Cassandra of Troy (Brynn Tannehill):
The more I write about this, the more it becomes plain: if Biden loses, 2020 will be the last remotely free and fair election we have for decades, and certainly my lifetime. We are in the middle of an autocratic attempt, and it looks so much like Hungary's... 1/n— Cassandra of Troy (@BrynnTannehill) August 28, 2020
Relembrando, há 52 anos, a Convenção dos Democratas
Este artigo combina coisas que me parecem um bocado disparatadas (como é costume na Spiked) com algumas interessantes; e nomeadamente tem o mérito de reconhecer que a maneira com que a direita (sobretudo) norte-americana usa a palavra "elite" (para se referir à classe média/média-alta de esquerda) é incorreta:
Collins: You refer to the post-Protestants who promote these ideas as the ‘Elect’. From a sociological perspective, why do you prefer to use the term ‘Elect’ rather than say the ‘elite’ or another designation?
Bottum: Ross Douthat, in a column in the New York Times, said that one of the things we need to take from An Anxious Age is the distinction between the elite and the Elect. I chose the term Elect because those people who are part of it are not elite in the sense of having a hundred billion dollars. They are not the elite in the sense of being political figures with lengthy careers, like Bill and Hillary Clinton, or Joe Biden for that matter. They are not elite in the sense they control things in terms of ownership. So we need another term for them. They certainly have elite educations, but that elite education is not translated into the enormous wealth and power that the true elite has.
O Supremo Tribunal já substituiu a direção do partido Pátria Para Todos:
La Sala Constitucional del Tribunal Supremo de Justicia (TSJ) decretó medida cautelar suspender la actual Dirección Nacional del partido Patria Para Todos (PPT), por lo que se designó una Junta Directiva Ad Hoc para llevar adelante el proceso de reestructuración necesario del mencionado partido, presidida por la ciudadana Ilenia Medina, en su condición de Secretaria Nacional de Organización y las secretarías generales regionales, ciudadanas Lisett Sabino y Beatriz Barráez. [APORREA]Como já disse, convém não esquecer que a atual direção também chegou ao poder com o Supremo Tribunal destituindo a anterior..
A intervenção judicial nos partidos venezuelanos (mesmo nos próximos do regime) continua com novos episódios: uma deputado do Pátria Para Todos (um partido nos últimos anos pró-governamental, mas que vai concorrer nas próximas eleição numa lista separada) pretende que o Supremo Tribunal retire à direção do partido o poder para apresentar candidatos (a deputada aparentemente era a favor de uma coligação com o PSUV de Maduro, e se essa providência for avante, o PPT não poderá apresentar candidatos próprios). Claro que uma ironia disto é que a atual direção do PPT também foi colocada na liderança na sequência de uma sentença do Supremo Tribunal.
A respeito da nova força que o PPT pretende integrar, junto com o Partido Comunista e outras organizações: - PCV y PPT se desmarcan del PSUV y lanzan plataforma electoral propia para las elecciones del 6-D (APORREA).
Até grupos tradicionalmente próximos do regime estão em choque com Maduro (ou Maduro em choque com eles):
Politics and Polls - 19 August 2020, por James Bosworth, no Latin America Risk Report:
In recent weeks, members of various leftwing political organizations in Venezuela claim that the regime has sent armed criminal groups to target them. Maduro appears to be attacking communists and other leftwing ideologues who once supported Hugo Chavez but have retained some independence from Maduro’s party structure. Part of that fight spilled over into the public this week as the regime’s Supreme Court ordered the takeover of the Tupamaros political organization.Venezuela: Supremo impõe nova direção a partido pró-regime Tupamaro (Notícias ao Minuto):
Maduro’s current attempt to hijack the traditional left-wing Tupamaros party comes with additional risks for the ruling regime. The Tupamaros leadership have called for other leftwing allies to rise up against Maduro. The Tupamaros have long-standing ties to armed groups that predate the Chavez era. Their call for people and parties to rise up may not imply peaceful protests and could lead to an increase in politically-motivated violence in the country.
