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eretzyisrael · 9 months ago

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Opinion

By MICHAEL KAYE Published: FEBRUARY 28, 2024 03:04 THE WRITER speaks at a marketing conference in New York City wearing a #EndJewHatred T-shirt.(photo credit: COURTESY MICHAEL KAYE)

It’s been almost five months since October 7, a day that completely changed the lives of more than 15 million Jews around the world. But the aftermath of the attack is still present, months later. In many ways, it feels as though this nightmare just happened, while at other moments, it’s hard to remember what life was like before that day of terror.

I am not fluent in Hebrew. I do not wear a kippah. I have almost 30 tattoos. I am not your stereotypical Jew, but I have become a proud Jewish activist. But October 7 changed me, as it did many others. Who I was before is someone I can never be again. I cannot be complicit or silent. I donate to the Anti-Defamation League; I speak at conferences wearing an #EndJewHatred T-shirt; I never leave home without Jewish-themed jewelry; and I use my social media platforms to discuss the rising antisemitism on college campuses across the United States and around the world.

As someone who was educated at a Jewish school and learned about the Holocaust, I am no stranger to antisemitism or the dangerous impact it can have. My earliest memories include being taught by my parents to be proud but quiet about my Judaism, having swastikas carved on my school playground, being immediately evacuated on September 11, and always leaving my Star of David at home when traveling.

During my childhood and teenage years, I heard from and met many Holocaust survivors, including Elie Wiesel. I listened to their stories about how the world remained silent.

Today, it feels like the beginning of a second Holocaust. That is why I cannot remain silent.

A scary time to be Jewish

For this Jewish New Yorker, it’s a scary time to be Jewish. The American Jewish Committee’s State of Antisemitism in America report found that 93% of American Jews surveyed think antisemitism is a problem in the United States and 86% believe antisemitism in the country has increased over the past five years.

In November, I attended the March for Israel in Washington. Around me were Jewish people from Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Richmond, San Diego, and Queens. A man from Brooklyn put tefillin (phylacteries) on me; it was the first time I had worn tefillin in almost 20 years. I even got to meet Julia Haart and Miriam Haart from Netflix’s My Unorthodox Life, who grew up in a religious community not too far from me. While there, I realized this gathering had the most Jews I’ve been around since I was in Israel in 2006. It was the safest I had felt in years. But there were also allies, including Congressman Ritchie Torres and CNN contributor Van Jones. That day reminded me of why I am proud to be Jewish and why I cannot be silent about my Judaism any longer.

Since October 7, I have lost hundreds of followers on social media. I have received anti-Israel and anti-Jewish messages, even threats. But I am not alone. The AJC found that six in 10 people have come across antisemitic content online, and 78% of American Jews feel less safe as Jews in the United States since that horrific day.

To many of us, the current climate feels different. We’re feeling angry, confused, and isolated. In my lifetime, I have watched the nation unite after domestic and foreign terrorist attacks, social justice actions, and wars. Rarely, outside of politics, have I seen us this divided: the Jewish community against everyone else. Overnight, people who had never spoken about any Middle Eastern wars became experts on the conflict. Disinformation spread like wildfire across social media, and much of it felt aimed at damaging or discrediting Jews and Zionists. Almost immediately after October 7, it was not only taboo to express sympathy for the Israelis who were captured or murdered; it was discouraged and forbidden, often met with attacks, both physical and verbal.

BUT THROUGH these painful months, there have also been glimmers of light.

During this period of mourning, I have watched people of all backgrounds come together – to educate, to grieve, to hope, and to pray. A Christian connection on social media thanked me for sharing educational resources. Jewish friends from elementary school and high school reached out. A Muslim friend held my hand as I cried, and another has been checking on me periodically for months. These are the moments I have chosen to cling to.

Our future is not where one side loses and another wins. It’s where we all unite.

The writer is an award-winning communications strategist, data storyteller, purpose-driven marketer, and educator based in New York City. He often speaks about antisemitism, LGBTQ+ rights, and social justice issues.

#Israel #antisemitism #israel hamas war

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mariacallous · 11 months ago

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Allies of Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orbán will hold a closed-door meeting with Republicans in Washington to push for an end to US military support for Ukraine, the Guardian has learned.

Members of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs and staff from the Hungarian embassy in Washington will on Monday begin a two-day event hosted by the conservative Heritage Foundation thinktank.

The first day includes panel speeches about the Ukraine war as well as topics such as Transatlantic Culture Wars. It is expected to feature guests including Magor Ernyei, the international director of the Centre for Fundamental Rights, the institute that organized CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) Hungary. Kelley Currie, a former ambassador under then president Donald Trump, said she was invited “but declined”.

According to a Republican source, some of the attendees, including Republican members of Congress, have been invited to join closed-door talks the next day.

The meeting will take place against a backdrop of tense debate in Washington over Ukraine’s future. Last week the White House warned that, without congressional action, money to buy more weapons and equipment for Kyiv will run out by the end of the year. On Wednesday Senate Republicans blocked an emergency spending bill to fund the war in Ukraine.

A diplomatic source close to the Hungarian embassy said: “Orbán is confident that the Ukraine aid will not pass in Congress. That is why he is trying to block assistance from the EU as well.”

Orbán is a frequent critic of aid to help Ukraine against the Russian invasion. Seen as Vladimir Putin’s closest ally inside the EU for the past few years, he was photographed smiling and shaking hands with the Russian president two months ago in Beijing.

Orbán recently demanded that Ukraine’s European Union (EU) membership be taken off the European Council’s agenda in December. The Hungarian leader posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “It is clear that the proposal of the European Commission on Ukraine’s EU accession is unfounded and poorly prepared.”

The Heritage Foundation is leading Project 2025, a coalition preparing for the next conservative presidential administration, and has in recent months hosted speeches by leading British Conservative party members Liz Truss and Iain Duncan Smith.

The thinktank has also been a vocal opponent of US assistance to Ukraine. Last year Jessica Anderson, the executive director of its lobbying operation, released a statement under the headline: “Ukraine Aid Package Puts America Last.” In August, Victoria Coates, Heritage’s vice-president, posted on social media: “It’s time to end the blank, undated checks for Ukraine.”

When Heritage celebrated its 50th anniversary last April, Orbán’s political director, Balázs Orbán (no relation), was invited as a speaker for the event. Heritage’s president, Kevin Roberts, repeatedly praised the Hungarian leader on X: “One thing is clear from visiting Hungary and from being involved in current policy and cultural debates in America: the world needs a movement that fights for Truth, for tradition, for families, and for the average person.”

In recent years Orbán has championed a transatlantic far-right alliance with a hardline stance against immigration and “gender ideology”, staunch Christian nationalism and scorn for those who warn of a slide into authoritarianism.

Hungary has been portrayed by conservative media as an anti-“woke” paradise and model for the United States. Some far-right Republicans, such as Kari Lake and Paul Gosar, said they would like to see the “Hungarian model” transplanted to the US, especially when it comes to immigration and family policies. CPAC went to Hungary for the second time this year, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson shot multiple episodes in Hungary touting Orbán policies.

Orbán has returned the favour by lavishing praise on Trump. During this year’s CPAC, where Roberts was also featured as a speaker, he claimed that if Trump were president, “there would be no war in Ukraine and Europe”. The Hungarian prime minister has criticised the multiple federal indictments against the former US president and called the judicial procedure a “very communist methodology” in a recent interview with Carlson.

Dalibor Rohac, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute thinktank in Washington, said: “The Hungarian embassy in DC has been very active lately, trying to repair ties with the Republicans and strengthen them where it’s appropriate.

“It is also not surprising that Heritage is the venue of these talks because they are different from other thinktanks in DC; they are more partisan, and their funding model heavily overlaps with the Trump base.”

But, Rohac said, despite his good relations with some Republicans it was “unlikely” that Orbán would have any leverage over US funding for Ukraine.

Supporters of Ukraine have also been making their case to Republicans in Congress. This week David Cameron, the British foreign secretary, held meetings on Capitol Hill. He told a press conference: “I am sure that goodwill will prevail and the money will be voted through, and it will have a huge effect not just on morale in Ukraine but also making sure that European countries keep asking themselves what more can they do.”

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 8 months ago

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Clay Jones

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 10, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAR 11, 2024

As predicted, last week was an important one for the Republican Party.

The Republicans’ rebuttal to the State of the Union on Thursday stayed in the news throughout the weekend. On Friday, independent journalist Jonathan Katz figured out that a key story in it was false. Senator Katie Britt (R-AL) described a twelve-year-old child sex trafficked by Mexican cartel members, implying that the young girl was trafficked because of President Joe Biden’s border policies.

Katz tracked down the facts. Britt was describing the life of Karla Jacinto, who was indeed trafficked as a child, but not in the present and not in the U.S. and not by cartels. She was trafficked from 2004 to 2008—during the George W. Bush administration—in Mexico, at the hands of a pimp who entrapped vulnerable girls. Jacinto has become an advocate for child victims and has told her story before Congress, and she met Britt at an event for government officials and anti-trafficking advocates.

Britt’s dramatic delivery of the rebuttal had already invited parody and concern about the religious themes she demonstrated. The news that a central image in it was a lie just made things worse. “Everyone’s f*cking losing it,” a Republican strategist told The New Republic’s Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling. “It’s one of our biggest disasters ever.”

On Friday, the Republican National Committee (RNC) voted to replace former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, who resigned effective Friday, with Trump loyalist Michael Whatley and Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump. They will co-chair the organization and have made it clear their primary goal is to put Trump back in the White House.

