That the Republican Party has morphed into a fascist cabal is undeniably true, especially given their successful Senate "killibuster" of the Democrats' pathetically watered-down voting rights bill this week.
But look no further than the Biden White House's own "National Strategy For Countering Domestic Terrorism" for disturbing evidence that not only is the current Democratic leadership of the enabling Vichy variety, but that they themselves have become at heart true believers in the anti-democratic authoritarian cause.
The Biden manifesto publicly announces that the government's spy and police agencies and the unaccountable tech billionaires of Silicon Valley will formalize their co-equal partnership to create "innovative ways to foster digital literacy and build resilience to recruitment and mobilization. The United States also recently joined the Christchurch Call to Action to Eliminate Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content Online, an international partnership between governments and technology companies that works to develop new multilateral solutions to eliminating terrorist content online while safeguarding the freedom of online expression."
This melding of corporations and oligarchs into government is just one of the definitions of a fascist state. The fact that the Biden strategy paper is careful to append promises to uphold the right to freedom of expression to its Orwellian directives is the same window dressing contained in the Patriot Act and other post-9/11 reactionary laws. In fact, there are so many cut-and-pasted First Amendment fig leaves contained throughout the White House document that methinks they might be protesting just a tad too much.
No specifics are offered on just what these "multilateral solutions" or "the innovative ways to foster literacy and build resilience" might be. There is certainly no mention of our public education system becoming involved. There is no mention of building new schools, or hiring more qualified teachers and professors, the better to enhance the literacy of the masses. There is no mention of continuing to send stimulus checks, expand and extend food aid, forgive student loans and crushing medical debt, build guaranteed housing, implement a government jobs program, legislate single payer health coverage, or any new social programs at all to help struggling Americans to foster the "resiliency" the government says they need to resist recruitment by violent actors.
To the contrary: the White House wants to repurpose the Department of Homeland Security and the secretive network of police and spy agencies into a new Department of Education. It even envisages this top-secret behemoth birthed from 9/11 paranoia to become the very latest cool thing in psychotherapy:
Our law enforcement agencies also play a critical role in responding to reports of criminal and otherwise concerning activity. That is why the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security are working to enhance public understanding of the full range of assistance that can be provided to those in need, including how mental health experts are complementing traditional law enforcement response. Additionally, the National Counterterrorism Center, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Department of Homeland Security will release publicly a new edition of the Federal Government’s Mobilization Indicators booklet that will include for the first time potential indicators of domestic terrorism–related mobilization. These agencies are also working toward including a range of resources that the public may consult in the event of possible domestic terrorist recruitment or mobilization."
Previous editions of the Mobilization Indicator have heavily concentrated on identifying Muslim terrorists. The 2019 edition also lumped white nationalists in with climate and animal rights activists as "violent extremists."
The 2017 edition's scoring system to help FBI agents identify potential terrorists has more than 40 questions on a checklist as warning signs for incipient terrorists. Among them are engagement in paintball or laser tag events, the use of encryption programs on the Internet to mask identities, and people who have recently suffered a severe loss. Given that 600,000 Americans have died from Covid-19 since the pandemic began, there might be contained in the newest FBI checklist untold millions of people whose grief and anger potentially make them prime suspects or recruits.
Our "resilience training" will be under the sole purview of the Silicon Valley-Washington Partnership. The first step, though, is to root out the racism and bigotry festering within the population - but not, of course, festering within the "woke" official government establishment.
To that end, the White House anti-terrorism report ridiculously casts the powerful, violent, official public-private government establishment as an innocent victim in its own right, as oppressed a victim as any minority or out-group, be it black, brown, Asian, LGBT. In order for the Biden administration to address the "systemic racism" that the president himself had a hand in creating and perpetuating with his Crime Bill, it insists that it must first root out the allegedly rampant racist extremism within the relatively powerless population.
The anti-terrorism report effectively ignores police violence, probably because it is the police agencies which form the buffer zones protecting the Silicon Valley-Washington government and its wealthy donors from the woefully unresilient rabble.
And make no mistake. The unresilient rabble as defined by the Corporate Partnership running the country potentially includes all of us. The Biden Strategy report comes right out and says so:
"Another key component of the threat comes from anti–government or anti–authority violent extremists. This significant component of today’s threat includes self–proclaimed “militias” and militia violent extremists who take steps to violently resist government authority or facilitate the overthrow of the U.S. Government based on perceived overreach; anarchist violent extremists, who violently oppose all forms of capitalism, corporate globalization, and governing institutions, which they perceive as harmful to society; sovereign citizen violent extremists, who believe they are immune from government authority and laws; or any other."
In other words, if you are a socialist or an anti-capitalist or are opposed to the undemocratic dispute settlement courts which are part of most "free trade" treaties - if you are "any other" whatsoever - then the Corporate Partnership of America views you as a potential extremist. The problem is not that our de facto oligarchy is harmful to society. The problem is that you mistakenly perceive them as being harmful to society.
In order for the Corporate Partnership to combat far-right racist extremism, therefore, any critic of capitalism must be considered a potential threat to their national security, which is code for "bottom line." And it is the police state which will enforce the required resiliency. The report ominously continues:
"It (the Biden policy) thus sets a pathway for a unity of effort at the policy level, while protecting the specific work of law enforcement that must be left wholly to appropriate law enforcement entities, whether Federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial..."
"The overarching goal of this Strategy is preventing, disrupting, and deterring that violence. Pursuing that goal it is critical that we condemn and confront domestic terrorism regardless of the particular ideology that motivates individuals to violence....
