Waarom steunt een oud NAVO-diplomaat de NAVO-staat Turkije, die weer op zijn beurt ISIS steunt? Met andere woorden: waarom probeert Marcel Kurpershoek in NRC Handelsblad van 23 februari 2016 de aandacht van soennitische terroristen af te leiden door te beweren: 'Poetin zet Westen schaakmat in Syrië.' Het antwoord is simpelweg dat hij op die manier propaganda kan maken voor het offensieve Atlantische bondgenootschap, onderdeel van het machtige westerse militair-industrieel complex, waarvoor president Eisenhower al in 1961 waarschuwde. Bovendien kan hij zodoende zijn soennitische broodheren in Abu Dhabi tevreden houden. Deze ideologische opiniemaker is exemplarisch voor de gecorrumpeerde mentaliteit in de polder, met haar kleinburgerlijke 'handelsgeest,' zoals Huizinga dit tijdens het interbellum typeerde, waarbij '[h]ypocrisie en farizeïsme hier individu en gemeenschap [belagen]!' In zijn aanval op het Russische offensief tegen ISIS manifesteert zich de corruptie van Kurpershoek het duidelijkst in het verzwijgen van het volgende:
In a recent article in the Guardian, Professor David Graeber of the London School of Economics stated how 'Back in August, the YPG, fresh from their victories in Kobani and Gire Spi (Tell Abyad. svh), were poised to seize Jarablus (Jarabulus. svh), the last Isis-held town on the Turkish border that the terror organization had been using to resupply its capital in Raqqa with weapons, materials, and recruits -- Isis supply lines pass directly through Turkey.' Graeber added: 'Commentators predicted that with Jarablus gone, Raqqa would soon follow. Erdogan reacted by declaring Jarablus a ''red line'': if the Kurds attacked, his forces would intervene militarily -- against the YPG. So Jarablus remains in terrorist hands to this day, under de facto Turkish military protection,'
aldus de Amerikaanse journalist Rob Kall in artikel van 24 november 2015, waarin hij uiteenzette dat:
It's impossible to discuss the connection between Turkey and ISIS without discussing the Kurds. The Undercoverinfo.org article reports this connection between the Kurds and Turkey:
The Kurds of northern Syria, together with the Kurds of Turkey and Iraq, have been at war with ISIS since the latter rose up and declared their so-called caliphate. It was the Syrian Kurds and their Kurdish comrades in Turkey who helped rescue the Yezidis, after they had fled the ISIS onslaught to take refuge in the Sinjar mountains. It was the Syrian Kurds and their comrades in Turkey who liberated the city of Kobani from ISIS.
But the Kurds of northern Syria have not just been waging war. They have also been waging peace: creating new, democratic structures, declaring autonomous cantons; setting up schools, universities, hospitals. They have taken their inspiration from the Zapatistas of Mexico, who in their thousands retreated into the jungles of Chiapas and together with the Mayans created a new society, free from the oppression of the Mexican authorities.
In short, the northern Syrian Kurds have created and are living a social revolution. It is no wonder, therefore, that the authoritarian and neo-Islamist Erdogan Government of Turkey is doing everything it can to break the Kurds, including providing covert support to the Kurds' main enemy, to ISIS.
CNN acts shocked that Turkey, a member of NATO, has attacked Russia, which is fighting ISIS. The reality is, both the USA and Turkey want Assad out. There lies the rub.
The shooting down of the Russian jet clarifies the reality that the US, in choosing to allow Turkey to engage in a long, aggressive campaign supporting, abetting and empowering ISIS, is itself helping ISIS.
This should be a huge problem for the US and it's surrogate NATO, since we are responsible for supporting Turkey, a NATO member nation. But Turkey, like the US and France and NATO, wants to get rid of Syria's Assad. It is confusing because it seems we are fighting ISIS, but at the same time letting Turkey support ISIS, as an enemy of Assad.
It is hard to imagine France continuing to tolerate Turkey continuing to be a part of NATO, unless their desire to get rid of Assad is greater than their desire to deal with ISIS. But just today, Hollande spoke clearly, stating that Assad must go.
Watching the news of the Turkish shoot-down of the Russian jet, it verges on bizarre, seeing the mainstream media frame the shoot-down without including background on Turkey's history of supporting ISIS.
