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tucker carlson
'Fascism on Full Display' at Trump's Madison Square Garden Rally
"No dog whistles, no plausible deniability," wrote one historian. "It's a show of power and an another attempt to make this look and feel normal."
Oct 28, 2024
From start to finish, Republican nominee Donald Trump's campaign rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night was a torrent of bigotry and fascistic rhetoric, with the former president and a bizarre lineup of preceding speakers trashing Puerto Ricans and Palestinians, condemning the press, and casting their political opponents as a satanic "enemy from within."
The New York City event, held on the second to last Sunday before the November 5 election, amounted to a closing pitch for a candidate who has pledged to wield the power of the federal government—including the U.S. military—against those he views as obstacles to his ascent to power and his political project, which includes a large-scale deportation campaign, massive deregulation for industry, and another round of tax cuts for the wealthy.
"When I say the enemy from within, the other side goes crazy," Trump said Sunday, characterizing Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and other party leaders as mere "vessels" for the "radical left machine," which the former president called "massive, vicious, [and] crooked."
"It's just this amorphous group of people. But they're smart and they're vicious. And we have to defeat them," said the Republican nominee, who falsely claimed the U.S. is an "occupied country" facing a "migrant invasion" that only he can stop.
"It's just this amorphous group of people ... they are indeed the enemy from within" -- Trump is indulging in Infowars-level conspiracism pic.twitter.com/Bdf6bCIQJr
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 27, 2024
While the rally featured familiar bloviating from Trump about crowd sizes and other petty obsessions—as well as absurd speakers such as Hulk Hogan and Dr. Phil—historians and other observers were horrified by what they described as the authoritarian ambitions that were front and center and shamelessly expressed Sunday night.
"The point here is that fascism is on full display, openly: no dog whistles, no plausible deniability," said Kathleen Belew, an associate professor of history at Northwestern University whose work has focused on the white supremacist movement in the United States.
"It's a show of power and another attempt to make this look and feel normal," Belew added. "And it will not just magically disappear after the election, regardless of the outcome. In fact, it might be worth thinking through the very likely possibility that this kind of display suggests that this candidate and this movement don't care that much about the outcome."
One journalist called Trump's event "the most overtly fascist mass rally in New York since 1939"—referring to a pro-Nazi rally held that year at Madison Square Garden—and criticized media coverage of the former president's remarks, pointing to a now-changed USA Today headline as a particularly stark example.
House Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-La.) appearance at the rally made clear that Trump and the leadership of the Republican Party are in sync as the GOP pursues full control of Congress on November 5 and lays the groundwork to enact the former president's agenda.
"We gotta get the congressmen elected and we gotta get the senators elected, because we can take the Senate pretty easily, and I think with our little secret we're going to do really well with the House. Right?" Trump said late Sunday, pointing to someone in the audience—possibly Johnson.
"He and I have a secret," Trump added, in remarks carried live by all three major cable news networks. "We'll tell you what it is when the race is over."
Other speakers at the rally included far-right pundit Tucker Carlson, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and billionaire Elon Musk, who has funneled roughly $118 million into the 2024 campaign in support of Trump.
"I'm not just MAGA," Musk said, pointing to his black hat. "I'm dark, gothic MAGA."
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Living Under a Trump Dictatorship
If you're not gaming out this scenario in your head, you are doing it wrong.
Mar 22, 2024
We should already be talking about what it would be like, if Donald Trump wins the 2024 election, to live under a developing autocracy. Beyond the publicized plans of those around him to gut the federal civil service system and consolidate power in the hands of You Know Who, under Trump 2.0, so much else would change for the worse.
All too many of us who now argue about the Ukraine and Gaza wars and their ensuing humanitarian crises, about police violence and extremism in the military here at home, about all sorts of things, would no longer share a common language. Basics that once might have meant the same thing to you and me, like claiming someone won an election, might become unsafe to mention. In a Trump 2.0 world, more of our journalists would undoubtedly face repercussions and need to find roundabout ways to allude to all too many topics. A moving opinion column by the New York Times’s David French, who faced threats for his writing about Donald Trump, highlighted how some who voiced their views on him already need round-the-clock police protection to ensure their safety and that of their family.
We are entering a new and perilous American world and it’s important to grasp that fact.
I often think about the slippery slope we Americans could soon find ourselves on. After all, from the time Vladimir Putin became Russia’s president in 1999, I spent 20 years traveling to his country and back, working there first as an anthropology doctoral student and later as a human rights researcher. I’ve followed Russian politics closely, including as a therapist specializing in war-affected populations, asylum seekers, and refugees. Friends and colleagues of mine there have faced threats to their safety and their careers amid a Kremlin crackdown on public discussion after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and several fled the country with their families in search of safety and a better life.
