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    This is what happens when the War on Terror is turned inward, on America | Hamilton Nolan

    A strange and necessary ingredient of America’s descent towards fascism is that it will have little impact on the majority of people. As militarized federal agents are deployed into major cities to snatch protesters and charge them with harsh federal crimes for daring to deface the ruling party’s monuments, most Americans will continue living their normal lives with no discernible changes, at least for the time being. People wake up and eat breakfast and spend their days doing mundane tasks in fascist countries, too.If there was ever a tipping point, we are past it. Trying to stare hard at the daily news to determine the exact point at which we slip into fascism is like staring at a baby to see when it turns into an adult. By the time you perceive it, it’s already happened. It is important to understand that the crackdown phase that we are now in – the unaccountable government forces, the riot police, the teargas, the targeted political prosecutions that will come next – are not something new, but something old. This isn’t about Donald Trump. This is about America, baby. This is what we do.Trying to determine when we slip into fascism is like staring at a baby to see when it turns into an adult. Once you perceive it, it’s already happenedTrump, a fool ruled by impulse rather than strategy, did not build the fearsome machine of government oppression that is now being aimed at his political opponents. This machine was systematically assembled and lovingly tended to by generations of presidents before him – Democratic, Republican, Whig. Trump is only broadening its aperture. All of these tools have been sharpened on the bones of Native Americans and Black people and immigrants and Muslims overseas. America has always needed someone to oppress. Mostly so that we could steal their stuff, but also so that the rest of us didn’t turn against one another. This country has managed to avoid a class war by giving poor white people an array of minorities to abuse, a trick that has benefited rich white people for centuries. We have used injustice not just as a way to get ahead, but as a release valve. Our leaders have long calculated that it is safer to subjugate and mistreat a minority of the population than to risk dissatisfaction in the majority. In doing so, the government has become very adept at creating enemies and wielding power against them in flagrant shows of force.These are trivial observations, basic facts that will only be disputed by those who are destined to land on the side of fascism anyhow. The question is what they mean for our present moment, which is distinguished not by the existence of government oppression but by its direction. We are finding out what happens when the war on terror is turned inward on ourselves. In addition to the federal agents already in Portland, more are coming to Chicago, Albuquerque, and Kansas City; that may well be just the beginning of a national rollout. “Protecting federal property” and “maintaining law and order” are twin fig leaves wafting in a cloud of teargas. The Department of Homeland Security has effectively become a White House-controlled paramilitary and domestic surveillance service unaccountable to anyone except Trump and his loyalists. (If we’re being honest, this moment has been inevitable since DHS was panic-created in the days after the September 11 attacks. If there is any more fascist word than “homeland”, I haven’t heard it.)The basic logic behind gun control is that if there are a bunch of guns lying around, sooner or later someone will get shot. The same holds true for the security state. If you build it, it will eventually come for you. Cloaked in the banality of federal bureaucracy, we have tolerated the creation of a terrifying set of powers that now rest in the small hands of a man who has been waiting his entire life to take revenge on each and every enemy who has slighted him. Barack Obama sat in the White House for eight years and did nothing to dismantle this bureaucracy of soldier-cops. He was too busy using it in foreign drone wars. It’s too seductive to have that power, when you are the one who controls it. Now a worse president has it, and it will be turned, at last, against a bigger chunk of us than ever before.The trick now is convincing that tranquil majority that their interests are more aligned with the protesters than with the cops in fatiguesEvery new outrage is a test of what we will tolerate. If the government can roll out troops to a large swath of major cities and shoot the eyes out of protesters with rubber bullets all under the guise of stopping some kids from spray-painting some courthouse, it is a fairly good indicator that the spirit of the broader American public will not rouse itself to stand in the way of fascism’s tightening grip. In a nation this big, you can make 100 million people official Enemies of the State and still leave a comfortable majority blissfully unaffected. The trick now is convincing that tranquil, all-American majority that their interests are actually more aligned with the protesters wielding spray-paint outside the courthouse than with the militarized cops in fatigues.That shouldn’t be an impossible task. When there is actual justice being done inside the courthouses, the protesters and the storm troopers will both disappear. More

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    Portland mayor teargassed by federal agents at protest

