First Lady Melania Trump Shares a Farewell Message

 

Posted on January 18, 2021 by Sundance

Always with grace. Always with class.  Always with the highest respect for her role as America’s First Lady…. A farewell message from First Lady Melania Trump:

 

 

 

 

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US Media: ‘Telling China’s Story Well’

US Media: 'Telling China's Story Well'

Judith Bergman for Gatestone Institute

(Photo by Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

One of the foremost tasks of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under Xi Jinping is, at his directive, to "tell stories about China well and spread China's voice well; enable the world to see a multidimensional and colorful China; present China as a builder of world peace, a contributor to global development, and an upholder of international order".

When the coronavirus pandemic broke out in December 2019 in Wuhan and the Chinese authorities allowed it to spread to the rest of the world, "telling China's story well" suddenly became an acute concern. It was necessary to save the regime's face, deflect blame and seek to portray China as heroically battling the pandemic, instead of the reality of having caused it. China went into an even more energetic propaganda mode than usual, seeking to control the narrative about the virus at every turn.

One efficient way to deflect blame is to change the topic, blame someone else, or preferably both. That is what China set out to do in multiple ways with a large-scale disinformation and propaganda effort. The CCP, however, could not rely on Chinese state media alone to do the job. It needed international cooperation. "If foreign audiences know that a piece of information comes from an official Chinese media source, they are likely to interpret it as 'propaganda' rather than 'news,'" wrote China expert Anne-Marie Brady in 2015.

Chairman Mao Zedong's strategy of "making the foreign serve China" remains an important tool in the CCP's propaganda toolbox. Fortunately for the CCP, China could rely on large segments of mainstream US media to help it with at least one central element of its multifaceted propaganda effort that has not received much attention thus far: Changing public discourse about China's role in the spread of the virus to one of Westerners "fueling racism" against Asians because of the virus.

Starting in early February, Chinese state media published a barrage of articles seeking to deflect public discourse from focusing on what China had done to make sure that the virus would not spread inside China but would be exported to the rest of the world. China's state media began by pushing a narrative of Westerners exploiting the coronavirus to fuel racism. It helped, of course, that this was the kind of narrative that many naïve Westerners were only too willing to help disseminate, perhaps unaware that they were doing Communist China's bidding.

Global Times, a mouthpiece for the CCP, started the propaganda campaign on January 31, 2020 with an article, "Racism shows ugly side as China fights coronavirus" -- nearly two months before U.S. President Donald J. Trump, in a March 17 tweet, called the disease the "Chinese virus". The piece accused the West of engaging in "'yellow peril' mythology" and went on to portray China as heroically battling the disease, while the Western media was supposedly caught up in racist "hysteria" and "racialization" of the pandemic.

Global Times followed up on February 2 with "Virus unleashes racism in Western societies", which accused Western media's coverage of the virus being made in China as racist:

"Amid a crucial period of fighting the novel coronavirus, some Western media outlets -- with a deep-rooted racist mind-set -- have lost their objectivity and rationality, issuing biased reports that would create panic among people and that may thus trigger more serious social problems".

The Xinhua News Agency, the official state-run press agency of China, followed up with a piece on February 7, "Racism worse enemy than epidemic" and another on February 11, "Racism a disease more difficult to eradicate" and yet another the next day, "Western media should quit racist reporting as China fights epidemic".

China could rely on two factors in distributing this narrative of the "virus fueling racism" in the US. First, there is the assured traction that the mere mention of racism immediately gets in the US for multiple reasons, chief among them the primacy of identity politics in public discourse. Second, the media conglomerates that own the major television networks in the US are deeply involved in business dealings with China and are therefore loathe to upset Beijing in any way that might jeopardize their access to the Chinese market of 1.4 billion potential customers.

The willingness of the media conglomerates to kowtow to the CCP has been abundantly demonstrated in the past decades by the Hollywood studios that these media conglomerates also own. The kowtowing of the studios comes in various forms of submission to CCP censorship and includes co-productions and partnerships with Chinese state-operated enterprises, such as that of Walt Disney Studios and Shanghai Disneyland Resort, which is majority-owned by Shanghai Shendi Group, a conglomerate of three companies owned by Shanghai's government.

According to an August 2020 report, Made in Hollywood, Censored by Beijing,by American PEN:

"The Chinese Communist Party... holds major sway over whether a Hollywood movie will be profitable or not—and studio executives know it. The result is a system in which Beijing bureaucrats can demand changes to Hollywood movies—or expect Hollywood insiders to anticipate and make these changes, unprompted—without any significant hue or cry over such censorship,"

Here is an extremely brief overview of some of the television networks owned by the media conglomerates:

• Warner Media, which owns the Warner Bros film studios, owns CNN worldwide in addition to a host of entertainment and sports networks.
• NBC Universal, which owns Universal Studios, owns a host of TV channels, among them NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC.
• ViacomCBS, which owns Paramount pictures, owns the CBS TV network, including CBS News, CBS Sports, Comedy Central and MTV.
• The Walt Disney Company, which owns Walt Disney Pictures, 20th Century Studios, Searchlight Pictures, Marvel and Lucas Film, owns the ABC news channel in addition to a host of entertainment channels.