To be sure, there are many differences between the United States, with its robust democratic tradition, and Russia, which only briefly had competitive elections and a free press. Nonetheless, my experiences there offer a warning about how a Trumpian version of top-down rule could someday stifle any possibility of calling out state-sponsored violence for what it is, and what it might feel like if that’s our situation here someday.
Tucker Carlson’s Moscow
On first look, far-right journalist Tucker Carlson’s recent visit to Moscow, covered exuberantly by Russia’s state media, might seem like an example of an American tourist’s naïve glorification of another country’s luxuries. Carlson marveled at the fancy tilework of the city’s subway system, visited the national ballet, and noted that you can buy caviar cheaply at the local grocery store. He also pointed out that Moscow’s pristine streets had no homeless people and no apparent poverty.
In the gilded halls of the Kremlin palace, he interviewed President Putin for more than two hours. Despite his guileless expression, Carlson occasionally appeared flummoxed as Putin lectured him endlessly on Russian history and the centuries-old claim he insisted Moscow has on Kyiv as its protector from aggressors near and far. Of course, he never challenged Putin on his rationale for invading that country (nor did he refer to it as an invasion) or any of the Russian leader’s other outrageous claims.
I’m of the school of thought that considers Putin’s Russia exactly the sort of anti-woke paradise the MAGA crowd craves. Anyone of Carlson’s age who grew up during the Cold War and turned on his or her television in that pivotal period when the Berlin Wall fell should certainly know that all of Russia doesn’t look anything like what he was shown. He should also have known about the recent history of economic “shock therapy” that drained Russian public services of funding and human resources, not to speak of the decades of corruption and unfair economic policies that enriched a choice few in Putin’s circle at the expense of so many.
Of course, something had to happen to turn the Moscow that Carlson saw into a sanitized moonscape. If you haven’t been following developments in Russia under Putin, let me summarize what I’ve noticed.
Protesters — even many going to opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s recent memorial service — have been arrested or at least intimidated when appearing to sympathize with anything that’s not part of the Kremlin’s official pro-Putin ideology. Many groups, from Asian migrants to the homeless, have either been rounded up by the police or at least relocated far out of the view of tourists of any sort. In fact, the imprisoned American journalist whom Carlson briefly gestured toward emancipating, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, had written on the practice of zachistki, or mop-up operations by the Russian authorities that, for instance, relocated homeless services to the outskirts of Moscow, far from public view. Of course, Gershkovich is now imprisoned indefinitely in Russia on charges of espionage for simply reporting on the war in Ukraine, proving the very point Carlson so studiously avoided, that an endless string of lies underscore Putin’s latest war.
What’s more, amid sub-subsistence wages, housing shortages, and the thin walls of so many city apartments, ordinary Russians are not always able to engage in the “hard conversations” that conservatives like Alabama Senator Katie Britt boast of having in their well-furbished kitchens. After all, neighbors are now encouraged to denounce each other for decrying Russia’s war. (You could, it seems, even end up in prison if your child writes “no to war” on a drawing she did for school.)
There are very personal ramifications to living in an autocracy with which Tucker Carlson and, of course, the Orange Jesus himself are signaling their agreement when they entertain the views of leaders like Vladimir Putin or call Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán “fantastic.” They’re signaling what their end goal is to Americans and, sadly enough, it’s not particularly far-fetched anymore to suggest that, someday, we won’t even have the freedom to talk about all of this with each other.
The Thing That Cannot Be Named
Tucker Carlson at least did his homework. He clearly knew that you couldn’t describe the war in Ukraine as an unprovoked Russian invasion, given that country’s carefully crafted censorship laws.
Since his February 2022 invasion, Putin has referred to it as a “special military operation” focused on the defense of Russia from NATO and the “denazification” of Ukraine. During that first spring, the Russian president signed a law forbidding journalists from even calling the invasion a “war,” choosing instead to frame the killing, displacement, abduction, torture, and rape of Ukrainian citizens as a surgical rescue operation provoked by the victims themselves. Broader, vaguer censorship laws were then passed, further limiting what Russians of all stripes could say, including one against “discrediting the army,” which imposed stiff fines and prison sentences, and more recently, property confiscations on anyone deemed to have said anything negative about Russia’s armed forces. While the thousands of arrests made may seem modest, given Russia’s 146 million people, it’s still, in my opinion, thousands too many.
The Russian leader’s perverse framing of his unprovoked war is undoubtedly what also allows him to admit that hundreds of thousands of Russians have been killed or wounded so far, something he couldn’t otherwise say. In a country suffused with right-wing Christian nationalism, it also certainly helps his cause that most of Russia’s war dead come from remote, poor, and predominantly minority regions.
