Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit in the Fascist State Of Florida

3 thoughts on “Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit in the Fascist State Of Florida”

1. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a crypto-fascist autocrat deeply admired by Tucker Carlson, host of “White Power Hour” on FOX News (he broadcast an Orban lovefest from Budapest, Hungary last year), will appear at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC} in Dallas, TX.

   In sports, this is known as a “home and away” series. CPAC just held its last conference outside the U.S., for the first time, in Hungary to lavish praise on Victor Orban.

   This is the moral equivalent of Charles Lindbergh, the leader of the America First movement in the 1930s, traveling to Germany to praised the Nazis. See, “Germany and the America First movement”, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Lindbergh/Germany-and-the-America-First-movement

   Orban will be joined by former President Donald Trump and right-wing icons such as Rep. Marjorie “Q” Greene, R-Ga. It is the most dramatic indication yet of how a leader criticized for pushing anti-democratic principles has become a hero to segments of the Republican Party.

   “Embrace for Hungary’s Orban deepens among US conservatives”, https://apnews.com/article/elections-donald-trump-dallas-marjorie-taylor-greene-6834776bcc1f65800a615b0745302be5

   Victor Orban has curbed immigration and stymied those who envision a more middle-of-the-road European democracy for their country. He’s done so by seizing control of Hungary’s judiciary and media, leading many international analysts to label him as the face of a new wave of authoritarianism. He also is accused of enabling widespread corruption and nepotism, using state resources to enrich a tight circle of political allies.

   The U.S. conservative movement’s embrace of Orban comes as it echoes Trump’s lies that he did not lose the 2020 presidential election, punishes Republicans who tried to hold him accountable for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and embrace new voting restrictions. Many experts on Hungarian politics fear the GOP might aspire to Orban’s tactics.

   “The Trumpist side of the Republican Party is coming for the rhetoric, but staying for the autocracy,” said Kim L. Schepple, a sociologist at Princeton University who has studied Orban. “I’m worried the attraction to Orban is only superficially the culture war stuff and more deeply about how to prevent power from ever rotating out of their hands.”

   “What we like about him is that he’s actually standing up for the freedom of his people against the tyranny of the EU,” said Matt Schlapp, head of CPAC, which meets in Dallas starting Aug. 4. “He’s captured the attention of a lot of people, including a lot of people in America who are worried about the decline of the family.”

   [A] self-styled champion of what he describes as “illiberal democracy,” Orban has depicted himself as a defender of European Christendom against Muslim migrants, progressives and the “LGBTQ lobby.”

   While Orban’s party has backed technocratic initiatives that have captured the imagination of the U.S. right — Schlapp specifically cited a tax cut Hungarian women receive for every child as a way to counter a declining population — he’s best known for his aggressive stance on hot-button cultural issues.

   Orban’s government erected a razor-wire fence along Hungary’s southern border in 2015 in response to an influx of refugees fleeing violence and poverty in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Carlson visited the border barrier, praising it as a model for the U.S.

   Last year, Orban’s right-wing Fidesz party banned the depiction of homosexuality or sex reassignment in media targeting people under 18, a move critics said was an attack on LGBTQ people. Information on homosexuality also was forbidden in school sex education programs, or in films and advertisements accessible to minors.

   [O]rban’s party implemented judicial reforms through constitutional amendment, enabling it to change the composition of the judiciary. It also passed a new law that created a nine-member council to oversee the media and appointed members to all those slots.

   Reporters Without Borders declared Orban a “press freedom predator” last year. It said his Fidesz party had “seized de facto control of 80% of the country’s media through political-economic maneuvers and the purchase of news organizations by friendly oligarchs.”

   The Associated Press and other international news organizations were barred from covering the CPAC conference in May, during which Orban called Hungary “the bastion of conservative Christian values in Europe.” He also urged conservatives in the U.S. to defeat “the dominance of progressive liberals in public life.”