O Supremo Tribunal de Justiça da Venezuela (STJ) suspendeu na terça-feira a direção do partido Tupamaro, uma organização venezuelana de ideologia comunista que faz parte do Grande Polo Patriótico, composta por partidos que apoiam o regime.Contexto: já há alguns anos que tem sido costume na Venezuela, o Supremo Tribunal demitir a direção de partidos e nomear direções alternativas; em 2011/2012 tinha feito isso com o Pátria Para Todos e com o Pela Democracia Social, dois partidos inicialmente do campo chavista mas que tinham passado para a oposição, e que por via judicial regressaram às mãos oficialistas (os opositores afastados entretando criaram o Movimento Progressista da Venezuela e o Avanço Progressista); recentemente, foram os partidos oposicionistas Primeiro Justiça. Ação Democrática e Vontade Popular que viram as suas direções afastadas. Mas com a destituição da direção dos Tupamaro penso que pela primeira vez isso aconteceu mesmo com o partido pró-regime (provavelmente devido às lutas faccionais dentro do governo, ou algo parecido).
#18Ago| Pronunciamiento de #TUPAMARO ante la consumación del asalto de nuestra Organización rojinegro por poderosos factores económicos disfrazados de revolucionarios. Basta de ataques contra partidos de izquierda y movimientos populares.#RespetoALaAutonomíaDeTupamaro pic.twitter.com/4xgnFAAIlL— Tupamaro Venezuela (@Venezuela_MRT) August 19, 2020
Uma coisa que eu desconhecia até há muito pouco tempo é a aparente popularidade do comunismo ortodoxo entre adolescentes norte-americanos no Twitter.
Atenção que não falo de trotskistas, "autónomos", "apelistas" ou anarco-comunistas - estou mesmo a falar de mesmo de comunistas estilo PCP da velha guarda (irão ser nos anos 20 o que foi a alt-right nos anos 10?)
My sincere answer for why tankies reemerged five years ago is that movements are social hierarchies and newbie teens don't want to compete for status in existing illegible/inaccessible spaces like anarchism, so they resurrected a dead/empty scene that had trappings of status. https://t.co/HmBJ4sYu7r— William Gillis 🏴 (@rechelon) August 16, 2020
O "538" dá a Biden cerca de 70% de probabilidade de ganhar - a mesma probabilidade que dava a Hillary em 2016.
Biden is favored to win the election, FiveThirtyEigth:
"Kámala" - ver este vídeo da campanha dela de 2016.
Pronouncing ‘Kamala’, por James Joyner:
Like many others, I’ve been pronouncing the first name of the presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee wrong. [e eu também]
Outro artigo (este em tom mais positivo) sobre a nova direita dos EUA, em várias versões mas todas elas menos comprometidas com o liberalismo económico:
Where Do Republicans Go From Here?, por David Brooks, no New York Times.
Numa versão benévola, isso significar algo equivalente à democracia-cristã europeia; mas eu diria que numa menos benévola pode representar algo parecido ao fascismo (p.ex., comparar Marco Rubio com Tom Cotton).
E, para uma visão crítica sobre esse artigo, ver este tweet de Matt Duss e a conversa subsequente, notando que muito do que se critica no trumpismo já vinha de trás, incluindo no "National Greatness Conservatism" do próprio David Brooks e de Bill Kristol e na "Guerra ao Terrorismo".
Um artigo (escrito de um ponto de vista da direita liberal) sobre a nova direita nacional-conservadora nos EUA.
Wait, Wasn't Peter Thiel a Libertarian?, por Brian Doherty, na Reason:
So what are Thiel's ideological goals? The billionaire took the opportunity to sum up his views at the July 2019 National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C., organized by new nationalist founding father Yoram Hazony under the auspices of a freshly launched group, the Edmund Burke Foundation. It is striking that Thiel chose that otherwise inauspicious venue to speak, which again demonstrates that he has made a priority of engaging with this new ideology.
In his hourlong presentation, Thiel expressed no particular libertarian inclinations. Instead, he talked about how public policy decisions should be based on how they would better not individual lives but a collective "America" while crushing her enemies. These latter foes he named as Google, China, and the U.S. university system, advocating vigorous police actions against the first and third and a trade war (at the least) against the Middle Kingdom.
Universities, Thiel said, are spreading the virus of "cultural Marxism" while perpetrating criminal fraud by shackling students with debt that the institutions themselves should be forced to repay. (He's been railing against political correctness on campus since his days as co-founder of the right-wing student newspaper The Stanford Review in 1987.)
