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solarbirdThis is the roundup post on Trump's demifascism directly. There's more fascism in practice to come, but this is (I think) all the stuff really specifically directly rated to Trump.
----- 1 -----
Eric Hananoki
twitter.com/ehananoki
2 June 2020
https://twitter.com/ehananoki/status/1267822926742425601
Trump campaign senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis says that the Right Rev. Mariann Budde, who oversees St. John's Episcopal Church, "is unfortunately a pawn of the leftist media that thrives on destruction of all that is moral and just."
[EMBEDDED IMAGE of Rev. Budde's statement against Trump's photo op]
[SEE ALSO:
Trump senior adviser and pundit Jenna Ellis has a long trail of toxic anti-LGBTQ remarks
Ellis has also claimed that “Islam is not freedom. It's not peaceful. It is not Liberty. It is not American.”
13 January 2020
https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/trump-senior-adviser-and-pundit-jenna-ellis-has-long-trail-toxic-anti-lgbtq-remarks
]
----- 2 -----
ABC News Politics
twitter.com/ABCPolitics
2 June 2020
https://twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/1267877098141683714
NEW: Attorney General Bill Barr releases statement on protests in Washington, D.C., saying, "there will be even greater law enforcement resources and support in the region tonight."
[IMAGE: Barr statement]
[TRANSCRIPTION BY EDITOR]
ATTORNEY GENERAL WILLIAM P. BARR'S STATEMENT ON PROTESTS IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
WASHINGTON - Attorney General William P. Barr released the following statement;
"Last night was a more peaceful night in the District of Columbia. Working together, federal and local law enforcement made significant progress in restoring order to the nation's capital.
I am grateful to Chief Peter Newsham and the Metropolitan Police Department for their outstanding work and professionalism. The District is well served by this exceptional police force.
I also thank Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley, and the men and women of the Department of Defense for their support. I am particularly impressed by the citizen-soldiers of the D.C. National Guard, who are committed to serving their community, and did so with great effectiveness last night.
Not least. I am grateful to the many federal law enforcement agencies and personnel who helped protect the District, including the FBI, Secret Service, Park Police, ATF, DEA, Bureau of Prisons, U.S. Marshals Service, Capitol Police, Department of Homeland Security's CBP and Border Patrol units, and others.
There will be even greater law enforcement resources and support in the region tonight. The most basic function of government is to provide security for people to live their lives and exercise their rights, and we will meet that responsibility here in the nation's capital."
----- 3 -----
Live updates: Barr personally asked to push back protesters outside White House just before Trump spoke
By Lateshia Beachum, John Wagner, Brittany Shammas, Marisa Iati, Ben Guarino, Meryl Kornfield and Felicia Sonmez
June 2, 2020 at 12:25 p.m. PDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/02/george-floyd-protests-live-updates/
Attorney General William P. Barr personally ordered law enforcement officials on the ground to extend the perimeter around Lafayette Square in Washington to push back protesters just before President Trump spoke Monday, a Justice Department official said.
That order came as clashes between police and the public continued to intensify, with largely peaceful daytime protests over George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody descending into violence and chaos after dark, amid widespread curfews and National Guard deployments.
----- 4 -----
Everyone at Facebook is qwhite complicit
Violet Blue
2 June 2020
https://www.patreon.com/posts/cybersecurity-2-37800670
Follow this timeline, it's revealing.
Wall Street Journal broke news last Tuesday documenting that Facebook is 100% aware of its role fueling racial violence by fostering hate groups -- and has been for years but chooses not to do anything about it. “Facebook’s own researchers found that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools” and that “our recommendation systems grow the problem,” tweetedzeynep. “Facebook VP for policy Joel Kaplan (known for throwing a party for Kavanaugh after confirmation) nixed any action.”
...
So Yesterday (Monday) two things happened.
One is that New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose spotted that the “top 10 stories on Facebook over the past 24 hours” were all from Fox News, “Blue Lives Matter,” and similar sources.
Meaning: the slant of all stories in FB's "top 10" (surfaced to the masses) were pro-police and Trump's agenda. Roose documented that FB's daily specials were “about Trump declaring antifa a terrorist group," he wrote. "One is a feel-good story about a trucker cleaning up after vandals, another is about an officer calmly listening to protesters, one is about violence against law enforcement,” tweeted Roose. “If Facebook was your sole news source," he correctly noted, "and you saw only the most popular links on the platform, you’d think that what happened this weekend was a violent, unprovoked attack on law enforcement by a left-wing terror group.”
----- 5 -----
Top Republican senators defend Trump's church photo-op after peaceful protesters cleared out
By Manu Raju, CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent
Updated 4:17 PM ET, Tue June 2, 2020
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/02/politics/congress-republican-reaction-trump-church/index.html
CNN)Top Republican senators are defending the use of police force to clear out peaceful protesters near the White House that allowed President Donald Trump to pose with a Bible in front of a church amid the continued unrest in the United States.
The stunning move prompted a visceral reaction among Democrats, who likened Trump's actions to a dictator as they prepared legislation to condemn the use of force -- including tear gas and rubber bullets -- against Americans exercising their constitutional rights to protest.