Several of those television networks distributed China's propaganda message about Westerners fueling racism so well that Global Times put together a video highlighting just how well they had done.

In a tweet on March 23, just six days after Trump called the virus "the Chinese virus" for the first time, Global Times played a video with clips from American television networks accusing Donald Trump of racism.

The first clip was of ABC White House reporter Cecilia Vega, who asked Trump on March 18, "Why do you keep calling this the Chinese virus? Why do you keep doing this, a lot of people say it is racist?"

"Because," Trump replied, "it comes from China. It is not racist at all".

Next up on the Global Times video was a clip of Richard Engel, chief foreign correspondent of NBC news, who said in a similar vein:

"It is easy to scapegoat people and this is what has always happened when there have been pandemics... This is a virus that came from the territory of China, but came from bats. This is a bat virus, not a China virus".

NBC news also ran a lengthy article about the exchange between Vega and Trump, in which NBC never once addressed China's responsibility for the spread of the virus, and instead quoted multiple sources saying that Trump was fueling racism.

The Global Times video also contained a clip with CNN anchor Chris Cuomo saying:

"The word coronavirus crossed out and changed to Chinese -- who does that help? We don't need an enemy. We have one: The virus... This isn't about China. It is about us".

The clips played by the Global Times provided textbook examples of American media hard at work, wittingly or not, helping the CCP to shape public opinion in the US. The Global Times video amplified the CCP message even further with quotes from Hillary Clinton, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and celebrities, all parroting the CCP narrative.

The CCP's use of the racism argument as an early element of its coronavirus propaganda campaign came to fashion public discourse about the virus significantly in the US, Europe and beyond. The CCP evidently knew the West well enough to calculate that framing the debate in terms of racism would be a highly successful strategy that would play into the divisive issue of identity politics in the US and Europe.

The CCP could not have done it, however, without the media's lack of critical judgment of China's behavior, as well as the media's utter lack of interest in the CCP's quest for global domination and, according to FBI Director Christopher Wray, its willingness to achieve it "by any means necessary."

Judith Bergman, a columnist, lawyer and political analyst, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

First Lady honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

 

OAN Newsroom

UPDATED 9:17 AM PT – Monday, January 18, 2021

First Lady Melania Trump honored Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. while taking to Twitter on Monday, which marked half a century since his passing

She noted, “Dr. King’s pursuit of freedom and equal opportunity ensured a brighter more prosperous future for generations to come.”

 

 In 1968, a campaign was started for Dr. King’s birthday to become a national day of honor, which made every year on the third Monday of January a federal holiday.

 

https://www.oann.com/first-lady-honors-dr-martin-luther-king-jr/ 

 

 

 

 

 

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Guatemalan security forces clash with migrant caravan

 

OAN Newsroom

UPDATED 8:30 AM PT – Monday, January 18, 2021

As thousands of migrants in Guatemala push through police barricades to reach the United States, many Americans are left concerned about Democrat attitudes toward the issue.

On Sunday, a report exposed a violent caravan of roughly 1,000 migrants who edged their way through security forces despite being tear gassed, all in a bid to make their way to Mexico with the United States as their final destination.

“We were informed just last night that elements of the Honduran Maras criminal gang and organized crime had infiltrated,” stated Guillermo Diaz, director of the Guatemalan Migration Institute. “This worried us more, and fortunately the forces of law and order established a contingency plan for these cases and controlled this that was a battle.”

While President Trump’s immigration policy ensures migrants must wait for asylum approval before entering the U.S., Joe Biden has pledged to overturn this.

 

 

While the radical left has a track record of glamorizing illegal immigration, it overlooks the recent research on brutal exploitation and violence that vulnerable women and children face during illegal border crossings.

In a recent interview conducted by Fusion, directors of migrant shelters claimed 80 percent of Central American female migrants are raped while traveling through South America on their way to the U.S. border.

This is further supported by a study from Amnesty International, which asserted that such treks put vulnerable female migrants at significant risk of sexual violence. The threats are particularly from criminal gangs, human traffickers, other migrants as well as corrupt officials.

Moreover, attorney Elvira Gordillo, who has lived and worked along the Mexico-Guatemala border for over a decade, expressed concern and claimed that almost all women are abused on their way up north.

While speaking in Florida, President Trump contrasted Biden’s defeatist immigration plan to his own efforts to keep America secure.

“We’re not letting criminals into our country, our country would surrender control of our border and we would surrender control to the cartels in Mexico who are vicious,” he stated. “The Biden border plan would be the biggest gift in the history.”