It seems that without Turkey's support, ISIS might not be the powerhouse terror organization it has become. And worse, without the White House's and Obama's tacit support for Turkey's massive support for ISIS, we wouldn't be where we are today. And lets not forget that because Turkey has refused to allow the US to fly sorties out of its Incirlik airbase, US jets have to fly 1200 miles.
Considering this aspect of the ISIS narrative, one must ask why Turkey is even being allowed to stay a member of NATO? And why are the mainstream media ignoring this, and why haven't members of congress and presidential candidates started calling for doing something about Turkey. And why would we be allowing people with Turkish passports into the US, given the background I've provided.
Turkey is not alone. Saudi Arabia is also a major problem, but that's another article.
Underlying all of this is Assad and those who want to get rid of him. It appears that Turkey blew the Russian jet out of the sky because it was fighting for Assad, attacking non-ISIS areas of Syria. If the US and NATO are allies with Turkey then it would seem they are allies with ISIS, fighting a war defending Syria's Assad. But the US would have us believe that is not the case. The problem is, it's complicated.
One thing that seems less complicated is Russia's role. It is supporting Assad and fighting ISIS.
Dat 'ook Saoedi-Arabië een zeer groot probleem' is, blijkt ondermeer uit de steun die het fundamentalistische soennitische regime aan ISIS verstrekt. Saillant detail daarbij is dat Abu Dhabi, waar Kurpershoek doceert, de Saoedische terreur steunt waarvan de Jemenitische burgerbevolking het slachtoffer is. Naar aanleiding van de terreuraanslagen in Parijs werd op donderdag 19 november 2015 in een programma van het Amerikaanse DemocracyNow! een fragment herhaalt van een Al-Jazeera vraaggesprek uit augustus 2015 met het voormalige hoofd van de 'U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Michael Flynn.' De interviewer, Mehdi Hasan, vroeg Flynn hoeveel de VS al geruime tijd wist over de opkomst van de zogeheten Islamtische Staat in Syrië.
MEHDI HASAN: Many people would argue that the U.S. actually saw the rise of ISIL coming and turned a blind eye, or even encouraged it as a counterpoint to Assad. In a secret analysis by the agency you ran, the Defense Intelligence Agency in August 2012 said — and I quote… 'there is a possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in Eastern Syria... and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.' The U.S. saw the ISIL caliphate coming and did nothing.
MICHAEL FLYNN: Yeah, I think that what we — where we missed the point — I mean, where we totally blew it, I think, was in the very beginning. I mean, we’re talking four years now into this effort in Syria. Most people won’t even remember — it’s only been a couple years — the Free Syrian Army, that movement. I mean, where are they today? Al-Nusra, where are they today, and what have — how much have they changed? When you don’t get in and help somebody, they’re going to find other means to achieve their goals. And I think right now what we have allowed is —
MEHDI HASAN: Hold on, you were helping them in 2012, while these groups —
MICHAEL FLYNN: Yeah, we’ve allowed this — we’ve allowed this extremist — you know, these extremist militants to come in —
MEHDI HASAN: But why did you allow them to do that, General?
MICHAEL FLYNN: Those are — those are —
MEHDI HASAN: You were in post. You were the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
MICHAEL FLYNN: Yeah, right, right. Well, those are… Those are policy issues.
MEHDI HASAN: I took the liberty of printing out that document.
MICHAEL FLYNN: Yeah, yeah.
MEHDI HASAN: This is a memo I quoted from. Did you see this document in 2012? Would this come across your table?
MICHAEL FLYNN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I paid very close attention to all the [inaudible] —
MEHDI HASAN: OK, so when you saw this, did you not pick up a phone and say, 'What on Earth are we doing supporting these Syrian rebels?'
MICHAEL FLYNN: Sure. I mean, that — that kind of information is presented, and —
MEHDI HASAN: And what did you do about it?
MICHAEL FLYNN: — those become — those become — I argued about it.
MEHDI HASAN: In 2012, your agency was saying, quote, 'the Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and [al-Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.'
MICHAEL FLYNN: Mm-hmm.
MEHDI HASAN: In 2012, the U.S. was helping coordinate arms transfers to those same groups. Why did you not stop that, if you’re worried about the rise of, quote-unquote, 'Islamic extremism'?
MICHAEL FLYNN: Yeah, I mean, I hate to say it’s not my job, but that — my job was to ensure that the accuracy of our intelligence that was being presented was as good as it could be. And I will tell you, it goes before 2012 — I mean, when we were in Iraq, and we still had decisions to be made before there was a decision to pull out of Iraq in 2011. I mean, it was very clear what we were going to face.