    Portland

    Democrat Ted Wheeler gives backing to protesters against ‘Trump’s occupation of this city’

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    Portland mayor teargassed by federal agents during protest – video

    Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler, has accused Donald Trump of conducting “urban warfare” after he was caught up in the teargassing of protesters by federal forces sent to quell Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the city.
    But Wheeler, who was left gasping for air by the teargas, was himself the target of anger and mockery from activists who accused him of sending the city police to attack other protests.
    “I’m not going to lie. It stings. It’s hard to breathe, and I can tell you with 100% honesty I saw nothing that provoked this response,” Wheeler said as he stood with protesters outside the federal courthouse that has become the focus of confrontation.
    “This is flat-out urban warfare, and it’s being brought on the people of this country by the president of the United States, and it’s got to stop now.”
    Protests into the early hours of Thursday morning were more contained than in previous nights after the authorities were finally able to erect a fence around the courthouse that could withstand attack by demonstrators.
    Protesters quickly tore down barriers on other nights but the stronger fortification kept them from reaching the front of the courthouse which meant members of the Department of Homeland Security taskforce sent by Trump largely remained behind the fence firing teargas over it.
    But the standoff showed how far the federal forces have fallen short of the president’s pledge to restore order in Portland, a liberal city with a long history of street protest.
    The DHS taskforce is largely trapped inside the courthouse grounds with the protesters generally controlling the streets outside.
    Earlier in the evening, Wheeler, who as mayor is also Portland’s police commissioner, attempted to reassure protesters at a large and peaceful demonstration that he was committed to police reform. But he was met with jeers and forced to admit that change had not come quick enough.
    “Obviously we have a long way to go,” Wheeler told the crowd.
    Large numbers of people at the demonstration remained sceptical of the man derided in graffiti as “Ded Wheeler” and “Fed Wheeler”.
    “He’s two-faced,” said Jennifer Bradley, a grandmother who joined the Wall of Moms formed to act as a shield between the protesters and the police. “Wheeler’s been on the side of the police when it was attacking Black Lives Matters before the feds arrived. I don’t think he’s done anything to support this movement.”
    A daily ritual has evolved in which thousands of protesters rally to the Black Lives Matter cause toward sundown in front of Portland’s justice center which holds the police department and county jail. More

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    Trump threatens to deploy more federal agents to protests despite reports of violence

    Federal agents sent to confront protesters in Portland have “done a fantastic job” and could be deployed to other cities, Donald Trump said on Monday.The mayor of Portland has called for Trump to withdraw the federal agents, and the Oregon attorney general has filed a lawsuit seeking the same end. The governor and the state’s two senators, all Democrats, have also complained.Speaking in the Oval Office, the president brushed aside claims the officers are depriving people of their constitutional rights, and concerns such deployments could herald an attempt by Trump to rule without Congress.The largest city in Oregon has seen more than 50 nights of protest over police brutality and systemic racism, arising from the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May.Confrontations between law enforcement and protesters in Portland have led to fires and the use of teargas. Speaking to the Guardian and other outlets, protesters have reported violence by police and instances of people being seized by unidentified officers and held without due process.Democrats in the US House of Representatives have demanded investigations, decrying “the use of federal law enforcement agencies by the attorney general and the acting secretary of homeland security to suppress first amendment-protected activities in Washington DC, Portland and other communities across the United States”.In June, the Trump administration used federal officers against protesters in the capital, some of whom were forcibly dispersed so Trump could stage a photo op at a church. National guard troops were also used, and active duty army units moved closer to the city.In Portland, local media has stressed that the protests are not paralysing the city and are confined to a small area, and that much of life continues as normally as possible under the coronavirus pandemic.Nonetheless, at the White House Trump was asked if he would consider sending troops. It depended on the definition of troops, he said, adding: “We are sending law enforcement.”Trump seemed to refer to such plans in a controversial Fox News Sunday interview. Talking about healthcare, the president said he would soon issue a plan “that the supreme court decision on Daca [regarding immigration enforcement and which went against the administration] gave me the right to do”.It has been widely reported that the White House has been influenced by John Yoo, a former government lawyer who justified the use of torture by the George W Bush administration. Yoo argues the Daca ruling, which upheld Barack Obama’s executive order, shows Trump how to bypass Congress.Many fear Trump, seeking to foreground law and order in an election in which he trails Joe Biden in most polls, will attempt to use federal agents against protesters and in cities in which gun violence has spiked.On Monday, it was reported that agents were set to be sent to cities including Chicago. In the Oval Office, the president complained about cities including Chicago and his native New York.“The police are afraid to do anything,” he said, though Portland police have reported some federal agents acting “under their own supervision and direction”, many while dressed in camouflage fatigues that make them look like regular troops.Trump continued: “We’re not going to let New York and Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and all of these, Oakland in California is a mess, we’re not going to let this happen in our country. All run by liberal Democrats.“Nobody will have done what I’m doing in the next four weeks,” Trump told Fox News Sunday.“We can’t let this happen in the cities. I’m going to do something, that I can tell you. We’re going to have more federal law enforcement … In Portland they’ve done a fantastic job, they’ve been there three days [and] have done a fantastic job.”Describing actions against protesters which observers and officials have described as blatantly unconstitutional, Trump said: “No problem. They grab them, a lot of people in jail.“These are leaders. These people are anarchists, they’re not protesters … These are people that hate our country and we’re not going to let it go forward.”Claiming lawmakers in Oregon were “maybe even physically afraid” of the protesters, he added: “It’s worse than Afghanistan.”Trump has sought to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan and other actual war zones. More

