Por Paul Street
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Here below is just some of the dystopian evil I have to choose from for my next Friday “This Week in Fascism” column at refusefascism.org.
It’s 10 am on Thursday, October 1 as I write this. “God” only knows how much more wild fascist news will emerge later today and tomorrow.
This is insane.
Hegseth at Quantico
On Wednesday, the openly fascist Christian white nationalist Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gave a wild “State of the Force” address to hundreds of officers and troops at the US Marines base in Quantico, Virginia. Celebrating the supposed glories of a US military based on white and male supremacism, and trashing the supposedly leftist media, the former Fatherland (FOX) News television host applauded himself for firing dozens of “woke” admirals and generals, gutting diversity programs, and barring transgendered people from the military. “No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals,” he said of the people he wants removed from the military.
The deranged “War Secretary” pointed to journalists who came to report on his fascist harangue, describing them as “anti-American losers.” Hegseth charged the journalists with “treason” for their coverage of the United States’ criminal and failed war on Iran.
After remarks absurdly proclaiming imminent US victory over Iran, “Hegsdeath” announced the creation of a new US military Robotics Command and his intent of building a giant new America First “fortress” somewhere inside the United States. He said state governors will compete to host this base, which will house thousands of troops brought back from overseas to guard the homeland.
Hegseth pointed to three civilians in attendance: the fascist, Trump-sponsoring tech trillionaire Elon Musk, the fascist tech billionaire Palmer Luckey, and the fascist former US House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Hegseth said these three monsters will map a new path forward for “the future of warfare.”
Besides marking the world’s richest man and leading global fascist Musk’s return to Trump’s good graces, this new Pentagon initiative, dubbed “Project Meridian,” epitomize the noxious wedding together of corporate power, private super-wealth, artificial intelligence/big tech (the “Nerd Reich”), and military power that characterize contemporary “end times fascism.”
“As usual,” The New York Times adds, “Hegseth wove religious language and Christian themes throughout his address and derided ‘secular humanism,’ adding that he had established an office of religious affairs that would report directly to him.”[1]
Hegseth’s fascist oration marked the one-year anniversary of his and Trump’s addresses to more than 800 top military commanders called to Quantico to hear Hegseth denounce international war and human rights law and to learn from the fascist US president that the United States’ top adversary is “the enemy within,” meaning any and all of Trump’s domestic opponents and critics, concentrated in Democratic-run cities Trump wanted used as training ground for wars abroad.
(Last Friday, Hegseth made a not-so-veiled call for US military personnel to vote Republifascist in the midterm elections. Hegseth suggested that they could make the difference in some districts predicted to vote blue.)
A Farcical Fascist Attack on Jack Smith
A farcical hearing of the Republi-fascist-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday attacked former special federal prosecutor Jack Smith with baseless and preposterous charges of perjury, bullying, and political persecution. The hearing was pure retribution for the expert investigations Smith conducted into Trump’s theft of classified documents and Trump’s attempt to subvert and cancel the 2020 presidential election. But for Trump’s re-election in 2024, both cases would have led to new felony convictions and possible incarceration for the nation’s depraved 47th president.
The MAGA Senators going after Smith yesterday used abusive language. Senator Eric Schmitt (Rf-MO) called Smith a “dirtbag,” and Senator John Kennedy (Rf-LA) told Smith, “You make me want to throw up in my mouth.”
It was a chilling episode in the MAGA party’s war on the rule of law.
Fascist Meta’s Election Interference on Behalf of the Fascist Presidential Candidate in Brazil
The major “Nerd Reich” tech giant Meta has revealed its commitment to fascism by banning the left Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s campaign ads. This is an act of election interference on behalf of Brazil’s fascist presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of Trump’s fascist ally Jair Bolsonaro, who attempted to lead a January 6-like coup against Lula’s re-election in 2022.
Fascist Advisors are Telling Trump to Declare Martial Law and Take Over the Midterms
Last Sunday morning, CNN reported on an Atlantic story showing that a number of Trump influencers are pushing the dictator-admiring US president to declare martial law and seize federal control of the elections. Among these advisers are Peter Tickten, a wealthy fascist lawyer who went to military school with Mein Trumpf and the convicted 2020 Trumpist election meddler Tina Peter. Peters recently went on right-wing media to say that she recently met with Trump and that he told her that “there is a plan to do what I am asking” — declare a national emergency and take over the elections.
CNN’s Jake Tapper showed a clip of Trump recently saying, “the Republicans should take over the voting in at least 15 places…the Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”
Tapper also aired Trump’s response when a right-wing talk show host recently told Trump he should declare a national emergency to mandate his control of the elections: “stranger things have happened.”