Despite this, Biden has appeared to push policies that directly incentivize illegal border crossing. His intentions were specifically exposed at the first Democrat debate in which he claimed his administration would provide free federal health care for all illegal immigrants.

 

 

According to a study by the Center for Immigration Studies, giving undocumented immigrants access to federally funded health care in the U.S. could cost up to $23 billion per year. Moreover, this would be on top of the $45.8 billion of which the federal government already shells out to illegal aliens and their children for expenditures such as public education, health care and welfare programs.

In an interview just days before inauguration, a high-ranking Biden transition official directed migrants in the caravan to wait and not enter the U.S. just yet. This comment possibly hints that they will be able to do so soon.

 

 

https://www.oann.com/guatemalan-security-forces-clash-with-migrant-caravan/ 

 

 

 

 Honduran migrants clash with Guatemalan soldiers in Vado Hondo, Guatemala, Sunday, Jan. 17, 2021. Guatemalan authorities estimated that as many as 9,000 Honduran migrants crossed into Guatemala as part of an effort to form a new caravan to reach the U.S. border. 

 

 

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Was It Worth It?

Was It Worth It?

by Judd Garrett at Ojectivity is the Objective

The National Guard, the FBI, the CIA are being sent to the Capitals in all 50 states, and there’s going to be over ten thousand National Guardsmen at the inauguration on Wednesday. The question is, why now? We experienced seven straight months of riots in our major cities, the death and damage has been well documented, yet Governors and Mayors refused to take action to stop those riots. Why? Why would they refuse to act to protect and defend the citizens of their cities and state? The cities most damaged by the 2020 riots are all Democratically controlled and all refused federal assistance to stop the rioting? 

Prior to the January 6 Capital riot, Washington, DC mayor Muriel Bowser wrote a letter to the U.S. Attorney General, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of the Army, stating, “to be clear, the District of Columbia is not requesting other federal law enforcement personnel and discourages any additional deployment.”

Why would she turn down help from federal law enforcement when she warned about potential violence at the rally? Why? The same reason she turned down federal law enforcement’s help during the riots in DC this summer. She wanted the riots to occur both times. Like other Democrat Governors and Mayors, if the riots could be blamed on Trump, she didn’t care if her city burned and her citizens were killed. There is video evidence of the DC police opening the doors, stepping aside and allowing the rioters inside the Capital. Who gave that order?

Shortly after the riot ended, Muriel Bowser was on TV, using the riot to justify making DC a state, to expand her office, and her power. Isn’t that convenient? ‘My poor decisions allowed the protest to turn into a riot, causing the death and destruction in my city, so make my city a state, make me more powerful. Reward me for my ineptitude.’ She should have been on TV submitting her resignation for dereliction of duty, and failure to protect her city and her citizens. 

The riot at the Capital has been characterized as the greatest threat our country has ever faced, equivalent to Pearl Harbor and 9/11. But when riots were tearing down your cities, breaching your stores, burning down your buildings, the same politicians who were shuddering under their desks on January 6, were fine with people shouting, ‘burn baby burn’ in June, July and August. 

If you haven’t noticed, the Black Lives Matter riots have stopped. Is this an indication that police departments are no longer “systemically racist”? Or are they only racist from June to November of Presidential election years? The BLM protests/riots accomplished nothing substantive for black people. Race relations are not better today than they were 8 months ago. They are worse. Black lives are not better today, they are much worse considering the majority of the stores that were looted and burned to the ground in the inner-cities were owned by black people. The protests/riots greatly benefitted the Democratic party, though. And that was their sole purpose. Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez admitted this in November.

Now, the Capital riot is being used to impeach Trump, and shut down the conservative social media site Parler. We are told that the riot was planned on Parler for weeks, and that’s why the site had to be shut down. How inept are our intelligence agencies? Not one agent was monitoring the “insurrection” traffic on Parler so they could alert Muriel Bowser to mobilize the National Guard? This is not unique, they also missed BLM and Antifa planning their riots on Facebook and Twitter for 7 straight months in 2020. In all cases, they either did not have the intelligence, or the intelligence was not heeded by the politicians. 

This is the way our politics work these days. In 2017, in one of the few lucid interviews Nancy Pelosi has ever given, she revealed a Democrat demonization tactic called “wrap-up smear.” She said, “You smear somebody, with falsehoods and all the rest, and then you merchandise it. And then you write it, and then they’ll say ‘See? It’s reported in the press that this, this, this and this,’ so they have that validation that the press reported the smear, and then it’s called the ‘wrap-up smear.’ Now I’m going to merchandise the press’s report on the smear that we made.”

This is the person who leads the United State House of Representatives. So, if you wonder why nothing ever gets done, why our problems never get solved, you don’t have to look any further than what she said in that press conference. 

In June of 2018, when our economy was humming along very well under Trump’s policies, especially the low unemployment and high wages for minorities, far-left talk show host Bill Maher said, “I'm hoping for it(recession) because I think one way you get rid of Trump is a crashing economy." So, I’m hoping for misery on the American people so my side gains power. This is evil.