This is the sort of muddling of meaning and motives that autocratic leaders engage in to justify deaths of all kinds. American equivalents might be what the MAGA crowds do when they blame the January 6th far-right assault at the Capitol, aimed at police and lawmakers, on the “Antifa,” or extreme leftists, without disputing that people were hurt. Or consider then-President Donald Trump’s comment that far-right white supremacist Charlottesville rioters and counter-protesters included “very fine people on both sides” — no matter that one such fine person plowed down a counter-protester in his car, murdering her, or that certain of those “fine” white supremacists espoused anti-Semitic conspiracy theories considered by some an incitement to violence.
For their part, Russians of various political stripes enjoy an ancient tradition of using dark humor and irony to engage in the kinds of conversations they really want to have. Take as an example the way progressive journalists like those at the news stations TV Rain and Novaya Gazeta (since banned from operating) began discussing the war in Ukraine as “the thing that cannot be named.” Eventually, however, sweeping censorship laws prevented even workarounds like those.
It’s not a small thing to live in a place where you can’t say what you want to for fear of political persecution, especially when you’ve grown up in other circumstances. A good friend of mine who came of age after the fall of the Berlin Wall and led a prosperous, happy life in St. Petersburg, fled the country on the last train out of that city to Helsinki, Finland, her young child in tow. Her goal: to start life over from scratch and avoid having to raise her child in a place where he would be brainwashed into thinking Russia’s armed forces and police were infallible and beyond critique. I suspect that many of the hundreds of thousands of Russians who joined her in fleeing the country weren’t that different.
Imagine raising a child whose unquestioning mind you can’t recognize. (That goes for you, too, Trump supporters, because — count on it! — once in office again, he would undoubtedly move toward ending elections as we know them, not to speak of shutting down whatever institutions protect our speech!)
America and the Lie that Begot Other Lies
Events in recent years indicate that Americans — particularly those in the MAGA camp — have grown inured to the public mention of armed violence. Who could forget the moment in 2016 when candidate Trump boasted at a campaign rally before winning the presidency that “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters”? As racially and politically motivated violence and threats have proliferated, so many of us seemed to grow ever less bothered by both the incidents themselves and the rationales of those who seek to encourage and justify them.
My own adult life began as Vladimir Putin consolidated power in Russia, while former President George W. Bush launched his — really, our — disastrous Global War on Terror, based on lies like that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Unfortunately, we’ve spilled all too little ink here on the nearly one million people who died across our Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African war zones since 2001 (and the many millions more who lost their lives, even if less directly, or were turned into refugees thanks to those wars of ours). And don’t forget the more than 7,000 American troops (and more than 8,000 contractors!) who died in the process, essentially baptizing our national lies in pools of blood. And how could that not have helped normalize other lies to come like Trump’s giant one about the 2020 election?
Thankfully, in this country we can still say what we want (more or less). We can still, for instance, call out the Pentagon for underreporting the deaths its forces have caused. In other words, something like the Costs of War Project that I helped to found to put our lies in context can still exist. But how long before such things could become punishable, if not by law, then through vigilantism?
Yes, President Biden is arming Israel in its gruesome fight against Hamas while providing only the most modest aid to Gaza’s war-devastated population, but we can still hold him to account for that. If the 2024 election goes to Donald Trump, how long will that be true? If we don’t get to the point right now where all of us are calling out lies all the time, then every Trumpian lie about violence — from Republican members of Congress calling the January 6th rioters “peaceful patriots” to The Donald’s claim that he would only be a dictator on “day one” of his next presidency (a desire supported by a significant majority of Republicans) — will amount to lies as consequential as the 1933 burning of the Reichstag parliament building in Germany, which Hitler’s ascendant Nazi party attributed to communists, setting the stage for him to claim sweeping powers.
We are entering a new and perilous American world and it’s important to grasp that fact. In that context, let me mention a Russian moment when I did no such thing. I still feel guilty about a dinner I had with human-rights colleagues in 2014, including a Russian activist who had dedicated his career to documenting political violence and war crimes committed under successive Russian leaders from Joseph Stalin to Vladimir Putin. I was sitting at the far end of the table where I couldn’t catch much of the conversation and I joked that I was “out in Siberia.” Yes, my dinner companions graciously laughed, but with an undercurrent of discomfort and tension — and for good reason. They knew the dangerous world they were in and, in fact, that very activist has since been sent to a penal colony for his work discrediting the actions of the Russian armed forces. My joke is anything but a joke now and consider that a reminder of how quickly things can change — and not just in Russia, either.
