2020 truly believe in anymore?
We know that many American elite don’t truly believe in free press or free speech:
Part 1 of this article, “CNN’s Jake Tapper: The foreman/overseer keeping all journalists in line” discussed how one of the nation’s top news anchors threatened lesser-privileged journalists with blacklisting if they don’t side with Biden immediately. His intimidation went uncommented upon/tacitly condoned by his top colleagues, when his pathetic careerism amid social instability should cost him at least some of his privileges.
Censorship is one way to prevent dissenting journalism, but informal censorship is another: The US doesn’t need formal government censors when their own journalists enforce such obvious suppression informally.
The goal of censorship is conformity. The US media which is corporate dominated – from the (fake) left New York Times to right-wing Fox News – is producing coverage which seemingly exclusively conforms to the false idea that it’s good journalism to exclude the massive number of Americans who feel the vote was not “fair and free”.
Since this troubled election began that number includes a stunning 70% of Republicans, per recent polls, but also independents and leftists. Since the election I interviewed both the Party for Socialism & Liberation and the Socialist Alternative Party (you have never heard of them because of the duopoly which strangles American elections) and both of them said the same thing: this is a terribly antiquated system in America, but in any democracy you count all the votes and litigate any contentious problems.
We know that many Americans don’t believe in the right to an attorney:
The anti-Trump and totally mainstream PAC/think tank The Republican Project has been lauded from the (fake) left to the far-right Washington Post for successfully harassing Trump’s Pennsylvania election lawyers into abandoning their client. The tactics used were not rhetorical and moral but mere intimidation, harassment and doxxing (releasing private information about people into public).
Trump is appalling, but does he not even deserve a lawyer?
Do people who associate with Trump, such as his lawyers, deserve such treatment? How far does this go – that’s the question those engaged in a witch-hunt are too fanatical to ask themselves.
Trump’s legal grievance is obviously supported by too large a democratic minority to ignore without causing lasting damage to the integrity of the American system.
By denying the right to an attorney these rabid anti-Trumpers do not technically betray the letter of their 1776 Revolution, that anti-imperialist event, but they certainly do seem to betray the spirit. It seems to violate the spirit if not the letter of the 6th amendment (ratified in 1791), which guarantees a lawyer in all criminal prosecutions, as well as the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th amendment (ratified in 1868).
Congratulations to rabid anti-Trumpers for being so very progressive that they have made it to just past the slavery era?
1868 is a good place mark for the mentality of US Democrats, who remain obsessed with race and totally untouched by any of the anti-imperialist and class-based analyses which began to prevail worldwide since 1917.
We know that some American lawmakers don’t believe in open elections:
Earlier this month I reported on the blacklist of Iranian media by the Bernie Sanders-affiliated Democratic Socialists of America, so we shouldn’t have expected much from this fake-leftist faction openly committed to working within the Democratic Party.
But many Americans were shocked that DSA’s most powerful member, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, actually doubled down when a tweet of hers suggested that lists should be compiled of pro-Trumpers who have committed no crime other than supporting not her party.
When top elected officials vaguely threaten citizens with “the idea of being responsible for their behavior over last four years” and their behaviour is just working for a democratically-elected candidate, what else is this but massively undemocratic intimidation? That would makes free elections in the future impossible.
AOC is seemingly advocating for a one-party state, without knowing it, perhaps, but incompetence is no excuse. It’s certainly another sign of the widespread hysteria of rabid anti-Trumpers.
Directly after AOC’s call sprang up the “Trump Accountability Project”, headed by former Democratic National Committee press secretary Hari Sevugan, which is seemingly looking to blacklist all those that worked for the (possibly) outgoing administration. Would Mr. Sevugan approve of a “Biden Accountability Project” in 2024 for Biden’s staff? Or is that a superfluous question because Democrats are preordained to rule in an unbroken, 1,000-year dynasty?
Why would anybody of merit want to go into public service anymore if they are just going to get blacklisted for doing so?
All the above: This is all wartime-era stuff.
And Chicago, where I am currently based, has been boarded up like it was wartime since the election. (And in August/September. And in May/June.)
It’s as if America can’t help but inexorably draw itself to conflict, because this is all totally self-imposed. This is not the 1960s – there is no peace movement here anymore.
America is acting like what it is: half-full of rabid imperialists
Of course, “neo-imperialism” means colonising your own nation for an international 1%, as the European Union – that supremely US-guided project; that project which is more American than even America – proves.