Friday night, on Newsmax, Donald Trump Jr. recorded a video announcing that the old Republican Party “no longer exists outside of the D.C. beltway…. The move that happened today…that’s the final blow. People have to understand that America First, the MAGA movement is the new Republican Party. That is conservatism today.”

Just what that means was crystal clear on Friday night, when Trump hosted Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán at the Trump Organization’s Florida property, Mar-a-Lago. The darling of the radical right, Orbán has spoken at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and hosted former Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson, and his policies inspired the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation Florida governor Ron DeSantis has championed.

The right wing’s fondness for Orbán springs from his having rejected democracy and replaced it in Hungary with what he calls an “illiberal state.” Orbán and other far-right leaders working against democracy maintain that the central principle of democracy, equality before the law, undermines society. It permits immigration, which, in their minds, dilutes the “purity” of a people, and it requires that LGBTQ+ individuals and women have the same rights as heterosexual men. Such a world challenges the heteronormative patriarchal world traditionalists crave.

Orbán’s takeover of the press, elimination of rival political parties, partisan gerrymandering, capture of the courts, and control of Hungary’s government are not just ideological, though, but also economic. Corruption and the capture of valuable factories and properties for cronies have allowed Orbán and his allies to amass fortunes.

“There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s fantastic,” Trump said on Friday. Trump said that Orbán simply says, “‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it, right? He’s the boss and…he’s a great leader, fantastic leader. In Europe and around the world, they respect him.”

On Saturday, Republicans in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, censured Senator James Lankford (R-OK) over his work negotiating the border security measure. In January, state Republicans claimed they had passed a resolution “strongly” condemning Lankford; others said the vote for the resolution was “not legitimate and definitely does not represent the voice of all Oklahoma Republicans.”

Lankford is a far-right senator whom Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tapped to represent the Republicans in the negotiations. House Republicans had demanded the border security measure before they would allow a vote on a national security supplemental bill that funds Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion.

Because the Democrats are desperate to fund Ukraine, they were willing to give up things they had never laid on the table before, including a path to citizenship for those brought to the United States as children, making the bill that emerged from the negotiations strongly favor the Republican position on immigration. The Border Patrol Officers’ union, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal all endorsed it.

But the House Republicans’ demand for a border measure appears to have been an attempt to kill the national security supplemental bill altogether. As soon as it became clear that there would be a deal, Trump came out against it. He demanded that Congress kill the measure, and his loyalists agreed.

Lankford, who had helped to produce the strongest border measure in years at the request of the nominal head of the party, has now been censured because he crossed Trump.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, Biden signed into law one of the consolidated appropriations bills that must be finished to fund the government. The other must be finished by March 22.

Biden has continued to ride the momentum built by Thursday’s State of the Union speech. His campaign has released a number of advertisements, and today he was in Georgia, where the largest political action committees representing communities of color—the AAPI Victory Fund, the Latino Victory Fund, and The Collective PAC—endorsed him and pledged $30 million to mobilize communities of color to vote in 2024.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #SOTU #election 2024 #Lankford #CPAC #Right wing extremism #authoritariansim

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stevetonyweekly · 2 years ago

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SteveTony Weekly - March 26th

Hello and welcome to this week’s reads. I was on a bit of a superfamily kick this week, so there’s a fair bit of kids in the mix. Enjoy and be sure to give your fic authors a kudos/comment!

~*~

A Partial Dictionary Of The 21st Century By Captain Steve Rogers, US Army by copperbadge

Steve is adapting well to the new millennium, and he has the dictionary to prove it.

***we survived the great war by meidui

When the dust settles and the blood dries, they reach for each other.

***Unbearably Adorable by iam93percentstardust

Steve's boyfriend gets stuck in his animal form by one of Loki's spells. Somehow, this is not the hardest part of Steve's day (that would be the Avengers' Instagram account).

***I Watch Your Fingers Working Overtime by royal_chandler

“Who knew that a heatwave could make Steve Rogers so petulant?” There’s a brightness to Tony’s eyes, like his brain is whirring behind them and hurriedly filing away this brand new piece of information.

Stuck in Chicago during a heatwave, Steve and Tony find a way to cool off.

winged by meidui

Steve temporarily grows a pair of wings on the sides of his head. Tony uses this to his advantage.

I don't care (go on and tear me apart) by AvengersNewB for Kiyaar

Tony finds himself tied up in an unknown place. Steve is there but not to help Tony; he has a whole other agenda.

————————

“No Tony, that’s not how it works. I don’t wanna ask you. I wanna make you. I wanna hurt you, fuck you, and then hurt you some more, and I don’t need your permission for it.”

Tony holds Steve’s gaze breathing hard, terrified that he can’t find the earnest, sweet stars that always shine in Steve’s eyes.

“That is what I want. The fact that you’re so fucking into it is a bonus.” He reaches down to palms his own cock from over the fabric. “You’re so good for me, Tony, even when you don’t want to be.”

Christmas, My Child, Is Love In Action by royal_chandler

It doesn't take too long for Peter to make a decision. After his dad leaves to go finish his last minute gift-wrapping, Peter heads to the living room. It's dim, shadowed by the twinkling holiday lights. His pop is staring into the Christmas tree, startles when Peter says by way of greeting, "According to Google, you’re nesting."

More Than the Average Good by royal_chandler for

Tony hadn't taken flight in nearly five months before Steve Rogers—plunged into the Potomac—finally gave him a reason to.

I'm Here, Sweetheart by DaftPunk_DeLorean

When Tony gets grievously injured at a press conference, Steve just about loses his mind with worry. And not only because they are best friends, or teammates, or colleagues. No one could blame Steve for his reaction, knowing that he and Tony were married. The problem was, no one knew.

Caffeine, Otherwise Known as the Key to Tony Stark's Heart by sol-nox (parasoling)

A new coffee shop opens across the street from Stark Tower. Steve is the hot, sweet and predictably clueless owner. Tony tries to do what he does best.

Steve Rogers' Life Is Not A Romance Movie (He Wouldn't Get The References, Anyway) by someonelsesheart

Steve hasn't always had this ridiculous crush on Tony Stark.

(Or, the one where Steve is his polite old self and doesn't really hate Tony Stark (unfortunately), Tony is a child progidy and apparently a cab driver now, too, and high school is still high school, even when you are the son of a billionaire.)

Looking After America by copperbadge

Steve tries to shake off a bullet, but Tony takes charge.

finding steve rogers by jacobby

Steve sighs. “Sorry. I wasn’t a very good tour guide. Ma always told me about the town, but she never got into specifics.”

Tony takes Steve’s hand in his and places it close to his lips. “It’s your first time here too. We understand.”

AKA

After a botched mission with SHIELD, Steve takes a vacation with his family to a town in Ireland.

Sit on the floor wearing your clothes by Raw_Ramen_Noodles

If Tony was being honest, he just wanted to go home. Actually, if Tony was honest, he would probably still be at home. Unfortunately he’s trapped in another universe with its own set of problems, and he’s going to need help to get back. Double unfortunately, he’s not quite sure who to trust.

Parent/Teacher Night by CapnShellhead (orphan_account)

When Steve's best friend James Barnes died overseas, his son James was given to Steve to raise. Steve did the best he could, throwing himself into being a parent with the same focus he did everything else. So, when he showed up to Parent/Teacher night, he was determined to make a good impression on James' favorite teacher.

Of course, like everything else in Steve's life, things didn't go according to plan.

From The Past by sara_holmes

"When Steve turns up at the tower late one night in December, looking gaunt and exhausted and like he could fall down right there in the lobby, Tony doesn’t say a word about how long it’s taken."

every dong has its day by orphan_account

it’s not the size of the boat, it’s the motion of the ocean.

-ancient chinese proverb

(aka that time z wrote 8k worth of dick jokes.)

I'll Picture You by royal_chandler

Even with having no idea where he'll land, Steve jumps.

Parentheses by royal_chandler

The only thing that could maybe redeem this entirely unfair situation is the Tom Ford that Steve’s immaculately dressed in.

#stevetony weekly #stevetony #stony #stony fic #stevetony fic #stony fic recs #stevetony fic recs #stteve rogers #tony stark #captain ameriqueue #iron man #fic rec #rec list #fanfiction rec list

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xtruss · 7 months ago

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Latin America’s New Hard Right: Bukele, Milei, Kast And Bolsonaro! Crime, Abortion and Socialism, Not Immigration, Are The Issues That Rile Them

— April 1st 2024| Santiago, Chile 🇨🇱

A montage of right-wing Latin American leaders on a red and blue background with Donald Trump throwing maga hats at them. Illustration: Klawe Rzeczy

“Mr president!” Javier Milei could barely contain himself when he met Donald Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) near Washington in February. The pair embraced and exchanged slogans, with Mr Trump intoning “Make Argentina Great Again” several times and Argentina’s new President yipping “Viva la Libertad, Carajo” (“Long Live Freedom, Dammit”) in response.

Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s Popular Autocratic President, had already addressed the conference. “They say globalism comes to die at CPAC,” he told enraptured Republicans. “I’m here to tell you that in El Salvador, it’s already dead.” Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s Hard-Right Former President, was a star guest in 2023. He, like Mr Trump, claimed without evidence that his bid for a second term was thwarted by fraud. His supporters also attempted an insurrection.