But Republicans -- for the most part -- aligned squarely with the President, saying it was his right to take such action given at times the violent protests that have occurred in the United States and the need for him to demonstrate that the country would not stand for the actions of looters and "anarchists."
It was the latest indication of the deeply polarized environment on Capitol Hill amid one of the most tumultuous years in American history, with the two parties at sharp odds over the President's stewardship of the multiple crises facing the country and violent protests in cities following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
----- 6 -----
Jack Jenkins
twitter.com/jackmjenkins
1 June 2020
https://twitter.com/jackmjenkins/status/1267644542762864641
[THREAD]
1. Spoke w/Bishop Mariann Budde of the Washington Diocese.
On Trump's remarks: "Everything he has said is antithetical to the teachings of our traditions and what we stand for as a church."
ALSO: One of those driven out w/tear gas for the photo op was a *priest of the diocese.*
[NEXT]
2. She read me a message sent to her by that priest, who was offering hospitality to protesters: "I was literally coughing bc of tear gas while helping ppl ... and the police drove us off ... w/riot gear and horses so that man could stand in front of our church with a Bible."
[NEXT]
Found another account from what appears to be one of the priests who was there, via Facebook.
Really harrowing stuff to read.
[EMBEDDED IMAGE]
[NEXT]
ANOTHER harrowing account from ANOTHER priest working outside St. John’s who says they were run off by tear gas, etc before Trump’s photo op.
Ends with a defiant decree: “I am now a force to be reckoned with.”
[EMBEDDED IMAGE]
----- 7 -----
Ahead of Trump Bible photo op, police forcibly expel priest from St. John’s church near White House
Jack Jenkins
2 June 2020
https://religionnews.com/2020/06/02/ahead-of-trump-bible-photo-op-police-forcibly-expel-priest-from-st-johns-church-near-white-house/
WASHINGTON (RNS) — Early Monday evening (June 1), President Donald Trump stood before the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church in downtown Washington and held aloft a Bible for cameras.
The photo opportunity had an eerie quality: Trump said relatively little, positioned stoically in front of the boarded-up church, which had been damaged the day before in a fire during protests sparked by the death of George Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis.
The church appeared to be completely abandoned.
It was, in fact, abandoned, but not by choice: Less than an hour before Trump’s arrival, armored police used tear gas to clear hundreds of peaceful demonstrators from Lafayette Square park, which is across the street from the church.
Authorities also expelled at least one Episcopal priest and a seminarian from the church’s patio.
“They turned holy ground into a battleground,” said the Rev. Gini Gerbasi.
----- 8 -----
Governors Push Back On Trump's Threat To Deploy Federal Troops To Quell Unrest
June 2, 2020
Scott Neuman
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/02/867565338/governors-push-back-on-trumps-threat-to-deploy-federal-troops-to-quell-unrest
President Trump, in a conference call Monday with the nation's governors, threatened to deploy the U.S. military to restore order unless states hit by days of unrest "put down" violent demonstrations, urging leaders to "dominate" lawbreakers or risk looking like "a bunch of jerks."
...
While some governors, such as South Carolina's Henry McMaster, a Republican, praised Trump's calls for a crackdown, others took umbrage at the president's combative tone and questioned his authority to unilaterally deploy federal troops to the states.
During the conference call, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, warned the president that the "rhetoric coming out of the White House is making it worse," to which Trump snapped back, "I don't like your rhetoric that much either."
"I had to speak up, and I told him that his rhetoric is inflaming matters, that it's making things worse, and that we need to call for police reform," Pritzker told NPR's Morning Edition on Tuesday. "We need to call for calm, that that's what the president should do and we need national leadership in this regard."
"He unfortunately — you know," the governor added, "he reacted badly."
Pritzker also said that what Trump's suggesting is "illegal."
"The governor of a state has to ask for federal help. I don't know any governor that intends to do that," he said. "And secondly, you know, you can hear in his rhetoric that he is simply trying to make himself sound like a strong man — almost like a dictator, as if he's going to be responsible for bringing order all the way."
In Michigan, where police and protesters have skirmished in Grand Rapids despite many demonstrations remaining peaceful, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, called the president's remarks "dangerous" and said they should be "gravely concerning to all Americans."
The president's comments, she said, "send a clear signal that this administration is determined to sow the seeds of hatred and division, which I fear will only lead to more violence and destruction."
"We must reject this way of thinking. This is a moment that calls for empathy, humanity, and unity," Whitmer said in a statement. "This is one of the most challenging periods in our nation's history, but as Americans, we must remember our enemy is racial injustice, not one another."
The Republican governor of Massachusetts, Charlie Baker, said he wasn't surprised by the president's "incendiary words."
"At so many times during these last several weeks, when the country needed compassion and leadership the most, it simply was nowhere to be found," he said following the phone call with Trump.
----- 9 -----
I Cannot Remain Silent
Our fellow citizens are not the enemy, and must never become so.
Mike Mullen
Seventeenth chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
2 June 2020
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/american-cities-are-not-battlespaces/612553/
It sickened me yesterday to see security personnel—including members of the National Guard—forcibly and violently clear a path through Lafayette Square to accommodate the president's visit outside St. John's Church. I have to date been reticent to speak out on issues surrounding President Trump's leadership, but we are at an inflection point, and the events of the past few weeks have made it impossible to remain silent.