Of course America is in a state of xenophobia (hostility or fear towards different cultures or strangers) and witch-hunting: this is exactly what the Democratic Party has normalised via their failed Russophobia campaign since 2016.
Did they think they could just turn that off?
Many current Biden supporters failed to stand up against this phony campaign designed to deflect from the Democrats 2016 election failures (2020 saw an even bigger “Blue Wave” failure, but isn’t this anti-Trump supporter hysteria deflecting attention from that for now?), and the most vociferous of them are now aiming their pitchforks at the people who dared to vote differently. The problem is that there are so very many of such persons.
We should add that for four years on US social media this hate mongering has to be multiplied by millions, maybe even billions of time-wasting, venomous posts and spiteful “likes” about veritable political nonsense. It’s practically a justification for state-sponsored censorship, because what kind of society can be healthy towards their neighbors, much less foreigners, when there have these been daily witch-hunts in the phony online world?!
So these lists can go on and on, but our tolerance of such intimidation should not.
(And, yes, before Russophobia there was Islamophobia, and before that it was socialism-phobia, Blackphobia, Indianphobia, etc.)
What’s going on in America is that the most Trump-hating Democrats are acting exactly like what they are: not fascists, as is so often alleged of the other side in Western discourse, but imperialists, which is so rarely discussed in Western discourse.
Like Jake Tapper, they are not just careerists who aspire to outdo everyone in extremism in order to rule from atop the pyramid, they also want to believe they also have the moral high ground despite that. It is arrogance combined with a lust for power and a hysterical, unreasoning rage which comes from we know not where?
Half of the US is so hysterical about being doubted that they can’t recognise themselves in the mirror, but many of those they have colonised, blockaded, sanctioned, brutalised and impoverished sure can.
It’s absolutely appalling and the solution is not simply, “Say that Biden is the president.”
Any nation which has a culture willing to go to such lengths to get others to accept their view – rather than relying on reasoned, secure reflection and some sort of litigation or vetting process – is deeply messed up.
But, as the US proved with their murderous meddling in Iran’s 2009 election: many in the US don’t just not care about anyone’s else’s rules, judges or systems of conflict resolution – the 2020 election proves that many Americans don’t even care about their own.
They are the law-giver and the life-taker and the president-maker, because they say so. Better side with “they”, or else.
*************************************************************
Results are in: Americans lose, duopoly wins, Trumpism not merely a cult (1/2) – November 5, 2020
Results are in: Americans lose, duopoly wins, Trumpism not merely a cult (2/2) – November 6, 2020
4 years of anti-Trumpism shaping MSM vote coverage, but expect long fight – November 7, 2020
US partitioned by 2 presidents: worst-case election scenario realized – November 9, 2020
A 2nd term is his if he really wants it, but how deep is Trump’s ‘Trumpism’? – November 10, 2020
CNN’s Jake Tapper: The overseer keeping all journalists in line (1/2) – November 13, 2020
Ramin Mazaheri is currently covering the US elections. He is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.
The patronage hierarchy to which Biden belongs has been planning this a while
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/05/09/the-strange-case-of-chrystia-freeland-and-the-failure-of-the-super-elite/
‘failure’ but hey, they never stop believing.
As someone who lived his formative years in a socialist state, I can say only one to those hapless ordinary american citizens: congratulations, you live in a state, which is a socialist in everything but the name.
It’s a shame, really. Once upon a time America was something to be admired. A very long time ago :-(
Socialism, but minus health, education, housing, public transportation. However, Coca Cola, Pepsi and Hollywood make up for those minuses :-)
Too true, a unique strand of socialism that has none of the societal benefits of being a healthy society.
America is a country that gave its self enough rope to hang its self.
America is socialist because it is like a late-Cold War Soviet state? I don’t follow this logic.
America does not have a socialist society. It scarecily has a society at all. It is a large group of individuals going about their own “business”, each with a delusional plot to become the master of their reality.
The USA is decidedly not Socialist. If it was, why are there tens of millions living in poverty alongside such obscene wealth ? Why are tens of millions denied access to medical care ? Why is the foreign policy of the USA imperialism personified ? Why is higher education so insanely expensive? Why is infrastructure crumbling ?
These are not rhetorical questions. Please respond.
