DEFEAT FASCISM BEFORE FASCISM DEFEATS YOU
DEFEAT FASCISM BEFORE FASCISM DEFEATS YOU
DEFEAT FASCISM BEFORE FASCISM DEFEATS YOU
DEFEAT FASCISM BEFORE FASCISM DEFEATS YOU
DEFEAT FASCISM BEFORE FASCISM DEFEATS YOU
https://refusefascism.org/.../what-are-you-going-to-do…/
‘WHAT’S PAST IS PROLOGUE…"
[NOTE: The following commentary was originally posted three weeks after the 2020 presidential election on November 24, 2020]
What are you going to do about the Nazi Problem?
by Coco Das
November 24, 2020
Refuse Fascism
We have a Nazi problem in this country. Some 74 million people voted for it. Their leader is still in power and waging a battle to delegitimize the election he clearly lost. His followers maraud through the streets and raise $2 million for a teenage killer’s bail and destroy Black Lives Matter murals and chant “Say his name, Donald Trump,” spitting on the anguished cries of Black people whose lives are so routinely cut down by police.
They don’t, for the most part, wave swastikas and salute Hitler, but we have a Nazi problem in this country as deeply as the German people had a Nazi problem in the 1930s. Their minds waterlogged with conspiracy theories, they take lies as truth, spread hate and bigotry, wrap themselves in several flags – American, Confederate, Blue Lives Matter – and use the Bible as a weapon of violence and repression. They are a grotesque expression of the worst of this country, of its ugly narcissism, its thuggish militarism, its ignorance and refusal to give a shit about the rest of the world. They carry the torch of slavery, genocide, and Jim Crow terror. Gunned up and mask-less, they exalt above all the right to kill.
Trump lost the election. They lost. We poured into the streets to celebrate but they will not go quietly into the night. Fascists have and can come back from defeat, and when they do they are stronger, more prepared, and more filled with vengeance. With his unhinged audacity, Trump still dominates the airwaves, turning an election that was decisive into a debate. Every day that he remains in power is an unrelenting barrage of lunacy. Every day is another day of the unthinkable and unprecedented said out loud and acted upon. Every day is a thousand more deaths from COVID. The humanity and morality of a portion of the 73 million people who voted for Trump is so hollowed out they can’t even mourn the dead. And what of the rest of us, who did not want this but learned to live with it?
This is what we face. Call it what you will but it’s a problem that will not go away without caring, thinking people refusing to let them have another inch. Whatever moral and political stand the German people should have taken to defeat the Nazis early, however much determination they should have shown, applies to us tenfold now. America has a MAGA problem. Millions of them believe that people who are by their very existence criminal – Black people in the cities of swing states – stole this election from their leader with the help of a band of evil conspirators, and this will be their rallying cry as they regroup to exact revenge and return to power. Hiding from them when they show up in your town, refusing to call it what it is, humoring them or failing to condemn their bigotry will not make them go away.
Recently, someone told me to treat MAGA mobs like a fire. How do you put out a fire? You deprive it of oxygen. This was his argument against a counter-protest of the million MAGA march in DC on November 14th, where thousands of Trump supporters did indeed chant “Say his name, Donald Trump” and many other things more heinous than that. Counter-protesting allegedly would give these thugs an excuse for violence, which was allegedly what they wanted, then giving Trump an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and institute martial law to remain in power.
If you recognize this as a possible danger, you know we have a Nazi problem in this country. Keeping your head down and telling the truth only behind locked doors and drawn curtains was a strategy widely deployed in Nazi Germany, to avoid violence, to keep the peace. Yes, fascists want violence and there are many ways for them to get it – tearing children from their parents’ arms, murdering worshippers in a synagogue, running their cars over protesters, telling police to stop being “too nice” to the Black and brown people they terrorize in the streets. They do not want you in your millions saying no. They do not want your voices rising together or your feet marching in unity. What they want above all is your silence – or better yet, for you to just disappear.
It is correct to view this as a fire still raging. The oxygen this vicious American fascism needs comes from the absence of millions of us in the streets, non-violent but determined to oppose them, refusing to accept a fascist America. The people won a victory by voting Trump out of power. Imagine the nightmare if he had won. But we have to stand on this victory and go all the way to bringing this fascist program to a halt. They are fighting for a future of unchallenged white supremacy, misogyny and theocratic patriarchy, and America First xenophobia, enforced by terror and violence. There is no decency in what they want. We cannot cede the public square and public discourse to fascists to air their false grievances and spread their lies, death, and hatred.