In her recent 60 Minutes interview, Nancy Pelosi admitted to holding up the stimulus for small business for 7 months, solely for political purposes. Their strategy; use the pandemic to destroy the economy, to destroy lives, inflict as much misery on the people, blame Republicans and Trump with their “wrap-up smear” tactic, and win the election.

The Democratic politicians who did nothing to stop the riots which devastated their cities and states, also imposed the harshest and most devastating lockdown measures in the country. Interesting, now that Biden is about to take office, and the country must turn around so Biden will get credit, many of the Governors who denied Trump’s calls for re-opening have changed their tune.

NY Governor Andrew Cuomo had an epiphany about the devastation of lockdowns recently. He said, “We simply cannot stay closed until the vaccine hits critical mass. The cost is too high. We will have nothing left to open. We must reopen the economy.” He is almost quoting Trump word for word. He knew Trump was right all along, but for months he had the most draconian lockdown policies in America, destroying millions of people livelihoods and well-being for a political victory. This is criminal.

Chuck Schumer, after months of blocking and stalling needed stimulus, holding legislation hostage to his far left projects, and only giving $600 of stimulus checks, promises now a quick delivery of new stimulus including $2,000 checks as soon as Biden takes office.

After criticizing President Trump’s push to re-open the country as reckless throughout his campaign, Joe Biden wants to open all schools within 100 days, even though the vaccine will not be widely distributed throughout the country to protect everyone. Is anyone going to blame the Coronavirus deaths that occur after the re-opening on Joe Biden? It’s interesting, most political websites have stopped the death counts, stopped tallying the Covid-19 infections and deaths that were so prominently displayed from March 2020 until November 2020. Are there no more infections? No more deaths? Of course not. 

This reminds me of the death counts we would get day-in and day-out during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars under George W. Bush, but amazingly stopped under Barack Obama as if soldiers stopped dying the day he took office. This is why very few people know that more servicemen were killed in Afghanistan under Obama than Bush. Everyone seemed to care about every single casualty of war under Bush, but stopped caring or at least paying attention under Obama. 

The exploitation of these crises by the Democrats was solely for political gain. This is what Mr. Potter would do in the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, exploit crises to expand and consolidate his power. But it’s worse than Potter. At least Potter was honest in his cruelty. He made it clear he didn’t like the working people and planned on exploiting them. You knew who the devil was. These politicians talk to us like they are George Bailey but treat us like Mr. Potter would. It’s so much more sinister. They told us they were so concerned about our well-being that we had to give up our rights, be locked in our homes, have our schools and businesses shut down, all for our own good. Yet, simultaneously, they allowed mobs of rioters to roam the streets unfettered, to kill, injure, burn and destroy without doing anything. They do not care about your well-being. They care about their power. And the lockdowns and riots were used solely to help Biden get elected. Was the carnage worth it?

‘Trump Nation’ Numbers At Least 150 Million Americans

The powers that be are alienating millions and millions of people. Every time they tell another lie, or silence another voice, the number grows.

Edward Ring for American Greatness

This sums up the sentiments that inform America’s establishment media, its corporate elite, Big Tech, academia, most of the public sector, the entire Democratic Party, and most of the Republican Party leadership. What do we do with 74,222,593 people? How will we reeducate these troglodytic haters? How will we control these dangerous insurrectionists?

Despite virtually every powerful special interest lined up against them, this “cleansing” will indeed be tough. Because, first of all, we are not talking about 74 million Trump supporters. We’re talking about over 150 million Trump supporters. To say that only 74 million Americans support Trump rests on an impossible assumption: that every American who didn’t vote for Trump, or for Biden, automatically is supposed to have supported Biden.

Unfortunately for the tastemakers and kingmakers of America, that’s not how reality works. A careful examination of the official election results by state yields several fascinating facts. For example, assuming the 1.8 percent going to third party candidates splits equally between Trump and Biden (with such a small fraction, it doesn’t matter much anyway), then Trump voters spoke for 47.7 percent of the population, and Biden voters spoke for 52.3 percent of the American population. That would be, for Trump, over 157 million people.

Why wouldn’t this be true? On what basis would anyone assume that Trump would not command the support of as many non-voting households as Biden? Moreover, in the 25 states where Trump won, a larger percentage of the population is under age 18, 24 percent, than in the 25 states where Biden won, 22 percent. That’s a slim difference, but it puts to rest the notion that the states where Trump won are filled with aging hillbillies.

In fact, one of Trump’s most decisive victories came in Utah, where he earned 61 percent of the vote despite the unhelpful influence of Mitt Romney. Utah is America’s youngest state, with 30 percent of its population under age 18.