These scenes suggest a seamless international alliance between Mr Trump and the leaders of Latin America’s hard right. Its members also include José Antonio Kast of Chile, who has spoken at cpac in the past too. This new right basks in Mr Trump’s influence. It has turned away from a more consensual form of conservative politics in favour of an aggressive pursuit of culture war.

Its ascent began with the surprise victory of Mr Bolsonaro in Brazil in 2018, followed by that of Mr Bukele in 2019. In Chile Mr Kast, the founder of a new hard-right Republican Party, got 44% of the vote in a presidential run-off in 2021 and his party won an election for a constitutional council in 2023. Mr Milei won his own surprise victory in November. Would-be leaders of the radical right jostle in the Politics of Peru and Colombia.

Unlike its older European and North American equivalents, the Latin American hard right does not have roots in the fertile soil of public anxiety about uncontrolled immigration (although this has become an issue recently because of the arrival of millions of Venezuelans fleeing their country’s rotten dictatorship).

The new group shares three hallmarks. The first is fierce opposition to abortion, and gay and women’s rights. “What unites them is an affirmation of traditional social hierarchies,” as Lindsay Mayka and Amy Erica Smith, two academics, put it. The second hallmark is a tough line on crime and citizens’ security. And the third is uncompromising opposition to social democracy, let alone communism, which leads some to want a smaller state.

There were common factors in their ascents, too. They were helped by a sense of crisis—about corruption and economic stagnation in Brazil and Argentina, gang violence in El Salvador and the sometimes violent “social explosion” in Chile.

Cousins In Arms

But each leader has adopted a different mix of these ideological elements. The hard right in Latin America are “cousins, not brothers”, says Cristóbal Rovira of the Catholic University of Chile. “They are similar but not identical.”

Mr Bolsonaro’s constituencies were evangelicals, to whom he appealed with his defence of the traditional family, and the authoritarian right in the form of the army, the police and farmers worried about land invasions and rural crime. But he was lukewarm about the free market and fiscal rigour. Mr Bukele made security the cornerstone of his first presidential term, overcoming criminal gangs by locking up more than 74,000 of El Salvador’s 6.4 Million Citizens. His economic policy is less clear and, despite his claim at CPAC, is not self-evidently “anti-globalist”.

Mr Milei was elected for his pledge to pull Argentina out of prolonged stagflation and to cut down what he brands as a corrupt political “caste”. A self-described “anarcho-capitalist”, he is a fan of the Austrian school of free-market economics. Unlike Mr Trump, he is neither an economic nationalist nor protectionist on trade. He has only recently adopted his peers’ stance on moral issues. His government supports a bill to overturn Argentina’s abortion law, and says it will eliminate gender-conscious language from public administration. Mr Bukele followed suit.

Mr Kast attempted to put conservative morality in the constitutional draft his party championed, which was one reason why it was rejected in a plebiscite. He wants tough policies on security and against immigration. “We should close the borders and build a trench,” he says. He wants to “shrink the state and lower the tax burden”. Whereas Mr Bolsonaro is a climate-change sceptic and anti-vaxxer, Mr Kast is not.

Democracy For Thee, Not For Me

Right-wing populists also have differing attitudes to democracy. With his attempt to subvert the election result, for which he is under police investigation, Mr Bolsonaro showed that he was not a democrat. Mr Bukele is contemptuous of checks and balances. His success at slashing the murder rate made him hugely popular, allowing him to brush aside constitutional term limits and win a second term in February.

Mr Milei’s “disdain for democratic institutions is clear”, says Carlos Malamud, An Argentine Historian, citing Mr Milei’s break with convention by giving his inauguration speech to a crowd of supporters, rather than to Congress. But, Mr Malamud adds, Mr Milei may yet learn that he needs to include the parliament in government.

“I’m a democrat,” insists Mr Kast, and his opponents agree. “On security and shrinking the state, we share views with Bolsonaro,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean that we are the same as Milei or Bolsonaro or Bukele.” As Mr Kast notes, policy choices are shaped in each country by very different circumstances.

So are the prospects of the various leaders. Mr Bukele is by far the most successful, with would-be imitators across the region and no obvious obstacles to his remaining in power indefinitely. In contrast, Mr Bolsonaro’s active political career may well be over. The electoral court has barred him as a candidate until 2030 (when he will be 75) for disparaging the voting system at a meeting with foreign ambassadors. He may be jailed for his apparent attempt to organise a military coup against his electoral defeat; he denies this and claims he is a victim of political persecution.

Mr Milei’s future is up for grabs. Succeed in taming inflation, and he could emerge strengthened from a midterm election in 2025. But if he refuses to compromise with Congress and provincial governors, he may be in trouble before then. In Chile, Mr Kast seemed to overplay his hand with the constitutional draft. The election in 2025 could see the centre-right take power. One influential figure of that persuasion argues that Mr Kast is unable to represent the diversity of modern Chile.

Ultimately, the group is bound by an international network built around common political discourse and cultural references. Mr Kast chairs the Political Network for Values, an outfit previously led by an ally of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s Populist Leader. Vox, Spain’s hard-right party, organises the Foro de Madrid, a network of like-minded politicians mainly from what it calls the “Iberosphere” in Latin America.

These gatherings offer a chance to share experiences and sometimes a bit more. Mr Bukele has advisers from Venezuela’s exiled opposition. Mr Trump’s activists have shown up at Latin American elections. Recently, Mr Bolsonaro took refuge in the Hungarian embassy in Brasília for two nights when he feared arrest.

But there are no signs of central direction or co-ordination. The right in Latin America has long claimed that the Foro de São Paulo, a get-together of Latin American left-wingers, is a highly organised conspiracy. All the evidence is that it is a loose friendship network. That seems to be true of its right-wing peer, too. ■

— This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline "The Anti-communist International"

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whatisonthemoon · 1 year ago

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Ten Years After Jonestown, the Battle Intensifies Over the Influence of ‘Alternative’ Religions (1988)

by Bob Sipchen - November 17, 1988 - Los Angeles Times

Eldridge Broussard Jr.’s face screwed into a grimace of such anger and pain that the unflappable Oprah Winfrey seemed unnerved. It hurts to be branded “the new Jimmy Jones” by a society eager to condemn what it doesn’t understand, the founder of the Ecclesia Athletic Assn. lamented on TV just a few days after his 8-year-old daughter had been beaten to death, apparently by Ecclesia members.

At issue were complex questions of whether the group he had formed to instill discipline in ghetto youth, and led from Watts to Oregon, had evolved into a dangerous cult. But Broussard couldn’t have found a less sympathetic audience than the group gathered around the TV in the bar of the Portland Holiday Inn.

There last month for the annual conference of the Chicago-based Cult Awareness Network were people whose kin had crumpled onto the body heaps at Jonestown, Guyana, 10 years ago, and people who believed they or family members had lost not their lives, but good chunks of them, to gurus and avatars less infamous but no less evil than Jim Jones.

One group’s cult is another’s “new religious movement,” though, and in the 10 years since Jonestown, a heated holy war of sorts has been mounting over the issues of how to define and contend with so-called cults.

The battle lines aren’t always well defined. Ongoing guerrilla actions between those who see themselves as crusaders against potential Jonestowns and those who see themselves as the persecuted members of outcast religious groups comprise the shifting legal and political fronts. On the outskirts of the ideological battleground is another loosely knit force that sees itself as the defender of a First Amendment besieged by vigilantes all too eager to kiss off the Constitution as they quash beliefs that don’t fit their narrow-minded criteria of what’s good and real. As one often-quoted definition has it: “A cult is a religion someone I don’t like belongs to.”

“It’s spiritual McCarthyism,” Lowell D. Streiker, a Northern California counselor, said of the cult awareness cause. To him, “the anti-cult network” is itself as a “cult of persecution,” cut from the same cloth as Colonial witch hunters and the Ku Klux Klan.

The key anti-cult groups, by most accounts, are CAN, a secular nondenominational group of 30 local affiliates; the Massachusetts-based American Family Foundation; the Interfaith Coalition of Concern About Cults and the Jewish Federation Council’s Commission on Cults and Missionaries.

Although they contend that their ranks continue to fill with the victims of cults or angry family members, they concede that the most significant rallying point came in the fall of 1978 when the leader of one alleged cult put a rattlesnake in an enemy’s mailbox and another led 912 people to their deaths.

Even though nothing so dramatic has happened since, cults have quietly been making inroads into the fabric of mainstream American life, and the effects are potentially as serious as the deaths at Jonestown, cult critics say.

With increased wealth and public relations acumen--with members clothed by Brooks Brothers rather than in saffron sheets--the 1,000 or more new cults that some estimate have sprung up in America since the ��60s have become “a growth industry which is diversifying,” said Dr. Louis Jolyon West, director of UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. “They have made steady progress on all fronts.”

Uglier Connotations

In the broadest sense, Webster defines a cult as simply “a system of religious worship or ritual.” Even before Jonestown, though, the word had taken on broader and uglier connotations.

To make a distinction, critics use the term destructive cult, or totalist cult. The issue, they say, pivots on the methods groups use to recruit and hold together followers.

CAN describes a destructive cult as one that “uses systematic, manipulative techniques of thought reform or mind control to obtain followers and constrict their thoughts and actions. These techniques are imposed without the person’s knowledge and produce observable changes in the individual’s autonomy, thoughts and actions. . . .”

A 1985 conference on cults co-sponsored by the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute and the American Family Federation came up with this definition:

“A group or movement exhibiting a great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea, or thing and employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control . . . designed to advance the goals of the group’s leaders, to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families, or the community.”

