Steve Bannon

America is No Longer the Leader of the Free World

~ Randy Blazak ~ 3 Comments

March 4, 2025

Many of us watched the February 28th White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is abject horror. One of our most heralded allies was being attacked by Trump and Vance like a child being berated for breaking a window with a baseball. Then it became clear that it was the set up. An ambush for Trump’s Russian bosses. Vance badgering him to apologize. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s boyfriend chiding him about not wearing a suit (when few of Trump’s White House chums have). I wanted Zelenskyy to just say to Trump, “Mr. President, are you aligned with America’s ally, Ukraine, or Putin?”

We know what Trump would have said – “I’m not aligned with anybody.” 

In that moment, it was clear that America was no longer the leader of the free world. That our allies could no longer rely on us and that we weren’t going to lift a finger to defend democracy. In that moment, Trump gave Putin the green light to obliterate Ukraine. At the United Nations, we voted with Russia (and North Korea) against the condemnation of Russia’s 2022 invasion. The following actions backed that position up, including halting support of military aid to Ukraine, ceasing cyber operations against Russia, mass firings at the CIA and FBI, and Trump asking to end U.S. sanctions against Russia. What more could Vladimir Putin ask for? (I’m sure we’ll find out.)

Trump’s capitulation to Russia and the falling in line of the MAGA cult rings familiar. In the years before the attack on Pearl Harbor, there were Americans, including in Congress, that thought the United States sending billions of dollars to our European allies to fight Nazi Germany was a big ol’ waste. Those nations weren’t sufficiently “grateful.” This included after Germany began their brutal blitzkrieg of Great Britain in 1940. They wanted England to at least give us some of their islands in the Caribbean for helping them. But FDR said, F that. We’re all in for freedom.

What launched the American century began in the first global conflict. During the “war to end all wars” (aka WW I), isolationist voices had the day, until it was clear that Britain and France REALLY need our help (and a ton of American merchant ships were being sunk by U-boats). On April 6, 1917, we declared war on Germany and shut that shit down. By November of the following year, the war was over. And the United States was the new hot shot defender of freedom, our perfect hair blowing in the wind. Ever since that moment in 1918, lovers of freedom and democracy knew we were their ride or die. Sure there were some ethical lapses, Central America, Vietnam, but for the most part we were the good guys on the planet.

That ended last Friday. The global realignment, long envisioned my MAGA architects, has jettisoned its long held alliance with Europe, viewed as decadent by Steve Bannon and white nationalists, in favor of an allegiance to authoritarian regimes like Russia. France is “socialist” and Moscow has clean subways. Sure, political dissidents are thrown into Siberian prisons, but Moscow has clean subways. We are now a part of the axis of evil and Trump and his handlers could not be happier.

I often tell the story of the time I was at a meeting at the U.S. embassy in London in 2018. I was there as a part of a government-funded trip to study how the British respond to violent extremism. We just happened to be at the embassy the day President Trump was attending a summit in Helsinki, Finland with the Russian leader. We all watched the press conference where Trump famously said that he trusted Putin’s assertion that Russia didn’t interfere in the 2016 election, over the evidence presented by his own intelligence agencies. The shock among the career diplomats I was watching with was palpable. They immediately scrambled to craft a response to the fact that the U.S. President and had just publicly chosen loyalty to the biggest dictator on the planet over his own nation.

We don’t know if Putin has some serious kompromat on Trump (perhaps the pee pee tapes are in a vault in the Kremlin) or Trump just really wants to be an authoritarian (or both), but Trump’s mandate is clear. He’s out for himself. He’s never read the Constitution, or The Bible for that matter. I’d lay odds he’s never read a complete book. He’s the transactional president. If it serves him and the sycophants that kiss his ass, he will throw Americans and their security under the bus. He will wage war on our allies, like Canada and Mexico, and sing the praises of dictators like Turkey’s Erdoğan and Hungary’s Orbán. Whatever fluffs his fragile ego.

Trump is murdering America.

So, sorry Ukraine, and other nations fighting to be free and democratic, we now have our own fight to win.

I Remember America: It Was a Good 248 Years

~ Randy Blazak ~ 6 Comments

July 4, 2024

There have been red flags along the way; the Civil War, Watergate, Rosanne Barr singing the national anthem at a Padres game. America has always been an idea more than a reality. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” referred to a small group of white men in 1776, some of whom owned slaves and none of whom (except for Thomas Paine) thought women should have a vote. America was a work in a progress. It wasn’t until the arrival of an orange-hued huxter that this grand experiment went completely off the rails.