   [E]xperts say Orban’s near-total control of his country makes him a pioneer of a new approach to anti-democratic rule.

   “I’ve never seen an autocrat consolidate authoritarian rule without spilling a drop of blood or locking someone up,” said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and co-author of the book “How Democracies Die.” He and other scholars said Orban qualifies as an authoritarian because of his use of government to control societal institutions.

   “It’s a remarkable success of Hungarian soft power that Orban has become so popular among American conservatives when his image has declined so much in Europe.”

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2. While Trump’s fascist propagandists at FOX News (each of whom texted his chief of staff Mark Meadows on January 6 telling him to tell Trump to call off his MAGA/QAnon mob of insurrectionists) continue their servility to Donald Trump, Rupert Murdochs’ other propaganda media outlets have now turned on Trump.

   The supposedly blue-collar conservative populist New York Post (I just call it a yellow rag in the same category as the National Enquirer and The Globe) editorialized over the weekend “Trump’s silence on Jan. 6 is damning”, https://nypost.com/2022/07/22/trumps-jan-6-silence-renders-him-unworthy-for-2024-reelection/

   (excerpt)

   There has been much debate over whether Trump’s rally speech on Jan. 6, 2021, constituted “incitement.” That’s somewhat of a red herring. What matters more — and has become crystal clear in recent days — is that Trump didn’t lift a finger to stop the violence that followed.

   And he was the only person who could stop what was happening. He was the only one the crowd was listening to. It was incitement by silence.

   [He] thought the violence of his loyal followers would make Pence crack, or delay the vote altogether.

   To his eternal shame, as appalled aides implored him to publicly call on his followers to go home, he instead further fanned the flames by tweeting: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”

   His only focus was to find any means — damn the consequences — to block the peaceful transfer of power.

   There is no other explanation, just as there is no defense, for his refusal to stop the violence.

   It’s up to the Justice Department to decide if this is a crime. But as a matter of principle, as a matter of character, Trump has proven himself unworthy to be this country’s chief executive again.

   And the snooty white-collar, sik stocking one percenters at the Wall Street Journal who look down upon you “lucky duckies” who don’t pay any taxes, they editorialize “The President Who Stood Still on Jan. 6”, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-president-who-stood-still-donald-trump-jan-6-committee-mike-pence-capitol-riot-11658528548

   “Mr. Trump took an oath to defend the Constitution, and he had a duty as Commander in Chief to protect the Capitol from a mob attacking it in his name. He refused. He didn’t call the military to send help. He didn’t call Mr. Pence to check on the safety of his loyal VP. Instead he fed the mob’s anger and let the riot play out.”

   “In the 18 months since, Mr. Trump has shown not an iota of regret,” the editorial continued. “On Thursday he claimed to be vindicated by a bill to clarify the Electoral Count Act…Character is revealed in a crisis, and Mr. Pence passed his Jan. 6 trial. Mr. Trump utterly failed his.”

   Both editorials were far more critical of Trump than Murdoch’s biggest megaphone: Fox News.

   FOX News has stopped airing Trump’s self-serving rallies, and instead interviewed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis this weekend.

   It’s hard to imagine that either editorial board would have written these editorial opinions without Murdoch’s sign off. That certainly hints that Murdoch and his media empire may be distancing themselves from Trump.

   But let’s wait and see what Murdoch’s most influential propaganda megaphone, FOX News, does.

   Until Fox News starts going after Trump for his actions on January 6, it is inaccurate to suggest that Rupert Murdoch has turned on Trump.

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3. Paul Waldman writes at the Washington Post, “The most dangerous threat to America? White male entitlement.”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/22/white-male-entitlement-threat-to-america/

   [It is impossible to ignore Donald Trump’s sense of entitlement.] What was this system for, if not to give him whatever he wanted? And if it wouldn’t, he would tear it down.

