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dictators
Be Terrified Trump Is Using the Same Bonaparte Quote as This Right-Wing Mass Murderer
This declaration by Trump was no passing joke or meme. He wants us all to see it. To hear it. To know that he means it. He’s shoving it in our faces. Pounding it out on the keyboard. Declaring it to the world. Quoting Anders Breivik.
Feb 17, 2025
The 32-year-old Norwegian considered himself a deep thinker and a big fan of the rightwing and Russian propaganda which argued western civilization was rotting from within because of multiculturalism, empowered women, racial/religious minorities, and liberalism. Putting pen to paper, he wrote:
“When I first started blogging I was concerned with how we could ‘fix the system.’ I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that the system cannot be fixed, and perhaps shouldn’t be fixed. Not only does it have too many enemies, it also has too many internal contradictions.
“If we define the ‘system’ as mass immigration from alien cultures, globalism, multiculturalism and suppression of free speech in the name of ‘tolerance,’ then this is going to collapse. It’s inevitable.
“The goal of Western survivalists — and that’s what we are — should not be to ‘fix the system,’ but to be mentally and physically prepared for its collapse, and to develop coherent answers to what went wrong and prepare to implement the necessary remedies when the time comes.
“We need to seize the window of opportunity, and in order to do so, we need to define clearly what we want to achieve.”
After writing over 1500 pages describing how it’s the essential duty of every white man in the world to marginalize or even kill as many non-white non-Christians as possible, Anders Breivik set off a bomb in Oslo’s Government Quarter, killing eight people.
He then drove to Utøya, an island in Tyrifjorden where the Norwegian Social Democratic party’s youth organization, the Workers’ Youth League (AUF), held their summer camp. There he used a semiautomatic rifle to kill another sixty-nine people, most in their teens or early twenties. He shot and wounded another 41 mostly young people, leaving many with life-changing injuries.
The epigraph to the paragraphs cited above was the polestar of Breivik’s philosophy, one he’d learned from studying the writings and lives of his heroes: Adolf Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte. He opened the chapter with it at the top of the page, apart from all the other text:
“He who saves his country, violates no law.”
The phrase was most recently quoted three weeks ago — on January 24, 2024 — by El Salvador’s notoriously violent and lawbreaking President Nayib Bukele, who also tweeted: “He who saves his country violates no law.”
Napoleon overthrew the Directory in 1799, naming himself as First Consul, and then declared himself Emperor in 1804 with those same words: “Celui qui sauve sa patrie ne viole aucune loi.”
Emperors like Napoleon and dictators like Bukele don’t bother with trivial details like obeying the law. They rule by decree. Write it down, put your signature on it, and boom, it’s now the law of the land.
That was also Breivik’s hope for the Scandinavian countries: throw off the yoke of the “globalist” EU and embrace a racist strongman to lead the continent into an era of whites-only paradise. Replace “the system” of democracy with a white supremacist Christo-fascist oligarchy.
Which is why it’s so troubling that Trump tweeted the same Napoleonic phrase that Breivik made famous. The phrase every white supremacist has memorized, along with the fourteen words and the number 88 as code for “Heil Hitler.”
It would be a mistake at this point to think that when Trump quotes people like Breivik he’s just trolling us: People are now dying all over the world because a half-billion dollars’ worth of USAID food is rotting in storage; millions have lost access to AIDS drugs that were keeping them alive; children in cancer drug trials have been cut off from lifesaving medication; and federal workers who thought Civil Service would protect them are now on the verge of homelessness.
He means it. And for three weeks he’s been acting on his words, largely with impunity.
So long as he’s “saving the country,” he argues, he’s “violating no law.” It’s why he’s defying court orders right now to eject Musk’s teenage hackers from the Treasury Department or restart NIH and USAID funding.
And, truth be told, six corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court have already ratified the White House’s new American dictator doctrine with the Trump v US decision last July, saying that if the president breaks the law while executing “official acts,” he’s immune from criminal prosecution for the crime.
He just gets away with it. As long as he’s saving the country, he violates no law. Don’t even bother going after him, the Republicans on the Supreme Court said; it simply won’t succeed.
It’s probably why Trump is now talking about running for a third term — perhaps even pulling a Putin and running for VP with a figurehead for president — because, like most dictators throughout history, he knows that the minute he’s no longer in power he’ll be facing prison.
This declaration by Trump was no passing joke or meme. He posted it both on Truth Social and on Xitter.
He wants us all to see it.
To hear it.
To know that he means it.
He’s shoving it in our faces. Pounding it out on the keyboard. Declaring it to the world. Quoting Anders Breivik.
And perhaps not just on his own behalf. Kyle Clark, a reporter for 9News Denver, believes it’s a shout-out to the armed insurrectionists Trump recently pardoned:
“As a journalist who covers extremism at the local level, I think it’s a mistake to view Trump’s Napoleonic statement as solely about presidential power.
“Consider if it’s interpreted as a wink and a nod for any extremist to act outside the law to ‘save’ the country as they see fit.”
