solarbird | Fascism Watch for February 25, 2023

The 5th Circuit, under a fleet of far-right GOP judges, has turned so viciously censorious that even one Trump judge – a very, very far-right judge otherwise – has gone to war against his fellows for permitting local officials to jail their political opponents on the flimsiest of excuses.

The Dilbert Man has gone full segregationist, saying explicitly that Black people are a threat and white people should “get away from” them, all on the basis of a poll showing a negative reaction to the phrase “It’s okay to be white.” But here’s the thing – and you may not know this, but he damn well does – “it’s OK to be white” is a white nationalism entry slogan, used by every variety of white supremacist and white nationalist for many years now.

Remember the whole “OK hand sign is a white nationalist dogwhistle?” This is the other side of that dogwhistle. It’s “OK” to be “white (supremacist).”

Here’s a rundown on the recent history of the phrase and it’s quite intentional uses. Here’s BoingBoing’s story on Dilbert Man, if you really care, but you really don’t need to. He’s just gone full segregationist.

“White privilege is Marjorie Taylor Greene calling to end the USA and then getting invited on Fox News to sell her idea to the public,” says Dean Obeidallah. That’s true, and the article is a reasonable summary of it, but there’s one bit of interesting news: she’s the fourth highest fundraiser in the House GOP. Yes, that’s terrible – but she was first, in 2020. Maybe people are tiring of her bullshit.

The other thing she did on Tucker’s show was promote Russian disinformation about their war on Ukraine. I do wonder how much of her money is from Russia, via third parties.

The Texas Observer has an article on “traditionalist Catholics,” a variably far-right schism of the Catholic Church. I’ve run into some of these people; within the broader movement, there’s a segment that is genuinely only about religious disagreements – as severe as those might be – but there’s also a big wedge serving as a neofascist movement that’s sorta-kinda within Catholicism. The article is about the latter.

Meanwhile, in Florida, Republicans are moving to end majors – and even minors – “in critical race theory, gender studies, intersectionality or ‘any derivative major or minor of these beliefs systems,'” as part of their campaign to pretend racism, gender discrimination, and queers in general don’t exist, and punish anyone who says they do.

Boing Boing has the story: “Of the ideologically-motivated mass killings in 2022, 100% of them were committed by right-wing extremists. They’ve ‘heavily dominated’ the figures since the 1980s, according to the ADL, but last year they aced it.”

Rightists are busily working to blackball anyone who worked with the January 6 committee. “The dark money group American Accountability Foundation listed the names of the former committee staffers and their titles — along with their new employers and links to their firms’ clients — all of whom they urged to blacklist.”

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.