Silicon Valley, too, is trying to impose a monoculture of identity politics on an unwilling America, he said. Google's collaborations with Red China on artificial intelligence merit scrutiny from the CIA and FBI, who should ask executives "in a not excessively gentle manner" about their "seemingly treasonous" behavior. The day Thiel gave that speech, July 16, 2019, Trump tweeted regarding Google's supposed treason: "The Trump Administration will take a look!"
Meanwhile, Thiel said, tariffs of 25 percent on Chinese products, negotiated by representatives untainted by free trade dogma, would be a good opening bid.
In Brazil’s Favelas, Organizing Is the Difference Between Life and Death, por Cecilia Tornaghi, na Americas Quarterly:
In favelas across Brazil, community activists and resident associations have sprung into action to battle the pandemic, knowing that waiting for the state to help them may mean a death sentence. Not every neighborhood has the resources of Paraisópolis, a community of roughly 80,000 people surrounded by some of São Paulo’s wealthiest areas. But they have still helped blunt the impact of a pandemic that is now spreading at alarming speed, making Brazil one of the hardest-hit places in the world.
The War on Free Expression, por Flemming Rose (Cato Institute, 2015):
In my research, I looked into what actually happened in the Weimar Republic and found that, contrary to what most people think, Germany did have hate‐speech laws that were applied quite frequently. The assertion that Nazi propaganda played a significant role in mobilizing anti‐Jewish sentiment is irrefutable. But to claim that the Holocaust could have been prevented if only anti‐Semitic speech had been banned has little basis in reality. Leading Nazis, including Joseph Goebbels, Theodor Fritsch, and Julius Streicher, were all prosecuted for anti‐Semitic speech. And rather than deterring them, the many court cases served as effective pubicrelations machinery for the Nazis, affording them a level of attention that they never would have received in a climate of a free and open debate.
In the decade from 1923 to 1933, the Nazi propaganda magazine Der Stürmer — of which Streicher was the executive publisher — was confiscated or had its editors taken to court no fewer than 36 times. The more charges Streicher faced, the more the admiration of his supporters grew. In fact, the courts became an important platform for Streicher’s campaign against the Jews.
Alan Borovoy, general counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation, points out that cases were regularly brought against individuals on account of anti‐Semitic speech in the years leading up to Hitler’s takeover of power in 1933. “Remarkably, pre‐Hitler Germany had laws very much like the Canadian anti‐hate law,” he writes. “Moreover, those laws were enforced with some vigour. During the 15 years before Hitler came to power, there were more than 200 prosecutions based on anti‐Semitic speech… As subsequent history so painfully testifies, this type of legislation proved ineffectual on the one occasion when there was a real argument for it.”
Supostamente as agências de espionagem não podem investigar cidadãos residentes nos EUA... a menos que eles estejam agindo ao serviço de uma potência estrangeira; assim argumentando que os "antifas" são um braço das milícias curdas da Síria já os podem legalmente vigiar - um problema aqui é que essas mesmas milícias eram aliadas dos EUA até há uns meses.
Homeland Security Is Quietly Tying Antifa to Foreign Powers, por Ken Klippenstein, em The Nation:
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) intelligence officials are targeting activists it considers “antifa” and attempting to tie them to a foreign power, according to a DHS intelligence report obtained exclusively by The Nation. (...)O relatório da DHS:
While the law generally prohibits intelligence agencies from spying on US residents, many of those protections do not apply if the individual is believed to be acting as an agent of a foreign power. (...)
The intelligence report describes over half a dozen people who traveled to Syria in order to fight alongside Kurdish factions—usually the YPG, but also other Kurdish groups like the PKK and the Peshmerga. Some of the individuals described have denied membership in antifa but variously identified with far-left causes. The DHS appears to define antifa broadly, to encompass various left-wing tendencies: “[A]ntifa is driven by a mixed range of far-left political ideologies, including anti-capitalism, communism, socialism, and anarchism.” In two cases, evidence of antifa affiliation was limited to photos taken in front of an antifa flag. As the intelligence report itself notes, “ANTIFA claims no official leadership,” raising questions about whether antifa even exists in any sort of operational capacity. (...)
“There appears to be a clear connection…between ANTIFA ideology and Kurdish democratic federalism teachings and ideology,” the intelligence report states. At least one of the activists listed is described as being ethnically Kurdish.