Na dit fragment te hebben uitgezonden werd in hetzelfde programma de vooraanstaande Amerikaanse onderzoeksjournalist Glenn Greenwald om een reactie gevraagd. Greenwald van het on-line tijdschrift The Intercept, en die herhaaldelijk erop heeft gewezen dat de Amerikaanse media 'simply echo what U.S. government and military officials say' merkte op:
Well, first of all, that clip is unbelievable. It is literally one of the three most important military officials of the entire war on terror, General Flynn, who was the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He’s saying that the U.S. government knew that by creating a vacuum in Syria and then flooding that region with arms and money, that it was likely to result in the establishment of a caliphate by Islamic extremists in eastern Syria — which is, of course, exactly what happened. They knew that that was going to happen, and they proceeded to do it anyway. So when the U.S. government starts trying to point the finger at other people for helping ISIS, they really need to have a mirror put in front of them, because, by their own documents, as that extraordinary clip demonstrates, they bear huge responsibility for that happening, to say nothing of the fact that, as I said, their closest allies in the region actually fund it.
And then, just to take a step further back, The Washington Post six months ago reported what most people who pay attention to this actually know, which is that what we call ISIS is really nothing more than a bunch of ex-Baathist military officials who were disempowered and alienated by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the subsequent instability that it caused, and then the policies of the — the sectarian policies of Prime Minister Maliki in basically taking away all of the power of those ex-Baathists in favor of Shiite militias and Iran-aligned militias and the like. And so, essentially, what I think everybody at this point understands is that the reason there is such a thing as ISIS is because the U.S. invaded Iraq and caused massive instability, destroyed the entire society, destroyed all of the infrastructure, destroyed all order, and it was in that chaos that ISIS was able to emerge. So, again, if you’re looking for blame, beyond ISIS, the U.S. government is a really good place to look…
So, as far as why the media is willing to sort of spread these claims so uncritically, you know, there are complicated reasons. I mean, one is that the media itself is very nationalistic, and they get wrapped up and caught up in the sort of über-patriotism and jingoism as much as non-journalists do, and see the world through that lens. Another is that they spend a huge amount of time with these government officials. They are in the same socio-economic sphere. They talk to them all day and night, because that’s where they get their stories from, is the ones that are fed to them by officials. And so they see the world through their lens and also, at the same time, want to serve them and please them in order to continue to get sources. A lot of these people are people who work for large corporations, and large corporations want to keep positive relations with the U.S. government, and so report favorably on them rather than in a way that would anger the government, because that’s not in their interest to do.
And then, finally, there’s a lot of resentment and bitterness to the Snowden reporting among lots of journalists, because they were excluded from the story, though journalism won a lot of awards that they themselves have never won. And they hate Edward Snowden, and they hate the journalism that he enabled, and so this is sort of their chance to demonize not just him, but the journalism. And so, they’re eagerly giving a platform to any U.S. officials who want to say that the person who has blood on their hands is Edward Snowden.
Als gezagsgetrouwe mainstream-opiniemaker die er diep van doordrongen is dat je niet de hand bijt die je voedt wist de bejaarde Paul Brill van de Volkskrant evenwel verontwaardigd te stellen: 'Obama's dilemma laat Edward Snowden koud,' en probeerde hij zijn publiek ervan te overtuigen dat er niets 'verrassend is' aan het feit 'dat de VS alles nalopen,' aangezien voor hem en andere propagandisten '[n]og steeds geldt: liever een spiedende Amerikaan dan een Chinees of Iraniër,' geheel in lijn met de Koude Oorlogsdogma van 'liever een kruisraket in de tuin dan een Rus in de keuken.' Brill, tevens 'Board Member at Fonds Bijzondere Journalistieke Projecten,' is geen uitzondering, maar staat juist model voor het gênant lage niveau van de polder-journalistiek. Vandaar dat Marcel Kurpershoek moeiteloos de opinievorming van het NRC-publiek kan beïnvloeden. Ook hij past naadloos in de propaganda-stijl van de Nederlandse 'kwaliteitskranten.' In hun wereldbeschouwing is en blijft Iran, en daarmee Syrië, en dus Rusland het grote kwaad in de wereld. Voor hen is het een gruwel dat, in de woorden van Kurpershoek, 'Poetin' het 'Westen schaakmat [zet] in Syrië,' en moet er veel meer geld naar het westers militair-industrieel complex vloeien, aangezien 'Eén conclusie al [kan] worden getrokken: een unie die niet is gebouwd op stevige fundamenten van politiek en veiligheid is een boom die bij de eerste storm omvalt.' De suggestie is dat er, voordat u het weet, een Rus in uw keuken zit.