The “manipulative techniques” in question are what cult critics call mind control or brainwashing.

To critics of the critics, on the other hand, brainwashing amounts to hooey.

And both sides say the weight of evidence is on their side.

New Beliefs, Personalities

Cult critics often point to classic surveys on brainwashing, which catalogue methods which they say are routinely used by cults of every color, religious and secular, to manipulate unsuspecting people into adopting new beliefs, and often, in effect, new personalities.

Among the techniques are constant repetition of doctrine; application of intense peer pressure; manipulation of diet so that critical faculties are adversely affected; deprivation of sleep; lack of privacy and time for reflection; cutting ties with the recruits’ past life; reduction of outside stimulation and influences; skillful use of ritual to heighten mystical experience; and invention of a new vocabulary which narrows the range of experience and constructs a new reality for cult members.

Margaret Singer, a former professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, describes psychological problems that have been attributed to cultic experiences, ranging from the despair that comes from having suddenly abandoned ones previous values, norms and ideals to types of “induced psychopathy.” Other psychologists and lay observers list similar mental and emotional problems linked to the indoctrination and rituals of cults.

Sociologist Dick Anthony, author of the book “Spiritual Choices,” and former director of the UC Berkeley-affiliated Center for the Study of New Religions, argues the exact opposite position.

“There’s a large research literature published in mainstream journals on the mental health effects of new religions,” he said. “For the most part the effects seem to be positive in any way that’s measurable.”

He and other defenders of new religions discount so-called mind control techniques, or believe the term has been misappropriated by anti-cult activists.

“Coercive Persuasion is a bombastic redescription of familiar forms of influence which occur everyday and everywhere,” said Streiker. “Someone being converted to a demanding religious movement is no more or less brainwashed than children being exposed to commercials during kiddy programs which encourage them to eat empty calories or buy expensive toys.”

“An attempt to persuade someone of something is a process protected by our country’s First Amendment right of free speech and communication,” said attorney Jeremiah Gutman head of the New York City branch of the American Civil Liberties Union and an outspoken critic of the anti-cult groups. “What one person believes to be an irrefutable and obvious truth is someone else’s errant nonsense.”

‘Fraud and Manipulation’

But anti-cult spokespeople say they have no interest in a group’s beliefs. Their concern is when destructive cults use “fraud and manipulation,” to get people to arrive at those beliefs, whatever they may be. Because people are unaware of the issues, though, cults have insinuated themselves into areas of American life where they are influencing people who may not even know where the influence is coming from, they contend.

The political arena is the obvious example, anti-cult activists say.

Followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh had a major impact on the small town government of Antelope, Ore., and Jim Jones had managed to thrust himself and his church into the most respectable Democratic party circles in San Francisco before the exodus to Guyana, for instance.

But recently the process has expanded, with the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church the leading example of a cult that is quietly gaining political clout, they say.

“What Jim Jones did to Democrats in San Francisco, Sun Myung Moon is doing to Republicans all across country now,” Kisser said.

Moon’s most obvious stab at mainstream legitimacy, critics say, was his purchase in 1982 of the Washington Times, a D.C. daily newspaper, and his financial nurturing of the paper’s magazine Insight--both of which have an official policy of complete editorial independence from the church.

In September, 1987, the conservative American Spectator magazine published an article titled “Can Buy Me Love: The Mooning of Conservative America,” in which managing editor Andrew Ferguson questioned the way the political right is lapping up Moon money, citing, among many examples, the $500,000 or more the late Terry Dolan’s National Conservative Alliance accepted in 1984. When the church got wind of the article, the Spectator received a call from the executive director of the Unification Church’s World Media Assn. warning that if it ran, the Times “would strike back and strike back severely,” Ferguson wrote in an addendum to the piece.

‘Everyone Speaks Korean’

Therapist Steven Hassan, a former “Moonie” and the author of the just-released book “Combatting Cult Mind Control,” estimates that the church now sponsors 200 businesses and “front organizations.”

Moon “has said he wants an automatic theocracy to rule the world,” explained Hassan, who, on Moon’s orders, engaged in a public fast for Nixon during Watergate and another fast at the U.N. to protest the withdrawal of troops from Korea. “He visualizes a world where everyone speaks Korean only, where all religion but his is abolished, where his organization chooses who will mate, and he and family and descendants rule in a heroic monarchy.”

Moon “is very much in support of the democratic system,” counters John Biermans , director of public affairs for the church. “His desire is for people to become God-centered people. Then democracy can fulfill its potential”

Besides, he said, “this is a pluralistic society, people of all faiths inject their beliefs into the system on every level . . . Using terms like ‘front groups’ and ‘insinuating,’ is just a way to attack something. It’s not even honest.”

Some observers dismiss concern about alleged Unificationist infiltration as self-serving hysteria whipped up by the anti-cultists.

“How much actual influence (the Unification Church) has seems questionable,” said David Bromley, a professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, and the author of the 1981 book “Strange Gods, the Great American Cult Scare.”

Bromley estimates, for instance, that the church brings $200 million a year into the U.S. from abroad. But he sees no evidence that the money, much of it spent on all-expense-paid fact-finding tours and conferences for journalists, politicians and clergypeople, is money well-invested as far as political impact goes.

The church, he estimates, is losing about $50 million a year on its Washington Times newspaper and the ranks of Unificationists, and most other new religions, in America are thinning as well.

Veterans of the anti-cult front, however, say that the appearance that cults are fading is an illusion. “Like viruses, many of them mutate into new forms,” when under attack, West of UCLA said. And new types of cults are arising to fill the void, they say.

Cult critics point, for instance, to the rise of such groups as the est offshoot called Forum, and to Lifespring and Insight--all of which CAN characterizes as “human potential cults” and all of which are utilized in mainstream American business to promote productivity and motivation.

Observers such as Gordon Melton of the Institute for the Study of Religious Institutions in Santa Barbara explain that many of these New Age-type trainings have their roots in the old fashioned motivational pep talks and sales technique seminars that have been the staples of American business for decades.

But critics see the so-called “psychotechnologies” utilized by some of these groups as insidious. For one thing, they say, the meditation, confessional sharing, and guided imagery methods some of them use are more likely to make employees muzzy-headed than competitive.

Other critics say the trainings violate employee’s rights. Richard Watring, a personnel director for Budget Rent-a-Car, who has been charting the incorporation of “New Age” philosophies into business trainings, is concerned that employees are often compelled to take the courses and then required to adapt a new belief system which may be incompatible with their own religious convictions. As a Christian he finds such mental meddling inappropriate for corporations.

He and other cult critics are heartened by recent cases, still pending, in which employees, or former employees, have sued their employer for compelling them to take trainings they felt conflicted with their own religious beliefs.

Most observers scoring the action on the broader legal battlefield, however, call it a toss-up, and perceived victories for either side have often proved Pyrrhic.

Threats of Litigation

Richard Ofshe, a sociologist at UC Berkeley, fought three separate legal battles with the drug and alcohol rehabilitation organization Synanon over research he published on the group. Although he ultimately won the suits, he said the battle wound up costing the university $600,000. And evidence obtained in other lawsuits showed that Synanon had skillfully wielded threats of litigation to keep several other critical stories from being published or broadcast, he said.

Similarly, a recently released book “Cults and Consequences,” went unpublished for several years because insurers were wary of the litigious nature of some of the groups mentioned, said Rachel Andres, director of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles’ Commission on Cults and Missionaries and the book’s co-editor.

But the most interesting litigation of late involves either a former member who is suing the organization to which he or she belonged, or a current member of a new religious group who is suing a deprogrammer who attempted unsuccessfully to persuade the person to leave the group.

The most significant case, everyone agrees, is last month’s Molko decision by the California Supreme Court, which anti-cult groups have cheered as a major victory.

In that reversal of lower court decisions, the justices agreed that David Molko and another former member of the Unification Church could bring before a jury the claim that they were defrauded by recruiters who denied they had a church affiliation and then subjected the two to church mind control techniques, eventually converting them.

Mainstream religious organizations including the National Council on Churches, the American Baptist Churches in the USA and the California Ecumenical Council had filed briefs in support of the Unification Church, claiming that allowing lawsuits over proselytizing techniques could paralyze all religions.

“What they’re attacking is prayer, fasting and lectures,” said Biermans of the Unification Church. “The whole idea of brainwashing is unbelievably absurd. . . . If someone had really figured out a method of brainwashing, they could control the world.” The church plans to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. Paul Morantz, the attorney who was struck by the rattlesnake placed in his mailbox by the “Imperial Marines” of Synanon, gave pro-bono assistance to the plaintiffs in the Molko case.

“For me, it was a great decision for freedom of religion and to protect against the . . . use of coercive persuasion,” he said.

Morantz currently is defending Bent Corydon, author of the book “L. Ron Hubbard, Madman or Messiah” against a lawsuit by the Church of Scientology. He said he’s confident of how that case will turn out.

But he shares the belief of others on several sides of the multifaceted cult battle, in concluding that education rather than litigation should be the first defense of religious and intellectual liberty.

He’s not, however, optimistic.

“If anyone thinks they’re ever going to win this war, they’re wrong,” he said. “As long as we have human behavior, there will be sociopaths who will stand up and say ‘follow me.’ And there will always be searchers who will follow.”