   That’s not just his story; it’s also the story of those who stormed the Capitol on his behalf. And it’s increasingly the story of the Republican Party. In our ongoing debate about what the Constitution means and whether we should have a genuine democracy, it is the people who have been given the most advantages who are most willing, even eager, to destroy the American system.

   This is about much more than Jan. 6, 2021. Consider a revealing exchange at a recent House Judiciary Committee hearing on gun reform legislation. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) made what has become a familiar argument, that enabling citizens to rise up against the government when necessary is “the reality of the purpose of the Second Amendment.”

   In response, Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) — a former constitutional law professor — called Roy’s perspective “the insurrectionist view of the Second Amendment,” saying it “flies in the face of the plain text of the Constitution, which in at least five different places clearly forbids armed violent resistance to the government.”

   Raskin’s response went viral among liberals. But this is about more than the hypocrisy of conservatives who bray about their love for the Constitution yet have no idea what it says and regularly fantasize about overthrowing the government it created.

   It raises a more important question: Why are these people so eager to justify violent attacks against our system — either a hypothetical future attack or the one on Jan. 6, 2021 — when they have the least to complain about?

   The most vulgar insurrectionist reading of the Second Amendment is the “Come and take it!” proclamation. It essentially says that should a law ever pass requiring its advocates to give up some of their guns, they could kill any law-enforcement officers attempting to enforce it.

   So for instance, Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.) recently tweeted a video of himself holding two AR-15-style rifles — one aimed rather unsafely at his foot — writing, “If Democrats want to push an insane gun-grab, they can COME AND TAKE IT!”

   Alongside that kind of grunt of rage is the slightly more thoughtful version. In an ad from Arizona GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters, he proudly displays a rifle and says, “The Second Amendment is not about duck hunting.” His gun “is designed to kill people,” he says, explaining how the Taliban took away people’s guns. “Without gun rights, before long, you have no rights,” he concludes.

   Look at who is making this argument, not just Chip Roy and Ronny Jackson and Blake Masters, but the ordinary citizens who echo them. It’s largely White men, especially from Republican states.

   In other words, the people who have throughout the United States’ history been most advantaged by the Constitution, especially its antidemocratic features, are the most obsessed with the idea that sometime soon they may have to start killing people.

   They are the ones who enjoyed the full panoply of rights and privileges from the start. They didn’t labor in chains. They didn’t have to fight to be able to vote, or to own property, or to see themselves represented in the halls of power.

   Not only that, to this day, they are granted special status within our political system. The Senate and the electoral college give overwhelmingly disproportionate power to small, rural, overwhelmingly White states. And within states they control, Republicans have gerrymandered districts so that rural White residents’ votes have even more weight.

   Just look at Jan. 6, 2021. What was it that enraged those people? In 2016, they had the privilege of seeing their candidate become president despite winning fewer votes than his opponent. In 2020 his margin of defeat in the popular vote was large enough that it didn’t happen again (though it almost did), and they were so aggrieved by the supposed injustice of losing that they attempted to reverse the election with violence.

   But you know who you almost never see fantasizing in public about the violent overthrow of the American system of government? Black people whose ancestors were enslaved, whose parents suffered under Jim Crow, and who today are the targets of enduring racism and a relentless campaign of voter suppression.

   Women watching their reproductive rights taken away do not protest with AR-15s in their hands. Nor do the gay teachers being run out of their jobs or the loving families of trans kids being slandered as child abusers.

   None of those groups are saying they may need to overthrow the government with violence. The political system has not been kind to them — indeed, at times it has actively brutalized them — but they maintain their belief in it. When confronted with oppression, they redoubled their commitment to democracy.

   Not so for the Jan. 6 rioter, the gun enthusiast with a “Don’t Tread On Me” flag in his yard, and even, at times, the Republican congressman. They have the least claim to being a victim of the American system, yet they are the most eager to react to a momentary political setback — or even a hypothetical one — with the threat of violence.

   We don’t have to wonder about whether they have any loyalty to the democratic values we’re all supposed to hold in common. They’re making their position more than clear.

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