Time to start killing liberals? Harassing queer people? Burning down the homes of undocumented immigrants?
After all, the rightwing gangs in Russia and Hungary enthusiastically do all these things with the tacit approval of Putin and Orbán.
And now Trump is doubling down; yesterday he retweeted a rightwinger’s message that he could defy the courts if he chose to because he is “saving the country.”
And his fellow billionaire, Elon Musk, is burning through our federal government like a California wildfire.
TS Eliot was wrong: sometimes the world does end with a bang rather than a whimper…
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School of Assassins Faces Protest, Congressional De-Funding
Nov 20, 2013
November 22-24, 2013: Shut Down the School of AssassinsThe School of the Americas is the Pentagon's flagship training school for Latin American militaries. The SOA has trained hundreds ...
The US Army School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia is a notorious training operation for Latin American officers and soldiers. It's associated with some of the worst dictatorships and human rights violators in the hemisphere. For over 20 years, the grassroots School of Americas Watch (SOA Watch) has grown into one of the most dynamic, multi-generational, cross-continental movements against militarism in the Americas.
This weekend, November 22-24, will see thousands gather for a massive rally at Ft. Benning in the ongoing campaign to shut down the school. Vans from colleges and universities will make the trek with students who've studied the grim history of U.S.-sponsored military coups and U.S.-friendly dictators, many of whom got their inspiration and training at the SOA (now renamed Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC).
Among the more infamous SOA graduates are Gen. Jose Rios Montt, who was convicted May 10th of committing genocide between March 1982 and August 1983 during his Guatemalan military dictatorship; death squad leader Otto Perez Molina who under Rios Montt directed massacres of Maya people, and who recently maneuvered Guatemala's high court to reverse Rios Montt's conviction; Gen. Manual Noreiga of Panama, who moved from dictatorship via SOA to the BOP (Federal Bureau of Prisons that is) on drug charges; Roberto D'Abuisson, leader of El Salvador's death squads in the 1980s; and Gen. Hugo Banzar Suarez of Bolivia who seized power in 1971 and who jailed, disappeared and assassinated suspected political opponents for eight years. SOA graduates led military coups in Venezuela in 2002 and the 2009 coup in Honduras.
For more background, "Somos Una America" -- a new documentary that focuses on the campaign against the Pentagon mindset that promotes U.S. domination and 'military solutions' in the Western Hemisphere -- is available online for free (visit: soaw.org/somos).
This past April, the SOA Watch campaign won a long-sought court victory over the U.S. government's refusal to release the names of the trainers at the SOA/WHINSEC. Federal Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton in Calif. ruled that the Pentagon has no grounds for refusing to release these names. President Obama has OKed the Justice Department's appeal of this ruling, protecting the Pentagon's effort to keep the information secret. As SOA Watch points out, this is because instructors there have coached "torturers, death squads and military dictators throughout the Americas." The president's decision to appeal puts the lie to his claim that his administration would be the most transparent in history. And you thought after his persecution of whistle blowers Julian Assange, Pfc. Manning and Edward Snowden that Obama could not get more cynical.
Teaching Torture the World Over
The SOA burst into the news in 1996, when the Pentagon released copies of its torture training manuals. The Sept. 21, 1996 Washington Post, in "U.S. Instructed Latins on Executions, Torture; Manuals Used 1982-91, Pentagon Reveals" by Dana Priest, notes that the manuals promote the use of "fear, payment of bounties for enemy dead, beatings, false imprisonment, executions and the use of truth serum." By 1996, 60,000 military and police officers had been through SOA training.
The torture manuals were distributed to thousands of military officers from eleven South and Central American countries, although the actions advocated in them violated U.S. Army law at the time. The Pentagon ordered the manuals destroyed, but only a few thousand were ever recovered. They have doubtlessly been reproduced and employed by militaries and counterinsurgency forces the world over. U.S. military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan appear to be direct beneficiaries, considering the torture regimes conducted at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq (2004) and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Afghanistan has become a torture regime too -- first under U.S. forces and now by their Afghan trainees (See "U.S. Practiced Torture After 9/11, Nonpartisan Review Concludes," NY Times, Apr. 16, 2013, and "Government Panel in Afghanistan Confirms Widespread Torture of Detainees," Jan. 21, 2013).
Demands to abolish the SOA/WHINSEC now come from across the political spectrum. From the point of view of the victims, more than 300 human rights defenders have employed nonviolent direct action at the base, and as a result have collectively spent over 100 years in prison and served additional years probation. (Disclaimer: I did 6 months in the Duluth prison camp for trespassing at SOA back in 2006. My cellie R.J., who was doing eight years, put me straight when he announced, "I see him doing his exercises, his yoga. He's just here for an oil change.") From officialdom, the Latin American Military Training Review Act of 2013, H.R. 2989, would suspend operations at the school. It also mandates an investigation into SOA's connection with abuses of human rights. It's got 40 co-sponsors but needs more.