Whatever Trump's goal in conducting his visit, he laid bare his disdain for the rights of peaceful protest in this country, gave succor to the leaders of other countries who take comfort in our domestic strife, and risked further politicizing the men and women of our armed forces.
There was little good in the stunt.
...
We must, as citizens, address head-on the issue of police brutality and sustained injustices against the African American community. We must, as citizens, support and defend the right—indeed, the solemn obligation—to peacefully assemble and to be heard. These are not mutually exclusive pursuits.
And neither of these pursuits will be made easier or safer by an overly aggressive use of our military, active duty or National Guard. The United States has a long and, to be fair, sometimes troubled history of using the armed forces to enforce domestic laws. The issue for us today is not whether this authority exists, but whether it will be wisely administered.
I remain confident in the professionalism of our men and women in uniform. They will serve with skill and with compassion. They will obey lawful orders. But I am less confident in the soundness of the orders they will be given by this commander in chief, and I am not convinced that the conditions on our streets, as bad as they are, have risen to the level that justifies a heavy reliance on military troops. Certainly, we have not crossed the threshold that would make it appropriate to invoke the provisions of the Insurrection Act.
Furthermore, I am deeply worried that as they execute their orders, the members of our military will be co-opted for political purposes.
Even in the midst of the carnage we are witnessing, we must endeavor to see American cities and towns as our homes and our neighborhoods. They are not “battle spaces” to be dominated, and must never become so.
----- 10 -----
James LaPorta
twitter.com/JimLaPorta
2 June 2020
[EDITOR: Fuckin' YIKES]
https://twitter.com/JimLaPorta/status/1267926498629074947
700 members of the 82nd are at Joint Base Andrews and Fort Belvoir. 1,400 more soldiers are ready to be mobilized within an hour. Soldiers are armed and have riot gear. They also were issued bayonets—standard issue but some feel could be inflammatory
https://twitter.com/JimLaPorta/status/1267933601829662723
Some context: they were issued to the members of the 82nd deploying to Washington, D.C. - they were told to pack them in their backpacks. Members I spoke said bayonets are always on their packing list but given the context of the protests, it could be perceived in a bad light.
----- 11 -----
The DEA Has Just Been Authorized to Conduct Surveillance on Protesters
The Justice Department gave the agency the temporary power “to enforce any federal crime committed as a result of the protests over the death of George Floyd.”
Jason Leopold BuzzFeed News Reporter
Anthony Cormier BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on June 2, 2020, at 6:48 p.m. ET
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/george-floyd-police-brutality-protests-government
The Drug Enforcement Administration has been granted sweeping new authority to “conduct covert surveillance” and collect intelligence on people participating in protests over the murder of George Floyd, according to a two-page memorandum obtained by BuzzFeed News.
Floyd’s death “has spawned widespread protests across the nation, which, in some instances, have included violence and looting,” said the DEA memo. “Police agencies in certain areas of the country have struggled to maintain and/or restore order.” The memo requests the extraordinary powers on a temporary basis, and on Sunday afternoon a senior Justice Department official signed off.
Attorney General William Barr issued a statement Saturday following a night of widespread and at times violent protests in which he blamed, without providing evidence, “anarchistic and far left extremists, using Antifa-like tactics,” for the unrest. He said the FBI, DEA, US Marshals, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives would be “deployed to support local efforts to enforce federal law.”
Barr did not say what those agencies would do, however.
The DEA is limited by statute to enforcing drug related federal crimes. But on Sunday, Timothy Shea, a former US Attorney and close confidant of Barr who was named acting administrator of the DEA last month, received approval from Associate Deputy Attorney General G. Bradley Weinsheimer to go beyond the agency’s mandate “to perform other law enforcement duties” that Barr may “deem appropriate.”
----- 12 -----
A letter to Defense Secretary Mark Esper
By James N. Miller
June 2, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/02/secretary-esper-you-violated-your-oath-aiding-trumps-photo-op-thats-why-im-resigning/
Hon. Mark T. Esper
Secretary of Defense
The Pentagon
Washington, D.C., 20301
Dear Secretary Esper,
I resign from the Defense Science Board, effective immediately.
When I joined the Board in early 2014, after leaving government service as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, I again swore an oath of office, one familiar to you, that includes the commitment to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States . . . and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same.”
You recited that same oath on July 23, 2019, when you were sworn in as Secretary of Defense. On Monday, June 1, 2020, I believe that you violated that oath. Law-abiding protesters just outside the White House were dispersed using tear gas and rubber bullets — not for the sake of safety, but to clear a path for a presidential photo op. You then accompanied President Trump in walking from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church for that photo.
President Trump’s actions Monday night violated his oath to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” as well as the First Amendment “right of the people peaceably to assemble.” You may not have been able to stop President Trump from directing this appalling use of force, but you could have chosen to oppose it. Instead, you visibly supported it.