You don’t put out a fire by walking away from it.
Filed Under: All, Coco Das, Latest Posts
RefuseFascism.org exposes, analyzes, and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in this country. Seventy-four million people voted for Trump in 2020. The Republi-fascist Party has been purged of dissenting voices. The mass fascist movement has hardened in the wake of their January 6 coup attempt. Fascist initiatives around restricting voting, immigration and abortion rapidly advance in statehouses across the country. The election of Biden has not eliminated the danger, it has only bought some time…
is an essential tool for understanding and uniting to defeat the American fascist movement that imperils all of humanity. Each week host Sam Goldman provides commentary and analysis alongside in-depth interviews with scholars and activists from diverse perspectives on the very real threat of fascism coming to power in the United States.
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https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/04/25/us/trump-immunity-supreme-court
Justices Seem Ready to Limit the 2020 Election Case Against Trump
Such a ruling in the case, on whether the former president is immune from prosecution, would probably send it back to a lower court and could delay any trial until after the November election.
by April 25, 2024
New York Times
The Supreme Court heard arguments on Thursday about Donald J. Trump’s claim that the federal charges accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election must be thrown out because he is immune from being prosecuted for any official act he took as president.
Here are some takeaways:
Several justices seemed to want to define some level of official act as immune.
Although Mr. Trump’s claim of near-absolute immunity was seen as a long shot intended primarily to slow the proceedings, several members of the Republican-appointed majority seemed to indicate that some immunity was needed. Some of them expressed worry about the long-term consequences of leaving future former presidents open to prosecution for their official actions.
Among others, Justice Brett Kavanaugh compared the threat of prosecution for official acts to how a series of presidents were “hampered” by independent counsel investigations, criticizing a 1984 ruling that upheld a now-defunct law creating such prosecutors as one of the Supreme Court’s biggest mistakes. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. criticized an appeals court ruling rejecting immunity for Mr. Trump, saying he was concerned that it “did not get into a focused consideration of what acts we are talking about or what documents we are talking about.”
The Democrat-appointed justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and
Ketanji Brown Jackson — asked questions indicating greater concern about
opening the door for presidents to commit official crimes with
impunity.
The arguments signaled further delay and complications for a Trump trial.
If the Supreme Court does place limits on the ability of prosecutors to charge Mr. Trump over his official actions, it could alter the shape of his trial.
A decision to send all or part of the case back to the lower courts could further slow progress toward a trial, increasing the odds that it does not start before Election Day.
Of the matters listed in the indictment, some — like working with private lawyers to gin up slates of fraudulent electors — seem like the private actions of a candidate. Others — like pressuring the Justice Department and Vice President Mike Pence to do things — seem more like official acts he took in his role as president.
At one point, Justice Amy Coney Barrett suggested that prosecutors could simply drop Mr. Trump’s arguably official actions from their case and proceed to a swift trial focused only on his private actions. And D. John Sauer, the lawyer for Mr. Trump, told the court that no evidence of Mr. Trump’s official actions should be allowed into the trial.
But Michael R. Dreeben, a Justice Department lawyer arguing on behalf of the special counsel’s office, said the indictment laid out an “integrated conspiracy” in which Mr. Trump took the official actions to bolster the chances that his other efforts to overturn the election would succeed.
He argued that even if the court holds that Mr. Trump has immunity from liability for his official actions, prosecutors should still be allowed to present evidence about them to the jury because the actions are relevant to assessing his larger knowledge and intentions — just as speech that is protected by the First Amendment can still be used as evidence in a conspiracy case.
The hearing revolved around two very different ways of looking at the issue.
Looming over the hearing was a sweeping moral question: What effect might executive immunity have on the future of American politics?
Not surprisingly, the two sides saw things very differently.
Mr. Sauer claimed that without immunity, all presidents would be paralyzed by the knowledge that once they were out of office, they could face an onslaught of charges from their rivals based on the tough calls they had to make while in power. He pictured a dystopian world of ceaseless tit-for-tat political prosecutions that would destroy the “presidency as we know it.”
Envisioning the opposite scenario, Mr. Dreeben worried that any form of blanket immunity would place presidents entirely outside of the rule of law and encourage them to commit crimes, including “bribery, treason, sedition, even murder,” with impunity.
