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      in US Politics

      Fit for office? From Trump to Abbott, 'vitality' is too often conflated with character in politics | Eleanor Gordon-Smith

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      It was important to US president Donald Trump to beat Covid-19. Not to recover from it, or to be successfully treated for it, but to beat it, as you would a wrestling enemy with the back of a chair. Already he has begun reframing his hospital discharge as a sign of strength. On Monday, campaign adviser Mercedes Schlapp told Fox News: “We’re going to defeat this virus. We’re not going to surrender to it like Joe Biden would surrender,” deliberately leaving open the interpretation that the relevant “surrender” was getting sick and dying. The president retweeted columnist Miranda Devine’s characterisation of him as an “invincible hero, who not only survived every dirty trick the Democrats threw at him, but the Chinese virus as well”.It is the latest instalment in a long history of the conflation between physical fitness and fitness for office, as though facts about a person’s character can be deduced from whether they get sick.Rightwing, authority-hungry leaders often make this move. From the state of their bodies we are supposed to deduce things about the state of their person. Vladimir Putin rides horses shirtless; shoots tigers; hugs bears. Jair Bolsonaro removed his mask after his Covid-19 diagnosis to show reporters how little it affected him. “Just look at my face, I’m fine”, he said.When these are the characters who voice a connection between physical wellness and moral character, the falsity of that connection is obvious. It is cartoonish, even – Trump himself is so obviously unfit (apparently owing to a belief that humans are born with finite heartbeats and to exercise is to waste them) that it’s almost impossible to take the position seriously.But the presumed link between physical health and strength and worthiness is far more politically widespread. In March a staffer for Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren tweeted a photograph of her jogging jauntily up a set of stairs, hair springing with her gait, while fellow candidate Bernie Sanders trailed behind her on an escalator, paunched and balding. “This hits me so hard,” said the staffer, assuming an obvious connection between physical mobility and leadership.The character endorsements for “fighters” who make it through disease are common; Gabrielle Giffords’ recovery from a cranial gunshot wound was used to show her strength of character, and Barack Obama –in his own right a good athlete – took many photographed opportunities to play basketball in shirtsleeves. Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott was possessed of genuine physical strength, which the public was seldom able to forget, as his rivals needed help to do a pull-up or failed to sink a basket.The assumption in all cases is that the visual impression of a person’s body is a reasonable guide to their character, or that since certain traits express themselves physically, the physical lack of those things shows they are lacking in the person’s character. This is just a bad and backwards deduction; intellectually energetic people are often physically spry but not all un-spry people lack intellectual energy. But this does not stop candidates leveraging physical wellness as a sign of some deeper strength.Now, of course, a candidate for political office has to be well enough to do the job. There are reasonable criticisms of an ageing political class and of specific individuals who stay in their jobs past the point where they can do them well. When your job involves working on other people’s behalf, you have to be able to do it better than the next best candidate, and there are some forms of physical wellness that bear on whether that’s true.But the broader connection between vitality, power and physical health is damagingly false whether it comes out of Trump’s mouth or the Warren campaign’s. It should be seen with special suspicion by those committed to accessible healthcare, a policy built on the idea that whether you are sick is not a function of what you deserve and that usual interventions of character will not save us.If – as most of us do – we believe that physical illness is not a sign of decrepit character or weakness, then we have to be careful about the photonegative thought that physical wellness is a sign of burnished character or strength. It is not only Trump and his fellow rightwing personality-leaders who seek to leverage that thought. Political positioning everywhere leverages the idea of physical health as strength, which in turn licenses the associated thought that physical illness is weakness. Whichever side of politics it appears on, that thought hurts millions of people. As any sufferer of chronic illness will tell you, the presumed connection between character and body runs deep in society, in the glances of strangers, the minds of loved ones.The president’s bizarre machismo around the virus is just the latest and most visible expression of that thought. Perhaps seeing it in such an extreme form can help us identify its more pedestrian, creeping, insidiously ordinary forms. We would do well to regard them, too, with the same sense of absurdity.• Eleanor Gordon-Smith is a writer and ethicist currently at Princeton University More

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      in World Politics

      How Russia Views the Election Aftermath in Belarus

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      In Moscow, all eyes are on Belarus. Russia and Belarus are intimately connected, so political actors in Russia feel an immediate connection with developments there.