Source: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-11-17-vw-257-story.html

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justinspoliticalcorner · 5 months ago

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Kayla Gogarty and Justin Horowitz at MMFA:

Less than a week after being reinstated to Twitch, misogynistic pro-Nazi streamer Sneako (real name Nico Kenn De Balinthazy) attended an event associated with Nick Fuentes’ white nationalist America First Foundation. Sneako has repeatedly defended and praised Fuentes’ extremist group since his reinstatement. This “off-service conduct” seemingly violates Twitch’s policies, which assert that “some off-service offenses committed by Twitch users can create a substantial safety risk to the Twitch community,” and do not allow “individuals or organizations who engage off-service in … leadership, membership, or sponsorship of a known hate group.” On June 10, Sneako was reinstated on Twitch after being banned from the platform in 2022, at a time when he's said he was “peak red pill raging.” Discussing his reinstatement, the streamer claimed: “I sent them a proper email explaining that I want to be a good member of the community and all this stuff. So if you are banned, just make sure to send Twitch a proper email and explain that you want to be involved, and you'll get unbanned.”

But less than a week after his reinstatement, Sneako was in Detroit on June 16 for what was supposed to be the 2024 America First Political Action Conference — an event organized by the white nationalist America First Foundation. The group was founded by Fuentes, a Holocaust denier and white supremacist who attended the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. (Sneako is linked to Fuentes and spoke at a Fuentes rally in 2023.) Fuentes and his organization reportedly attempted to hold their event in two different locations in Detroit but were kicked out of both venues. While the group did not end up having an official location, it appears that Fuentes did speak from a podium for a short time to a crowd of attendees who mingled in and around the venue spaces.

Twitch reinstated misogynistic manosphere streamer Nico Kenn De Balinthazy (aka Sneako), only for him to attend the AFPAC event associated with vile antisemite and white nationalist Nick Fuentes.

#Twitch #Sneako #Manosphere #Misogyny #Rumble #Nick Fuentes #Lauren Chen #Nico Kenn De Balinthazy #America First Foundation #America First Political Action Conference

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haggishlyhagging · 1 year ago

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The quotes below the cut are about the tension between consciousness raising and political action. All are from Alice Echols’ Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America: 1967-75.

Quote 1: p. 61

With Koedt's article, Firestone's summary of the Jeannette Rankin Brigade protest, and Sarachild's D.C. speech, "Funeral Oration for Traditional Womanhood," NYRW's Notes from the First Year was an implicit, and sometimes explicit, rejection of the politico analysis. Within two months of its publication, Evelyn Goldfield of Chicago's Westside group issued a rebuttal of sorts in the The Voice of the Women's Liberation Movement. Goldfield took women's groups to task for concentrating on consciousness-raising rather than action. And in contrast to those New York women who argued that women needed to organize separately to build a power base from which to attack male supremacy, Goldfield advised that if men were to be excluded initially from women's meetings, it be for the "tactical" reason that women had difficulty expressing themselves around men, and not as a "matter of principle." In fact, Goldfield argued that the very notion of a separate women's movement was divisive. She admitted that the bromide "there can be no liberation for women outside a general movement for liberation, and no such movement can exist without a movement for women's liberation" had failed to silence those who asked which movement came first. But Goldfield proposed shelving any further debate by declaring that radical women should henceforth "not think of the women's movement as separate but as a united force within the radical movement." She chastised the women of Notes for envisioning "the women's movement as very separate from other movement struggles," and declared that a "women's movement which confines itself to issues which only affect women can't be radical."

Quote 2: pp. 113-114

Some women at the conference also discussed the upcoming Counter-Inaugural demonstration to protest Nixon' inauguration. The action was being organized by the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (Mobe). Webb and Baxandall, in particular, had ties with people in the Mobe. In fact, Webb's husband, Lee Webb, had informed her that there was a slot available on the program for a women's liberation speaker. Barbara Mehrhof reports that during the car ride back from Lake Villa, Firestone, Atkinson, Koedt, Margaret Polatnik, and she discussed the proposed action. According to Mehrhof, all the women agreed that consciousness-raising, as it was practiced in NYRW, was leading to more consciousness-raising rather than to action. They discussed reorganizing the group, making it "more action and theory-based." Margaret Polatnik suggested that they "give back the vote" at the Counter-Inaugural protest, and the others agreed. According to Ellen Willis, the action was intended to demonstrate that "suffragism"—which they contended had eviscerated the first wave of feminism—was dead and that "a new fight for real emancipation was beginning." They announced the action at the next meeting of NYRW and welcomed others to join them in planning the protest. Firestone, Willis, Peslikis, Mehrhof, Kearon, Forer, Baxandall, Linda Feldman, Barbara Kaminsky, and Sheila Cronan were among those involved in planning the protest.

Quote 3: pp.142-143

In early April, Sheila Cronan proposed that for their next action the group hang a banner which would read "Liberty for Women: Repeal All Abortion Laws" from the Statue of Liberty. However, Cronan and her allies encountered technical problems in constructing the banner, and opposition to the action when Sarachild returned to the group. Sarachild argued that the action was poorly conceived and that the group's energy would be better spent writing a manifesto. When the group voted in mid-June to scuttle the action, the discussion reportedly "broke down into great recriminations."

The Statue of Liberty action became a point of contention because members disagreed about the importance of consciousness-raising. Not everyone in the group was as committed to consciousness-raising as Sarachild, Peslikis, and Mainardi. Certainly, Mehrhof, Kearon, Cronan, and Linda Feldman—who eventually left Redstockings to join The Feminists—felt that consciousness-raising should be de-emphasized. Even Firestone reportedly wanted the group to be more action-oriented. There were also disagreements about the pro-woman line. Mehrhot, Kearon, Cronan, and Feldman were its most vocal detractors. But Willis contends that both she and Firestone were far more psychologically oriented than Sarachild, Peslikis, and Mainardi of the pro-woman faction.

The tensions over consciousness-raising and the pro-woman line seem to have been exacerbated by Sarachild's re-entry to the group. She reportedly let the group know that she was returning to Redstockings despite her differences with the group. She then reportedly tried to recruit to the group women who she thought shared her political vision. Baxandall, who was at that time in a study group with Anne Forer, Judy Thibeau, and Helen Kritzler, was among those Sarachild succeeded in recruiting. Baxandall asserts that Sarachild told her that she was shifting the group's focus from action to consciousness-raising and that the meetings were, as a result, much improved. Indeed, the group became less action-oriented following the March 1969 abortion speak-out. The group did disrupt another all-male abortion panel at Cooper Union and helped to organize a number of joint actions. But from the spring of 1969 until its demise in the fall of 1970, the group devoted most of its time to consciousness-raising, organized c-r groups for new women, drafted its manifesto, and distributed movement literature.

#alice echols #consciousness raising #political action #radical feminist theory

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eretzyisrael · 8 months ago

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by Fuzzy Slippers

And it wasn’t enough for Abuhamdeh to just break off and do her own thing, so now she and a handful of Hamas-supporting Girl Scout troop leaders are actually demanding an apology from GSA and a change of the organization’s national policy that permits fundraising for “humanitarian aid.”

Fox 2 reports:

A group consisting of Girl Scout troop leaders and other advocates is pushing the Girl Scouts organization to issue a public apology to a St. Louis troop that disbanded last week and to take a stance in support of children in Gaza, among other demands. The former troop’s adult leader, Nawal Abuhamdeh, says the Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri warned her of legal action over a fundraiser plan to sell bracelets and donate money to a Palestinian children’s relief fund. . . . . In previous emails with Nawal, the local branch cited concerns that the fundraiser was political, partisan, and against Girl Scout policies. Nawal’s troop has since disbanded from Girl Scouts. The Girl Scouts of the USA organization offered a statement on Tuesday, noting that they “sincerely regret any hurt” caused by developments leading up to the warning. Officials described the situation as “a learning moment for our organization.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) Missouri branch considers the statement a “positive first step” in addressing the situation. Nawal feels it wasn’t good enough. During a roundtable Zoom conference on Thursday, Nawal says the former troop’s girls, which included two of her daughters, “feel discouraged and unheard by Girl Scouts because no statements have been [directed] towards us, and our questions [about fundraising for causes in Gaza] were still unanswered.” “Their silence is very loud to us,” said Nawal. Tasneem Manjra, an adult leader for a northern California Girl Scouts troop also on the conference call, said, ‘To us, it looks like the Girl Scouts are backtracking because they got called out.” . . . . “The Girl Scouts celebrate young women finding their voices on causes they care about. Our council recognizes Troop 149 for identifying the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and creating a fundraiser to help. Our troops have always had the ability to support causes they care about, within the guidelines published by Girl Scouts. This has never been about the cause, but rather meeting Girl Scouts’ governing documents and maintaining our tax-exempt status. We were in communication with Ms. Abuhamdeh for several weeks and provided her with multiple options to find a way to continue the work, which are still available to this troop. We are sorry that Ms. Abuhamdeh chose to disband. We would welcome them back to the Girl Scout family.”

And of course they have a list of “demands.”

#girl scouts #girl scout cookies #cair #gaza #hamas

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mariacallous · 29 days ago

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Ahead of November’s U.S. presidential election, several right-wing Latin American leaders have been open about their support for Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump. Among them are Argentine President Javier Milei, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, as well as their allies and supporters. “With Trump’s election, we can see a major turnaround. And we will, God willing,” Eduardo Bolsonaro, the former president’s son and member of Brazil’s Congress, said at Brazil’s Conservative Political Action Conference in July.