“ (It)includes reducing the factors contributing to domestic terrorism. Those factors have multiple dimensions, including incitement to imminent violence online, some transnational linkages, and certain self–proclaimed private “militia” activity that, to varying degrees, is prohibited by the laws of all 50 states. Addressing these factors contributing to domestic terrorism is, in part, a means to achieving the first objective of preventing the violence itself and handling the threats we face today; but it must also be its own objective, as reducing the contributing factors can make a difference in diminishing the threat we might otherwise face tomorrow."
This paranoid document disingenuously and simplistically foists the blame for extremism and all kinds of protest and unrest on our unfettered access to technology. It touts the fostering of the same kind of stoic "resilience" as the "Eat Your Peas" scoldings that the Obama administration preached to justify the imposition of austerity on the masses, even as the rich only got richer.
The current White House continues to gaslight the public. The deflection of blame onto the public continues apace:
Resilience can take many forms. It can mean raising public awareness of how terrorists deliberately seek overreaction, which can help to avoid precisely that overreaction and instead thwart terrorists’ own strategies. And it can mean, broader still, cultivating the type of digital literacy that can empower the American public to resist those who would use online communications platforms and other venues to recruit, radicalize, and mobilize to violence. Fostering and ultimately attaining these and other forms of resilience is a third goal, and one whose achievement would strengthen the United States against domestic terrorism as well as other threats to U.S. national security."
Tamp down your emotions while you are being evicted and starved, proles! As long as you're in touch with your feelings as you needlessly suffer, it will raise your awareness. It is the corporatist state that must be strengthened, not the masses of people. Freelance "extremism" must not be allowed to compete against the real thing, which is our currently existing corporate system.
To that end, the report also recommends the deprogramming of returning troops of the profitable Forever Wars, state-trained killers who are especially vulnerable to PTSD and depression and self-harm and the committing of domestic violence, and a handful of whom become mass shooters. The Biden government pays lip service to combating white supremacy and violence while implicitly upholding white supremacy and violence within its own ranks, most notably within the military and the outsourced mercenaries financed by private equity.
As stated before, the corporate cult of "wokeness" is just another form of capitalistic exploitation of historically marginalized people. In pitting the jobless white working class against black and brown people, while simultaneously also foisting blame on black and brown people and various out-groups, the corporate state maintains its own supremacy at everybody else's expense.
The White House also continues the grand American Exceptionalist tradition of foisting blame on foreign countries for fomenting racial animosity here in the US, which is the exact same tactic that the FBI employed against unions and socialists during the Depression and against the Civil Rights movement in the 60s, and most recently, in its Russiagate propaganda crusade, non-fealty to which is almost considered a heresy if you're a Democrat.
Now that the official narrative states that the US has instantaneously regained its alleged "standing" in the world with the departure of Donald Trump, the Biden administration is putting pressure on its junior global partners of the unified Corporate State to crack down on their own dissidents and other threats to its manufactured polarization for the prevention of transnational populist solidarity. The administration has also issued a thinly-veiled directive to its junior partners and client states to censor news about racial unrest and police violence in the United States, lest the One Exceptional Nation be accused of hypocrisy when it bombs democracy on regimes it doesn't like.
" The U.S. Government has thus prioritized obtaining from foreign partners credible intelligence and law enforcement information regarding international support for domestic terrorism in the United States, capturing it in written reporting, and sharing that intelligence and information appropriately across the Federal Government. That effort complements an increased emphasis on the sharing of relevant information with foreign partners, where appropriate, on aspects of the domestic terrorism threat of international relevance. We can also learn from our international partners’ challenges and successes in disrupting plots and responding to attacks, integrating that expertise into our own planning and operations."
"Additionally, the intelligence and law enforcement communities will enhance the government’s understanding of how foreign malign influence operations and the dissemination of disinformation, including by foreign governments, relate to the domestic terrorism threat we face. These efforts complement the U.S. Government’s coordinated activities to recognize, understand, and counter terrorist propaganda and disinformation. In addition, the Department of State will leverage public diplomacy programs and messaging to serve as a preventative measure to raise awareness in the short–term and shift sentiments over the long– term. Such efforts can also be used to counter messages from adversaries who use racially motivated violent incidents in America to attempt to erode U.S. credibility."
Credibility is code for supremacy.
But almost as an afterthought, the White House's anti-domestic terrorism report also touts the Democrats' recent efforts to deliver a modicum of financial relief to serve as a counterweight to "the economic dislocation and even despair felt by many Americans. Our continued efforts will augment and accelerate the essential work of economic recovery and sustainable development, alleviating over time (my bold) the sentiments that some domestic terrorists deliberately use to recruit and mobilize. Demonstrating that our government can deliver for all Americans is crucial to restoring confidence in our democracy."
The Biden administration does acknowledge, albeit fleetingly and glibly, that its own Corporate Partnership had a hand in creating the misery and despair leading to violent acts by the populace. But it only acknowledged this truth in one measly paragraph out of the 30 pages that do nothing but issue yet another clarion call for more surveillance, more police, more censorship.
Of course, Biden has already said there will be no student debt relief or continuation of federal unemployment benefits past September, when the national eviction moratorium also will have expired. Immediate relief takes time. First they have to stop the folks from acting out all their anger with the help of some digital literacy classes and websites operated by federal law enforcement with a little assist from Health and Human Services.
Biden's ultimate goal is to restore folks' faith in government, once the government roots out all the troublemaking folks and makes them resilient. The "crisis of misinformation and disinformation" is simply tearing hungry jobless desperate folks apart at the seams.