Deze infantiele angstzaaierij voert de boventoon in kringen van wat Henk Hofland betitelde als 'de politiek-literaire elite.' Het wil niet tot de intellectuele hooligans alhier doordringen dat wanneer zij het nazi-bombardement op Rotterdam beschouwen als 'één van de grootste misdaden' in de geschiedenis, precies hetzelfde opgaat voor de Amerikaanse 'Shock and Awe' bombardementen op bevolkingscentra als Hiroshima, Pyongyang (waarbij 75 percent van de Noord-Koreaanse hoofdstad tijdens de Korea Oorlog werd vernietigd), Hanoi, Bagdad, Afghanistan, Irak, Libië en de toekomstige bombardementen, die Henk Hofland in De Groene Amsterdammer impliciet aanprijst als, ik citeer: 'De Libische manier.' Hoflands autisme verhindert hem te beseffen dat volgens het internationaal recht zijn 'Libische manier' een even 'enorme infame daad' is als het bombardement op Rotterdam dat was. Het enige verschil is dat vandaag de dag de burgerslachtoffers veel talrijker zijn dan op 10 mei 1940. Niets heeft Hofland en zijn claque geleerd van de Tweede Oorlog, behalve dan misschien dat wanneer 'we' harder meppen dan 'onze' tegenstander, 'we' winnen, maar dat is niet veel meer dan de wijsheid van de straat. Niet alleen zitten 'we' in de polder opgescheept met een misdadig politiek systeem, dat vanuit het Pentagon, Wall Street en het Witte Huis wordt aangestuurd, maar bovendien worden 'we' geconfronteerd met een tot op het bot moreel gecorrumpeerde 'politiek-literaire elite.' Zij is intellectueel geenszins voorbereid op de grote omwenteling waarvan het begin zich al voltrekt. Daarentegen zijn buiten Nederland genoeg scherpzinnige intellectuelen te vinden. Zo eindigde de Iraanse-Amerikaanse hoogleraar Hamid Dabashi zijn boek Iran. A People Interrupted (2008) met de volgende woorden:
The abiding fact that determines the cosmopolitanism I propose here and shapes the anti colonial modernity that becomes the breeding ground of historical agency is history itself. For much of the rest of the world, those with the patience of a solemn river running quietly through the elongated valleys of any notion of home and habitat, history has not ended. For them history has just begun — for they have just entered it, for they never exited it. Them is also us — for the anti colonial modernity I propose here embraces as much the disenfranchised and radicalized minorities within the so-called Metropolitan West as much as it does the rest of the world — and thus the only way that Americans can help promote democracy in Iran or anywhere else in the world is by first and foremost restoring and safeguarding it in their own country.
Mijn bejaarde generatiegenoten zijn geboren in de bloedigste eeuw van de geschiedenis. Om de economische belangen van de westerse metropolis te dienen, werd en wordt nog steeds met grof geweld de periferie onderdrukt en uitgebuit, en zagen de koloniale machten, op zoek naar Lebensraum, zich genoodzaakt ook elkaar af te slachten. Inmiddels is het Westen niet langer meer de enige metropolis. In het oosten is een nieuwe economische macht opgestaan. Het enige dat de Hoflanden en Kurpershoeken, de Makkianen en Smeetsen kunnen doen, is naar het koloniale verleden terug verlangen, maar meer ook niet. De ondergaande zon kan men hooguit beschrijven maar niet tegenhouden, zo merkte Kierkegaard eens op. Sommige fenomenen zijn zo eenvoudig om te begrijpen dat het verbijsterend is hoe stupide de polder 'elite' is. De stem van Hofland en Kurpershoek is die van de periferie geworden. 'We' leven in de 21ste eeuw. Godzijdank is het geestelijk niveau onder de Amerikaanse intelligentsia veel hoger dan in de polder. Zondag 21 februari 2016 publiceerde Truthout, één van de talloze websites van kritische Amerikaanse intellectuelen, een interview met Mike Lofgren over diens boek The Deep State. The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government (2016). Lofgren, een Amerikaanse voormalige 'senior analyst' van de begrotingscommissies van zowel de Senaat als het Huis van Afgevaardigden, antwoordde als volgt op de vraag waarom Amerikaanse burgers zijn boek zouden moeten lezen:
I think they should read it because we get a lot of pseudo-information from corporate media that focuses very intently on the horse race between the two parties to the exclusion of more fundamental issues. Meanwhile, regardless of who is elected, government policy regarding issues like economic regulation or national security doesn't change very much. I wasn't totally satisfied that my first book, The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted, answered the question, ‘What is it that happened to the US in the last 30 to 40 years such that both parties seem to enact the same policies on big things like militarism, Wall Street, or trade?’ While there are considerable differences between the parties on cultural and identity issues, there is very little difference in the big money issues, which is what a certain class of people who run the country are really interested in and that is what I try to explain.