“The framers knew too well the dangers of a king who could do no wrong,” he said.
Both sides found advocates for their positions on the court.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. clearly seemed worried that without some form of criminal immunity, former presidents would be vulnerable to partisan warfare as their successors used the courts to go after them once they were out of office. And that, he added, could lead to endless cycles of retribution that would be a risk to “stable, democratic society.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson appeared more concerned that if presidents were in fact shielded by immunity, they would be unbounded by the law and could turn the Oval Office into what she described as “the seat of criminality.”
What happens next?
There did not seem to be a lot of urgency among the justices — especially the conservative ones — to ensure that the immunity question was resolved quickly. That left open the possibility that Mr. Trump could avoid being tried on charges of plotting to overturn the last election until well after voters went to the polls to decide whether to choose him as president in this election.
And if he is elected, any trial could be put off while he is in office, or he could order the charges against him dropped.
It could take some time for the court to do its own analysis of what presidential acts should qualify for the protections of immunity. And even if the justices determine that at least some of the allegations against Mr. Trump are fair game for prosecution, if they do not issue a ruling until late June or early July, it could be difficult to hold a trial before November.
That would become all but impossible if the court took a different route and sent the analysis back to the trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan. If Judge Chutkan were ordered to hold further hearings on which of the indictment’s numerous allegations were official acts of Mr. Trump’s presidency and which were private acts he took as a candidate for office, the process could take months and last well into 2025.
Reporting from Washington
Just as the Supreme Court began considering on Thursday morning whether former President Donald J. Trump was entitled to absolute immunity, rap music started blaring outside the court.
The lyrics, laced with expletives, denounced Mr. Trump, and several dozen demonstrators began chanting, “Trump is not above the law!”
Mr. Trump was not in Washington on Thursday morning — in fact, he was in another courtroom, in New York. But the spectacle that pierced the relative tranquillity outside the court was typical of events that involve him: demonstrations, homemade signs, police, news media, and lots and lots of curious onlookers.
One man, Stephen Parlato, a retired mental health counselor from Boulder, Colo., held a roughly 6-foot-long sign with a blown-up photo of Mr. Trump scowling that read, “Toxic loser.” The back of the sign featured the famous painting by Cassius Marcellus Coolidge of dogs playing poker, adorned with the words, “Faith erodes … in a court with no binding ethics code.” He made the sign at FedEx, he said.
The Supreme Court’s decision to even hear the case, which has delayed Mr. Trump’s election interference trial, was “absurd,” he said.
“I’m a child of the late ’60s and early ’70s and the Vietnam War,” said Mr. Parlato, dressed in a leather jacket and cowboy hat. “I remember protesting that while in high school. But this is very different. I’m here because I’m terrified of the possibility of a second Trump presidency.”
Inside the court, Jack Smith sat to the far right of the lawyer arguing on behalf of his team of prosecutors, Michael R. Dreeben, a leading expert in criminal law who has worked for another special counsel who investigated Mr. Trump, Robert S. Mueller III.
Among those in attendance were Jane Sullivan Roberts, who is married to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and Ashley Estes Kavanaugh, who is married to Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.
In an orderly line outside along the side of the court, people were calmly waiting to listen to the arguments from the court’s public gallery. More than 100 people, many of them supporters of Mr. Trump, were in line as of 8:30 a.m. Reagan Pendarvis, 19, who had been waiting there since the middle of the night, said the first person in line had gotten there more than a day before the arguments began.
Mr. Pendarvis, a sophomore at the University of California, San Diego who is living in Washington for the spring semester, was wearing a black suit and bright red bow tie. He said he had been struggling to keep warm since he took his place in line.
Mr. Pendarvis, a supporter of Mr. Trump, said he thought that the cases brought against the former president were an uneven application of the law.
“I think a lot of the cases, especially that happen for Donald Trump, don’t really happen for Democrats on the other side,” he said. “That’s just my take on it.”
David Bolls, 42, and his brother, Jonathan, 43, both of Springfield, Va., also in line for the arguments, also contended that the prosecutions against Mr. Trump were an abuse of judicial power.
“For me, I want to see an even application of justice,” David Bolls said.
For others in line, the Supreme Court’s deliberations were not the main draw. Ellen Murphy, a longtime Washington resident, was trying to sell buttons she designs, though she acknowledged that it was unlikely she would be allowed in with all of her merchandise.