Anyone who takes the oath of office must decide where he or she will draw the line: What are the things that they will refuse to do? Secretary Esper, you have served honorably for many years, in active and reserve military duty, as Secretary of the Army, and now as Secretary of Defense. You must have thought long and hard about where that line should be drawn. I must now ask: If last night’s blatant violations do not cross the line for you, what will?
Unfortunately, it appears there may be few if any lines that President Trump is not willing to cross, so you will probably be faced with this terrible question again in the coming days. You may be asked to take, or to direct the men and women serving in the U.S. military to take, actions that further undermine the Constitution and harm Americans.
As a concerned citizen, and as a former senior defense official who cares deeply about the military, I urge you to consider closely both your future actions and your future words. For example, some could interpret literally your suggestion to the nation’s governors Monday that they need to “dominate the battlespace.” I cannot believe that you see the United States as a “battlespace,” or that you believe our citizens must be “dominated.” Such language sends an extremely dangerous signal.
You have made life-and-death decisions in combat overseas; soon you may be asked to make life-and-death decisions about using the military on American streets and against Americans. Where will you draw the line, and when will you draw it?
I hope this letter of resignation will encourage you to again contemplate the obligations you undertook in your oath of office, as well as your obligations to the men and women in our military and other Americans whose lives may be at stake. In the event that at least some other senior officials may be inclined to ask these questions after reading this letter, I am making it public.
I wish you the best, in very difficult times. The sanctity of the U.S. Constitution, and the lives of Americans, may depend on your choices.
Sincerely,
James N. Miller
----- 13 -----
Trump’s Use of Tear Gas To Break Up A Protest Undermined Three Core Values Of American Democracy
By Perry Bacon Jr. and Julia Azari
2 June 2020
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trumps-use-of-tear-gas-to-break-up-a-protest-undermined-three-core-values-of-american-democracy/
The criticism that President Trump has disregarded many of our country’s norms and democratic values is not new. We’ve written about it several times before — in particular, about how the violation of values is a bigger deal than the breaking of norms. But law enforcement officials using tear gas on protesters outside the White House to clear a path for Trump to visit a church nearby — for what seemed to amount to a photo-op of him holding a Bible — was arguably one of most significant moments of his breaking with such values during his presidency.
It was essentially a three-part violation. In being generally unsupportive of the protests against the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, Trump is in tension with a core democratic value — America taking additional steps to ensure people are treated equally, no matter their race. Trump’s decision to break up the protest then subverted one of America’s core democratic values, the right to peacefully protest. Finally, by involving the National Guard and senior military officials in the action against the protesters, Trump also disregarded the democratic value that the military and police not be used for political purposes.
----- 14 -----
This Is Fascism
Trump is sending an unambiguous message to a country in turmoil—and his armed supporters, from cops to vigilantes, hear it loud and clear.
Adam Weinstein
2 June 2020
https://newrepublic.com/article/157949/fascism-america-trump-anti-police-george-floyd-protests
“Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes,” Umberto Eco wrote in 1995. “It would be so much easier, for us, if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, ‘I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the Italian squares.’ Life is not that simple.” Eco, the great theorist and novelist, had been an adolescent in northern Italy under Mussolini’s fascist regime, and half a century later, as ultranationalist demagoguery and violence were set aflame by the Cold War’s last European embers, he began to wonder how to recognize, and mobilize against, a nascent fascist regime. “We are here to remember what happened and solemnly say that ‘They’ must not do it again,” he wrote. “But who are They?”
To many Americans—mostly white Americans—Eco’s question has long felt academic. It’s obvious who “They” are, isn’t it? Hitler and the Nazis, of course, and perhaps Islamist terrorists. “They” are totalitarian death cults, but specifically alien ones—to be kept away from our superior shores, and occasionally to be vanquished by our incomparable military.
Eco knew better, and he had America’s number, even in the world wide web’s infancy. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People,” he wrote. He could be describing the rise of online Trumpism, packaged and Taylorized by the Republican Party apparatus, buttressed by the right-wing media ecosphere and its funders, all in the service of an authoritarian gangster state, which reached an important stage of fascist maturity in the streets of dozens of cities last weekend. The country has entered a moment in which the frog notices it is getting boiled.
In Philadelphia on Sunday morning, the first thing the authorities cleaned up was a statue of former police commissioner and Mayor Frank Rizzo, a race-baiting demagogue who spent his life pitting white residents against everyone else. At a complex in Cincinnati, county sheriff’s deputies replaced the U.S. flag (which they said had been taken by looters) with their own gang colors, a Thin Blue Line banner; the city council chairman blasted that move as insensitive, saying the sheriff “has only made things worse. Again.” Further upstate in Columbus, Ohio, cops pepper-sprayed Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, along with other elected officials. In Cleveland, officials attempted to ban any journalists from traveling downtown to the heart of the protests.
- Trump campaign senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis: Right Rev. Mariann Budde is a "pawn of the leftist media"
- Barr promises "even greater" police action in D.C.
- Live updates: Barr personally asked to push back protesters outside White House just before Trump spoke
- Everyone at Facebook is qwhite complicit
- Top Republican senators defend Trump's church photo-op after peaceful protesters cleared out
- "Everything he has said is antithetical to the teachings of our traditions and what we stand for as a church."