Interviewster: You describe the ‘deep state’ as the iceberg beneath the visible tip of the official US government ‘that is theoretically controllable via elections.’ How does it function and what are its main components?
Lofgren: It's a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry effectively able to govern the US without reference to the consent of the governed. Its nodes are the national security agencies of government, Treasury, the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court (whose dealings are so mysterious not even most members of Congress know what the court is doing).
Most congresspeople just vote according to what their party leadership tells them. Membership in the deep state in Congress boils down to the leadership and a handful of Defense and Intelligence Committee members. The private part of the deep state is the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned about in 1961. There is also Wall Street and its symbiotic relationship with the Treasury and its regulatory agencies, like the SEC [Security and Exchange Commission]. People like Hank Paulson, who worked for [George W.] Bush, or Tim Geithner, who worked for Obama, are essentially interchangeable: Their worldview is much the same despite being of different political parties.
And then, of course, you have Silicon Valley - necessary for the technology which totally enables the NSA [National Security Agency] (which informants have told me couldn't do its job without that technology). Silicon Valley is also significant as an enormous center of new wealth. You also see their self-glorifying statements about being innovative disruptors. They certainly are disrupting the economy. There is little evidence that technology will do anything in a macroeconomic sense other than concentrating wealth even further so that we're left with CEOs on top and everyone else in the gig economy (een economie van uitzendkrachten. svh)…
Dinsdag 1 maart 2016 gaf Mike Lofgren in dezelfde Truthout de volgende analyse van het nieuws:
Blowback: Donald Trump Is the Price We Pay for the 'War on Terror'
The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.—Hermann Göring, in an interview by Gustave Gilbert, April 18, 1946
The 'war on terror' is the longest continuous war in US history. Taxpayers have ponied up over $4 trillion to wage it. Yet the consensus of our intelligence community is that we are more in danger than ever. Did we spend more than $4 trillion to make ourselves less safe? Let us unpack the contradictions.
Terrorism in the United States is statistically a negligible cause of mortality: One is about as likely to die from being crushed by a flat-screen TV, and more likely to die falling in the bathtub than from terrorism. Imagine if we had spent $4 trillion to cure cancer or heart disease. Nevertheless, nearly every word US government officials have uttered about the matter during the last 15 years has been designed to instill dread of terrorism in the population. And it has worked.
Voters in the Republican primary in South Carolina declared terrorism to be their foremost concern, eclipsing a stagnant, low-wage economy; deteriorating living standards leading to an actual increase in the death rate of GOP voters' core demographic; and the most expensive and least available health care in the "developed" world. The operatives of the national security state must have been rubbing their hands with glee: Through relentless conditioning, their agenda is now the creed of a numerically significant and highly motivated segment of the electorate.
But there was a flaw in their calculation. Those voters who felt most strongly about terrorism chose Donald Trump, who comfortably won the primary. The national security state, which is a subset of the corporate state, doesn't want Trump. They prefer to maintain the present corporate oligarchy that offers a façade of democratic process by putting forward safe, obedient, pre-programmed candidates. Since the "war of terror" began, this charade has worked rather efficiently: Bush or Kerry, Obama or McCain, Obama or Romney. And this year it was to be Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton. Or, in a pinch, a second-stringer like Marco Rubio.
Trump's proposed tax policy is such a giveaway to the rich that it would make the Bush tax cuts look like fiscal rectitude.