More Eligible Voters

Another indication that the Trump Nation is closer to half of all America instead of just the 74 million number that keeps getting tossed around has to do with eligible voters’ turnout. This statistic is more meaningful than the conventional “turnout” percentage, which only measures the turnout of registered voters. It indicates success in getting out the vote, but it also considers efforts to register eligible voters. And the numbers are revealing.

In the states where Trump won, 59.4 percent of eligible voters cast ballots. In states where Biden won, the figure was 62 percent. And in the six contested swing states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—a whopping 65 percent of eligible voters cast ballots.

This disparity of 5.6 percent when applied to the 38.7 million eligible voters living in those six swing states equates to 2.2 million more people voting. The cumulative margin of victory for Biden in those six states was a mere 312,288 votes.

The point here is not to contest the result of the election. That’s been done, that’s being done, and that debate will live on across the pages of history. But this data plainly shows the impact of Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to spend $400 million to register voters and get out the vote in these swing states. It shows the impact of last-minute laws and rule changes designed to facilitate ballot harvesting, mail-in ballots, same-day registration, combined with that avalanche of pro-Biden money. And Zuckerberg was just the biggest wave, part of a tsunami of pro-Democrat billions that bought the presidency.

But while money may facilitate collecting extra votes from America’s most politically disengaged in Democratic strongholds, it is reasonable to assume that money could also facilitate collecting more votes from the apolitical masses across the red expanses of America. But even if disengaged right-leaning voters didn’t go to the polls, and they didn’t, because there was no Mark Zuckerberg to pay someone to drag them to the polls (or harvest their ballot), their sentiments likely reflect the sentiments of their neighbors. And these sentiments are not racist, or sexist, or hateful. They’re commonsense, pro-American sentiments that Trump, for the first time in over a generation, spoke to without apology.

A Great American Awakening

There were good reasons to vote for Trump. He was the first president since Jimmy Carter not to start a new war, while at the same time, and unlike Carter, he built up the American military deterrent. He encouraged the Europeans to provide more for their own defense and negotiated peace agreements in the Middle East. He approved the Dakota Access and Keystone pipelines. He deregulated the economy and brought jobs and capital back to the United States. He stood up to the environmental extremists. He rejected “critical race theory.” He fought for realistic, pro-American immigration policies. He renegotiated trade agreements. He fixed the Veterans Administration. He did as well as anyone could have done dealing with COVID-19, including developing vaccines in record time.

It’s a long list. Trump did a good job while enduring more sustained harassment than any president in history.

Ideologues like ABC News’ Rick Klein, and his photogenic stooge, ABC News anchor David Muir, are playing with fire. Along with their counterparts across America’s entire media complex, conventional and online, they have stoked the flames of division and resentment. They have told so many lies, and have displayed such obvious bias, that nothing they say can be believed anymore. And the number of awakened people who don’t believe anything coming from sources like ABC is not 74 million. It’s well over 150 million.

Trump was a polarizing figure. His enemies took advantage of that to endlessly use every negative utterance he ever made, invariably presented out-of-context, and terrify low-information voters or voters who only consume conventional media. And despite this endless war against Trump by every establishment institution in America, he was gaining ground towards the end of the campaign. If the election had been held even a few weeks later, all the money and dirty tricks in the world might not have been enough to prevent his victory.

What America needs now is not a “cleansing” of Trump supporters. America needs a thorough reformation of voting laws across the country, combined with an acceptance of online freedom of speech. Sadly, the powers that be are doing the exact opposite. But they are not alienating a small minority of clingers. They have already alienated at least 157 million people, and every time they tell another lie, or silence another voice, that number grows.

Lindsey Graham Attempts to Explain Why He Did Not Subpoena FBI/DOJ Spygate Operatives

Maria Bartiromo questions Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham about why he never subpoenaed James Comey, Andrew McCabe and various ‘spygate’ operatives [SEE 05:15 Point of Video].  Graham punts the question using the DC two-step to put the responsibility in the lap of John Durham… complete nonsense.

Pelosi Baselessly Claims GOP Reps Are Dangerously Bringing Guns To Inaugural

Tristan Justice reporting for The Federalist

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claims lawmakers might be carrying firearms to this week’s inaugural ceremony as more than 20,000 troops secure the nation’s capital on lockdown.

According to ABC News congressional reporter Ben Siegel, on a call with Secret Service Wednesday Pelosi said she was “very, very concerned” about lawmakers bringing their weapons.

Pelosi speaks as if colleagues trained to protect themselves and others by carrying firearms pose a significant threat after security failed at the Capitol earlier this month. Instead, the events vindicated Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert’s vows to carry legally on the hill.

“I walk to my office every morning by myself, so as a 5-foot-tall, 100-pound woman, I choose to protect myself legally, because I am my best security,” the freshman congresswoman said in an ad released days after the new Congress was sworn in.

The ad sparked outrage among Democrats who don’t understand legal gun use as a measure to protect oneself and others from violence. In December, Democrats launched a bid to ban firearms carried by members, who are exempt from D.C. statutes, after Boebert first raised the idea with Capitol Police at new member orientation. The ban proposal drew support from about two dozen Democrats, according to the Hill.

