Background Briefing: July 7, 2019
Unmasking the Growth of Fascist Tendencies in Trump’s America
We begin with America’s traditionally non-partisan celebration of Independence Day which was hijacked on the 4th of July by an authoritarian leader who cages children, talks about being president for life, is grooming his children for dynastic succession, says he will not accept the outcome of an election if he loses, has threatened to jail his opponents and constantly attacks the free press, recently sharing his hatred of journalists with his despotic buddy Putin saying we should “get rid of them”, and to top it off, holds military parades. Jason Stanley, Professor of Philosophy at Yale whose latest book is “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them”, joins us to discuss his article at The New York Times, “Is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Fascism Claim too Extreme? ICE is not the SS or the Gestapo. But it has concerning similarities.” We look into Trump’s radical break with America’s democratic tradition since democracies organize themselves around respect for the dignity, equality and freedom of all human beings as opposed to fascism which organizes society around the vilification of outsiders. We will also examine the similarities between powerful business interests and the institutions of state terror with Wall Street giving billions in loans to for-profit prison companies who run detention centers, some with former high-ranking Trump Administration officials serving on their boards.
State-Sponsored Terror on the US-Mexico Border
Then we investigate further state-sponsored terror on the U.S.-Mexico border with historian Monica Muñoz Martinez, and award-winning author who is Professor of American Studies and Ethnic Studies at Brown University whose latest book is “The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas”. She joins us to discuss the fear engendered in immigrant communities about Trump’s promised forthcoming mass roundups for deportation and her work on Mapping Violence, a digital research project that recovers histories of racial violence in Texas, and how that relates to the apparent turn for the worse within the culture inside the Border Patrol revealed in recent racist and callous Facebook postings.
Health Insurance Giants Target Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders
Then finally we get an assessment of the coming titanic battle between the increasingly powerful health insurance giants and the Democratic candidates running for president who are advocating Medicare-For-All, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and in particular Elizabeth Warren. Wendell Potter, the former chief spokesman for CIGNA and head of corporate communications at Humana who is now a senior analyst on healthcare at the Center for Public Integrity and the founder of Tarbell.org, joins us to discuss the need for better arguments and strategy in advocating for a single-payer healthcare system in America.