Dozens of the buttons, which said, “Immunize democracy now” and “Trump is toast” over a toaster with two slices of bread, were pinned to a green apron she was wearing.
“We lose our democracy,” Ms. Murphy said, “if the president can do whatever he wants just because he’s president.”
Eileen Sullivan contributed reporting.
Reporting from Washington
The justices heard arguments in the immunity case at a special session, the day after what had been the last scheduled argument of its term. Arguments heard in late April almost always yield decisions near the end of the court’s term, in late June or early July.
But a ruling in early summer, even if it categorically rejected Mr. Trump’s position, would make it hard to complete his trial before the election. Should Mr. Trump win at the polls, there is every reason to think he would scuttle the prosecution.
In cases that directly affected elections — in which the mechanisms of voting were at issue — the court has sometimes acted with unusual speed.
In 2000, in Bush v. Gore, the court issued its decision handing the presidency to George W. Bush the day after the justices heard arguments.
In a recent case concerning Mr. Trump’s eligibility to appear on Colorado’s primary ballot, the justices moved more slowly, but still at a relatively brisk pace. The court granted Mr. Trump’s petition seeking review just two days after he filed it, scheduled arguments for about a month later and issued its decision in his favor about a month after that.
In United States v. Nixon, the 1974 decision that ordered President Richard M. Nixon to comply with a subpoena for audiotapes of conversations with aides in the White House, the court also moved quickly, granting the special prosecutor’s request to bypass the appeals court a week after it was filed.
The court heard arguments about five weeks later — compared with some eight weeks in Mr. Trump’s immunity case. It issued its decision 16 days after the argument, and the trial was not delayed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/25/us/usc-cancels-graduation-campus-protests.html
U.S.C. Cancels Its Main Graduation Ceremony, Citing Security Concerns
There have been student protests and arrests, as well as controversy over the school’s decision to cancel the speech of its valedictorian.
Officers from the Los Angeles Police Department at the University of Southern California on Wednesday. Credit: Philip Cheung for The New York Times
by Stephanie Saul
April 25, 2024
New York Times
The University of Southern California announced on Thursday that it has canceled its main-stage graduation ceremony for students, a move that follows campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war and a controversy over its selection of a class valedictorian.
The university said that it could not host the ceremony, which was scheduled for May 10, because of new safety measures that would have increased the amount of time needed on the day to process the 65,000 students and guests who usually attend.
This week, the university has been rocked by turmoil by pro-Palestinian protesters, resulting in the arrests of more than 90 people.
It was the continuation of controversy on the Los Angeles campus that began in early April, when the university selected a Muslim valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, a biomedical engineering major from Chino Hills, Calif.
Following complaints from several Jewish organizations that Ms. Tabassum, who is of South Asian descent, had posted a social media link to a controversial pro-Palestinian organization, the university informed her that she would not be delivering the traditional valedictorian speech.
The university said the decision was based on a barrage of communications threatening to disrupt the graduation ceremony. But, in a statement, Ms. Tabassum voiced skepticism about the university’s motivation.
In making the announcement Thursday about the main stage cancellation, the university emphasized that other graduation events celebrating individual schools would continue. In those ceremonies, students cross the stage, are awarded their degrees and are photographed.
“We understand that this is disappointing,” the announcement said, “however, we are adding many new activities and celebrations to make this commencement academically meaningful.”
That did not appease many students.
“The cancellation of commencement? I think it’s cowardly,” said Layla MoheyEldin, a senior majoring in international relations and Middle East studies. Her high school graduation was scaled down because of the pandemic, and now she is losing her main college ceremony.
Last week, the university announced that speakers and honorees who had been scheduled to attend the main stage graduation, including the “Crazy Rich Asians” director Jon M. Chu and the tennis star Billie Jean King, would not be present.
Past speakers at the main ceremonies have included the actor Will Ferrell and the author Siddhartha Mukherjee.
Jonathan Wolfe contributed reporting.
A correction was made on
April 25, 2024
An earlier version of this article included a picture that was published in error. It showed the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles, not the University of Southern California.
When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know at nytnews@nytimes.com.Learn more
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Stephanie Saul reports on colleges and universities, with a recent focus on the dramatic changes in college admissions and the debate around diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education. More about Stephanie Saul
A version of this article appears in print on April 28, 2024, Section A, Page 17 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S.C. Cancels Graduation Ceremony for 65,000 People, Citing Security Concerns. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper
