‘The US can still become a fascist country’: Frances Fox Piven’s midterms postmortem

Guno צְבִי

Guno צְבִי

We fight, We win, Am Yisrael Chai
“I don’t think this fight over elemental democracy is over, by any means,” she said. “The United States was well on the road to becoming a fascist country – and it still can become a fascist country.”

The revered sociologist and battle-tested activist – an inspirational figure to those on the left, a bogeywoman for the hard right – is sharing with the Guardian her postmortem of the 2022 midterm elections and Donald Trump’s announcement of a 2024 presidential run. While many observers have breathed a sigh of relief over the rout of extreme election deniers endorsed by Trump, and his seemingly deflated campaign launch, Piven has a more sombre analysis.

All the main elements are now in place, she said, for America to take a turn to the dark side. “There is the crazy mob, Maga; an elite that is oblivious to what is required for political stability; and a grab-it-and-run mentality that is very strong, very dangerous. I was very frightened about what would happen in the election, and it could still happen.”

That Piven is cautioning against a false sense of security in the wake of the midterms would not surprise her many students and admirers. The co-author, with her late husband Richard Cloward, of the progressive bible, Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail, has for decades sounded the alarm.

She has raised red flags over the vulnerabilities of the country’s democracy, the inequalities baked into its electoral and judicial systems, and how poor Americans, especially those of colour, are forced to resort to defiance and disruption to get their voices heard. Now, with the Republicans having taken the House of Representatives, she foresees ugly times ahead.


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...A14vcZp?cvid=54c4184340c3408bb0e55bb9524e8a5b
 
To say that Piven has come to such a perspective through years of experience as a sociologist and anti-poverty warrior would be an understatement. She recently celebrated her 90th birthday, and her earliest political memories go back to the 1930s.

Her first is from 1939. It was prompted by the Russo-Finnish war which, though thousands of miles away, spilled out on to the streets of her neighbourhood. She was brought up in the New York borough of Queens by Jewish immigrant parents from Uzliany, in what is now Belarus.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...A14vcZp?cvid=54c4184340c3408bb0e55bb9524e8a5b
 
Anti-truth.....power feeds us dump trucks full of Anti-truth now......and the masses are mostly too ignorant to figure it out.

The communists designed this when they gutted the education system, journalism, and science.

Buckle Up, this is going to hurt.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
America is now communist....it will not be facist anytime soon.
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Communism is an economic system, not a geographic location nor a form of government. It is the same with fascism. It is the same with capitalism.

Capitalism, fascism, and communism exist in every nation on Earth.

Capitalism, fascism, and communism exist in the States of America as well.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
Anti-truth.....power feeds us dump trucks full of Anti-truth now......and the masses are mostly too ignorant to figure it out.

The communists designed this when they gutted the education system, journalism, and science.

Buckle Up, this is going to hurt.
Click to expand...

The education system isn't. It's an indoctrination system now.

The free press is alive in the States of America. The Democrats can't stand that. They constantly try to denigrate it.

Science can't be 'gutted'. Science has no politics. Theories of science exist, and no government can erase them or change them. They can, however, try to keep people from learning them. I have found that Democrats simply discard theories of science. They are in the way of their agenda. The most common tactic in this regard is to try to introduce new terms to the equation stemming from the theory, or to try to claim that the equation is 'interpreted' badly (as if you 'interpreted' math equations!). The theory still exists, however. So does the history of how the theory was developed, and so does the equation (or 'law') of that theory. In other words, Democrats simply deny and discard theories of science since they can't change them or erase them.

Example of this include the Church of Global Warming and it's denial of the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics and the Stefan-Boltzmann law.

Logic and mathematics can't be 'gutted' for the same reasons. No matter what they do to try to deny them, Democrats can't make them go away.

An example of denying logic can be found in the Church of Covid, which creates Paradox M and Paradox V. This religion is quite irrational as a result.

Examples of denying mathematics can be found in all the religions of Democrats, typically by discarding statistical mathematics, probability mathematics, and random number mathematics. Occasionally I see them discard even algebra. Making up numbers and using them as 'data' is a favorite tactic. They try to legitimize these numbers as coming from so-called 'experts', computer models (which are really just glorified random number generators), or by using consensus (as if you voted in mathematics!).

The Constitution of the United States is denied and discarded by Democrats, so they constantly misquote it and try to hide behind it. Anyone that wants to can go read it for themselves. I suggest everyone should, and recognize it for what it is: a contract between the States to define and declare the federal government and to give it certain powers and authorities. It has NO power or authority other than what the Constitution gives it.

Learning the science isn't hard either. Anyone can learn it if they put their mind to it. The theories the Democrats discard are very simple when it comes right down to it. Learning the history of how these theories came about is more difficult, but nevertheless a fascinating set of stories. Knowing this history nice, but not required to understand the theories themselves. Fewer and fewer schools even teach science at all now.

Logic hasn't been taught in schools for a very long time now. Fortunately, a smattering of it can be learned as one learns how to program a computer. Basic combinatorial logic and even minimal set theory is built into most computer languages. Most programmers, however, never learned or use these capabilities in their chosen computer language. The programs they write are often badly organized, have poor response, have poor performance, are full of bugs. Much of this comes as a result of not being able to handle or organize data and a lack of understanding the capabilities of their chosen programming language (and of programming languages in general!).

Engineering is a most misunderstood bit of knowledge. Democrats generally don't like to work with their hands, and disparage any that do. The people that manufacture cars, computers, bicycles, food, water supply systems, industrial equipment, the sewage systems, and the operators of this equipment, and all the things that make modern life possible; are disparaged as 'rednecks' or 'manual laborers' by the Democrats in their ivory tower. They disparage the very people that make their ivory tower life possible.

Indeed, the situation today is nearing the scenario described in Atlas Shrugged, before the revolt by John Galt is realized. In government, the scenario is reaching that described in Animal Farm (a fable about the revolution in Russia by Lenin, forming the USSR) that will be used to justify the Revolution by The Oligarchy. That fable has been transcribed into animated form reasonably well.
 
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