Actually, your questions answer themselves – they describe what a socialist state looks like in it’s final stages just before the collapse, just before the anarchy that arises as result of the differences between the common people and the so called “party elite”, who claims that it steals, cheats and kills for the “common good”. You don’t have to believe me, but I lived through it.
I suspect that you live in US, which is probably the reason why you can’t see. But you will, unfortunately.
If you’re lucky, you won’t end up with another oligarchy (like in my country), which doesn’t even pretend that they care about the people.
The good “liberal” is constantly afraid of saying something anti=”liberal” and being excluded from “liberal” polite society. They are quite puritanical0 a small remark reveals one is Subconsciously or actually a bigot or some . They put so much pressure on themselves to conform to the “liberal” hivemind , it is anti-human. This expresses itself in the rage against political opponents, which they regard as EVIL. The rigid conformity and obsession with race does make them Fascists”Intersectionality” makes them categorize everyone around favored and hated racial types just like the Nazis did. Their values are inverted from Nazi values, but the same schema is there, Some people are evil because of their race, others are better because of their race/sex. They are fanatically against free speech, since most of their arguments can not hold water, they try and stop speech they don’t like as “hate speech”. They have become quite illiberal and totalitarian. The historian Victor D. Hansen has summed up the Democrats position as “We hate Western Civilization”. Since they worship the democratic party, their positions are Nihilism and Necropjila, or death worship. We they cheat at elections and try to stamp out a free press. Many of the Trump votes ere not for Trump or the republicans, but against the rabidly Fascist and Nihilist Democrats. Against SJWs.
“Many of the Trump votes ere not for Trump or the republicans, but against the rabidly Fascist and Nihilist Democrats. Against SJWs.”
Yes. The problem was never only the Trump personality.
The bigger problem is the nauseating Liberal Democrat personality.
Adam Schiff, Pelosi, Clintons, Obama, Joe and Hunter Biden: Puke.
Katherine
well i wouldn’t give these hysterical liberals any depth of thought or capability of foreseeing the consequences of their childish views. after being thoroughly brainwashed by tv, hollywood, school and the msm, they are utterly confused, feeling the injustice of the society they live in but incapable of sorting out the who what why. Their heads are under a huge pile of lies and it’s a herculean task to even start explaining to them ….but where to start ?
Democrats don’t hate current Western civilization unless one defines Western civilization to be from an arbitrary point in the past. Say, Anglo Christian civilization.
On the contrary, Democrats worship the current phase of Western civilization: “human rights”, “democracy”, “freedom”. Of course, only as far as these values apply to themselves, nevermind the “other”.
it’s pretty obvious to me : none of these politicians have any principles other than money / power. Analyse , take apart, thoroughly examine their motives , nothing but shallow words and greed.
Can a politician have a different driving force ? Yes , there are other goals in politics.
I believe there is a curse on the “american people”, one that maybe a powerful indien sorcerer might have thrown on the colonisers when it became obvious the native people would lose everything.
But that is just my fantasy : do or die financial capitalism/imperialism and the growing resistance of the rest of the world can explain the usa predicaments too.
@yorg
‘none of these politicians have any principles’
I don’t think they all as bad as each other no. Some are in it for empire and some in it for America.
The democrazies may be out of luck if Trump will not concede until after all the procedures except one have played out. Then it will be one elector from each of the states who will elect the new POTUS. The majority of states being pro Trump may well play in his favor.
That why Lavrov said that they may have to wait until january 20 to congratulate the new US president…
“It’s absolutely appalling and the solution is not simply, “Say that Biden is the president.”
That line is the MSM and online echo chamber new mantra. But no one is buying this – not even the paid presstitutes or rent a street stooges.
Where are the throngs of Biden proles? – no where to be found – because they do not exist. Only antifa/blm paid mobs – out numbered and confused on how to respond to real street protests.
The Trump march in Washington is just the beginning – the anger will build – the anger of exclusion from reality of the working class and the poor. The anger of knowing that you are no longer exceptional and never were – that badge of distinction belongs only to the super rich not the billions of rubes.
The goal of the DP is not to eliminate Trump with ‘shut the FXCK UP and bow down to Biden’ but to crush humanity under the zionazis boot.
2020 is a poorly planned dystopia designed by inbred billionaire morons and executed by inept careerists.
Well said!
I hope you are right that it is only the beginning. This was never about Trump, it is a coup to install dystopia, indeed. It must be stopped.