If you're not heading down to the Georgia for the rally, at least push your Congressional Rep's to join the shutdown effort.
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Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Doesn't Mince Words About War and Justice
May 04, 2008
Shirin Ebadi wants Americans to do what they can to stop the Bush administration's threats to bomb Iran as punishment for presumably making nuclear weapons.
"Nuclear weapons are not a daily concern of the people," said Ebadi. "They want jobs; they want houses; they want health; they want more freedom."
However, she predicted that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would whip up nationalistic support if Iran were forced into a face-off with the United States, just as it did when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980. The invasion resulted in an eight-year war between the two countries.
"Iranians may criticize their government, but if there is a military attack on Iran, they will defend their own country," she said. "A government that is in danger from the outside will take any chance to accelerate nationalism inside the country."
The lawyer, writer, teacher and former judge, became the first Muslim woman and first Iranian to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her efforts to promote democracy and human rights in Iran.
She spoke recently at the annual Great Lakes PeaceJam held at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo.
PeaceJam's mission is to work with Nobel Peace Laureates to help create a new generation of young leaders committed to peace through positive change in themselves, their communities and the world.
Instead of preparing for war, Ebadi wants to see Iran, the United States and every nation make education a top priority by taking 10 percent out of the military budget and re-directing it to education.
The cost of the military overwhelms government budgets, she said, and only a few countries in the world are "lucky" enough NOT to have this expense drain their resources.
"Governments tend to act in violent ways," she said. "So the people must build an awareness that every violent act begets more violence."
In other words, citizens should not wait for their government to promote peace and justice. The people must demand and fight for it themselves.
"I believe we must introduce peace and peaceful co-existence to children when they are young," in programs like PeaceJam, she said.
In general, Ebadi doesn't trust government and judging from her experience, she has good reason.
At age 23 she became the first woman judge in Iran (1975-79) serving as head of the city court of Tehran. However, she lost her judgeship because the post-Revolution government, the Islamic Republic, deemed women too "incompetent" to serve as judges.
Not to let a few mullahs to disturb her, Ebadi continued to defend women and children as well as government dissidents. She also distributed evidence implicating government officials in the murders of students at the University of Tehran in 1999. That landed her in jail for three weeks in 2000 and resulted in her disbarment.
Through all of this turmoil she taught law at the University of Tehran, tended to her family and wrote books.
One of her books, Iran Awakening: A Memoir of Revolution and Hope, was banned in Iran because it criticizes the 1979 Revolution and the Islamic Republic. She published it in the USA and it was subsequently translated into several languages.
Currently, Ebadi is accused of having taken money from the U.S. to give to Akbar Ganji, an international award-winning journalist who has called for a switch from Iran's theocratic system to "a secular democracy." She regularly receives death threats for "working against Islam and Iran."
So how and why does she continue in this maelstrom of political and religious tyranny?
Ebadi describes herself as stubborn. Others describe her as courageous, tough, and possessing a funny, earthy sense of humor. There is no mistaking her seriousness of purpose, however, and her willingness to put herself on the line to advocate for those least protected by government.
What also drives her is the belief that the strength of a chain lies in its smallest link, therefore, it is essential for the strong to protect the weak and marginal people of society.
Iran is rich in natural resources, she said, however, more and more children are leaving school to sell flowers or beg in order to help their impoverished families. In fact, the number of street children has increased in the larger cities at alarming rates.
"For a wealthy country this is embarrassing, said Ebadi.
Fourteen years ago she and her colleagues established an association to protect street children by providing them health care and teaching them to read. Since then a dozen other associations have been founded.
Women in Iran don't have it much better even though they obtained the vote 50 years ago, became professionals and skilled trades workers and outnumber men in the universities as students and professors.
The Islamic Republic passed many discriminatory laws denying women their rights, which is one of the reasons why the feminist movement in Iran is very strong. Ebadi believes women will eventually prevail in making Iran more democratic.
Although Iran has experienced much internal strife over the past few decades, Ebadi insists that Iranians should solve their own problems without outsiders trying to solve them, especially the United States.
"It's not about U.S. troops coming to Iran," she said. "A military attack or threat on Iran will worsen democracy and human rights. The government will use national security as an excuse to suppress our freedoms. And an attack will create further chaos in the region."
She also said an attack on Iran would be as misguided as America's invasion of Iraq.
"Saddam was a dictator, there is no doubt. Unfortunately, the world is filled with dictators. The only difference with Saddam was that he sat on a lot of oil."
She questioned aims of the Iraq War that has now squandered half a trillion dollars and killed over 4,000 young Americans and one million Iraqis.
"It's high time to ask what the purpose of this is and to remind the U.S. not to make another mistake by attacking Iran....Never have the problems of any country been solved through war," said Ebadi.
So, she said, the American people-and people all over the world-must make their voices heard and do whatever they can to promote justice to end this war and war altogether.
"The opportunities to be creative and make a difference in the world are endless. A person has only to decide what s/he wants to do for peace and then do it."
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