      In formal terms, the two countries form a “union state” and an economic and defense community. Belarus is Moscow’s closest ally and a linchpin for Russian neighborhood policy. For two decades, Russia has funded and subsidized Belarus’ state and economy. This has become a high price for a complicated relationship, as Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko consistently — and successfully — spurns Russian attempts to deepen integration.

      Belarus Election Unleashes Unprecedented Anti-Government Protests

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      Heading a joint state in Moscow had been raised as an option for keeping Russian President Vladimir Putin in power after 2024. Lukashenko was less than enthusiastic and turned, as always in moments of tension with Moscow, to the European Union. That variant is off the table, now that the amended Russian Constitution permits Putin two more terms in the Kremlin.

      A Lack of Distance

      Despite growing political differences, Moscow continues to support Lukashenko through his latest domestic political travails. Official figures put his share of the presidential vote at 80%. The candidate of the united opposition, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, had just 10%, according to the Central Election Commission. Opposition exit polls paint a very different picture, with some showing the proportions exactly inverted.

      Since the announcement of the results on August 9, the country has seen ongoing mass demonstrations, to which the security forces have responded with brutality. Nevertheless, President Putin congratulated Lukashenko on his “victory” as expected.

      The Russian political discourse pays very close attention to developments in Belarus, reflecting a persistent post-imperial lack of distance to its sovereign neighbors. Looking at the Russian discussion, one might forget that there actually is a border between Russia and Belarus, much as was the case following the Ukrainian presidential election in 2019.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Another reason for this closeness lies in the similarity of the political systems. Both are aging autocracies that are out of touch with the societies they rule and suffer rapidly evaporating legitimacy. The economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic is tangibly accelerating these processes in both states.

      The Russian state media tend to play down the significance of the events and push a geopolitical interpretation in which the protesters are a minority controlled by hostile Western actors. They would not exist without Western support, it is asserted. The objective of Western policy is said to be reducing Russian influence in the region and, ultimately, “regime change” in Moscow. In other words, the issue is not liberty but geopolitical rivalry.

      In this understanding, the trouble in Minsk is just the latest in a long series of Western plots against Russia — following the 2014 Euromaidan in Ukraine and the “color revolutions” of the early 2000s. The needs of Belarusian society are completely ignored.

      Russia’s independent media, on the other hand, seek to present a realistic picture, concentrating on developments within Belarus and Lukashenko’s loss of public legitimacy. Belarus is also treated as a template for Russia’s own political future. Comparisons are frequently drawn with the ongoing protests in Khabarovsk, with speculation whether Minsk 2020 might be Moscow 2024.

      Russian Intervention?

      Foreign policy analysts in Moscow do not believe that Tsikhanouskaya can expect Western support. The European Union is divided, they note, weakened by COVID-19 and preoccupied with internal matters, while the United States is generally incapable of coherent foreign policy action. The regime will weather the storm, they believe, but emerge from it weakened.

      This, in turn, will increase Lukashenko’s dependency on Moscow. Regime-loyal and more critical foreign policy experts alike concur that Russia will ultimately profit from the situation in Minsk without itself having to intervene politically or militarily.

      The coming days will tell whether that assumption is correct. The regime in Minsk may have lost touch with the realities of Belarusian society, but it has good prospects of survival as long as the state apparatus backs Lukashenko and Russia maintains its support.

      But if the unrest grows to paralyze the country, a Russian intervention cannot be excluded. The costs would be enormous, in view of the pandemic and the economic crisis. And an intervention could also harm the Kremlin domestically, where it has its own legitimacy problems. On the other hand, it would not be the first time Moscow chose geopolitics and great power bravado over economic and political reason. And Russia’s rulers are still happy to ride roughshod over society, both at home and in Belarus.

      The EU cannot overlook the massive election fraud and the brutality of the security forces against unarmed demonstrators. It should back the demand for new elections, offer mediation and impose additional sanctions if the regime refuses to alter its current stance. But in the process, it should do everything it can to preserve contacts within Belarusian society. Clear communication with Moscow is vital, both to float possible solutions and to lay out the costs of intervention. There is no need to fear a quarrel — the EU has been in a conflict with Russia for a long time already.