The coup may not involve Trump or Biden. My first alternative was this … updated :
Regime Change USA : Milley has sufficient medals to prevent his survival should he fall into a swimming pool. He is not alone in that regard as most high ranking US military officers would also suffer a similar fate, but how did it happen …
https://youtu.be/KEk1m6nwwog or http://www.cowdisley.com/videos/regimechange2.mp4
Early comments in Ramin’s articles about Trump (bad Trump) explained this outcome was likely and obvious. And now the world is facing a danger greater than any danger in the last four years. In fact, to be precise: the western world will not re-emerge from lockdowns, and the non-Western world is in much greater danger of nuclear war. Trumpers (specially those who have maintained a semblance of community and family life) are specially in danger within the US. Everywhere population will be reduced, perhaps dramatically. Was it worth it, to get rid of a buffoon?
Jake Tapper and this ilk always remind me of “office space’s” Lumbergh. Who does not find this sort of apparatchik’s velvet fisted coercion nauseating? I suppose the ubiquitous “Karen” feels this sort of threat moral and justified as long as it is line with the ideology de jure. I think Eric Blair had these sorts of people pegged in the late 40’s “They are the bigoted adherents of the party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and the nosers out of unorthodoxy”.
Bidenism is mostly a platitude soup rather than an ideology. What little ideology there is seems to revolve around the ideas of “wokeness”. “Wokeness” itself seems to reduce all of human history to racism, or sexism or other such -isms. Any thought that doesn’t match with this version of reality must be censored. “Wokeness” is a utopian place where there is no darkness. A shining hill, they like to say.
We have seen this before. The place where there is no darkness historically is a place like Makarenko’s playground for naughty children. Places like Pitesti prison.
IMO, Ramin is WAY out of his element here. Too much poppycock to even begin to address. So what’s really happening?
The global bankers back both Trump and Biden. The goal is to bring the country to it’s knees. This is called “Disaster Capitalism” folks. The banksters “end game” is always the same – “Buy Low. Sell High”.
This is not a “left” versus “right” fight. It’s the “top” (the global financial elite) versus the “bottom” (everybody else). And it’s working very well.
“This is not a “left” versus “right” fight. It’s the “top” (the global financial elite) versus the “bottom” (everybody else). And it’s working very well.”
The few vs. the many has always worked and probably always will. The only thing that seems to change is just who those few are and how they sell it to the many.
Exactly, that’s why “there’s no left or right” analysis is so lazy and politically nihilist.
Yes, the truly rarified elite are opposed to the masses… duh. Doesn’t mean that left and right politics don’t have actual impacts on the average person’s lives.
Saying Trump and Biden are the same is nonsense as well.
Quite an optimistic view! That history’s most terrible, lawless, and destructive empire could be brought to its knees without a fight.
It does not strike me as beneficial for capitalism to have the world’s most libertarian power crushed and replaced by the world’s most powerful state (PRC).
Capitalism and nuclear warfare are the primary threats to global ecological collapse (through uncontrolled consumption of ecosystems), so if these “global bankers” can kill two birds with one stone, what is really at stake?
We can fight for America without lamenting the termination of its evil.
Scathing commentary.
Too much for sensitive American tastes, but very real.
>They are the law-giver and the life-taker and the president-maker, because they say so. Better side with “they”, or else.
This statement certainly describes U.S. international ‘diplomacy’. It’s a gun to the head, our way or the highway. Could it be this attitude is systemic with the indispensable people?
the same tools and mechanisms the globalist club has been using (very often employing force and muscle from america) against the rest of the world, have also been turned against america itself. the ideas of strictly limited government and untouchable liberties exemplified by the american constitution’s enumerated powers and bill of rights, those ideas are something the globalists have been working hard to eradicate from the earth. is america the last castle? maybe. the siege now is a raging storm. europe never let go of the concept of absolute power, they only changed from time to time to facade presented to make it look like it was ‘democratic’, but they never accepted a concept of _limited_ and _expressly enumerated_ powers for whatever regime rxisted to exercise. In europe this means that even constitutions are suspended, circumvented, or changed wherever and whenever convenient by the very governments one would think they are supposed to restrain. The same elites have been irritated by the institutionalized limited powers in america for a long time and havebeen wroking to chip them away bit by bit. now they think they’re positioned to move in for the kill.