Too chillingly on the nose: Timothy Ryback on his new book, TAKEOVER: Hitler's Rise to Power: "In the run-up to the 1932 election, told his followers, 'Be there, it's going to be wild.'" publicsphere.news/p/q-and-a-a-hi… I hesitated before tweeting this. I've reported on & written about rightwing movements 20 yrs. Never beaten like, for instance, Russian counterparts. But plenty else. I was never afraid. Not brave; just didn't feel afraid. Now? Yes.

So much "everybody knows" thinking in political discussion right now. Like "everybody knows" Dobbs will be Trump's downfall. Maybe! But it's not just the recent Times poll that gives Trump historically high numbers w/ women. Then there's another "everybody knows," which is that unless Biden changes course on Gaza, he's cooked. A) for many, it's too late. B) For far more, the much bigger numbers of those who don't "support genocide" but also don't consume news, they *like* Biden's awful policy.

Today's NYT headline--its phrasing, the story that follows, its placement--more than anything Maggie Haberman ever wrote persuades me that the paper's political default is now the kind of center-right that imagines responsible people can contain fascism by coopting bits of it. 1/

This NYT headline really is "fake news": not a deliberate lie but willful delusion, casting a race that realistically probably *couldn't* be lost as a victory because the Democrat ran to to the right of the "Republican," an almost non-entity candidate. 2/

What's rightwing media chattering about? This NBC tracking poll showing Trump catching up w/ Biden & growing his lead over 6 months. If you were give Biden all of Stein, West, & RFK (much lower than other polls), those who say they won't vote for president, he'd still lose. I'm not telling anyone what to do. Let me repeat that before people scream at me that I'm trying to "force" them to vote Biden. Each makes their own decision. But the fascists know what's on tap. We should, too.

WaPo that exemplifies how rightwing & fascist frames shape stories written by otherwise good reporters with good intentions. Problem 1: Why is this presented at an election story? Stakes, not odds, as @jayrosen_nyu says. Lives are at stake. & yet nut grafs don't explain. 1/

Third graf doesn't pivot to tell us what's going to, you know, *happen,* or what it will mean to people involved; instead, it reduces all that humanity to a question of polls for Biden. Giddyap, horse race! 2/

I live in VT, work in NH, wander it often. Welcome to the so-called moderate state. III, upper left: III percenters. Designated terrorists by Canada. Designated patriots by Trump. 1/ I write about the III Percenters in my book THE UNDERTOW: Scenes from a Slow Civil War (@wwnorton), which, yeah, I'm hawking, because after 20 yrs covering the Right, it's my best effort to say this is what's happening. Here in NH. Everywhere. 2/

When I launched THE UNDERTOW I did an event w/ a NYT politics reporter who scoffed at use of "fascism." When pressed, he didn't seem to know what it means. Here's my definition, informed by years of reading and... "fieldwork." With illustrations! A thread. 1/ The dude w/ the gun lives near me. Here in Vermont. First point of defining fascism: Not just violence, by a reverence for violence as a purifying force, as an exhilarating, even titillating experience. By the way, here's the hand holding that gun: 2/

The most amazing thing about Nikki Haley's pandering racism--wait, there's nothing amazing about it. She's been at it for years, going back to 2010, when she told "Confederate heritage" groups--white supremacists--that the Civil War was about "tradition" v. "change." 1/ Back in 2010, long before Trump said the white power riot in Charlottesville featured "very fine people on both sides," Nikki Haley--the GOP's new "moderate"--told white supremacist leaders "you see passions on different sides," but there was no "hate" involved in slavery. 2/

Lousy source but it’s a whole lot of smoke. Satisfying to see an anti-queer fascist revealed as hypocrite. But—it does. Not. Matter. Her downfall won’t hurt the fascist movement a bit. Here’s why… 1/ dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1… So maybe now Noem won’t be VP. So what? Her fascist views are interchangeable with those of many others. “But doesn’t this ding their ‘fam values’ shtick?” Nope. Fascism *depends* on constant betrayals that create a culture of hate, backstabbing, & paranoia. 2/

Friday, my 14, wary of school, answered a teacher’s query about this weekend by saying we’re going driving in VT’s Northeast Kingdom. “You should go to the Museum of Everyday Life!” said teach. “We went last weekend!” said kid. 1/ @rumblestripvt @sevendaysvt @chedgar31 The truth is we’re going to Bread Puppet & the Museum of Everyday Life because the 14 likes to drive. Or, at least, be driven. It is a way they have of driving off the spleen. And lately I’ve been introducing them to @rumblestripvt. This thread is to introduce it to you. 8/

I’ve been studying the manifestoes of racially-motivated mass killers (that is, most of them) since the 2011 Oslo massacre. Haven’t read anything from Jacksonville yet, but as I write in The Undertow, these killers see themselves more like a chain letter than lone wolves. Oftentimes they lift whole sections of previous manifestoes, comment on previous killers’ tactics, express hope that their own crimes will carry forward what they see as a war. They find support online. They are the very opposite of lone wolves. This is the slow civil war.