A memo from the chamber’s sergeant-at-arms reminded lawmakers firearms are still restricted to members’ offices.

While Boebert, who also made headlines this month for refusing to comply with Capitol metal detector screenings, has made a point to challenge congressional guidelines for firearms, the Colorado congresswoman stands among only a handful of colleagues vocally against Pelosi’s massive increase in security measures around the complex. None others have produced ads declaring their intent to bring firearms to the Capitol.

Pelosi has demanded fines for members who refuse to abide by the new House security protocols. The first offense will trigger a fine of $5,000, with the second $10,000 deducted from the member’s salary.

The hysteria marks just one episode of Democrats exploiting the chaos at the Capitol this month to spike fears that Republicans are preparing to launch a second Civil War in light of Joe Biden’s inauguration. Such security measures, including the addition of more than 20,000 troops to lock down the capital city, were absent in the aftermath of far-left extremists burning businesses to the ground.

Leftist riots in 2020 included setting fires in the U.S. Capitol. Instead of increasing security, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser named a plaza after them and celebrated their anarchy.

After leftist political violence, Pelosi condemned the presence of federal troops coming into Washington to secure federal monuments such as the Lincoln Memorial, which had been defaced.

https://mises.org/wire/what-fascism-its-system-weve-been-living-under-decades?

What Is Fascism? 

It's the System We've Been Living under for Decades.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.

[Editor's Note: In 2011, Lew Rockwell penned this thorough explanation of what fascism really is and what must be done to combat it. Fascism, unlike what the dominant media narrative asserts, has virtually nothing to do with people expressing politically incorrect opinions, or people refusing to wear masks, or a group of disorganized rioters smashing windows in the US Capitol. Fascism, rather, is an ideology of state control, and one that has been immensely successful over the past seventy years in the United States. As Rockwell explains below, the "eight marks of fascism" are all clear and powerful trends within the United States regime today.]

Fascism is the system of government that cartelizes the private sector, centrally plans the economy to subsidize producers, exalts the police state as the source of order, denies fundamental rights and liberties to individuals, and makes the executive state the unlimited master of society.

This describes mainstream politics in America today. And not just in America. It’s true in Europe, too. It is so much part of the mainstream that it is hardly noticed anymore.

If fascism is invisible to us, it is truly the silent killer. It fastens a huge, violent, lumbering state on the free market that drains its capital and productivity like a deadly parasite on a host. This is why the fascist state has been called the vampire economy. It sucks the economic life out of a nation and brings about a slow death of a once thriving economy.

…

The talk in Washington about reform, whether from Democrats or Republicans, is like a bad joke. They talk of small changes, small cuts, commissions they will establish, curbs they will make in ten years. It is all white noise. None of this will fix the problem. Not even close.

The problem is more fundamental. It is the quality of the money. It is the very existence of 10,000 regulatory agencies. It is the whole assumption that you have to pay the state for the privilege to work. It is the presumption that the government must manage every aspect of the capitalist economic order. In short, it is the total state that is the problem, and the suffering and decline will continue so long as the total state exists.

The Origins of Fascism

To be sure, the last time people worried about fascism was during the Second World War. There can be no question of its origins. It is tied up with the history of post–World War I Italian politics. In 1922, Benito Mussolini won a democratic election and established fascism as his philosophy. Mussolini had been a member of the Italian Socialist Party.

All the biggest and most important players within the fascist movement came from the socialists. It was a threat to the socialists because it was the most appealing political vehicle for the real-world application of the socialist impulse. Socialists crossed over to join the fascists en masse.

This is also why Mussolini himself enjoyed such good press for more than ten years after his rule began. He was celebrated by the New York Times in article after article. He was heralded in scholarly collections as an exemplar of the type of leader we needed in the age of the planned society. Puff pieces on this blowhard were very common in US journalism all through the late 1920s and the mid-1930s.

In Italy, the Left realized that their anticapitalistic agenda could best be achieved within the framework of the authoritarian, planning state. Of course our friend John Maynard Keynes played a critical role in providing a pseudoscientific rationale for joining opposition to old-world laissez-faire to a new appreciation of the planned society. Recall that Keynes was not a socialist of the old school. As he himself said in his introduction to the Nazi edition of his General Theory, National Socialism was far more hospitable to his ideas than a market economy.

Flynn Tells the Truth

The most definitive study on fascism written in these years was As We Go Marching by John T. Flynn. Flynn was a journalist and scholar of a liberal spirit who had written a number of best-selling books in the 1920s. It was the New Deal that changed him. His colleagues all followed FDR into fascism, while Flynn himself kept the old faith. That meant that he fought FDR every step of the way, and not only his domestic plans. Flynn was a leader of the America First movement that saw FDR’s drive to war as nothing but an extension of the New Deal, which it certainly was.