- Ahead of Trump Bible photo op, police forcibly expel priest from St. John’s church near White House
- Governors Push Back On Trump's Threat To Deploy Federal Troops To Quell Unrest
- I Cannot Remain Silent
- 700 members of the 82nd are at Joint Base Andrews and Fort Belvoir, 1,400 more soldiers are ready, all issued bayonets
- The DEA Has Just Been Authorized to Conduct Surveillance on Protesters
- A letter to Defense Secretary Mark Esper
- Trump’s Use of Tear Gas To Break Up A Protest Undermined Three Core Values Of American Democracy
- This Is Fascism
----- 1 -----
Eric Hananoki
twitter.com/ehananoki
2 June 2020
https://twitter.com/ehananoki/status/1267822926742425601
Trump campaign senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis says that the Right Rev. Mariann Budde, who oversees St. John's Episcopal Church, "is unfortunately a pawn of the leftist media that thrives on destruction of all that is moral and just."
[EMBEDDED IMAGE of Rev. Budde's statement against Trump's photo op]
[SEE ALSO:
Trump senior adviser and pundit Jenna Ellis has a long trail of toxic anti-LGBTQ remarks
Ellis has also claimed that “Islam is not freedom. It's not peaceful. It is not Liberty. It is not American.”
13 January 2020
https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/trump-senior-adviser-and-pundit-jenna-ellis-has-long-trail-toxic-anti-lgbtq-remarks
]
----- 2 -----
ABC News Politics
twitter.com/ABCPolitics
2 June 2020
https://twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/1267877098141683714
NEW: Attorney General Bill Barr releases statement on protests in Washington, D.C., saying, "there will be even greater law enforcement resources and support in the region tonight."
[IMAGE: Barr statement]
[TRANSCRIPTION BY EDITOR]
ATTORNEY GENERAL WILLIAM P. BARR'S STATEMENT ON PROTESTS IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
WASHINGTON - Attorney General William P. Barr released the following statement;
"Last night was a more peaceful night in the District of Columbia. Working together, federal and local law enforcement made significant progress in restoring order to the nation's capital.
I am grateful to Chief Peter Newsham and the Metropolitan Police Department for their outstanding work and professionalism. The District is well served by this exceptional police force.
I also thank Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Mark Milley, and the men and women of the Department of Defense for their support. I am particularly impressed by the citizen-soldiers of the D.C. National Guard, who are committed to serving their community, and did so with great effectiveness last night.
Not least. I am grateful to the many federal law enforcement agencies and personnel who helped protect the District, including the FBI, Secret Service, Park Police, ATF, DEA, Bureau of Prisons, U.S. Marshals Service, Capitol Police, Department of Homeland Security's CBP and Border Patrol units, and others.
There will be even greater law enforcement resources and support in the region tonight. The most basic function of government is to provide security for people to live their lives and exercise their rights, and we will meet that responsibility here in the nation's capital."
----- 3 -----
Live updates: Barr personally asked to push back protesters outside White House just before Trump spoke
By Lateshia Beachum, John Wagner, Brittany Shammas, Marisa Iati, Ben Guarino, Meryl Kornfield and Felicia Sonmez
June 2, 2020 at 12:25 p.m. PDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/02/george-floyd-protests-live-updates/
Attorney General William P. Barr personally ordered law enforcement officials on the ground to extend the perimeter around Lafayette Square in Washington to push back protesters just before President Trump spoke Monday, a Justice Department official said.
That order came as clashes between police and the public continued to intensify, with largely peaceful daytime protests over George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody descending into violence and chaos after dark, amid widespread curfews and National Guard deployments.
----- 4 -----
Everyone at Facebook is qwhite complicit
Violet Blue
2 June 2020
https://www.patreon.com/posts/cybersecurity-2-37800670
Follow this timeline, it's revealing.
Wall Street Journal broke news last Tuesday documenting that Facebook is 100% aware of its role fueling racial violence by fostering hate groups -- and has been for years but chooses not to do anything about it. “Facebook’s own researchers found that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools” and that “our recommendation systems grow the problem,” tweeted
zeynep. “Facebook VP for policy Joel Kaplan (known for throwing a party for Kavanaugh after confirmation) nixed any action.”...
So Yesterday (Monday) two things happened.
One is that New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose spotted that the “top 10 stories on Facebook over the past 24 hours” were all from Fox News, “Blue Lives Matter,” and similar sources.
Meaning: the slant of all stories in FB's "top 10" (surfaced to the masses) were pro-police and Trump's agenda. Roose documented that FB's daily specials were “about Trump declaring antifa a terrorist group," he wrote. "One is a feel-good story about a trucker cleaning up after vandals, another is about an officer calmly listening to protesters, one is about violence against law enforcement,” tweeted Roose. “If Facebook was your sole news source," he correctly noted, "and you saw only the most popular links on the platform, you’d think that what happened this weekend was a violent, unprovoked attack on law enforcement by a left-wing terror group.”