Our rulers may have overplayed their hand. Their implementation of a psychological shock doctrine has unhinged a sizable percentage of the American people, although the full implications were not evident for years. First, the shock of 9/11. To divert Congress and the public from the simplest explanation as to why it happened - that George W. Bush sat in Crawford, Texas, during the entire month of August 2001 and did precisely nothing — the national security complex concocted a tale of the fearsomeness and ubiquity of terrorism. Then, the fearmongering over Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, followed by a futile and intractable war. Then the crash of 2008, engineered by the same corporate mindset that dominates the national security state, only it is located on Wall Street rather than in the Pentagon. A numbing fear of unemployment and foreclosure gripped millions.
The fear apart, I was surprised by how passively Americans appeared to respond to that trifecta of shocks. After the horrific bungling and shabby lying attendant to the US invasion of Iraq, Democratic voters lined up like iron filings obeying a magnet to coronate a dud like John Kerry, who voted for the war. Likewise, Republicans in droves supported the warmongering John McCain and the rapacious corporate predator Mitt Romney. Democrats might think they have reason to be excused for being deceived by Obama's sonorous rhetoric — provided they hadn't checked his 2008 vote on the FISA Amendments Act, or the fact that John Brennan, who had separated from Bush's CIA, proceeded to attach himself, limpet-like, as a national security adviser to then-Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign.
As much as the Republican Party created Trump, it shares parentage with the transpartisan national security complex.
But the chickens finally came home to roost. What we now have, it appears, is not the public finally wising up en masse and realizing they'd been played for chumps by the corporate oligarchy and their political marionettes. No, a sizable chunk of them have lurched headlong in the opposite direction; they are sick of the charade of managed democracy, so why not try a little fascism, straight-up and without all those boring impediments like a bill of rights or checks and balances? This flight from reason is both a symptom of, and a reaction to, the underlying pathologies of the last decade and a half.
The slick operators at the CIA, Wall Street and the Kennedy School of Government did their job a little too well. It will be hard for some State Department spokesman to piously lecture other countries about human rights when a President Trump institutes a torture regime that will make George W. Bush look like the Marquess of Queensbury. Maybe he'll televise the torture sessions as the next reality TV hit.
Canadian psychologist Robert Altemeyer estimates that about a fifth of the US population consists of authoritarians. These are people who practice the creed of kiss up, kick down, by which they vent their spite on those they fancy below them while attaching themselves to a bullying, charismatic leader figure. Twenty percent isn't a majority, but combined with the fact that they are easily mobilized, there are also millions of low-information voters, unbelievably misguided people (who overlap with authoritarians), and human drones who robotically cast votes strictly by party label. Those add up to numbers that can swing an election.
Beyond those groups, I have run into a surprising number of gullible cynics not attached to either party. They persuade themselves that because Trump is the first prominent Republican to debunk the trance-like belief among the faithful that Bush was somehow not president on 9/11, it means Trump's views on the Middle East are more reasonable than the GOP norm and therefore worthy of their vote. Meanwhile, on the economic front, Trump has sneered at Republican free trade theology, but his proposed tax policy is such a giveaway to the rich that it would make the Bush tax cuts look like fiscal rectitude: Trump would literally wreck the government's finances. The selective amnesia of these gullible cynics is striking; they remind me of children playing with fire. I wonder how many of them there are in the country.
I'd estimate the odds at about fifty-fifty that this country ends up with something resembling a fascist political system.
It has finally become conventional wisdom among centrist pundits that the Republican Party (and its associated media-entertainment complex) created Trump, however much the party detests his business model. I agree with that view, but there is an aspect of the media-entertainment complex that they may be missing: It seems to have created a new voting demographic, which, with Trump, will be unprecedentedly strong. There probably has always been a relatively fixed percentage of hostile paranoiacs in the general population, but in the past they were isolated, politically unmobilized and doubtful that others shared their worldview. Twenty years of Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and other broadcast effluvia have handed them an insular group identity, stoked their rage and mobilized them.
But as much as the Republican Party created Trump, it shares parentage with the transpartisan national security complex. Politicians, generals, CIA directors, think tank warriors and terrorism "experts" have been dinning a message of fear into our heads for a decade and a half, a fear that works on many voters like catnip on a feline.
The fear, of course, can only be exorcised by a policy of nonstop militarism. Congratulations, patricians of the Beltway: However disdainful you are of the vulgarian Trump, you helped put him where he is today. After all, as the media incessantly reminded us, South Carolinians worship the military - and those same South Carolinians broke for Trump, because they want their militarism pure and untainted by the base metal of establishment hypocrisy about being a peace-loving people.