Trump supporters across Latin America identify with the former U.S. president’s various culture war crusades and economic policies. Many also suggest that his return to the White House would put an end to U.S. interventions abroad and create a more peaceful world. In 2022, Jair Bolsonaro said, “Some think the war in Ukraine would not have happened if [Trump] were still been in power. I agree with that.” Bia Kicis, a politician and Bolsonaro ally, recently told the New York Times, “Back when Trump was a candidate, there was talk of a possible third war. But there was no war—until Trump left office, and now war is affecting the whole world.” Agustín Laje, an Argentine writer and Milei supporter, said that Trump’s return is essential “to guarantee peace.”

But there is strong evidence that, at least in the case of Latin America, Trump’s return to the White House would lead to a far more interventionist U.S. foreign policy, as was the case during his first term. At the time, Trump adopted “maximum pressure” tactics against countries like Cuba and Venezuela, and pressured—in vain—countries like Brazil to ban Chinese tech giant Huawei.

A second Trump presidency would likely see the return of more explicit U.S. pressure on Latin American countries to pick sides in the brewing competition between the United States and China. That could create considerable friction in the region, just as it did during Trump’s first term in office, when many countries warmed to China’s embrace. The more aggressive Trump’s approach to Latin America, the faster governments can be expected to balance Washington by fostering closer ties to Beijing.

Most of the recent U.S. administrations have explicitly distanced themselves from the Monroe Doctrine, which, in 1823, asserted Washington’s authority over meddling European powers in Latin America. The doctrine was often used as a pretext for U.S. military or diplomatic interventions in the Western Hemisphere and was largely seen as a form of U.S. imperialism, especially during the 20th century. In 2013, then-Secretary of State John Kerry announced, “The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over.”

Trump and his allies, however, have explicitly defended the doctrine. At the United Nations General Assembly in 2018, Trump argued that “it has been the formal policy of our country since President Monroe that we reject the interference of foreign nations in this hemisphere and in our own affairs.” This time, the warning was not directed at Europeans, but at Russia and China, the latter of which became the main trading partner of most South American countries in the last decade.

Perhaps the most extreme element of Trump’s worldview was revealed by his former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who noted in his 2020 book, The Room Where it Happened: A White House Memoir, “Trump insisted he wanted military options for Venezuela and then keep it because ‘it’s really part of the United States.’” In April 2019, Bolton said, “Today, we proudly proclaim for all to hear: The Monroe Doctrine is alive and well.”

All this suggests that Trump’s isolationist foreign policy in the world at large translates into a stronger urge to dominate the Western Hemisphere, a detail often lost on Trump supporters in the region. As Johns Hopkins University professor Hal Brands argued in Foreign Affairs, “‘America First’ would feature a reenergized Monroe Doctrine: U.S. retrenchment from Old World outposts would presage intensified and perhaps heavier-handed efforts to safeguard American influence in the New World, and to prevent rivals from gaining a foothold there.”

In retrospect, Trump’s strategy in Latin American failed to achieve its goals. Despite crippling sanctions and menacing rhetoric, the regimes of Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba—which Bolton dubbed the “Troika of Tyranny”—remain in power. Trump’s efforts to convince Latin American governments to ban Huawei or downgrade their ties to China also did not produce any tangible results. Even during the Bolsonaro administration, Brazil’s trade with China only grew.

The Trump administration’s strategy vis-à-vis Huawei in particular caused bewilderment among Latin American policymakers. The United States pressured Latin American countries to exclude Huawei as a component provider of their 5G networks, arguing that the company could be used as a Trojan horse for Chinese spying activities. At the time, Trump officials threatened governments in Europe and Latin America not to use Huawei, warning them that doing so could lead Washington to stop sharing U.S. intelligence with them.

Yet Washington ignored political realities in Latin America, where there was little appetite among political or economic elites to confront Beijing. Worse, the United States offered no real alternative to Chinese 5G technology; Huawei’s competitors—including Ericsson, Nokia, and Samsung—were more expensive, and Washington refrained from offering to pay the difference.

Trump’s warnings about the dangers that Huawei posed also largely fell flat: To most Latin Americans, there is little daylight between being spied on by China and being spied on by the United States, which has—for example—refused to apologize for putting former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff under NSA surveillance, among many other instances of U.S. interventionism and covert activities in the region.

Trump’s muscular approach to the region largely served Beijing’s interests; Latin American governments strengthened ties to China to balance Trump’s posturing. Beijing has emphasized respecting sovereignty in its interactions with Latin American governments, aware of how attractive the prospect sounds to governments across the global south.

While Trump ultimately decided against a military intervention to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, his aggressive rhetoric had the region on edge. Even the remote specter of a U.S. invasion led to a rally-round-the-flag effect that strengthened Maduro’s narrative that Venezuela faces serious threats to its sovereignty. It also became an opportunity to blame all the country’s economic woes on U.S. sanctions. As a result, several regional leaders reluctantly sided with Maduro.

Although Trump’s hostile approach to Latin America during his first term as president failed, he would likely repeat the strategy upon returning to the White House, Juan Gabriel Tokatlian, a professor at Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires, warned in Americas Quarterly. Republican senators and representatives have presented resolutions reaffirming the Monroe Doctrine’s validity. Numerous leading voices in the Republican Party also regularly employ threatening language toward the region.

Last year, Trump lamented the United States’ loss of control over the Panama Canal. Trump, his vice presidential pick J.D. Vance, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley have all threatened to bomb Mexico to combat drug cartels. Such rhetoric—which promotes U.S. violations of international law—is a boon to anti-American voices and would make it easy for China to position itself as a more attractive partner in the region.

Trump could impose high tariffs against products from countries that are engaged in initiatives to circumvent the dollar. That would likely apply to Brazil, which uses local currencies for some of its trade with fellow countries in the BRICS grouping. Mexico is likely to be one of the countries most affected by Trump’s return, as he pledges to impose hefty tariffs on goods produced in the country, reduce immigration, and cut the U.S. trade deficit.

Trump may back down from some of his most extreme proposals for Latin America, however. If he followed through on his pledge to conduct mass deportations of more than 10 million undocumented immigrants, the majority of whom hail from the region, remittances would drop and returning workers could de-stabilize labor markets. The resulting worker shortage would negatively affect the U.S. economy and potentially increase inflation, making it unlikely Trump fully delivers on his threats.

During Trump’s first term, leaders from Brasília to Buenos Aires were largely able to ride out U.S. pressure to align with Washington and move away from China. Across the region, there continues to be a consensus that multialignment between great powers remains feasible for years to come and that U.S. pressure to reduce ties to China can be resisted at little cost.

Trump is often described as holding a transactional foreign-policy view, and the same applies to most Latin American governments. Brazil is a case in point: While President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s decision to refrain from unequivocally condemning Russia for its war in Ukraine has been couched in moralistic language—accusing the West of hypocrisy—it is, above all, rooted in hard-headed pragmatism. Brazil’s positioning on the war, for example, allowed it to save millions of dollars when purchasing Russian diesel and fertilizers at a heavy discount. Protecting ties to Moscow is seen as crucial to preserving Brazil’s strategic wiggle room and constraining the United States.

For the same reason, Latin American countries care little about U.S. rhetoric about the risks of being technologically dependent on a dictatorship like China, as embodied by the Huawei dispute. Governments would certainly consider excluding Huawei from their 5G networks if doing so would create a measurable economic benefit. But without tangible U.S. incentives or funding, that seems implausible.

Trump’s attempts to reduce China’s role in Latin America via a renewed Monroe Doctrine will likely backfire again. In Trump’s erratic approach to foreign affairs, Latin American leaders perceive instability—and believe that they must hedge relations with the United States to strengthen their ties to other large powers.

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reasoningdaily · 1 year ago

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WASHINGTON (AP) — With more than a year to go before the 2024 election, a constellation of conservative organizations is preparing for a possible second White House term for Donald Trump, recruiting thousands of Americans to come to Washington on a mission to dismantle the federal government and replace it with a vision closer to his own.

Led by the long-established Heritage Foundation think tank and fueled by former Trump administration officials, the far-reaching effort is essentially a government-in-waiting for the former president’s return — or any candidate who aligns with their ideals and can defeat President Joe Biden in 2024.

With a nearly 1,000-page “Project 2025” handbook and an “army” of Americans, the idea is to have the civic infrastructure in place on Day One to commandeer, reshape and do away with what Republicans deride as the “deep state” bureaucracy, in part by firing as many as 50,000 federal workers.

“We need to flood the zone with conservatives,” said Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project and a former Trump administration official who speaks with historical flourish about the undertaking.

“This is a clarion call to come to Washington,” he said. “People need to lay down their tools, and step aside from their professional life and say, ‘This is my lifetime moment to serve.’”

The unprecedented effort is being orchestrated with dozens of right-flank organizations, many new to Washington, and represents a changed approach from conservatives, who traditionally have sought to limit the federal government by cutting federal taxes and slashing federal spending.

FILE - Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2023, March 4, 2023, at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

The goal is to avoid the pitfalls of Trump’s first years in office, when the Republican president’s team was ill-prepared, his Cabinet nominees had trouble winning Senate confirmation and policies were met with resistance — by lawmakers, government workers and even Trump’s own appointees who refused to bend or break protocol, or in some cases violate laws, to achieve his goals.

While many of the Project 2025 proposals are inspired by Trump, they are being echoed by GOP rivals Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy and are gaining prominence among other Republicans.