----- 5 -----
Top Republican senators defend Trump's church photo-op after peaceful protesters cleared out
By Manu Raju, CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent
Updated 4:17 PM ET, Tue June 2, 2020
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/02/politics/congress-republican-reaction-trump-church/index.html
CNN)Top Republican senators are defending the use of police force to clear out peaceful protesters near the White House that allowed President Donald Trump to pose with a Bible in front of a church amid the continued unrest in the United States.
The stunning move prompted a visceral reaction among Democrats, who likened Trump's actions to a dictator as they prepared legislation to condemn the use of force -- including tear gas and rubber bullets -- against Americans exercising their constitutional rights to protest.
But Republicans -- for the most part -- aligned squarely with the President, saying it was his right to take such action given at times the violent protests that have occurred in the United States and the need for him to demonstrate that the country would not stand for the actions of looters and "anarchists."
It was the latest indication of the deeply polarized environment on Capitol Hill amid one of the most tumultuous years in American history, with the two parties at sharp odds over the President's stewardship of the multiple crises facing the country and violent protests in cities following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
----- 6 -----
Jack Jenkins
twitter.com/jackmjenkins
1 June 2020
https://twitter.com/jackmjenkins/status/1267644542762864641
[THREAD]
1. Spoke w/Bishop Mariann Budde of the Washington Diocese.
On Trump's remarks: "Everything he has said is antithetical to the teachings of our traditions and what we stand for as a church."
ALSO: One of those driven out w/tear gas for the photo op was a *priest of the diocese.*
[NEXT]
2. She read me a message sent to her by that priest, who was offering hospitality to protesters: "I was literally coughing bc of tear gas while helping ppl ... and the police drove us off ... w/riot gear and horses so that man could stand in front of our church with a Bible."
[NEXT]
Found another account from what appears to be one of the priests who was there, via Facebook.
Really harrowing stuff to read.
[EMBEDDED IMAGE]
[NEXT]
ANOTHER harrowing account from ANOTHER priest working outside St. John’s who says they were run off by tear gas, etc before Trump’s photo op.
Ends with a defiant decree: “I am now a force to be reckoned with.”
[EMBEDDED IMAGE]
----- 7 -----
Ahead of Trump Bible photo op, police forcibly expel priest from St. John’s church near White House
Jack Jenkins
2 June 2020
https://religionnews.com/2020/06/02/ahead-of-trump-bible-photo-op-police-forcibly-expel-priest-from-st-johns-church-near-white-house/
WASHINGTON (RNS) — Early Monday evening (June 1), President Donald Trump stood before the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church in downtown Washington and held aloft a Bible for cameras.
The photo opportunity had an eerie quality: Trump said relatively little, positioned stoically in front of the boarded-up church, which had been damaged the day before in a fire during protests sparked by the death of George Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis.
The church appeared to be completely abandoned.
It was, in fact, abandoned, but not by choice: Less than an hour before Trump’s arrival, armored police used tear gas to clear hundreds of peaceful demonstrators from Lafayette Square park, which is across the street from the church.
Authorities also expelled at least one Episcopal priest and a seminarian from the church’s patio.
“They turned holy ground into a battleground,” said the Rev. Gini Gerbasi.
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Governors Push Back On Trump's Threat To Deploy Federal Troops To Quell Unrest
June 2, 2020
Scott Neuman
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/02/867565338/governors-push-back-on-trumps-threat-to-deploy-federal-troops-to-quell-unrest
President Trump, in a conference call Monday with the nation's governors, threatened to deploy the U.S. military to restore order unless states hit by days of unrest "put down" violent demonstrations, urging leaders to "dominate" lawbreakers or risk looking like "a bunch of jerks."
...
While some governors, such as South Carolina's Henry McMaster, a Republican, praised Trump's calls for a crackdown, others took umbrage at the president's combative tone and questioned his authority to unilaterally deploy federal troops to the states.
During the conference call, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, warned the president that the "rhetoric coming out of the White House is making it worse," to which Trump snapped back, "I don't like your rhetoric that much either."
"I had to speak up, and I told him that his rhetoric is inflaming matters, that it's making things worse, and that we need to call for police reform," Pritzker told NPR's Morning Edition on Tuesday. "We need to call for calm, that that's what the president should do and we need national leadership in this regard."
"He unfortunately — you know," the governor added, "he reacted badly."
Pritzker also said that what Trump's suggesting is "illegal."
"The governor of a state has to ask for federal help. I don't know any governor that intends to do that," he said. "And secondly, you know, you can hear in his rhetoric that he is simply trying to make himself sound like a strong man — almost like a dictator, as if he's going to be responsible for bringing order all the way."
In Michigan, where police and protesters have skirmished in Grand Rapids despite many demonstrations remaining peaceful, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, called the president's remarks "dangerous" and said they should be "gravely concerning to all Americans."
The president's comments, she said, "send a clear signal that this administration is determined to sow the seeds of hatred and division, which I fear will only lead to more violence and destruction."
"We must reject this way of thinking. This is a moment that calls for empathy, humanity, and unity," Whitmer said in a statement. "This is one of the most challenging periods in our nation's history, but as Americans, we must remember our enemy is racial injustice, not one another."
The Republican governor of Massachusetts, Charlie Baker, said he wasn't surprised by the president's "incendiary words."