In fact, oppression feels closer than ever in America today and verbal massaging, joking, or willful ignorance can only mask what another Trump presidency could mean for us all.
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Critics Warn Orbán Visit Aimed at Tutoring Trump on 'How to Destroy a Democracy'
"If you want to see Trump's and the GOP's vision of America's future, just look at what Orbán's done to Hungary," said one observer.
Mar 07, 2024
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is set for a Friday meeting with former U.S. President Donald Trump, an admirer—and potential emulator—of the far-right European leader as progressive voters in Europe, the United States, and dozens of other countries push back against a surging worldwide wave of "soft fascism."
Trump—who has all but officially secured the Republican presidential nomination—will welcome Orbán to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for what's being described as a "strategy session" ahead of upcoming elections in both the United States and European Union, where far-right parties are poised for major gains in the European Parliament.
"Orbán is the textbook example of why autocrats are often much more dangerous the second time in office."
Orbán spoke Thursday on a panel with the head of the Heritage Foundation, the influential conservative think tank that fawns over the prime minister's "European values," and his demonization of progressives and shared bogeymen including Hungarian American philanthropist George Soros. Critics have sounded the alarm on the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, which has been described as a "far-right playbook for American authoritarianism" in a second Trump term.
Conspicuously absent from Orbán's agenda is any meeting with Biden administration officials, a rare situation given Hungary's NATO membership.
"While the present liberal administration in the U.S. may not actively seek to strengthen ties with Hungary, there is undeniably a growing interest in Hungary among U.S. conservatives," Balázs Orbán, the prime minister's unrelated political director, toldThe Guardian. "Prime Minister Orbán is visiting the United States to strengthen these relationships."
As Orbán—who has ruled Hungary for 14 years over four terms—consolidates his power by systematically eroding democratic institutions and strengthening his Fidesz party and its parliamentary supermajority, Trump and many Republicans have embraced his brand of populist autocracy. Orbán has spoken to adoring audiences at Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) events in Texas and Budapest, the Hungarian capital where then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson interviewed him while relocating his show for a week.
"Orbán has become a role model for many American politicians, particularly those in the GOP's Sedition Caucus," Thom Hartmann wrote Thursday, referring to the 147 Republican U.S. lawmakers who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in service of Trump's conspiracy theory that the contest was rigged by Democrats and the so-called "deep state."
Trump and many of his supporters are drawn to Orbán's open racism—which includes embraces of eugenics and the "great replacement" theory—xenophobia, homophobia, and Christian nationalism, as well as his aversion to helping Ukraine defend against Russian invasion. Like Trump, Orbán is also an oligarch, with a net worth estimated in the hundreds of millions of graft-boosted dollars, and under whose rule Hungary has been ranked as the E.U.'s most corrupt country.
"Orbán is well on his way to staying in office for the rest of his life."
"There is a great man, a great leader in Europe—Viktor Orbán," Trump—who has infamously praised some of the world's dictators—said in a speech last month. "He is a very great leader, a very strong man."
The admiration is mutual. Speaking last month, Orbán said that "we cannot interfere in other countries' elections, but we would very much like to see President Donald Trump return to the White House and make peace here in the eastern half of Europe. It is time for another 'Make America Great Again' presidency in the United States."
The European Parliament has condemned Orbán's rule as less than democratic, calling his government a "hybrid regime of electoral autocracy." Others have called it a form of "soft fascism." Orbán calls it "illiberal democracy," touting its universal appeal to international conservatives, including U.S. Republicans and their fixation on "owning the libs."
"Hungary is actually an incubator where experiments are done on the future of conservative policies," Orbán said at CPAC Budapest. "Hungary is the place where we didn't just talk about defeating the progressives and liberals and causing a conservative Christian political turn, but we actually did it."
While there has been some recent pushback—most notably in Brazil, Colombia, and Chile—observers are warning of the dangers of a still-ascendant right as voters prepare to head to the polls this year in the E.U. and in countries from Mexico and India to Indonesia and the United States.
In the case of the U.S., Protect Democracy editor Amanda Carpenter warned this week that "Orbán is the textbook example of why autocrats are often much more dangerous the second time in office."
"They learn from their mistakes, shortcomings, and—above all—the things that caused them to lose power previously. Orbán is well on his way to staying in office for the rest of his life," Carpenter added. "On that too Trump aims to do the same."
Hartmann wonders whether Orbán is "going to be instructing Trump in how to destroy a democracy," having "already pulled it off in Hungary."
"If you want to see Trump's and the GOP's vision of America's future, just look at what Orbán's done to Hungary," he added. "Forewarned is forearmed. Spread the word."
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