And if Trump wins a second term, the work from the Heritage coalition ensures the president will have the personnel to carry forward his unfinished White House business.

“The president Day One will be a wrecking ball for the administrative state,” said Russ Vought, a former Trump administration official involved in the effort who is now president at the conservative Center for Renewing America.

Much of the new president’s agenda would be accomplished by reinstating what’s called Schedule F — a Trump-era executive order that would reclassify tens of thousands of the 2 million federal employees as essentially at-will workers who could more easily be fired.

Biden had rescinded the executive order upon taking office in 2021, but Trump — and other presidential hopefuls — now vow to reinstate it.

“It frightens me,” said Mary Guy, a professor of public administration at the University of Colorado Denver, who warns the idea would bring a return to a political spoils system.

Experts argue Schedule F would create chaos in the civil service, which was overhauled during President Jimmy Carter’s administration in an attempt to ensure a professional workforce and end political bias dating from 19th century patronage.

As it now stands, just 4,000 members of the federal workforce are considered political appointees who typically change with each administration. But Schedule F could put tens of thousands of career professional jobs at risk.

“We have a democracy that is at risk of suicide. Schedule F is just one more bullet in the gun,” Guy said.

The ideas contained in Heritage’s coffee table-ready book are both ambitious and parochial, a mix of longstanding conservative policies and stark, head-turning proposals that gained prominence in the Trump era.

There’s a “top to bottom overhaul” of the Department of Justice, particularly curbing its independence and ending FBI efforts to combat the spread of misinformation. It calls for stepped-up prosecution of anyone providing or distributing abortion pills by mail.

There are proposals to have the Pentagon “abolish” its recent diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, what the project calls the “woke” agenda, and reinstate service members discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.

Chapter by chapter, the pages offer a how-to manual for the next president, similar to one Heritage produced 50 years ago, ahead of the Ronald Reagan administration. Authored by some of today’s most prominent thinkers in the conservative movement, it’s often sprinkled with apocalyptic language.

A chapter written by Trump’s former acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security calls for bolstering the number of political appointees, and redeploying office personnel with law enforcement ability into the field “to maximize law enforcement capacity.”

At the White House, the book suggests the new administration should “reexamine” the tradition of providing work space for the press corps and ensure the White House counsel is “deeply committed” to the president’s agenda.

Conservatives have long held a grim view of federal government offices, complaining they are stacked with liberals intent on halting Republican agendas.

But Doreen Greenwald, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said most federal workers live in the states and are your neighbors, family and friends. “Federal employees are not the enemy,” she said.

While presidents typically rely on Congress to put policies into place, the Heritage project leans into what legal scholars refer to as a unitary view of executive power that suggests the president has broad authority to act alone.

To push past senators who try to block presidential Cabinet nominees, Project 2025 proposes installing top allies in acting administrative roles, as was done during the Trump administration to bypass the Senate confirmation process.

John McEntee, another former Trump official advising the effort, said the next administration can “play hardball a little more than we did with Congress.”

In fact, Congress would see its role diminished — for example, with a proposal to eliminate congressional notification on certain foreign arms sales.

Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies the separation of powers and was not part of the Heritage project, said there’s a certain amount of “fantasizing” about the president’s capabilities.

“Some of these visions, they do start to just bleed into some kind of authoritarian fantasies where the president won the election, so he’s in charge, so everyone has to do what he says — and that’s just not the system the government we live under,” he said.

At the Heritage office, Dans has a faded photo on his wall of an earlier era in Washington, with the White House situated almost alone in the city, dirt streets in all directions.

It’s an image of what conservatives have long desired, a smaller federal government.

The Heritage coalition is taking its recruitment efforts on the road, crisscrossing America to fill the federal jobs. They staffed the Iowa State Fair this month and signed up hundreds of people, and they’re building out a database of potential employees, inviting them to be trained in government operations.

“It’s counterintuitive,” Dans acknowledged — the idea of joining government to shrink it — but he said that’s the lesson learned from the Trump days about what’s needed to “regain control.”

#Conservative groups draw up plan to dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision #maga #white lies #election interference #election fraud #trump #trump lies

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ausetkmt · 1 year ago

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While debates around reparations for the descendants of slaves often focus on costs of such action, advocates believe discussions must also address other efforts for systemic change.

Financial estimates are wide-ranging depending on how they are projected and thoughts on what exactly will, or even can be paid for are also divided.

"Reparations is not a check in the mail," Raymond Winbush, author of Should America Pay? Slavery and The Raging Debate on Reparations and Belinda's Petition: A Concise History of Reparations For The Transatlantic Slave Trade, told Newsweek.

"We've got to look at the difference between changing symbols and changing systems."

The growing dialogue surrounding racial justice following worldwide protests sparked by the death of George Floyd has also brought the issue to the fore. The U.S. Conference of Mayors has got behind Democratic calls in Congress to enact a study on the matter of reparations being made to the descendants of those impacted by slavery.

House Representatives could hear a bill, H.R. 40, this summer in regards to forming a committee to discuss reparations. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said he could be in favor of cash reparations to African Americans and Native Americans if studies found this to be a viable option.

"I think that Black people are saying we've had enough and I think white people are coming to grips with the fact that this country owes a debt that has been unpaid," Winbush added.

How could a cost be calculated?

If payments were to be made, the amount that would be calculated could vary dependent on how the cost is estimated, applications of factors such as interest and who would be considered eligible.

A study in The Review of the Black Political Economy journal, first published on June 19, titled "Wealth Implications of Slavery and Racial Discrimination for African American Descendants of the Enslaved," looked at the Black-white wealth gap alongside the cost of slavery and discrimination to descendants of the enslaved.

Among its estimates for the costs were around $12-$13 trillion in 2018 dollars, based upon estimates looking at land-based, stemming from the promise made to freed slaves, and price-based, considering what slave prices were.

This amount, divided by 40,909,233 Black non-Hispanic descendants of the enslaved, could result in a total reparations payment per descendant of $151.63 million. This figure on the number of descendants may be overstated, as it likely includes some Black U.S. Residents who do not trace their ancestry back to slavery, the researchers note.

Another estimate, based upon wealth disparity, is around $14 trillion. Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, suggested this sum, which would amount to around $350,000 each for the estimated 40 million African Americans in the United States, giving them an amount signifying the wealth disparity between African Americans and white Americans.

This amount echoes that of a previous study, from University of Connecticut researcher Thomas Craemer, who was involved in the aforementioned study published June 19, that suggested an amount of up to $14.2 trillion.

This was calculated by tabulating the hours slaves worked between 1776 and 1865, multiplying the time they worked by the average wage at the time, then accounting for 3 percent annual interest, as previously reported by Newsweek.

As well as reparations based upon earnings, others suggest payment to backdate the failed promise of "40 acres" promised to slaves by Union Army General William Tecumseh Sherman. Land was set aside though the order was reversed by President Andrew Johnson.

The June 19 study suggests based upon these parameters, the reparations could amount to around $11.9 trillion, estimating around $291,186 per descendant, based on an estimate for 2018.

The case for reparations now

A Brookings Institution report, titled Why we need reparations for Black Americans by Rashawn Ray and Andre M. Perry refers to the value assigned to slaves in 1860 of $3 billion dollars as another point backing calls for reparations.

"Slavery enriched white slave owners and their descendants, and it fueled the country's economy while suppressing wealth building for the enslaved. The United States has yet to compensate descendants of enslaved Black Americans for their labor," the report said.

The report suggests payments to the descendants of slaves, as well as programs such as student loan forgiveness and down payment grants.

Speaking with Newsweek, Ray said Congress should have looked into reparations long before now.

"There should not be any blocks to simply forming a committee. It should be a no brainer and should have occurred long ago," said Ray, a David M. Rubenstein Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution.

On what should be done, he said "wealth-building opportunities" might also be an option.

"While direct payments are one option, we might also think about wealth-building opportunities in the form of tuition payments, housing grants, and small business grants," he said.

Winbush echoed that the time for reparations had come.

"The reparations movement is old. I think that people think it's very young," he told Newsweek, suggesting people linking it to Black Lives Matter makes them think it does not go as far back as it does.

"It goes back well over 200 years in this country," said Winbush, also a research professor and the Director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University, commenting on how social media in recent years has brought it to the fore.

More than just money

Winbush also suggested that while handing out money is an option, other methods of reparations, focusing on systemic change, could be implemented.

"If we were to say, 'just give everybody a check,' that's only a partial solution. I think reparations has been narrowly defined as it's related to money," he said.

"It's acknowledgement by a nation that they did something wrong. One way of atoning for that is money. But it's a variety of solutions."

Roy L. Brooks, author of Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations and Sorry Isn't Enough: The Controversy Over Apologies and Reparations for Human Injustice suggested that reparations must look at factors other than simply money.

"One of the most important responsibilities of the commission would be to educate the American people, including African-Americans, not only about slavery and its lingering effects, but also about the fact that reparations come in many forms and are not the only way to redress slavery," he told Newsweek.

"Apologies, truth commissions, truth trials, and reparations are just a few of the ways to redress any atrocity, whether it is slavery, Japanese-American internment or the Holocaust. Calculations are complex but not impossible because they have been performed all over the world in the last 70 years."

Regarding the cost of reparations, he said African-Americans will have to work through the models and issues in the context of the commission.

"Until that happens, it is not only premature to talk about the "cost" of reparations (or more generally slave redress), it is irresponsible," said Brooks, who is also a professor at the University of San Diego.