"At so many times during these last several weeks, when the country needed compassion and leadership the most, it simply was nowhere to be found," he said following the phone call with Trump.
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I Cannot Remain Silent
Our fellow citizens are not the enemy, and must never become so.
Mike Mullen
Seventeenth chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
2 June 2020
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/american-cities-are-not-battlespaces/612553/
It sickened me yesterday to see security personnel—including members of the National Guard—forcibly and violently clear a path through Lafayette Square to accommodate the president's visit outside St. John's Church. I have to date been reticent to speak out on issues surrounding President Trump's leadership, but we are at an inflection point, and the events of the past few weeks have made it impossible to remain silent.
Whatever Trump's goal in conducting his visit, he laid bare his disdain for the rights of peaceful protest in this country, gave succor to the leaders of other countries who take comfort in our domestic strife, and risked further politicizing the men and women of our armed forces.
There was little good in the stunt.
...
We must, as citizens, address head-on the issue of police brutality and sustained injustices against the African American community. We must, as citizens, support and defend the right—indeed, the solemn obligation—to peacefully assemble and to be heard. These are not mutually exclusive pursuits.
And neither of these pursuits will be made easier or safer by an overly aggressive use of our military, active duty or National Guard. The United States has a long and, to be fair, sometimes troubled history of using the armed forces to enforce domestic laws. The issue for us today is not whether this authority exists, but whether it will be wisely administered.
I remain confident in the professionalism of our men and women in uniform. They will serve with skill and with compassion. They will obey lawful orders. But I am less confident in the soundness of the orders they will be given by this commander in chief, and I am not convinced that the conditions on our streets, as bad as they are, have risen to the level that justifies a heavy reliance on military troops. Certainly, we have not crossed the threshold that would make it appropriate to invoke the provisions of the Insurrection Act.
Furthermore, I am deeply worried that as they execute their orders, the members of our military will be co-opted for political purposes.
Even in the midst of the carnage we are witnessing, we must endeavor to see American cities and towns as our homes and our neighborhoods. They are not “battle spaces” to be dominated, and must never become so.
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James LaPorta
twitter.com/JimLaPorta
2 June 2020
[EDITOR: Fuckin' YIKES]
https://twitter.com/JimLaPorta/status/1267926498629074947
700 members of the 82nd are at Joint Base Andrews and Fort Belvoir. 1,400 more soldiers are ready to be mobilized within an hour. Soldiers are armed and have riot gear. They also were issued bayonets—standard issue but some feel could be inflammatory
https://twitter.com/JimLaPorta/status/1267933601829662723
Some context: they were issued to the members of the 82nd deploying to Washington, D.C. - they were told to pack them in their backpacks. Members I spoke said bayonets are always on their packing list but given the context of the protests, it could be perceived in a bad light.
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The DEA Has Just Been Authorized to Conduct Surveillance on Protesters
The Justice Department gave the agency the temporary power “to enforce any federal crime committed as a result of the protests over the death of George Floyd.”
Jason Leopold BuzzFeed News Reporter
Anthony Cormier BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on June 2, 2020, at 6:48 p.m. ET
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/george-floyd-police-brutality-protests-government
The Drug Enforcement Administration has been granted sweeping new authority to “conduct covert surveillance” and collect intelligence on people participating in protests over the murder of George Floyd, according to a two-page memorandum obtained by BuzzFeed News.
Floyd’s death “has spawned widespread protests across the nation, which, in some instances, have included violence and looting,” said the DEA memo. “Police agencies in certain areas of the country have struggled to maintain and/or restore order.” The memo requests the extraordinary powers on a temporary basis, and on Sunday afternoon a senior Justice Department official signed off.
Attorney General William Barr issued a statement Saturday following a night of widespread and at times violent protests in which he blamed, without providing evidence, “anarchistic and far left extremists, using Antifa-like tactics,” for the unrest. He said the FBI, DEA, US Marshals, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives would be “deployed to support local efforts to enforce federal law.”
Barr did not say what those agencies would do, however.
The DEA is limited by statute to enforcing drug related federal crimes. But on Sunday, Timothy Shea, a former US Attorney and close confidant of Barr who was named acting administrator of the DEA last month, received approval from Associate Deputy Attorney General G. Bradley Weinsheimer to go beyond the agency’s mandate “to perform other law enforcement duties” that Barr may “deem appropriate.”
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A letter to Defense Secretary Mark Esper
By James N. Miller
June 2, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/02/secretary-esper-you-violated-your-oath-aiding-trumps-photo-op-thats-why-im-resigning/
Hon. Mark T. Esper
Secretary of Defense
The Pentagon
Washington, D.C., 20301
Dear Secretary Esper,
I resign from the Defense Science Board, effective immediately.
When I joined the Board in early 2014, after leaving government service as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, I again swore an oath of office, one familiar to you, that includes the commitment to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States . . . and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same.”
You recited that same oath on July 23, 2019, when you were sworn in as Secretary of Defense. On Monday, June 1, 2020, I believe that you violated that oath. Law-abiding protesters just outside the White House were dispersed using tear gas and rubber bullets — not for the sake of safety, but to clear a path for a presidential photo op. You then accompanied President Trump in walking from the White House to St. John’s Episcopal Church for that photo.