      *[This article was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions relating to foreign and security policy.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      The Brain Malfunction Affecting the US and Its Respectable Media

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      Ever since Dwight Eisenhower denounced the military-industrial complex in no uncertain terms, the intelligence community (IC) can be seen as the literal brain of an immense, tentacular but poorly-structured system of economic and political governance. The clandestine nature of its activities within an officially democratic system of government means that this reality will never be publicly acknowledged. 

      Without IC, the Democratic Party could not have entertained the nation for four years with the Russiagate show. One of the unintended consequences of the media’s obsession with alleged Russian interference in US elections has been to highlight both the central role of the IC brain and its fatal weaknesses. 

      A Double Twist in Russiagate

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      The New York Times and The Washington Post have relied on the IC to provide the substance of unending streams of stories revealing the functions of the brain. MSNBC and CNN have rivaled against each other to recruit and then display the insight of former intelligence chiefs, presenting them as paragons of objectivity.

      The NY Times provided an example of this last week in an article by Robert Draper concerning the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a classified report on Russiagate. A close reading of Draper’s analysis reveals some of the subtleties both of how the IC brain works and how The Times has become the voice of that brain.

      Here is an example in which Draper quotes veteran national intelligence office, Christopher Bort: “The intelligence provided to the N.I.E.’s authors indicated that in the lead-up to 2020, Russia worked in support of the Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders as well. But Bort explained to his colleagues … that this reflected not a genuine preference for Sanders but rather an effort ‘to weaken that party and ultimately help the current U.S. president.’”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Genuine:

      In the language of intelligence agencies, the official interpretation of facts that should be retained to the exclusion of the facts themselves

      Contextual Note

      Draper and Bort want Americans to understand that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is committed to one thing alone: maintaining their man, Donald Trump, as the US president. If Russia speaks kindly of Senator Bernie Sanders, it can only be a tactic to comfort Trump’s reelection. It certainly cannot be the hope that, if elected, Sanders might be less rigid than past presidents — including both Trump and Barack Obama — in terms of his Middle East policy, for example. Elections are not about concrete issues. They are only about personalities and loyalties.

      As the brain of the system, the IC has the role of defining acceptable and unacceptable codes of behavior for itself and for the population as a whole. It can define, for example, what is “genuine.” Unlike moral codes, the behavioral code it defines is a single ethical criterion called “interest.” This is particularly evident in the realm of foreign policy, where actions can always be justified as the defense of “American interests.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      The system’s most obvious feature is the nature of what fuels it: money. But the IC doesn’t understand money as an allocated budget measured in dollars and cents. Instead, money exists in a far more abstract sense, taking it beyond any form of traditional reckoning. The IC uses unlimited amounts of unaccounted-for means of payment to conduct operations designed precisely to optimize the national and global environment in ways that will boost the production of unaccounted for streams of profit.

      The profit will ultimately accrue to the commercial beneficiaries of the system. These are the famous “American interests,” though they are never specifically named. The system functions as a community structure but with no dimension of personal kinship. In its opaqueness and focus on money, it resembles the mafia, but devoid of the cumbersome sense of honor that can sometimes get in the way of straight business.

      The IC has traditionally steered clear of electoral politics. Because the US is technically a democracy, the IC must play the role of the influencer rather than a manipulator. The task of manipulation has been confined to the media, essentially privately-owned tentacular structures whose role is to orient and stabilize an ideology and worldview shared by the population. Influenced by the brain, the media define what is normal (good and reassuring), what is tolerable (not so good but non-threatening) and what is extreme (to be banished or shamed). Such a system is designed to ensure the stability that will permit the perpetuation of profits for the entire corporate class, of which the media is a part.

      In normal times, the IC prefers to remain invisible. But Trump’s election victory in 2016 forced the Democratic Party and its sympathizers in the media to bring it into the spotlight. Together, they provided the American public with four years of Russiagate entertainment. They also revealed how close the ties are between the Democratic Party and the brain of the oligarchic system.

      Historical Note

      In a Foreign Affairs article published on August 5 bearing the title, “There Is No Russian Plot Against America” and the subtitle, “The Kremlin’s Electoral Interference Is All Madness and No Method,” seasoned analyst Anna Arutunyan examines the history of Russia’s purported interference in the 2016 US presidential election. In contrast with Christopher Bort, who, among other things, claimed to know that Russia did not have “a genuine preference for Sanders,” the author warns that “ascribing motive and intent is a tricky business, because perceived impact is often mistaken for true intent.”