The costs of slavery

Joe Feagin, author of The White Racial Frame and co-author of Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations, and Racial and Ethnic Relations, similarly told Newsweek that there needs to be an examination of the "many other costs of slavery."

He said: "For example, how do you calculate the costs of great pain and suffering, and lives lost or cut short?"

Stating that most reparations estimates calculate "just the labor and wealth lost," he added, "I think it is at least as important to talk about the many other costs of slavery."

In terms of a starting point for reparations being paid, he suggested beginning with people who suffered under segregation.

"Start with reparations for Jim Crow, no questions there about the white nonsense about this harm happened centuries ago and we cannot figure out who did what to whom," he said. "Start with the living folks and then work backwards to slavery."

Deciding the amount

Craemer, whose research is mentioned above, suggested the work of a commission in looking at the financial costs has largely already been done—though stated issues that are difficult to quantify need to be looked at, with the descendant community integral in choosing an outcome.

"I would say, the commission's work has largely been done. It might be more reasonable to proceed directly to reparations," he told Newsweek.

"Otherwise, the need for further study may be misused by reparations opponents to indefinitely delay implementation. This has disadvantages not only for eligible recipients, but also for the U.S. government—reparations become exponentially more expensive the longer we wait."

With regards to the sum of reparations, he said estimates only address the financial aspect of slavery, not looking at its other implications.

"These specific estimates only address the value of slavery in the United States, they do not address colonial slavery, or racial discrimination after slavery. Also, they only address lost inheritances, they do not address loss of freedom, loss of other opportunities, or withheld compensation for pain and suffering," he said.

"In my view, it is up to negotiations between the descendant community and the federal government to determine whether the entire estimate should be compensated, or only a portion, at what interest rate, and using what estimation method."

Despite the increased discussion on the matter, polling from earlier this year found that only one in five asked felt the U.S. should spend "taxpayer money to pay damages to descendants of enslaved people in the United States," according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll which asked 1,115 adults in June.

Ray said the issue of reparations happening should no longer be a point of discussion.

"If 40 acres and a Mule was actually implemented we wouldn't be having this conversation," he told Newsweek. "Time is up. This needs to happen."

#After Reparations Study Suggests $151 Million for Each African American #Experts Say Money Alone Isn't Enough #Reparations #Reparations Study

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 year ago

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[The Daily Don] Pride Month

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

June 4, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUN 5, 2023

Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, a staunch supporter of Russian president Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine, last week awarded the First Degree of the Order of Glory and Honor from the Russian Orthodox Church to Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. Orbán has dismantled Hungary’s liberal democratic government in favor of what he calls “illiberal” or “Christian” democracy that rejects LGBTQ and women’s rights, claiming that the equality valued by liberal democracies undermines traditional virtue. Kirill called out for praise Orbán’s “great attention to the preservation of Christian values in society and the strengthening of the institution of family and marriage.” This award makes explicit the link between the Putin regime, which has been committing war crimes against Ukraine’s people, and Orbán, who is such a hero to America’s right wing that the Conservative Political Action Conference has twice gathered in Hungary, most recently just last month. Orbán has called for Trump’s reelection. The common thread among these groups is a rejection of democracy, with its emphasis on equality before the law, and the embrace of a hierarchical world in which some people are better than others and have the right to rule. In Poland today, an estimated half a million people marched in the streets to protest the loss of rights for women and LGBTQ people amid an attack on democracy by the nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS), which condemned the protest as a “march of hate.” Leaders for PiS claim they are only trying to protect traditional Christian values from Western ideas. Today is the 34th anniversary of the first democratic elections in Poland in 1989 as the Soviet Union was disintegrating. Former Polish prime minister and president of the European Council Donald Tusk, who called for the march, told the crowd: "Democracy dies in silence but you've raised your voice for democracy today, silence is over, we will shout.” Today is also the 34th anniversary of the Chinese government’s crackdown on demonstrations for democracy in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, with troops firing on their own citizens. For 22 weeks now, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been protesting in the streets against the plans of right-wing prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to overhaul the judiciary, weakening the country’s system of checks and balances by shifting power to Netanyahu, and threatening the rights of minorities and marginalized groups. In Sudan today, the war between two military generals who seized power from a democratic government continues. Tens of thousands of Sudan’s people have fled the country since the fighting broke out in April. The political career of Florida governor Ron DeSantis is the epitome of Orbán’s “Christian democracy” come to the United States. DeSantis has imitated Orbán’s politics, striking at the principles of liberal democracy with attacks on LGBTQ Americans, abortion rights, academic freedom, and the ability of businesses to react to market forces rather than religious imperatives. Last week he told an audience that “the woke mind virus represents a war on the truth so we will wage a war on the woke. We will fight the woke in education, we will fight the woke in the corporations, we will fight the woke in the halls of congress. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. We will make woke ideology leave it to the dustbin of history; it’s gone.” But DeSantis’s speech was a perversion of the real speech on which he based it. On June 4, 1940, nine months into the Second World War, British prime minister Winston Churchill addressed the House of Commons. British, Canadian, and French destroyers along with dozens of merchant ships and a flotilla of small boats had just managed to evacuate more than 338,000 Allied soldiers from Dunkirk, in northern France, as German troops advanced. Britain was fighting fascism, and Churchill warned his people that the war would be neither easy nor quick. But, he promised, “we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender....”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#The Daily Don #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardsoon #fascism #LGBTQ #human rights #White Nationalism #viktor orban #ron desantis #Churchill

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loveloki555 · 1 year ago

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Civil War is not continuation of Age of Ultron

Here are my words from that reblog:

The MCU was good until 2015… Age of Ultron may not be a great movie, but that's where I draw the line… Old MCU/New MCU

Why am I not including Civil War…it's a good movie, it's not like Thor Ragnarok or Captain Marvel which confuse the chronology and start to reduce the entire franchise to pointlessness.

Civil War was supposed to show that the Avengers were responsible for their carelessness. Okay, this is a good thread. The only problem is how he does it. The writers won't think that Tony Stark taking Spider-Man on the team…doesn't work. Because Tony should make him realize that by supporting Tony…he supports signing up and taking off the mask. Peter doesn't know what he supports. He knows that Captain America has done something and he has to help because it's Tony Stark… How does this put the character of Tony Stark and the things he's come to understand in his previous films?

Also a political fact… suddenly the Accords are ratified and the Avengers are faced with a fait accompli. There should be a press conference something like at the end of Winter Soldier. They should present their case to the public… They should remind that Hydra recently infiltrated everything… and such a paralysis of their decision-making… may be beneficial for such entities…

Also, why did Ross blame the Avengers for the damage to New York… they were trying to stop the battle… It's not their fault, Loki is too smart. Not that it matters, I support Loki ruling Midgard;) But it's strange that the Avengers didn't remind Ross that this battle wasn't their fault. Maybe it's diplomacy's fault more… because they tried to fight and antagonize a being 1000 years older than them. Maybe if they sat down with Thor and Loki as mediators on the helicarrier… maybe the problems would be solved… or not… Loki, as usual, would be wiser. But at least they would try. (Yes, I'm a Loki fan… because first I'm a fan of Loki, and then I'm a fan of the rest of the MCU… Loki always comes first;)

I'm not sure how to rewrite Civil War to be more in line with earlier canon. Well…maybe remove Lagos and the Accords and start with the consequences for Ultron. Maybe some Senators want to take Tony's armor again. Maybe they'll decide the shield shouldn't be in Steve's hands. And in the background, involve this thread with Zemo and Bucky… Zemo could be this baron, an important figure from Sokovia who is publicly concerned about the fate of the world… and secretly works against the Avengers.

Civil War is a good movie… if we consider it the beginning of the New MCU Canon… which I allude to in this:

Because Civil War is not a good continuation of the threads of Age of Ultron. And neither is further MCU in general.

Age of Ultron threads

Hawkeye - having a family and a normal life, Laura tells him that in this world of gods and superhumans… he can make a difference… there is no continuation of this.

Thor - has a vision of destruction… what's more… it is said that he is guilty of it… how? Seeing at Thor Ragnarok, how can Thor be guilty of his father having an illegitimate daughter? What is Thor's fault in this? The vision talks about doom because of him, that he is a destroyer… that it is his personal fault… abandoned Loki plot?

Vision - is a consequence of Ultron's actions… and we don't have any storylines with it… how does he deal with it.

Thanos - already has the gauntlet. He has it. And he takes it from Asgard. I'm more betting on Loki offering it than war. But with a trick… Loki probably gave him the gauntlet, but he definitely kept the trick in his pocket.

Steve - sees Peggy's vision and knows that he has come to terms with the loss of what was… and he wants to continue building his life… completely abandoned plot.

Bruce - I don't know if Bruce was originally supposed to end up this far in space… Fury shows at the end of Age of Ultron that Hulk could have landed in the ocean, near the Philippines…

Also at the end of Age of Ultron, Thor says: someone has been playing an intricately game and has made pawns of us.

Another clue to Loki's abandoned plot? Because Thanos wants to destroy the Avengers at the end of Age of Ultron. Personally. There is no moral objection at all. He cannot be player making pawns. But Loki can. Because he was the one who played the game first and learned everything about the Avengers Team.

#avengers age of ultron #civil war #marvel meta #marvel cinematic universe #hawkeye #loki marvel #loki odinson #loki tom hiddleston #thor odinson #vision #thanos #bruce banner #steve rogers

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