Fascist Supremes Sign Off on a Fascist National Voter Database
Last Friday afternoon, after the time stamp (11 AM) of my last “This Week in Fascism” report, the Trumpist Supreme Court greenlighted the White House’s deployment of an unconstitutional and deeply flawed national citizen database. The database is meant for “red” (Republifascist) state officials to use to disenfranchise people on the false Trumpian premise that US elections are plagued by illegal noncitizen voting. The League of Women Voters and other liberal voting rights groups said the ruling puts “millions of Americans at risk of being unlawfully targeted by the administration’s unreliable voter purge database weeks before the midterm elections.”
Georgia’s Fascist House Representative and Senate Candidate “Fine” with Troops at the Polls
Last Sunday, Rep. Mike Collins (Rf-GA), the Trump-backed Republi-fascist candidate for Georgia’s U.S. Senate seat, said he was “fine” with federal troops being sent to the polls this November.
Mein Trumpf Using Taxpayer Dollars to Advance Self and Fascism
Over the weekend, in an openly illegal misuse of public money, the White House aired a 30-second spot of Trump promising to “demolish the deep state, expel the warmongers from our government,” and “cast out the communists, Marxists, and fascists.”
Curious words from an open fascist warmonger who is trying to use “the deep state” to subvert the 2026 elections.
The ad says, “Paid for by the U.S. Government.” It’s the third taxpayer-financed White House Trump-centric add to appear on national television this year, at a cumulative cost well over $1 million.
With these commercials, the fascist Trump regime is arch-criminally bilking taxpayers to promote himself and promote fascist ideology, which obsessively targets the left, while denying his own fascism.
Fascist Supremes Approve Resumption of Fascist Third Country Deportations
The fascist Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the “Trump administration can resume rapidly deporting immigrants to countries other than their own…The one-page emergency ruling was unsigned and gave no vote count,” the New York Times reports. Further:
“The deportations had been blocked recently after a federal court ruled the administration could not deport migrants to third countries unless they were given an opportunity to contest their removals, including to voice concerns that they might be persecuted or tortured abroad…The justices’ ruling means that the administration can, for now, continue its program and conduct rapid deportations including to countries like Equatorial Guinea, where U.S. deportees were hooded, bound and beaten by the police…”
The decision is what a leading immigrant rights lawyer calls “a devastating result” that “allow[s] the administration to resume sending people to third countries where they face persecution or torture.” The fascist Department of Homeland Security’s top lawyer called the ruling a “victory,” telling immigrants, “It’s not too late to get $3,000 and a flight home.”
Fascist ICE’s “Quiet” but Brutal Summer Surge
The New York Times on Monday reported at length on “A Quiet ICE Surge That Unfolded ‘Everywhere All at Once’ This Summer”:
“The most effective escalation of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign happened quietly. Unlike earlier high-profile raids that drew thousands of protesters into the streets of Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis, the surge in arrests in June, July and August was captured mostly by grainy security camera footage, through cracked blinds and from behind closed doors.
Arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement this summer soared to record highs since the start of this Trump administration — with 43,000 in June, more than 49,000 in July and nearly 51,000 in August — as officials cut or narrowed the pathways to legal residency in the United States and expanded the pool of people eligible for deportation.
Federal agents appeared in nearly every corner of daily life, carrying out operations at hospitals and airports, outside suburban schools and along rural construction sites and truck stops. They fanned out from coastal cities in Maine to desert towns in Arizona, across the open plains of Wyoming and down through the southern borderlands.
In Republican-led states like Texas and Florida, where the swell was strongest, they amplified their reach through partnerships with sheriffs and state highway patrol officers. In Democratic strongholds, they intensified their activities despite laws meant to restrict them.”
David Bier of the Cato Institute told the Times that “this gradual rise everywhere all at once, through a lot of means, is enabling the operation to fly under the radar.”
The Trump regime may have toned down its highly visible, militarized ethnic cleansing raids that generated widespread backlash last year and winter, but its repackaged fascist remigration campaign is brutally sweeping up, detaining, torturing and trafficking more of our fellow human beings than ever before. The Times report is full of horrific stories, like this one:
“On the morning of Aug. 20, Grace Calero, 39, and her daughter, Giulianna Carriel, 19, were rushed to a hospital after a car crash south of Orlando, Fla. As medical staff treated them for injuries, a federal agent entered the emergency ward and began questioning Grace’s sister, Gia Calero, about the women’s immigration status, the sister said. He remained in the room, joking with nurses. It wasn’t until hours later, after Grace’s neck brace was removed, that the officer announced he was with ICE, Gia said. In the dramatic scene, captured by Gia on her cellphone, five deputies with the Polk County Sheriff’s Office arrived. They handcuffed Grace as Giulianna wailed on a bed, clinging to her mother and begging them not to take her. ‘They didn’t even let them recover,’ Gia Calero said.”
