Advertisements

*The following is an opinion column by R Muse*

Advertisements

Americans who are even remotely aware of exactly how the Nazi’s rose to power in 1930s Germany must be astonished at the rate at which the Trump is embracing Gestapo-type tactics. Whether it is compiling an enemies list consisting of government employees or demonizing different groups for rage from his racist zealots, “the Trump” is conducting a real-time master class in how Hitler controlled his enemies.

The latest outrage, one that should alarm every American alive, is a call from a Trump acolyte in a Trump-related newspaper. The call to action was a summons for FBI Director James Comey, to use the authority of the Bureau to act as “official state police” to repress Americans exercising their First Amendment right to assemble.

Although this is a seriously astonishing concept in America, this is the fascist authoritarian Trump making America great like his adopted Russian “bro” made the former Soviet Union “great.” Coupled with the “not-so-stunning” official revelation that Putin’s Russians worked alongside the Trump campaign to install Vladimir’s surrogate in the White House, of course Trump is going to employ Putin tactics to suppress dissent; it is just what authoritarian tyrants do.

The newspaper in question is owned by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Kushner is the same unelected private citizen that Trump wanted the highest level security clearance for so he could “play president” and receive daily presidential security briefings. Kushner is already a high-level advisor to dumb Donnie, and now he is using his personal newspaper as an administration propaganda arm to portray peaceful American protestors as “violent” and unlawful, and to demand that the FBI director Comey employ Stasi, KGB, or Gestapo tactics to crackdown, investigate and intimidate Americans for peaceably assembling.

It is unknown if Kushner got the idea from Nazi Germany, East Germany, the Soviet Union, Communist China, Hussein-era Iraq, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, or Russia under Vladimir Putin, but he certainly did not find it anywhere in American history. The Founding Fathers saw to it that all Americans, including those protesting “the Trump,” were constitutionally protected to assemble and exercise free speech.

The opinion piece in the New York Observer was written for Trump by Austin Bay, a retired Army Reserve colonel and adjunct professor at the University of Texas in Austin. Bay’s pro-Trump propaganda piece was titled “Comey’s FBI Needs to Investigate Violent Democratic Tantrums.” Most Americans consider peaceable assembly as one of their many constitutionally-guaranteed rights, not violent democratic tantrums and not anything the “official state police” have authority to “clamp down on.”

The despicable Donald Trump, through a surrogate of course, demanded that as a loyal Trump campaign advocate and ally, FBI Director Comey has an obligation to use the full authority and power of the federal investigative agency to:

“Launch a coordinated crackdown on nationwide anti-Trump protests, mobilizations and recount efforts. Conduct detailed investigations into the violence and political thuggery that continue to mar the presidential election’s aftermath, and include a thorough probe of the protests to include possible ties to organizations demanding vote recounts. The hard left’s violent reaction to Donald Trump’s election is vile and dangerous. Demonstrators vandalize and destroy. They have two goals: intimidating people and sustaining the mainstream media lie that Donald Trump is dangerous.”

Ironically, in speaking on behalf of a Russian sympathizer and Putin devotee, the Trump article incites fear of “communists” and goes to great lengths to smear the Black Lives Matter movement as violent. The propaganda also smears the various grassroots campaigns urging electors to honor the popular vote and keep Trump from the White House. Bay writes that “Reports that members of the Electoral College are being threatened by angry, vicious (and likely Democratic Party) malcontents require Comey’s quick and systematic attention.”

The editor of Extra!, the media watchdog magazine of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), Jim Naureckas, told Alternet that the anti-American propaganda piece is:

“One of the most disturbing things he has seen since the election. To have the incoming ruler’s son-in-law using his paper to call for the federal police to investigate protests against the ruler, that is pretty far gone. It struck me as a ‘first they came for the communists’ moment. It shows you the outlines of how you would justify a complete crackdown on dissent. It’s frightening.”

Mr. Naureckas certainly hit the nail on the head when he said it was irrelevant whether Kushner or Trump himself penned the propaganda piece.

“This publication is literally in the family. This paper has been an organ of the Trump movement from the beginning, and it is owned by one of the closest confidants Trump has. The idea of sending the secret police after protesters is an incredibly dangerous idea, and it must be repudiated.” (author bold)

It is probably redundant to state, but the retired colonel who ghost-wrote the piece for Trump, Trump’s son-in-law, and dastardly Donald himself know what the First Amendment says and guarantees, but they have as little use for the document as they do any other law that doesn’t force Americans to worship Trump or eliminate his detractors. Don’t believe it?

Remember, throughout the campaign Trump incited his racist devotees to violence against protestors at his events and rallies. At a Las Vegas campaign stop in February, he said about one protestor, “I’d like to punch him in the face. In the old days protesters would be carried out in stretchers.” He also used social media to incite his acolytes by condemning peaceful protests as “very unfair” and claimed that peaceably assembled protestors were all “paid agents incited by the media.” The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has tracked a frightening rise in hate crime violence by Trump supporters since the election, and regarded at least 867 “post-election hate incidents” as a gross under count.

This latest sign from “the Trump” that “constitutionally protected exercises in free speech” are going to be targeted by a Trump-directed federal police agency is much more than frightening; it is terrifyingly similar to Nazi Germany, East Germany Stasi, Russia and any tyrannically oppressive regime. A professor of politics and international studies at U.C. San Francisco, Stephen Zunes, said that despite the Constitution’s free speech and assembly protections, the New York Observer article “presages a serious crackdown on civil liberties in the coming years.” It is precisely what no small number of political opinion writers warned Americans would happen if they placed a Putin cohort in the White House with Nazi advisors in tow; it’s too bad that no-one listened.