Even many who loathe white supremacism remain naive about its reach—including *into* communities of color, thru what @AntheaButler, author of White Evangelical Racism, describes as a “promise of whiteness”—a lie that seduces some into thinking they can enjoy white privilege. 1/ Meanwhile, fascists & other white supremacists are very aware of the power they can gain by recruiting even a small number of people of color thru appeals to individual greed, misogyny, homophobia, Christian nationalism, or simple vanity. 2/

I’ve been reporting on rightwing movements for 20 yrs. Disappointing to see my beloved hometown paper, @VNewsUV, describe Prager U as “right leaning.” The Economist is “right leaning”; Prager has always been very hard right. 1/ Prager U is in the news because of its grotesque, historically false, and plain racist takes on slavery—far to the right of “right leaning,” @VNewsUV! But there’s more… 2/

I, too, enjoy the DeSantis Dive. It’s good for the soul to see a bad man fail in an effort to hurt others. But as “news,” it’s not really good, & it might be bad. A short thread on the dynamics of the new American fascism… 1/ First, let’s get horse race out of the way: what’s bad for DeSantis is good for Trump. What’s good for Trump is bad for people and other living beings. Except, maybe, I don’t know, the roaches that will run amok in the ruins, the viruses that’ll sing death unchecked… 2/

I hate tweeting the link but better to know than not: Country star Jason Aldean has released a violent white nationalist video. I look at a lot of RW media dispassionately. This one makes me mad. I’m from a working class small town, live in a small town. Jason Aldean is trying to profit off our slow civil war, trying to make it a hot one. And if yr a city person—don’t believe his BS. Small towns are also Black & Latinx & indigenous & queer. Plenty are white & even what used to be conservative & wld look at this vid w/ disgust.

Here we go... blah blah blah perfect blah blah blah no ever president blah blah -- wait, what, he kept his "shirts and shoes... clothing" in the boxes? What? 1/ Trump is in deep sniffle mode -- that's his rage, when he's huffing air. 2/

I wanted to include screenshot from Rep. Clay Higgins campaign ad in this @TheAtlantic piece on him, but it didn't fit. Right before firing, he says, "Take a door. Arrest the bad guys. If they shoot, kill them. Simple." theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… In the article, I note Rep. Higgins identifying as part of the III Percenter movement, linked to bombings and banned as a terrorist org in Canada. Here he is two days proposing a III Percenter solution to the indictments.
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

Trump opening post-indictment speech today: "Together we stand up to the globalists, we stand up to the Marxists." Historically, this is hate speech for "Jews." A subtle move, feeding outright Jew-haters & broadening their conspiracy theories to all his enemies. 1/ "We stand up to the open border fanatics and... the lawless prosecutors... in blue states," Trump continues. Much as Nixon used "heroin" & "marijuana" to mean Blacks and hippies, Trump means brown & Black people. But he also knows he's making inroads w/ them, so... 2/

My tentative prediction: our rough peace, blistering with little bubbles of violence, will hold for now. The civil war talk isn’t “just talk”; it’s heat under the kettle. But we’re not at a boil. Please think carefully how you can help keep it from getting there. 1/ Thinking of a radical grad student I met a month ago: he spoke excitedly of arming up, of leftists going to the gym: “make the left swole again,” he said. This is as realistic as the Red Dawn fantasies of all the already-armed fascists I’ve interviewed. 2/

Bumped from Reidout, so here's some of what I was thinking about Pence, Pat Robertson, and the evolution, such as it is, of far rightwing Christianity in U.S. Spoiler: Trump--or, Trumpism, as carried on by another--wins. 1/ As I write in THE FAMILY, Pat Robertson himself represented a new kind of rightwing religion. His father, Sen. A. Willis Robertson, was a hard right Dixiecrat who, through a leadership role in the Family, helped frame the Cold War as a God vs. Godlessness conflict. 2/

"Ep 1.: "An alien species is flying hypersonic aircraft over our cities." Also: who killed JFK, who really did 9/11, oodles of antisemitism--Zelensky is like a "rat," "shifty," "dead-eyed," a "persecutor of Christians"--and, of course, over and over, attacks on trans people. "We're allowed to yap all we want about racism, but go ahead and talk about something that really matters?"--by which Tucker means, I kid you not, UFOs.