The GOP’s ‘Red Caesar’ New Political Order Plan Marches Forward

• by: Thom Hartmann

Thom Hartmann – Photo: en.wikipedia.org

“Thirty years ago,” Damon Linker told The Guardian, “if I told you that a bunch of billionaires and intellectuals on the right are waiting in the wings to impose a dictatorship on the United States, you would have said that I was insane.”

Now, however, the senior lecturer at Penn State University’s Department of Political Science and author of the Notes from the Middleground Substack newsletter has reconsidered.

“But it’s no longer insane,” Linker writes. “It’s now real. There are those people out there.” And, Linker notes, “The question is: will they get their chance.”

The simple reality is that they already have had their chance in multiple Red states, and when we watch what they’re doing with it we see that step-by-step, day-by-day the GOP is inching towards full-blown fascism. Now they’re calling to end democracy and replace our president with a “Red Caesar.”

They no longer believe in elections, because the American people are rejecting their vision of more tax cuts for billionaires, hating on racial and gender minorities, and more fossil fuel pollution to destroy our planet.

So instead of trying to get elected by presenting honest differences in policy from Democrats, Republicans have resorted to massive gerrymandering, purging voting rolls of millions of Americans who live in Blue cities within Red states, and dark-money TV carpet-bombing campaigns often filled with lies and half-truths.

But that’s just the beginning.

Wisconsinites elected a Democratic Chief Justice for their Supreme Court, Janet Protasiewicz, and Republicans are trying to impeach her before she’s heard a single case because they believe (probably correctly) that she will vote to declare their gerrymander map—which overwhelmingly favors Republicans all out of proportion to their strength in the state—unconstitutional.

North Carolina is so gerrymandered that the majority of the state’s residents vote for Democrats (which is why the governor is a Democrat) but, just like Wisconsin, Republicans hold a solid majority in the House, Senate, and their federal Congressional delegation. So, I guess it shouldn’t surprise us that a committee co-chaired by Republican Senate Leader Phil Berger and Republican House Speaker Tim Moore just gave itself gestapo-like powers.

The Republican-controlled Joint Legislative Committee on Government Operations—or, as Judd Legume notes at Popular.info, Gov Ops for short—now has the power to break into the home or office of anybody in the state who has worked for or with state government and go through their files and even personal phones and computers.

As Legum writes at his brilliant Popular.info Substack newsletter:

“The rule applies to contractors, subcontractors, and any other non-state entity ‘receiving, directly and indirectly, public funds,’ including charities and state universities.

“Moreover, Gov Ops staff will be authorized to enter ‘any building or facility’ owned or leased by a state or non-state entity without a judicial warrant. This includes the private residences of subcontractors and contractors who run businesses out of their homes, lawmakers say.

“Alarmingly, public employees under investigation will be required to keep all communication and requests ‘confidential.’ They cannot alert their supervisor of the investigation nor consult with legal counsel. Violating this rule ‘shall be grounds for disciplinary action, including dismissal,’ the law reads.

“Those who refuse to cooperate face jail time and fines of up to $1,000. In the event that Gov Ops searches a person’s home, these rules mean that the person 1) must keep the entry a secret, 2) cannot seek outside help (unless necessary for fulfilling the request, the law says), and 3) could face criminal charges if Gov Ops deems them uncooperative.”

Meanwhile, down in Florida, Ron DeSantis has created two new armed organizations answerable to himself: a new “state guard” militia and a police agency that is supposed to provide for “election integrity” (GOP code for preventing Black people in Blue cities from voting).