I'd estimate the odds at about fifty-fifty that this country ends up with something resembling a fascist political system, if not in 2017, then at some point in the next decade. We may never hear it called that: The prestige media have up to now mostly maintained an embargo on words like 'fascist' or 'authoritarian'; it will be fascinating to see at which point in the coming year — if at all — the embargo is lifted. No, we won't have black uniforms and goose-stepping. In the US cultural vernacular, it would be more like Lee Greenwood played on an endless loop, with patriotic ceremonies even more lugubrious and hypocritical than the ones now at professional sporting events.
I have occasionally heard it objected that Trump's gestalt is not fascist but populist. This belief betrays a confusion of ends and means. Fascism is a political and economic system; populism is a rhetorical style and campaigning technique designed to gain and maintain power by appealing to mass longings that do not normally see expression in formal political systems. Policies like mass deportation, torture, killing hostages, and so forth, are hard to assemble under the umbrella of populism. They would be awfully difficult to link with the 19th-century Populists, for example, but they readily fit under most definitions of fascism.
It is difficult to convey the sheer animal excitement at a Trump rally. And one thing that has gotten insufficient notice is how his followers threaten, or actually use, violence against protesters while Trump stands on the stage, arms folded, chin thrust out, glowering. Occasionally, as in Nevada, he utters threats of violence himself. Where, skeptics ought to ask themselves, have they seen this grainy newsreel footage before?
Maar dat de situatie in de VS fascistische karaktertrekken heeft gekregen, ontgaat de polderpers geheel. Zaterdag 27 februari 2016 berichtte NRC Handelsblad op de voorpagina onder de kop 'Het geheim van Trump':
Eerst nam niemand hem serieus. Maar na vier Republikeinse voorverkiezingen treedt hij op Super Tuesday aan als de grote favoriet. Is Donald Trump nog te stuiten?
Voor de NRC-redactie is er nog steeds sprake van een 'geheim.' Hoe slecht de redactie heeft opgelet blijkt uit het feit dat zij beweert dat 'niemand hem serieus [nam].' Dat wil zeggen: 'niemand' van de polderpers, maar wel al die miljoenen gefrustreerde en woedende Amerikanen die hem vanaf het begin hebben gesteund. Die tellen evenwel niet mee, zij werden ook niet naar hun mening gevraagd, omdat ze simpelweg voor de mainstream-pers niet meetellen. Zij vormen slechts het klapvee. Wanneer de zelfbenoemde 'kwaliteitskrant' schrijft 'niemand,' dan bedoelt zij 'niemand' van het inteelt-groepje in de polder dat al decennialang slechts elkaar als referentiekader heeft. Al die jaren beseffen mijn mainstream-collega's in Nederland niet dat er voor hun ogen een omslag gaande is, een feit waarop Noam Chomsky al decennialang wijst:
Williams: What are your opinions on the surprising progress of Donald Trump? Could it be explained by a climate of fear?
Chomsky: Fear, along with the breakdown of society during the neoliberal period. People feel isolated, helpless, victim of powerful forces that they do not understand and cannot influence. It’s interesting to compare the situation in the ‘30s, which I’m old enough to remember. Objectively, poverty and suffering were far greater. But even among poor working people and the unemployed, there was a sense of hope that is lacking now, in large part because of the growth of a militant labor movement and also the existence of political organizations outside the mainstream.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/noam-chomsky-we-owe-rise-trump-fear-and-breakdown-society
Maar omdat mijn collega's door hun neoliberale gehoorzaamheid verblind zijn geraakt, kunnen ze de werkelijkheid niet zien. Let op hun onnozelheid de komende maanden.
Williams: What are your opinions on the surprising progress of Donald Trump? Could it be explained by a climate of fear?
Chomsky: Fear, along with the breakdown of society during the neoliberal period. People feel isolated, helpless, victim of powerful forces that they do not understand and cannot influence. It’s interesting to compare the situation in the ‘30s, which I’m old enough to remember. Objectively, poverty and suffering were far greater. But even among poor working people and the unemployed, there was a sense of hope that is lacking now, in large part because of the growth of a militant labor movement and also the existence of political organizations outside the mainstream.
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/noam-chomsky-we-owe-rise-trump-fear-and-breakdown-society
Maar omdat mijn collega's door hun neoliberale gehoorzaamheid verblind zijn geraakt, kunnen ze de werkelijkheid niet zien. Let op hun onnozelheid de komende maanden.
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