Month: December 2022

What Patriotic Americans Can Do to Save Their Democracy From the Resurgence of Plutocratic Populism

We continue on this interregnum between Christmas and the New Year to look back on the major stories we covered in 2022 and how they evolved today focusing on the growth of American fascism. We begin with a broadcast of Background Briefing from January 3, 2022 on what patriotic Americans can do to save their democracy from the resurgence of plutocratic populism. Joining us was Ian Haney López, the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class and Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America. We discuss his essay at Protect Democracy, “Can Democracy (and the Democratic Party) Survive Racism as a Strategy? An Argument for Race-Class Fusion Politics,” and with Trump’s GOP actively engineering an electoral coup following the failed attempt on January 6, we discuss how right wing American oligarchs are playing with fire as plutocratic populism could soon morph into American fascism.

Trump’s Pressure Campaign on the DOJ and Pardons Sought by the GOP’s Most Ardent Trumpsters

Then we go to a broadcast from June 23, 2022 about Trump’s pressure campaign on the DOJ and pardons sought by the GOP’s most ardent trumpsters. We began with that day’’s hearing of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection which focused on the pressure Trump put on the Department of Justice to get the DOJ to add its credibility to Trump’s bogus “stop the steal” lies. Joining us was Allan Lichtman, a political historian who teaches at American University and has studied both the American right and the presidency. His books include The Keys to the White House: A Surefire Way to Predicting the Next President.  His prediction system has correctly predicted the outcomes of all US presidential elections since 1984 including the 2016 election when against all odds, he predicted a Trump victory. The author of the national best-seller, The Case For Impeachment, his most recent books are The Embattled Vote in America and Repeal the Second Amendment: The Case for a Safer America, we discuss the revelations in the Oval Office from top DOJ officials appointed by Trump and how Republican Congressmen Perry, Gaetz, Brooks, Gohmert, Biggs and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene all sought pardons from Trump presumably because they knew they broke the law.

American Fascism Was Never Exorcised, It Was Obscured Beneath Romantic Mythmaking

Then finally we go to a broadcast from July 24, 2022 about how American fascism was never exorcised but was obscured beneath romantic mythmaking. We examined the rise of the right and assess the size of the coalition of white supremacist Confederates, Christian nationalists, right-wing militias, alt-right neo-Nazis and America Firsters. Joining us was Sarah Churchwell, a Professor of American literature and ­humanities at the School of Advanced Study of the University of London. She is the author of Behold America: The Entangled History of “America First” and The American Dream and her latest book is The Wrath to Come: Gone with the Wind and the Lies America Tells.