Caffeinated from a late night drive and freaked out by *how* bad the coverage of Trump Sec Def Pete Hegseth is, I decided to start reading his new book, The War on Warriors. A thread. The new Pentagon chief begins by bragging he was pushed out for being an "extremist"... Gist of new Sec Def Hegseth's book War on Warrios, per intro, seems to be that the military is anti-white, conquered by a "diverse" "infection" intent on breaking the military--which would be treason. Which justifies the self-declared "extremism" of his response.

I've been reporting on rightwing movements 20 years. Starting Jan 6, 2021, I began working on a book about what I believed was an age of Trump anything but over. IThe Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War. I'm not peddling it now. I'm trying to give as much as I can away. 1/ The Undertow is about the age of Trump--the Trumpocene--but I decided to begin with... Harry Belafonte. The singer. Day-O. Seriously. Because the kind of hope he held on to all his days of freedom struggle is what we need now. We need to remember that the struggle is long. 2/

I think it’s important to know how much FOX News is putting into conspiracy theories around the Butler PA assassin. There are many reasons for this, but bottom line is how dangerous it is: this is civil war thinking. Thread 1/ Today on Fox, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson said he’s seen persuasive evidence of a second shooter. (He’s talking about a YouTube.) He says a mysterious man in a suit told local law to send photos to someone who has “gone dark.” (That is, he has no proof.) 2/

Evaluating Trump's speech according to democracy's laws of physics makes as much sense as declaring what we don't know about black holes "impossible." Fascism exerts a different gravity. The speech fuses the base; it's the "confidence" of the base that draws in "undecideds." That's how fascism "works." It doesn't have to be how fascism wins. But defeating it, I suspect, means at least a larger number of us discarding our reassurance narratives. Looking at the awfulness dead on, & fighting *that,* not what we wish it was.

I was going to go to Vegas to report Trump's first rally as a felon--not for "news" but to listen for tone, for the mood of fascism as it mutates. But I decided it was too hot, so I stayed in VT & watched 5 hrs of it from an obscure rightwing network. And I made pictures... 1/ The image above: “Costumes of sorts,” proclaims one of the two broadcasters, Vanessa Broussard. Then, as if on cue, right behind her, a “costume”--the man in the sombrero. My article continues w/ the juxtaposition of the grotesque & the absurd in service of fascist hysteria: 2/

Trump returns to Fox today. Strongman rhetoric from get-go, in response to q on how best to seek "revenge": "Lotta people said, 'We have no choice but to elect Trump, because he's only one who can withstand this." Basic fascist trope: Great Leader can do what mortals can't. 1/ Q&A continues as if everyone knows that the fundamental fight is America, as embodied in Trump, vs. "Intel," as in intelligence agencies, as in "deep state." By making it a given, Trump & Fox sweep their viewers into conspiracism as if it's simple as "they sky is blue." 2/

This Jew thinks it’s perhaps not widely understood in non-Jewish circles that Israel’s war—I think it can correctly be named a genocidal campaign—has led to a rhetorical civil war among US Jews. With, of course, not the “two sides” some insist cover all but a dozen or more. It’s not the main event, to any of the “sides.” But it’ll reverberate long after the war ends. It’ll probably have a significant impact on US politics, probably in ways that aren’t yet clear; you can’t draw a straight line from now to the future.

I’ve been listening to Trump in the Bronx. My record of both taking on Trumpist fascism, starting from the golden escalator, and not telling anti-Trumpers what we’d want to hear when it’s not true, is solid. So here’s the awful news: he’s doing what he does *very well.* One of the things Trump knows how to do is put on a show. For a show, you need a good stage. That’s what the Bronx was for him tonight: not the folks there, but white tv viewers who want to think it’s not racist to vote for Trump watching Black & brown people cheering him.

I’m Dartmouth faculty, & I voted for this censure—the first in 255 yrs, in response to the first use of a militarized SWAT team in 255 yrs. A local story with larger implications as college presidents inadvertently advance the far right’s 30-yrs war on higher education.

https://twitter.com/thedartmouth/status/1792714465001038091

I’m not interested in celebrating the censure of our president. It was unhappy work made necessary by Dartmouth’s unprecedented militarized response. I’d have rather been meeting with students yesterday than with faculty. But *nobody* is safe when a college SWATs itself.