When Trump and his mail order bride came down the golden escalator in 2015, no sane thinking person thought this malignant narcissistic game show host could become the leader to the free world. Trump was a buffoon with a string of bankruptcies. (You have to be a special kind of moron to bankrupt a casino.) But his rough justice brand of racism (“Mexicans are murderers and rapists”) spoke to the victims of globalization and, while he lost the popular vote, he managed to sneak in to the high office. Thus began the campaign to hijack the no-longer Grand Ol Party and dismantle the guard rails of democracy.

If the 2022 Dobbs decision, that ended women’s bodily sovereignty, was a sign that this was democracy’s sunset, the July first Supreme Court decision in Trump vs. United States, that gave presidents absolute immunity, was our lights-out moment. Goodnight, John Boy. The President is now officially above the law. Trump will claim that he is now immune from all indictments, past and future. If re-elected, he becomes Caesar.

The once revered Supreme Court has gone down this road before. In 2000, the court literally stopped the counting of ballots in Florida and handed the presidency to George W. Bush. But the Federalist Trump Court, stacked with his three nominees and insurrection supporters Alito and Thomas, represent the complete obliteration of the checks and balances system our Founding Fathers designed. The federal judiciary is now merely an extension of MAGA. MAGA controls the House of Representatives as well. So if Trump’s minions take the Senate and he takes back the White House, which controls the entire Executive Branch, America is completely under the control of this madman who has already proclaimed he will be a dictator on Day 1.

Since 1984, when I became a political science major at Emory University (on top of my sociology major), I have dedicated my life to understanding how fascism happens. My work has included going undercover in fascist movements to see how they recruit young people, to entering war zones in Eastern Europe to help children escape the invasion of fascists. For forty years, I have been consumed with this work in hopes that I could prevent it from happening here. That forty years of work, of expertise in this field, tells me one thing. It is happening here.

Let me put this into the most simple words I can, Donald Trump does not give a fuck about America or Americans. He would never let any of his knuckle-dragging MAGA base into his haughty Mar-a-Lago affairs where he flaunts his stolen wealth. Trump cares about power and ego and ratings. And he cares about retribution. He has made it exceedingly clear that his second term would be about revenge, including firing any and all federal workers that are not absolutely loyal to him. His (currently imprisoned) top advisor, Steve Bannon, has said Trump 2.0 will arrest, try, and imprison Biden officials and anyone viewed as not supporting Trump, including former FBI acting Director Andrew McCabe, former FBI Director James Comey, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, former Attorney General William Barr and former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.

Trump 2.0, would be modeled on the authoritarian regimes Trump has only shown admiration for. A national abortion ban, the releasing of the January 6 terrorists, and detention camps for immigrants would be the first impact. The hollowing out of voting access for minority populations and the protection of corporations from regulations comes next. Then, as Trump has publicly supported, the implementation of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, replacing every federal worker not loyal to Trump, from the highest executive office staff to the lowest park ranger, with Christian nationalists. Department of Education? Gone. Environmental regulations? Gone. Civil rights enforcements? Gone. And finally, because of the July 1 ruling, Trump can legally “take out” any perceived opponents, from Nancy Pelosi to the teenage anarchist down the street. America becomes a hellscape where the Confederacy has won the long civil war. There will be blood.

Why Americans are not out in the streets, I’ll never know. Maybe we’re the frog in the slowly boiling pot. Maybe it’s, as John Lennon sang in 1970, they “keep you doped with religion and sex and TV and you think you’re so clever and classless and free.” Or maybe we have prematurely achieved Idiocracy. Whatever reason, fascism is at our doorstep and turning the knob.

Even if you think my words alarmist, you know another four years of Trump appointments to the federal judiciary will fundamentally transform the nation for generations in a way that will make America the nineteenth century again. An immunized presidency will provide no disincentive to the wanton criminal behavior of a sociopath. A sociopath who only cares about his own power.

Yeah, Joe Biden’s performance at the recent debate was a train wreck, but I would vote for Biden in a coma if it meant keeping this very real threat to the nation from access to the levers of our democracy. Trump and his GOP cult of personality will burn it to the ground.

Fascists Fall for Trump, their Nazi Dream Date

~ Randy Blazak ~ 6 Comments

August 4, 2017

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The Metroplex was a beautiful abandoned building turned into a thriving punk rock club and the de facto Island of Misfit Toys in the 1980s. I saw shows there by the Dead Kennedys, the Circle Jerks and a million others (including, oddly, Mick Taylor of the Rolling Stones). I did my first interview with a racist skinhead there 31 years ago this summer. There had been a skinhead brawl at the competing 688 Club that had sent the doorman to the hospital. You can hear the skinhead version of events in the Anti-Heroes’ song, “Disco Riot.”

