solarbird | Fascism Watch for 25 July 2023: the Why Can’t People Remember edition

People Aren’t Facing Up to the Horrors a New Trump Term Would Bring, writes Brynn Tannehill at the New Republic. And they really aren’t. As in 2016, and in 2020, he’s being very clear about the sorts of things he wants to do. And in 2024, he’s being way more clear about how he wants to do it. Like COVID, huge swaths of people are erasing their own memories of what happened in 2017-2020.

Remember waking up each day and asking for a damage report? I do.

The Party of Plague (remember that?) is also the party of torturers (Leaked transcript from canceled doc into Guantanamo Bay depicts DeSantis laughing at force-fed detainees. DeSantis “was smiling and laughing with other officers as I screamed in pain“), of racists (Black people benefitted from generations of chattel slavery where they could be tortured and killed at will.), of literal fascists, nazis, and holocaust-deniers (Republican Paul Gosar promotes another antisemitic site that praises Hitler and denies the Holocaust, DeSantis campaign staffer tweets pro-DeSantis video with prominent fascist/nazi symbols).

I mean, what’s it take to get Americans to remember more than the last week? Because honestly I don’t know.

Let’s see, what else is up? Let’s start with the right’s going effort to wipe out LGBT people, starting with the T:

Last week, Governor Glen Youngkin approved an anti-trans model school board policy that bans trans people from bathrooms, forcibly outs them. Arlington Public Schools announced it will not comply. This is a reminder that there are no “moderate” Republicans.
Minnesota Public Radio uses the R word, as they should: ‘Refugees in the USA’: Transgender care bans cause families to pull up stakes.
Two San Diego residents cleared out the Pride month display at their library, held the books hostage but it backfired, which is nice
Fox News keeps reaching further: The Transgenders Are Ruining… Military Enlistment Rates?!
Italy begins stripping lesbian mothers of their parental rights – remember, so much of this is boosted, organised, even funded overseas by American fundamentalists. (Not that they aren’t also spending boatloads of money here, too, because obviously they are.)
If this seems a little opaque to you, believe me: the fundamentalists get it: British TERF/fash Helen Joyce misquotes the bible, suggests Rachel Levine kill herself. It’s part of a broader sanction for violence against LGBT people, particularly trans people.
Here’s a whole thread of European and Russian anti-LGBT actions in the last few weeks, it’s a lot.

Finally, let’s get a few school-related items:

School board in Missouri, now controlled by Republicans, revokes anti-racism resolution, because see above about Republican racists.
Cole Wagner, former chair of Alliance for a Pro-Life Alabama who worked for the Alabama Department of Education, just got arrested for sexually abusing children.
Not content with banning books, they’re banning songs: meet the Wisconsin teacher fired for protesting a ban on the Miley Cyrus & Dolly Parton Song “Rainbowland.”
Texas A&M President Katherine Banks has abruptly resigned after interfering with a major hire of a Black woman to revive their journalism department; “race was a factor” in her actions and decision to interfere.

And that’s all I’ve got time for tonight. Good luck out there, and don’t let people memory-hole what happened the last time Trump had the Presidency. Because next time? He won’t give it up.

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