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    Trump equates support for Confederate flag with Black Lives Matter

    Donald Trump has equated the Black Lives Matter movement with displays of the Confederate flag, saying: “I’m not offended either by Black Lives Matter, that’s freedom of speech. You know the whole thing with cancel culture – we can’t cancel our whole history. We can’t forget that the north and the south fought.”Repeating his threat to veto moves to rename US military bases named for Confederate generals, he added: “When people proudly have their Confederate flags, they’re not talking about racism. They love their flag, it represents the south.”Trump made the potentially inflammatory comments in an interview with Fox News Sunday, broadcast a day after a Black Lives Matter mural on the street in front of Trump Tower in New York was defaced for the third time in less than a week.Asked about moves to rename US bases under the National Defense Authorization Act which are supported by senior military leaders, Trump said: “I don’t care what the military says. I’m supposed to make the decision. Fort Bragg is a big deal … Go to the community, say, ‘How do you like the idea of renaming Fort Bragg,’ and then what are we going to name it? We going to name it after the Reverend Al Sharpton?”Sharpton is a New York-based civil rights leader who was among national figures paying tribute this weekend to John Lewis, the civil rights campaigner and Democratic congressman who died on Friday, aged 80.Fort Bragg in North Carolina is named for Braxton Bragg, a Confederate general during the civil war. Numerous other bases are named for leaders on the losing side who fought to maintain slavery.Calls to rename bases and bring down statues to Confederate leaders have surged, amid protests demanding justice and reform after the police killings of George Floyd and other black people. Many statues and monuments have been removed.This week, the Department of Defense followed in the footsteps of Nascar by effectively banning the Confederate flag from display at its properties. Seeking to avoid angering Trump, who has made support for Confederate symbols a central plank of his re-election campaign, defense secretary Mark Esper simply left the flag off a list of flags which can be displayed at bases.On Sunday Colin Powell, an African American retired general, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of state under George W Bush, told CBS’s Face the Nation bases should be renamed and flags banned.“It was the Confederate States of America,” said Powell, who has endorsed Joe Biden for president. “They were not part of us and this is not the time to keep demonstrating who they were and what they were back then. This is time to move on. Let’s get going. We have one flag and only one flag only.”Across the US, the words “Black Lives Matter” have been painted on prominent streets, including in Washington on the road leading to the White House. New York mayor Bill de Blasio helped paint the mural on Fifth Avenue, in front of Trump’s Manhattan residence. Trump said in a tweet that the project would denigrate “this luxury avenue”.In similar fashion to Confederate and other monuments defaced with paint and graffiti, the Trump Tower mural has been attacked repeatedly. In the latest incident, two women were arrested around 3pm on Saturday after police said they poured black paint on the block-long mural.Bystander video showed officers surrounding one woman as she rubbed paint on the bright yellow letters, shouting “They don’t care about black lives” and “Refund the police”. More