President Trump’s actions Monday night violated his oath to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” as well as the First Amendment “right of the people peaceably to assemble.” You may not have been able to stop President Trump from directing this appalling use of force, but you could have chosen to oppose it. Instead, you visibly supported it.
Anyone who takes the oath of office must decide where he or she will draw the line: What are the things that they will refuse to do? Secretary Esper, you have served honorably for many years, in active and reserve military duty, as Secretary of the Army, and now as Secretary of Defense. You must have thought long and hard about where that line should be drawn. I must now ask: If last night’s blatant violations do not cross the line for you, what will?
Unfortunately, it appears there may be few if any lines that President Trump is not willing to cross, so you will probably be faced with this terrible question again in the coming days. You may be asked to take, or to direct the men and women serving in the U.S. military to take, actions that further undermine the Constitution and harm Americans.
As a concerned citizen, and as a former senior defense official who cares deeply about the military, I urge you to consider closely both your future actions and your future words. For example, some could interpret literally your suggestion to the nation’s governors Monday that they need to “dominate the battlespace.” I cannot believe that you see the United States as a “battlespace,” or that you believe our citizens must be “dominated.” Such language sends an extremely dangerous signal.
You have made life-and-death decisions in combat overseas; soon you may be asked to make life-and-death decisions about using the military on American streets and against Americans. Where will you draw the line, and when will you draw it?
I hope this letter of resignation will encourage you to again contemplate the obligations you undertook in your oath of office, as well as your obligations to the men and women in our military and other Americans whose lives may be at stake. In the event that at least some other senior officials may be inclined to ask these questions after reading this letter, I am making it public.
I wish you the best, in very difficult times. The sanctity of the U.S. Constitution, and the lives of Americans, may depend on your choices.
Sincerely,
James N. Miller
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Trump’s Use of Tear Gas To Break Up A Protest Undermined Three Core Values Of American Democracy
By Perry Bacon Jr. and Julia Azari
2 June 2020
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trumps-use-of-tear-gas-to-break-up-a-protest-undermined-three-core-values-of-american-democracy/
The criticism that President Trump has disregarded many of our country’s norms and democratic values is not new. We’ve written about it several times before — in particular, about how the violation of values is a bigger deal than the breaking of norms. But law enforcement officials using tear gas on protesters outside the White House to clear a path for Trump to visit a church nearby — for what seemed to amount to a photo-op of him holding a Bible — was arguably one of most significant moments of his breaking with such values during his presidency.
It was essentially a three-part violation. In being generally unsupportive of the protests against the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, Trump is in tension with a core democratic value — America taking additional steps to ensure people are treated equally, no matter their race. Trump’s decision to break up the protest then subverted one of America’s core democratic values, the right to peacefully protest. Finally, by involving the National Guard and senior military officials in the action against the protesters, Trump also disregarded the democratic value that the military and police not be used for political purposes.
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This Is Fascism
Trump is sending an unambiguous message to a country in turmoil—and his armed supporters, from cops to vigilantes, hear it loud and clear.
Adam Weinstein
2 June 2020
https://newrepublic.com/article/157949/fascism-america-trump-anti-police-george-floyd-protests
“Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes,” Umberto Eco wrote in 1995. “It would be so much easier, for us, if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, ‘I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the Italian squares.’ Life is not that simple.” Eco, the great theorist and novelist, had been an adolescent in northern Italy under Mussolini’s fascist regime, and half a century later, as ultranationalist demagoguery and violence were set aflame by the Cold War’s last European embers, he began to wonder how to recognize, and mobilize against, a nascent fascist regime. “We are here to remember what happened and solemnly say that ‘They’ must not do it again,” he wrote. “But who are They?”
To many Americans—mostly white Americans—Eco’s question has long felt academic. It’s obvious who “They” are, isn’t it? Hitler and the Nazis, of course, and perhaps Islamist terrorists. “They” are totalitarian death cults, but specifically alien ones—to be kept away from our superior shores, and occasionally to be vanquished by our incomparable military.
Eco knew better, and he had America’s number, even in the world wide web’s infancy. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People,” he wrote. He could be describing the rise of online Trumpism, packaged and Taylorized by the Republican Party apparatus, buttressed by the right-wing media ecosphere and its funders, all in the service of an authoritarian gangster state, which reached an important stage of fascist maturity in the streets of dozens of cities last weekend. The country has entered a moment in which the frog notices it is getting boiled.
In Philadelphia on Sunday morning, the first thing the authorities cleaned up was a statue of former police commissioner and Mayor Frank Rizzo, a race-baiting demagogue who spent his life pitting white residents against everyone else. At a complex in Cincinnati, county sheriff’s deputies replaced the U.S. flag (which they said had been taken by looters) with their own gang colors, a Thin Blue Line banner; the city council chairman blasted that move as insensitive, saying the sheriff “has only made things worse. Again.” Further upstate in Columbus, Ohio, cops pepper-sprayed Congresswoman Joyce Beatty, along with other elected officials. In Cleveland, officials attempted to ban any journalists from traveling downtown to the heart of the protests.