As former Republican Governor (now a Democrat) Charlie Christ said of DeSantis’ new armed officers:

“No governor should have his own handpicked secret police.” Read more

Israel’s Current Government Cannot Envisage Peace. An Interview With C.J. Polychroniou

• by: Alexandra Boutri

C.J. Polychroniou

A dangerous new phase in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is currently under way. Following Hamas’s vicious October 7 attacks inside Israeli territory, the Netanyahu government vowed to destroy the militant group and ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza. More than 9,000 Palestinians have already been killed and the death toll will surely rise much higher as Israeli troops have now encircled Gaza City. How do we explain Hamas’s devastating attack on October 7? How should the Left have reacted to the Hamas’s attacks? What is Israel’s plan for Gaza? Is Israel guilty of war crimes? What is the mission of peace movements and activist groups inside Israel? Political scientist/political economist, author, and journalist C. J. Polychroniou addresses these questions in an interview with French-Greek journalist Alexandra Boutri.

Alexandra Boutri: It’s been 27 or so days since Hamas unleashed a massacre in Israel, killing more than 1400 people and capturing more than 200 hostages. Since then, Israel has been hammering Gaza with airstrikes and artillery as retribution for the surprise attack by Hamas and Israeli ground forces have also moved inside the besieged region, though without a clearly stated objective other than to destroy Hamas. So far more than 9,000 Palestinians have been killed, with the majority of them being women and children, and Gaza’s infrastructure has been totally destroyed. But let me start by asking you what you make of certain left-wing defenses of Hamas.

C. J. Polychroniou: First, let me say that, for me, it has become more difficult over time to keep using the term Left in order to describe a certain political worldview. Identity politics has divided the Left, various segments of the so-called radical Left have developed an insufferable tolerance problem, and universalism has become passé. In this sense, I miss the old communist/anarchist left. Having said that, it was wild watching “leftists” appearing to celebrate Hamas’s atrocities, or finding excuses for the killing of innocent civilians, including children, women, and elderly. It’s one thing to say that we need to understand the context of a conflict, and yet another thing to applaud the massacre of innocent civilians.
In today’s world, perhaps more than ever before, we need a humanist left and a left that is socialist and universalist. We know that the Israeli regime is brutal towards Palestinians and that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is unlawful. But what does Hamas represent? Sure, it is not driven by religious fanaticism like ISIS, which wants to establish some sort of a global caliphate, but the organization remains committed to the idea of “the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea” through a jihad. In this context, Israel has the right to self-defense but not too indiscriminate attacks that kill innocent civilians. I just don’t get how support for Palestinians should translate into support for Hamas.

Alexandra Boutri: Isn’t it surprising though that Hamas was able to break through Israel’s border defenses on October 7 and storm into Israeli towns? How could Israeli intelligence miss Hamas’s preparations for the attack?

C. J. Polychroniou: I am not in a position to answer the question about Israel’s intelligence disaster. Of course, the attack itself was surprising in terms of its audacity and scale, but perhaps it was also foreseeable, as Israel’s former ambassador to France Elie Barnavi argued in a recent op-ed in Le Monde. Israel helped create Hamas and then believed that it was containing them with economic incentives, which included allowing Qatar to give cash subsidies to Gaza. As an Israeli general said a few years ago, Netanyahu’s strategy was to prevent the two-state solution from moving forward so he turned Hamas into a covert ally. In any case, one can only hope that the day will come when Israelis hold Netanyahu accountable for the border breach that killed 1,400 and that he will be investigated for war crimes by the International Criminal Court. Israel’s attacks on the Jabalia refugee camp could amount to war crimes, according to UN human rights officials. And it’s quite conceivable that the worst may be yet to come.

Alexandra Boutri: What do you think Israel plans to do once it destroys Hamas and leaves most of Gaza in ruins?

C. J. Polychroniou:As many analysts have already indicated, and this is also a concern shared by Washington and officials in major capitals throughout Europe, Netanyahu’s government didn’t seem to have a plan for what comes next when he declared war on Hamas and started the bombardment of Gaza Strip, but perhaps the hope was that the Israelis could somehow succeed in transferring Gaza’s Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. It could also be the case, now that Israeli ground forces are inside Gaza, that they want to force all of Gaza’s Palestinians to move to the southern part of the besieged region. But I don’t think that Israel has any interest in governing Gaza. Read more