      Arutunyan notes that the intelligence community has unearthed plenty of evidence of “activities of Russian actors with ties to the Kremlin during the 2016 election.” But the IC possesses “comparatively little information about the real impact of these measures on the election’s outcome—and still less about Moscow’s precise objectives.” In other words, the brain is doing only half its job. It fails to see the connection between what it sees as causes and the reality of the effects produced.

      The author concludes that the campaign to subvert the 2016 election was essentially “a series of uncoordinated and often opportunistic responses to a paranoid belief that Russia is under attack from the United States and must do everything it can to defend itself.”

      Concerning the motives, Arutunyan describes a chaotic environment encouraging the “activities of this or that activist, or special forces group, or businessmen and entrepreneurs—these people are always active in fields like this. It’s what they do.” And what do they want? “They are trying to earn money or political capital that way,” she writes. 

      As for the 2020 election, she speculates: “If there is another Russian operation, expect contrarian messages targeting both candidates’ campaigns and highlighting generally divisive issues such as the United States’ response to the coronavirus pandemic. The messaging will not be coherent, and it will have no further purpose than to provoke arguments.”

      Could this be Vladimir Putin’s ultimate stroke of genius? The Russian president understands how to exploit, with the least amount of effort, the fact that Americans love nothing more than to argue, insult, cancel, shame and, by any other means possible, put in their place fellow Americans who don’t agree with them. It requires far less effort than dialogue or debate. Addressing the issues implies listening, revising one’s judgments, seeking nuanced understanding of complexity, and finally agreeing on collaborative actions adapted to the nature of the challenge.

      If the 2020 election continues to focus on nothing more than the increasingly visible inadequacies of the two candidates — Donald Trump and Joe Biden — their failure to understand the historical context in which they are living and their lack of vision for the future, Putin’s strategy will have paid off. 

      The big question facing electors today seems to be: Which of the two men is the most cognitively impaired? Which has the worst history of corruption? Neither appears to want to focus on the concrete measures required to address the issues that Americans are struggling with today, whether it’s race, the economy or health care. 

      On the other hand, there will be plenty of room for arguments. But the satisfaction of a good dispute may not appease those about to be evicted or deprived both of the prospect of finding a job and, in the midst of a pandemic, the guarantee of health care that would accompany it.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      The Mount of Autocrats

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      Donald Trump would dearly like to add his face to Mount Rushmore as the fifth presidential musketeer. His fireworks-and-fury extravaganza on July 3 was the next best thing. Trump’s dystopian speech was almost beside the point. Much more important was the photo op of his smirking face next to Abraham Lincoln’s.

      More fitting, however, would be to carve Trump’s face into a different Rushmore altogether. This one would be located in a more appropriate badlands, like Mount Hermon in Syria near the border with Israel. There, Trump’s visage would join those of his fellow autocrats, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. To honor the illiberal locals, the stony countenances of Bashar al-Assad and Benjamin Netanyahu would make it a cozy quintet.

      Has Putin Won the Vote on Constitutional Amendments?

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      Let’s be frank: Thomas Jefferson and George Washington are not the company that Trump keeps, despite his “America First” pretensions. His ideological compatriots are to be found in other countries: Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Narendra Modi of India, Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Viktor Orban of Hungary and so on. Alas, this global Rushmore of autocrats is becoming as crowded as a football team pressed together for a selfie.

      But Putin and Xi stand out from the rest. They get pride of place because of their long records of authoritarian policies and the sheer brazenness of their recent power grabs. By comparison, Trump is the arrogant newcomer who may well not last the season, an impulsive sprinter in the marathon of geopolitics. If things go badly for Team Trump in November, America will suddenly be busy air-brushing 45 out of history and gratefully chiseling his face out of the global Rushmore. Putin and Xi, however, are in it for the long haul.

      Leader for Life

      At the end of June, Russia held a referendum on a raft of constitutional changes that President Putin proposed earlier in the year. In front of Russian voters were over 200 proposed amendments. No wonder the authorities gave Russians a full week to vote. They should have provided mandatory seminars on constitutional law as well.

      Of course, the Russian government wasn’t looking to stimulate a wide-ranging discussion of governance. The Russian parliament had already approved the changes. Putin simply wanted Russian voters to rubber-stamp his nationalist-conservative remaking of his country.