I had first encountered skinheads when I was student in London in 1982. I hopped on a train in Victoria Station to my internship in a clinic out in suburban Thamesmead. There were three skinheads in the car and me. They were drawing swastikas and National Front logos on the wall. One looked at me and then scrawled, “Kill a mod.” I got off at the next stop. By 1986, racist skinheads were popping up all over America, including the Old Glory Skins in Atlanta. I was 22 and this kid, in boots and braces, was probably 18. I wanted to know what was going on.

“What do you guys really want?” I asked him as we sat on the curb of Marietta Street, the heat too unbearable inside the Metroplex.

“We just want a strong leader who will kick all the fucking mud races out of the county.”

I wonder where that kid is now. I bet he’s happy. He finally got his “strong leader.”

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Much has been written (including by me) about how Donald Trump has used white supremacist tactics, dog whistles, and code words to generate support from the extreme right and white supremacist counter-culture. Remember when he pretended not to know who David Duke was? When he was elected, white nationalist, oh, excuse me, “alt-right” leaders like Richard Spencer raced to Washington to exalt “Hail Trump!” with a stiff-armed salute.

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His campaign to take America back to 1950 (in an interview with CNN he said that was the “again” in his “Make America Great Again” slogan), has only gained momentum. His fascistic rule by tweet undermines the fabric our democracy, including his recent pronouncement that all transgendered people will be kicked out of the U.S. military. His unquestioning flock believe that accusations of racism are just a liberal (Jewish?) plot, spread by the fake (Jewish?) media.

Certainly the people I have been studying for over thirty years have been watching. I don’t go to Klan rallies anymore or bring beer to skinhead parties to get them to talk, but I still hang out with them in their virtual worlds and eavesdrop on their conversations in neo-Nazi discussion groups and the hang-outs in the darkest corners of the web (i.e., Reddit). And boy howdy, do racists love Trump.

The latests clarion call from their fake blonde führer is his plan to limit legal immigration to English-speaking only applicants. Everyone knows this is not about keeping German-only speaking immigrants out of the country. It’s about brown and black people, especially brown people from Latin America. It’s not even a veiled attempt at racism. It’s clear as a bell, and the radical right (and some of the Trump trolls who post on my Facebook page) are loving it. Just try to keep up with this thread on Stormfront, the leading discussion site for white supremacists: STORMFRONT

WhiteHistoryWrightBrosTrump’s “merit based” plan (you know, because the people who pick our food have no merit) would only offer visas to immigrants who have high-paying job offers and speak English better than our Drunk Uncle president. It would end the diversity that comes from the visa lottery and that was making America great long before Trump’s made in China MAGA dunce caps sat on the empty noggins of Bocephus and Betty Lou. It would also drastically restrict  the number of refugees allowed in the country, because, you know, screw that whole America is a “beacon of freedom” thing. If only we had more Nazi rocket scientists who needed sanctuary. The Statue of Liberty was a French (Jewish?) plot.

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These policies are surely the work of right-wing hate groups, like FAIR (the Federation for American Immigration Reform), that have Steve Bannon’s blotchy Caucasian ear and the soul of “more than kinda” racist Stephen Miller. And they are catnip to white supremacists. You thought they went gaga over Trump’s unconstitutional Muslim ban and Attorney General Jeff Sessions praise of the 1924 “Whites Only” immigration act. (That’s the one that caused the 1920s KKK to close up shop because they got what they were marching for.) The Little Hitlers are going ape poo over Trump’s latest plan to make America white again. I know. I lurk in their world of stupidity. And we don’t even have to get into his silencing of the First Lady (First Ladies are to be seen and not heard), or the stomping on transgender rights (“No boot camp for you!”). Fascist forums have threads dedicated to both.  The immigration thing alone has them ginned up like frat boys on pledge night.

Yes, America has a president who was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan. But Trump won’t get his final solution. He’s clueless at how America works. The guy can’t even speak in complete sentences or keep his lies straight. The Republican congress has blocked him and the courts have blocked him and the diverse patchwork of the American populace will continue to block him. But there will be casualties along the way as the 2017 alt-right versions of those 1980s skinheads believe they’ve got their strong leader. That’s why Americans cannot be silent or still.

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