#anti-constitutional republicans

[tomorrowusa]

Far right ideologues, like DeSantis buddy Chris Rufo, like to refer to themselves as the "dissident right". That is a euphemism to hide their true anti-constitutional pro-dictatorship nature.

Chris Rufo, a rightwing culture-war celebrity and close Ron DeSantis ally, has maintained a close relationship with IM-1776, a “dissident right” magazine that regularly showers praise on dictators and authoritarians, puffs racist ideologues, and attacks liberal democracy. The outlet’s editors and writers – many of them so-called “anons” working under pseudonyms – have variously advocated for the repeal of the Civil Rights Act; celebrated figures such as the “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski and the proto-fascist Italian nationalist Gabriele D’Annunzio; and advanced conspiracy theories about the Covid pandemic, and what they term the “regime”, a leftist power structure that they imagine unites the state, large corporations, universities and the media.

Rufo and his cohorts are working to muddy the difference between themselves and the less extreme right.

Last month a “manifesto” written by Rufo – The New Right Activism – ran in the online and print versions of IM-1776, and Rufo has publicly urged his audience to buy and subscribe to the outlet. He has also co-hosted a series of Twitter spaces with the magazine’s editors, beginning in July last year. In one of them, recorded in October, he indicated an interest in incorporating the “dissident right” more fully in mainstream political discourse, saying: “I think there is a room for engaging the dissident right and the establishment right. I think we need to have a bridge between the two and and engage in thoughtful dialogue.” More recently, he has expressed a personal interest in expanding the range of acceptable political discourse. On the Pirate Wires podcast earlier this month, he told host Mike Solana of his own activism: “I try to play that game, I try to lay traps, I try to provoke certain reactions, I try to launder certain words and phrases into the discourse.”

Rufo's rag IM-1776 glorifies domestic terrorists.

Last June, IM-1776 published an obituary of Ted Kaczynski by another pseudonymous author calling themselves “The Prudentialist”. Kaczynski died in a federal prison last year at the conclusion of a life sentence he received for a 17-year mailbombing campaign that killed three of his targets and injured 23 others. Describing Kaczynski as “allegedly a lone wolf terrorist, but also a mathematical genius”, the IM-1776 author relativized his crimes and explained that Kaczynski’s “iconic status on the contemporary right can be partly attributed to the devastating critique of the left included in his famous manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future”.

The Republican Party is now the Trump MAGA Party. It refuses to call out extremists and is cozy with foreign dictators like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán. Permitting Republicans to gain power puts the country under the control of the anti-constitutional "dissident right" who advocate Red Caesarism.

The ONLY way to defeat Republicans/MAGA/the "dissident right"/Red Caesarism is to vote Democratic. Any talk from the third party curious about impotent minor party candidates should get an instant reality check; the last presidential election won by a non-Democrat or non-Republican was in 1848.

[alwaysbewoke]

[queerism1969]

[all-socialism-is-democratic]

[webntrmpt2x]

Joyce Vance, Civil Discourse

Excerpt:

“To encourage the adoption of the new Constitution, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote The Federalist Papers, 85 essays, from 1787 to 1788. They defended their vision of government against claims made by anti-federalists that the country was too big, that a president would become a dictator, and that a national army would crush any possibility of dissent.��

“To protect against those prospects, Madison argued in Federalist No. 10 that the system of government under consideration contained checks and balances to protect individual liberties. The legislative branch and the judicial branch would act as checks on the executive, and there would be a balance of power shared between states and the federal government.”

“Those are the checks that Trump wants to undo, whether it is through the substantive plans contained in Project 2025 that consolidate and centralize the powers of government in the presidency, or nominees for key positions in the cabinet whose loyalty is to Trump, not the Constitution.”

[randyite]

[bigdadskypilot]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Really American (@reallyamerican1)

[all-socialism-is-democratic]

I mean, not everyone. Just YouTube, Twitter, Roblox, Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, and the entire Republican Party.