“No Reforms”: Amnesty International Calls for the Abolition of Fascist ICE
As Monthly Review Online reported Tuesday, the international human rights organization Amnesty International has called for the abolition of Trump’s Gestapo (ICE )in a new 100-page plus report documenting grave human rights abuses in the regime’s ethnic cleansing campaign. The report focuses on ICE and Border Patrol’s horrific attacks on the Twin Cities, Chicago, New Orleans and Washington, DC in 2025 and early 2026. The abuses documented by Amnesty International include “racially discriminatory immigration enforcement; unjustified us of force by federal agents; unlawful killings by federal agents; repression of protests through tear gas and pepper spray; unlawful surveillance; and inhumane detention conditions.” Further:
“Amy Fischer, Amnesty’s director of refugee and migrant rights, said it’s rare move for the organization to call for an agency to be fully abolished, but that the report shows the agency has reached a tipping point after decades of ‘mass impunity. There are simply no reforms that would bring this agency into alignment with United States right human rights obligations.’”
…Actually, Fascist ICE is Adding 5000 More Pigs with Money from Congress
It was reported Tuesday that fascist ICE is preparing a new pig hiring surge to support the fascist US president’s fascist ethnic cleansing, torture, and human trafficking program. Trump’s Gestapo will add more than 5000 new sadistic, racist and nativist gendarmes by the end of the year, a mass hiring enabled by the sickening infusion of more than $100 billion from Congress earlier this year.
Fascist Tennessee Execution Called Off with One Hour to Go, Then Quickly Reinstated by Fascist Supreme Court, Then Botched…
In other horrific news, the Christian fascist governor of Tennessee, Bill Lee, ordered his state to go ahead with its first execution of a woman in more than 200 years Wednesday night. Lee refused to commute the death sentence of Christa Pike for a murder she committed in 1995 at the age of 18 after a childhood poisoned by extreme neglect and sexual abuse. An hour before she was to be put to death, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth District said it needed to review Pike’s claims of abuse. Lee then immediately went over the appeals court’s head to the fascist US Supreme Court, which broke with the usual norm of permitting appellate review and ordered that the execution take place Wednesday. Then the incompetent state of Tennessee botched the execution. Ms. Pike, 50, was hospitalized Wednesday evening after two doses of the lethal drug pentobarbital failed to killer her. The whole episode is a clear violation of the US Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, which permits cruel and unusual punishment.
Gov. Lee’s attempted misogynist state-murder of Pike reflected vicious anti-scientific denial of the basic scientific fact that the horrific abuse of youths commonly generate pathological behaviors on the part of those abused
So, dear readers, let me know what I’ve left out – quite a bit, I’m guessing. I have a doctorate in history, long experience in research, and numerous book publications along with hundreds of published essays and a fair amount of time (usually) to stay up on current events, and I can’t keep up with the fascism. It’s hard to imagine that hard-working folks struggling to keep their head above water in Trump’s dystopia can keep tabs on anything close to all the shit that’s going down, some of which is fairly complicated.
Note
+1. In a social media post, the brilliant social critic Henry Giroux wrote this about “Project Meridian”:
“It would be easy to dismiss this as another example of MAGA idiocy, but that would miss what is most dangerous about it. Something far darker is at work. We are witnessing a political and ethical madness in which billionaires, right-wing ideologues, arms merchants, and authoritarian politicians are handed the power to imagine the future through the barrel of a gun and new upgraded AI guided weapons of mass destruction. This is what happens when gangster capitalism joins forces with a militarized state and technology is increasingly harnessed to surveillance, domination, and death…The issue is not simply that incompetence and stupidity have migrated to the commanding heights of power. It is that they now come armed with enormous wealth, advanced technologies, a vast military apparatus, and a contempt for democracy and human life. This is fascism upgraded for the age of AI and billionaire rule, stripped of restraints and drunk on the fantasy that every problem can be solved through force, every enemy eliminated, and every limit overcome by technology and violence. Hegseth and the Trump administration are symptomatic of a broader fusion of hyper-militarism, steroidal masculinity, and a pathological pleasure in violence, all paraded under the language of ‘lethality.’ What is being celebrated here is not simply military power but a political culture in which domination is confused with strength, cruelty with resolve, ignorance with insight, and the capacity to inflict violence with the right to rule. Gangster capitalism has reached the point where it can imagine no future except one organized around war, militarization, surveillance, and the worship of power.”
Paul Street’s latest book is This Happened Here: Amerikaners, Neoliberals, and the Trumping of America (London: Routledge, 2022).
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