As We Go Marching came out in 1944, just at the tail end of the war, and right in the midst of wartime economic controls the world over. It is a wonder that it ever got past the censors. It is a full-scale study of fascist theory and practice, and Flynn saw precisely where fascism ends: in militarism and war as the fulfillment of the stimulus spending agenda. When you run out of everything else to spend money on, you can always depend on nationalist fervor to back more military spending.

The Eight Marks of Fascist Policy

Flynn, like other members of the Old Right, was disgusted by the irony that what he saw, almost everyone else chose to ignore. After reviewing this long history, Flynn proceeds to sum up with a list of eight points he considers to be the main marks of the fascist state.

As I present them, I will also offer comments on the modern American central state.

Point 1. The government is totalitarian because it acknowledges no restraint on its powers.

If you become directly ensnared in the state’s web, you will quickly discover that there are indeed no limits to what the state can do. This can happen boarding a flight, driving around in your hometown, or having your business run afoul of some government agency. In the end, you must obey or be caged like an animal or killed. In this way, no matter how much you may believe that you are free, all of us today are but one step away from Guantanamo.

No aspect of life is untouched by government intervention, and often it takes forms we do not readily see. All of healthcare is regulated, but so is every bit of our food, transportation, clothing, household products, and even private relationships. Mussolini himself put his principle this way: “All within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” I submit to you that this is the prevailing ideology in the United States today. This nation, conceived in liberty, has been kidnapped by the fascist state.

Point 2. Government is a de facto dictatorship based on the leadership principle.

I wouldn’t say that we truly have a dictatorship of one man in this country, but we do have a form of dictatorship of one sector of government over the entire country. The executive branch has spread so dramatically over the last century that it has become a joke to speak of checks and balances.

The executive state is the state as we know it, all flowing from the White House down. The role of the courts is to enforce the will of the executive. The role of the legislature is to ratify the policy of the executive. This executive is not really about the person who seems to be in charge. The president is only the veneer, and the elections are only the tribal rituals we undergo to confer some legitimacy on the institution. In reality, the nation-state lives and thrives outside any “democratic mandate.” Here we find the power to regulate all aspects of life and the wicked power to create the money necessary to fund this executive rule.

Point 3. Government administers a capitalist system with an immense bureaucracy.

The reality of bureaucratic administration has been with us at least since the New Deal, which was modeled on the planning bureaucracy that lived in World War I. The planned economy—whether in Mussolini’s time or ours—requires bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is the heart, lungs, and veins of the planning state. And yet to regulate an economy as thoroughly as this one is today is to kill prosperity with a billion tiny cuts.

So where is our growth? Where is the peace dividend that was supposed to come after the end of the Cold War? Where are the fruits of the amazing gains in efficiency that technology has afforded? It has been eaten by the bureaucracy that manages our every move on this earth. The voracious and insatiable monster here is called the Federal Code that calls on thousands of agencies to exercise the police power to prevent us from living free lives.

It is as Bastiat said: the real cost of the state is the prosperity we do not see, the jobs that don’t exist, the technologies to which we do not have access, the businesses that do not come into existence, and the bright future that is stolen from us. The state has looted us just as surely as a robber who enters our home at night and steals all that we love.

Point 4. Producers are organized into cartels in the way of syndicalism.

Syndicalist is not usually how we think of our current economic structure. But remember that syndicalism means economic control by the producers. Capitalism is different. It places by virtue of market structures all control in the hands of the consumers. The only question for syndicalists, then, is which producers are going to enjoy political privilege. It might be the workers, but it can also be the largest corporations.

In the case of the United States, in the last three years, we’ve seen giant banks, pharmaceutical firms, insurers, car companies, Wall Street banks and brokerage houses, and quasi-private mortgage companies enjoying vast privileges at our expense. They have all joined with the state in living a parasitical existence at our expense.

Point 5. Economic planning is based on the principle of autarky.

Autarky is the name given to the idea of economic self-sufficiency. Mostly this refers to the economic self-determination of the nation-state. The nation-state must be geographically huge in order to support rapid economic growth for a large and growing population.

Look at the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. We would be supremely naive to believe that these wars were not motivated in part by the producer interests of the oil industry. It is true of the American empire generally, which supports dollar hegemony. It is the reason for the North American Union.

Point 6. Government sustains economic life through spending and borrowing.

This point requires no elaboration because it is no longer hidden. In the latest round, and with a prime-time speech, Obama mused about how is it that people are unemployed at a time when schools, bridges, and infrastructure need repairing. He ordered that supply and demand come together to match up needed work with jobs.

Hello? The schools, bridges, and infrastructure that Obama refers to are all built and maintained by the state. That’s why they are falling apart. And the reason that people don’t have jobs is because the state has made it too expensive to hire them. It’s not complicated. To sit around and dream of other scenarios is no different from wishing that water flowed uphill or that rocks would float in the air. It amounts to a denial of reality.