[unforth]

Everything feels awful right now but it isn't really. We still don't officially have a winner, but regardless of how the presidential election ends up, I wanted to take a minute and find what lights I can in the 3 a.m. darkness. Here's what I know:

* Kentucky overwhelmingly rejected an attempt to undermine the public education system by offering private school vouchers:

* Delaware has elected a transgender woman to the House of Representatives, the first out trans person of any gender ever elected to congress:

* For the first time in history, two Black women will be serving in the senate at the same time, and they are only the fourth and fifth Black women ever elected to the senate:

* New York State has passed a constitutional amendment enshrining the rights of pregnant people (including the right to an abortion), LGBTQIA+ people, the disabled, immigrants regardless of legal status, and other at-risk groups:

* Democrat Josh Stein has beaten self-avowed Nazi Mark Robinson to become governor of North Carolina:

That's everything I know off the top of my head. It's not many bright spots, but it's not zero. I'm going to try to find more and I'll add them to the post. It's the only thing I can think of to do that isn't sobbing and throwing up or looking up Canadian immigration rules.

If you know more good news, I encourage you to add it in reblogs.

[shamballalin]

What Does ANTIFA Mean? Why Should We Care? Repost

This is what the United States really looks like, United Humanity, not only white male Americans. “ANTIFA” is a philosophy, not a group of people. It means “Anti-Fascist[1].” What does is mean to be a Fascist? Fascism means: a form of extreme-right authoritarianism ultra nationalism characterized by dictatorial power forceable suppression of opposition strong regimentation of society and…

[tomorrowusa]

In the United States, control-freak Republicans like Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith tell Americans what to do with their reproductive systems.

Meanwhile, France moves one step closer to enshrining reproductive freedom in the constitution.

GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith blocks legislation protecting IVF access

French Senate votes to enshrine abortion access in the constitution after US rollback

The only way to protect reproductive freedom in the United States is to sweep Republicans out of power by voting Democratic. The GOP worked 49 years to overturn Roe v. Wade. We need to show as much tenacity and determination.

VOTE BLUE TO PROTECT ABORTION RIGHTS AND IVF.

[all-socialism-is-democratic]

The blame goes to the corporate bosses. The blame goes to the Republican Party.

And the blame goes to Biden and the Democrats. You can blame them all.

Joe Biden does not have the power to lower prices or deal effectively with inflation. He can take steps to "repair" the economy Trump broke, but the Republicans will just break it again. That's the cycle. And it's intentional. It's how the corporations make money.

There will be no substantive change because DEMOCRATS DON'T WANT SUBSTANTIVE CHANGE. EVER. They make their money off of Wall Street, and Wall Street wants the cycle. Boom and bust. The profit machine that transfers money from below to above.

Liberals SAY they want change, and then keep voting for a party that will never change anything. The Democratic Party is not a Left party. The Democratic Party is not an anticapitalist party. The Democratic Party is not an antifascist party. Democrats want the status quo.

And Republicans want to dismantle the system to eliminate rights and freedoms completely. The problem is that the Democrats, the only "opposition" party, are NOT in opposition. They will do nothing, then convince Liberals that doing nothing is "helping."

American Oligarchy has created an "electoral" system designed to give citizens the illusion of choice while we march down the road of Fascism, or something new but very close to Fascism. Democrats claim they will protect women, and LGBT people, and minorities, and for a season they will, tepidly—until the Republicans eventually and inevitably win and do more damage. And so things get worse and worse.

No real change can come about electorally in America. Every major change in American history required a war or a civil uprising.

And personally I'd like to avoid a war.

I get it...

[hillpoet-blog-blog]

Thar She Blows!

Letter to the Editor. 2 February 24. Dear Editor, The Saturday paper listed The Wager as the current #1 non-fiction bestseller non-fiction bestseller, and I’m enjoying the true story, a frightening account of life at sea in the 1700s.  Ironically, it mirrors current U.S. politics. Each sailor crewing an English man-of-war had a purpose; if that purpose went unfulfilled, people died. To become a…

[thebreakfastgenie]

It is extremely disturbing how many posts I see claiming that Roe v. Wade was overturned on Biden's watch and blaming him and the Democratic Party for it. It's disturbing on a number of levels.

First, it was Trump and Bush-appointed justices who handed down the Dobbs decision. This is a flagrant example of blaming Democrats for things Republicans did, and not coincidentally is one of the the most widely felt differences between the two parties. As a result, it's usually the first example Democrats and their allies point to; this misappropriation suggests a deliberate attempt to undercut that fact.