      At the same time, a poor turnout would not have been a good look. To guarantee what the Kremlin’s spokesman described as a “triumphant referendum on confidence” in Putin, workplaces pressured their employees to vote and the government distributed lottery prizes. Some people managed to vote more than once. On top of that, widespread fraud was necessary to achieve the preordained positive outcome.

      Instead of voting on each of the amendments, Russians had to approve or disapprove the whole package. Among the constitutional changes were declarations that marriage is only between a man and a woman, that Russians believe in God and that the Russian Constitution takes precedence over international law. Several measures increased executive power over the ministries and the judiciary. A few sops were thrown to Putin’s core constituencies, like pensioners. Who was going to vote against God or retirees?

      But the jewel in the crown was the amendment that allows Putin to run for the presidency two more times. Given his systematic suppression of the opposition, up to and including assassination, Putin will likely be in office until he’s 84 years old. That gives him plenty of time to, depending on your perspective, make Russia great again or make Russia into Putin, Inc.

      The Russian president does not dream of world domination. He has regional ambitions at best. Yet these ambitions have brought Russia into conflict with the United States over Ukraine, Syria, even outer space. And then there’s the perennial friction over Afghanistan. Much has been made in the US press about Putin offering the Taliban bounties for US and coalition soldiers. It’s ugly stuff, but no uglier than what the United States was doing back in the 1980s.

      Did you think that all the US money going to the mujahideen was to cultivate opium poppies, run madrasas and plan someday to bite the hand that fed them? The US government was giving the Afghan “freedom fighters” guns and funds to kill Soviet soldiers, nearly 15,000 of whom died over the course of the war. The Russians have been far less effective. At most, the Taliban have killed 18 US soldiers since the beginning of 2019, with perhaps a couple tied to the bounty program.

      Still, it is expected that a US president would protest such a direct targeting of US soldiers even if he has no intention to retaliate. Instead, Trump has claimed that Putin’s bounty program is a hoax. “The Russia Bounty story is just another made up by Fake News tale that is told only to damage me and the Republican Party,” Trump tweeted.

      Knowing how sensitive the US president and the public are to the death of America soldiers overseas, Putin couldn’t resist raising the stakes in Afghanistan and making US withdrawal that much more certain. Taking the United States out of the equation — reducing the transatlantic alliance, edging US troops out of the Middle East, applauding Washington’s exit from various international organizations — provides Russia with greater maneuvering room to consolidate power in the Eurasian space.

      Trump has dismissed pretty much every unsavory Kremlin act as a hoax, from US election interference to assassinations of critics overseas. Trump cares little about Ukraine, has been lukewarm if not hostile toward US sanctions against Moscow, and has consistently attempted to bring Russia back into the G8. Yet he has also undermined the most important mechanism of engagement with Russia, namely arms control treaties.

      President Trump’s servile approach to Putin and disengaged approach to Russia is the exact opposite of the kind of principled engagement policy that Washington should be constructing. The United States should be identifying common interests with Russia over nuclear weapons, climate, regional ceasefires, reviving the Iran nuclear deal — and, at the same time, criticizing Russian conduct that violates international norms.

      Territory Grab

      China’s Xi Jinping has already made himself leader for life, and he didn’t need to go to the pretense of a referendum on constitutional changes. In 2018, the National People’s Congress simply removed the two-term limit on the presidency and boom: Xi can be on top ‘til he drops. Forget about collective leadership within the party. And certainly forget about some kind of evolution toward democracy. Under President Xi, China has returned to the one-man rule of the Mao period.

      So, while Putin was busy securing his future this past weekend, Xi focused instead on securing China’s future as an integrated, politically homogeneous entity. In other words, Xi moved on Hong Kong.

      Hong Kong once had great economic value for Beijing as a gateway to the global economy. Now that China has all the access to the global economy that it needs and then some, Hong Kong has only symbolic value, as a former colonial territory returned to the Chinese nation in 1997. To the extent that Hong Kong remains an enclave of free-thinkers who take potshots at the Communist Party, Beijing will step by step deprive it of democracy.

      On June 30, a new national security law went into effect in Hong Kong. “The new law names four offences: secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces,” Matt Ho writes in the South China Morning Post. “It also laid out new law enforcement powers and established government agencies responsible for national security. Conviction under the law includes sentences of life in prison.”