As for the rest of this speech, Obama promised yet another long list of spending projects. But no government in the history of the world has spent as much, borrowed as much, and created as much fake money as the United States, all thanks to the power of the Fed to create money at will. If the United States doesn’t qualify as a fascist state in this sense, no government ever has.

Point 7. Militarism is a mainstay of government spending.

Have you ever noticed that the military budget is never seriously discussed in policy debates? The United States spends more than most of the rest of the world combined. And yet to hear our leaders talk, the United States is just a tiny commercial republic that wants peace but is constantly under threat from the world. Where is the debate about this policy? Where is the discussion? It is not going on. It is just assumed by both parties that it is essential for the US way of life that the United States be the most deadly country on the planet, threatening everyone with nuclear extinction unless they obey.

Point 8. Military spending has imperialist aims.

We’ve had one war after another, wars waged by the United States against noncompliant countries, and the creation of even more client states and colonies. US military strength has led not to peace but the opposite. It has caused most people in the world to regard the United States as a threat, and it has led to unconscionable wars on many countries. Wars of aggression were defined at Nuremberg as crimes against humanity.

Obama was supposed to end this. He never promised to do so, but his supporters all believed that he would. Instead, he has done the opposite. He has increased troop levels, entrenched wars, and started new ones. In reality, he has presided over a warfare state just as vicious as any in history. The difference this time is that the Left is no longer criticizing the US role in the world. In that sense, Obama is the best thing ever to happen to the warmongers and the military-industrial complex.

The Future

I can think of no greater priority today than a serious and effective antifascist alliance. In many ways, one is already forming. It is not a formal alliance. It is made up of those who protest the Fed, those who refuse to go along with mainstream fascist politics, those who seek decentralization, those who demand lower taxes and free trade, those who seek the right to associate with anyone they want and buy and sell on terms of their own choosing, those who insist they can educate their children on their own, the investors and savers who make economic growth possible, those who do not want to be felt up at airports, and those who have become expatriates.

It is also made of the millions of independent entrepreneurs who are discovering that the number one threat to their ability to serve others through the commercial marketplace is the institution that claims to be our biggest benefactor: the government.

How many people fall into this category? It is more than we know. The movement is intellectual. It is political. It is cultural. It is technological. They come from all classes, races, countries, and professions. This is no longer a national movement. It is truly global.

And what does this movement want? Nothing more or less than sweet liberty. It does not ask that the liberty be granted or given. It only asks for the liberty that is promised by life itself and would otherwise exist were it not for the Leviathan state that robs us, badgers us, jails us, kills us.

This movement is not departing. We are daily surrounded by evidence that it is right and true. Every day, it is more and more obvious that the state contributes absolutely nothing to our well-being; it massively subtracts from it.

Back in the 1930s, and even up through the 1980s, the partisans of the state were overflowing with ideas. This is no longer true. Fascism has no new ideas, no big projects—and not even its partisans really believe it can accomplish what it sets out to do. The world created by the private sector is so much more useful and beautiful than anything the state has done that the fascists have themselves become demoralized and aware that their agenda has no real intellectual foundation.

It is ever more widely known that statism does not and cannot work. Statism is the great lie. Statism gives us the exact opposite of its promise. It promised security, prosperity, and peace; it has given us fear, poverty, war, and death. If we want a future, it is one that we have to build ourselves. The fascist state will not give it to us. On the contrary, it stands in the way.

In the end, this is the choice we face: the total state or total freedom. Which will we choose? If we choose the state, we will continue to sink further and further and eventually lose all that we treasure as a civilization. If we choose freedom, we can harness that remarkable power of human cooperation that will enable us to continue to make a better world.

In the fight against fascism, there is no reason to be despairing. We must continue to fight with every bit of confidence that the future belongs to us and not them.

Their world is falling apart. Ours is just being built. Their world is based on bankrupt ideologies. Ours is rooted in the truth about freedom and reality. Their world can only look back to the glory days. Ours looks forward to the future we are building for ourselves. 

Their world is rooted in the corpse of the nation-state. Our world draws on the energies and creativity of all peoples in the world, united in the great and noble project of creating a prospering civilization through peaceful human cooperation. We possess the only weapon that is truly immortal: the right idea. It is this that will lead to victory.

This article is adapted from a longer version published in 2011.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is founder and chairman of the

 Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and editor of LewRockwell.com.

Leftists Advocate for Reeducation and Deprogramming to Protect The U.S. Totalitarian State

They are no longer hiding it any more.  The leftists are publicly demanding that government intervene using the same tactics deployed against ISIS propaganda to target wrong-think by conservative American citizens.  WATCH:

Those who helped install the JoeBama administration cannot have subversive voices refusing to comply with their ideological dictates.  This is not the slippery slope, this is the full-blown advocacy of the totalitarian state.  They openly demand that alternate points of view and opinions must be shut-down to advance the left-wing agenda.  Remarkable.