I join many Jewish colleagues @dartmouth in rejecting our administration's apparent belief that it can speak for "Jewish safety," much less increase it by permitting a SWAT team and riot cops to menace all regardless of identity. 1

Jewish communities, like the country as a whole, are deeply divided by Israel’s war in Gaza. The College’s leadership does not have the right to elevate one set of voices and experiences as representing all Jews. 2/

Regardless of your view on protests, the militarized response—which has ramped up with what some call “the Palestine exception”—will not end there. Absent a big—& politically diverse—pushback, this is the new norm for campus protest. 1/ Maybe you disagree with Gaza protests, or some language you’ve heard from them. Do you approve of *militarized* response to civil disobedience? Because going forward that will be the standard response to protest over many issues. 2/

I am a Jew. This week, a trustee of @dartmouth, the college at which I've taught 14 years, @GovChrisSununu, declared a protest there "100% antisemitic." A protest in which Jewish students, faculty, & staff took part. Sununu's statement isn't just wrong--it's antisemitic. 1/ Christian "Zionists" & others who weaponize antisemitism for their own political projects will say, "But there has been antisemitism at protests." YES. There has. I've heard it and seen it here, too. That's a problem. It's not the main one, & their "answer" makes it worse. 2/

US fascists are having a field day. American Jews (I'm one) troubled by real antisemitism w/in *but not definitive* of protest panic & support anti-democratic crackdowns. Protesters who know their own honest good faith insist there's not even a trace--& again, US fascists gloat. A few of Mike Johnson's favorite things: liberals who support crackdowns; leftists who insist, against evidence, that there is ZERO antisemitism anywhere; news orgs that focus on higher ed, Johnson's foe, instead of Israeli crimes; Israeli crimes.

Too chillingly on the nose: Timothy Ryback on his new book, TAKEOVER: Hitler's Rise to Power: "In the run-up to the 1932 election, told his followers, 'Be there, it's going to be wild.'" publicsphere.news/p/q-and-a-a-hi… I hesitated before tweeting this. I've reported on & written about rightwing movements 20 yrs. Never beaten like, for instance, Russian counterparts. But plenty else. I was never afraid. Not brave; just didn't feel afraid. Now? Yes.

So much "everybody knows" thinking in political discussion right now. Like "everybody knows" Dobbs will be Trump's downfall. Maybe! But it's not just the recent Times poll that gives Trump historically high numbers w/ women. Then there's another "everybody knows," which is that unless Biden changes course on Gaza, he's cooked. A) for many, it's too late. B) For far more, the much bigger numbers of those who don't "support genocide" but also don't consume news, they *like* Biden's awful policy.

Today's NYT headline--its phrasing, the story that follows, its placement--more than anything Maggie Haberman ever wrote persuades me that the paper's political default is now the kind of center-right that imagines responsible people can contain fascism by coopting bits of it. 1/

This NYT headline really is "fake news": not a deliberate lie but willful delusion, casting a race that realistically probably *couldn't* be lost as a victory because the Democrat ran to to the right of the "Republican," an almost non-entity candidate. 2/

What's rightwing media chattering about? This NBC tracking poll showing Trump catching up w/ Biden & growing his lead over 6 months. If you were give Biden all of Stein, West, & RFK (much lower than other polls), those who say they won't vote for president, he'd still lose. I'm not telling anyone what to do. Let me repeat that before people scream at me that I'm trying to "force" them to vote Biden. Each makes their own decision. But the fascists know what's on tap. We should, too.

WaPo that exemplifies how rightwing & fascist frames shape stories written by otherwise good reporters with good intentions. Problem 1: Why is this presented at an election story? Stakes, not odds, as @jayrosen_nyu says. Lives are at stake. & yet nut grafs don't explain. 1/

Third graf doesn't pivot to tell us what's going to, you know, *happen,* or what it will mean to people involved; instead, it reduces all that humanity to a question of polls for Biden. Giddyap, horse race! 2/

I live in VT, work in NH, wander it often. Welcome to the so-called moderate state. III, upper left: III percenters. Designated terrorists by Canada. Designated patriots by Trump. 1/ I write about the III Percenters in my book THE UNDERTOW: Scenes from a Slow Civil War (@wwnorton), which, yeah, I'm hawking, because after 20 yrs covering the Right, it's my best effort to say this is what's happening. Here in NH. Everywhere. 2/

When I launched THE UNDERTOW I did an event w/ a NYT politics reporter who scoffed at use of "fascism." When pressed, he didn't seem to know what it means. Here's my definition, informed by years of reading and... "fieldwork." With illustrations! A thread. 1/ The dude w/ the gun lives near me. Here in Vermont. First point of defining fascism: Not just violence, by a reverence for violence as a purifying force, as an exhilarating, even titillating experience. By the way, here's the hand holding that gun: 2/

The most amazing thing about Nikki Haley's pandering racism--wait, there's nothing amazing about it. She's been at it for years, going back to 2010, when she told "Confederate heritage" groups--white supremacists--that the Civil War was about "tradition" v. "change." 1/ Back in 2010, long before Trump said the white power riot in Charlottesville featured "very fine people on both sides," Nikki Haley--the GOP's new "moderate"--told white supremacist leaders "you see passions on different sides," but there was no "hate" involved in slavery. 2/