      The protests that have roiled Hong Kong for the past many months, from Beijing’s point of view, violate the national security law in all four categories. So, violators may now face very long prison sentences indeed, and police have already arrested a number of people accused of violating the new law. The new law extends to virtually all aspects of society, including the schools, which now must “harmonize” their teaching with the party line in Beijing.

      What’s happening in Hong Kong, however, is still a dilute version of the crackdown taking place on the mainland. This week, the authorities in Beijing arrested Xu Zhangrun, a law professor and prominent critic of Xi. He joins other detainees, like real-estate mogul Ren Zhiqiang, who was linked to an article calling Xi a “clown with no clothes on who was still determined to play emperor” and Xu Zhiyong, who called on Xi to resign for his handling of the coronavirus crisis.

      Meanwhile, Beijing’s treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang province amounts to collective punishment: more than a million consigned to “reeducation camps,” children separated from their families, forced sterilization. Uighur exiles have charged China with genocide and war crimes before the International Criminal Court.

      Like Putin, Xi has aligned himself with a conservative nationalism that appeals to a large portion of the population. Unlike Putin, the Chinese leader doesn’t have to worry about approval ratings or periodic elections. He is also sitting on a far-larger economy, much greater foreign currency reserves, and the means to construct an illiberal internationalism to replace the Washington consensus that has prevailed for several decades. Moreover, there are no political alternatives on the horizon in China that could challenge Xi or his particular fusion of capitalism and nationalism.

      Trump has pursued the same kind of unprincipled engagement with China as he has with Russia: flattery of the king, indifference toward human rights and a focus on profit. Again, principled engagement requires working with China on points of common concern while pushing back against its human rights violations. Of course, that’s not going to happen under the human rights violation that currently occupies the White House.

      And Trump Makes Three

      Trump aspires to become a leader for life like his buddies Putin and Xi, as he has “joked” on numerous occasions. He has similarly attacked the mainstays of a democratic society — the free press, independent judges, inspectors general. He has embraced the same nationalist-conservative cultural policies. And he has branded his opponents as enemies of the people. In his Rushmore speech on July 3, Trump lashed out against:

      “… a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished. It’s not going to happen to us. Make no mistake: this left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution. In so doing, they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress.”

      He went on to describe his crackdown on protesters, his opposition to “liberal Democrats,” his efforts to root out opposition in schools, newsrooms and “even our corporate boardrooms.” Like Putin, he sang the praises of the American family and religious values. He described an American people that stood with him and the Rushmore Four and against all those who have exercised their constitutional rights of speech and assembly. You’d never know from the president’s diatribe that protesters were trying to overthrow not the American Revolution but the remnants of the Confederacy.

      Trump’s supporters have taken to heart the president’s attacks on America’s “enemies.” Since the protests around George Floyd’s killing began in May, there have been at least 50 cases of cars ramming into demonstrators, a favorite tactic used by white supremacists. There have been over 400 reports of press freedom violations. T. Greg Doucette, a “never Trump” conservative lawyer, has collected over 700 videos of police misconduct, usually violent, toward peaceful demonstrators.

      As I’ve written, there is no left-wing “cultural revolution” sweeping the United States. It is Donald Trump who is hoping to unleash a cultural revolution carried out by a mob of violent backlashers who revere the Confederate flag, white supremacy and the Mussolini-like president who looks out upon all the American carnage from his perch on the global Rushmore of autocrats.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in Elections

      Trump claims 'Russian bounty' story is hoax as pressure for answers grows – live updates

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      Trump faces demand for answers over his relationship with Putin Covid-19 outbreaks at meat-processing plants in US being kept quiet Los Angeles sheriff’s department faces reckoning after police shooting Virginia joins states banning hair discrimination Sign up to our First Thing newsletter LIVE Updated Trump has described the ‘Russian bounty’ story as a hoax in […] More

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      in US Politics

      The Observer view on the need to know the extent of the Russian threat to Britain | Observer editorial

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      The Observer view on the need to know the extent of the Russian threat to Britain Observer editorial A slew of allegations about destabilisation campaigns must not be brushed aside According to a US briefing, agents attached to Russia’s military intelligence agency offered bounties to Taliban-linked extremists for killing American and British troops Photograph: Andrew […] More