Background Briefing: September 6, 2020

On By gram

 

The Commander-in- Chief’s Real Attitude Toward Those Who Serve Under Him

We begin with the revelations of our Commander-in-Chief’s real attitudes towards the men and women in the military serving under him along with the veteran community which were revealed in The Atlantic then confirmed by the Washington Post, the AP, The New York Times and Fox News. Having called America’s fallen “losers” and “suckers” Trump made similar disparaging and grotesquely insensitive remarks to General Kelly at the gravesite of his son at Arlington who died at the age of 29 in Afghanistan. Needless to say General Kelly has not come forward to support Trump’s claim that this is “fake news” and we speak with Lucian Truscott, a journalist and author who is a graduate of West Point and is currently a columnist for Salon where his latest article is “Cadet Bonespurs reports for duty. Down in the polls, denigrating our war dead, Trump wants a new civil war.” We discuss the comparison between Trump’s disrespect for the military but affection for the fake military of these weekend warriors and sunshine patriots with their rag-tag militias who shoot unarmed protesters and threaten Democratic governors.

The Mainstreaming of White Nationalism

Then we speak with Cynthia Miller-Idriss who runs the Polarization and Extremism Research & Innovation Lab in the Center for University Excellence at American University who is also Director of Strategy and Partnership at the U.K.-based Center for Analysis of the Radical Right and serves on the advisory board of the Center for Research on Extremism in Oslo, Norway. She joins us to discuss her latest book Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right and how the days of the Aryan brotherhood in prisons and backwoods white power militias are long gone since white nationalism has now been mainstreamed, aided and abetted by the movement’s chief apologist, Donald Trump.

 

Similarities Between the 1930’s and the Present

Then finally we speak with a scholar of the 1930’s and fascism, Benjamin Carter-Hett, who is the author of Burning the Reichstag, and his latest book, just out, The Nazi Menace: Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, and the Road to War.  He joins us to discuss similarities between the world of the 1930’s and the present, between open societies organized around democracy and the rule of law or dominant groups organized along racial and national lines owing nothing to minorities.