Secondly, and related to the first point, it obfuscates who the real enemy is, and I am comfortable using word "enemy" to describe the Republican Party because of the policies they advocate and enact. The truth is that states controlled by the Republican Party were where the effects of Dobbs are most severely felt, while states controlled by the Democratic Party are passing laws to protect abortion. It is important to know which party opposes abortion and which party supports it. If the Republicans gain control of the House, Senate, and White House, they will pass a national abortion ban, as they have done at the state level in several places.

Thirdly, blaming Biden for Dobbs demonstrates a very concerning lack of understanding of how the government functions. The judiciary is its own branch of government; judges are appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate. It doesn't matter who is president when a decision is handed down, it matters who was president when the justices were appointed. People sometimes react to this by moving the goalposts and claiming the real issue was a failure by Democrats to "codify" Roe v. Wade. I am not sure what "codify" means in this context, and I'm not sure they are either. One thing it does not mean is that congress can pass a law saying "abortion is legal forever." Republicans could easily repeal such a law and it the federal government cannot necessarily prevent states from restricting abortion at the state level. Roe v. Wade was a ruling stating that the constitution guaranteed a right to privacy, which included the right to have an abortion. This prevented abortion restrictions in a way federal law cannot. That doesn't mean passing federal law protecting abortion is a bad idea, but it isn't a foolproof protection. It's fair to argue that the Democratic Party and the left of center generally were complacent about abortion. The form of this complacency was not taking the courts seriously, while the right spent fifty years openly filling the courts with anti-abortion judges.

The last thing that worries me is that this is popping up phrased almost the exact same way all over the place. I am afraid that it is not merely incompetence, but intentional misinformation, that is then repeated by the incompetent who believe it.

I know some will probably dismiss this post as being from a "vote harder" liberal Biden supporter, but whatever your feelings about Biden, the Democratic Party, or the democratic process in the U.S., you should care about the truth. The truth is that Roe v. Wade was overturned by Republican-appointed judges and abortion bans are being enacted by Republican elected officials, and Joe Biden opposes these things. You can do with that information whatever you wish, but you denying it is dishonest.

[all-socialism-is-democratic]

[lizardsfromspace]

It's wild to see people advance these completely made-up histories

So, if voting mattered, gay marriage would be legal nationwide. It was legal, in 2008, but Democrats repealed it in 2013 and it's remained illegal since.

So first up: huh???

Gay marriage is legal nationwide. Right this second. In 2008 it became legal in a few states, most notably California, but not federally, and then California blocked gay marriage with Proposition 8 that year. 2013 was when the Supreme Court struck down Proposition 8 & the Defense of Marriage Act, which was a good thing. Then in 2015 two Bill Clinton justices, two Obama justices, and one Reagan appointee (who went less conservative in the court & who was a moderate nominated when Democrats torpedoed the nomination of Robert Bork) legalized gay marriage nationwide. Which is still the law.

(I keep seeing people claim it's Revisionist History to attribute Obergefell to Obama, since activists pressured him into that, and it can't be both the Supreme Court and activists responsible, it can only be one. Because of course gay rights activists would've been able to pressure John McCain or Mitt Romney and whoever they appointed to the court just as much!)

In 2022, the Biden administration passed the Respect for Marriage Act, which forced states to recognize gay marriages from other states even if it's banned again. "It would be legal nationwide by now" - it is legal! Now! The best case scenario is that this person got very confused by the legalization and repeal of it in California, the worst case scenario is they're just lying.

True, there is no federal "you can get gay married everywhere" bill. But there also can't be? Marriage licenses are granted by states. That's why states were able to legalize gay marriage under the Defense of Marriage Act, and why even after that Republicans talked about a constitutional amendment against it, only that or a Supreme Court decision could do that everywhere at once. Same with the unenforceable anti-gay marriage bills in the states, the federal government can render those unenforceable, but it doesn't have authority to make states take them off the books. Do people just not understand the difference between federal, state, and local government anymore?

Anyway if someone has to contort history this badly to make a case that something doesn't matter, it probably does