Now that the Fake News media has run out of academic experts at various American universities who know ‘for a fact’ that Trump will establish a fascist government if he wins in 2024, we can get treated to academic experts from outside the United States who also know ‘for a fact’ that fascism, American-style, is about to emerge.
I’m referring to a piece in The Guardian (thank you Paula) by a Canadian professor who says that “By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a rightwing dictatorship.”
And worse, if American democracy goes down the tubes, this will pose a serious threat to Canadian democracy as well. Ready? Here goes: “But now we must focus on the urgent problem of what to do about the likely unraveling of democracy in the United States. We need to start by fully recognizing the magnitude of the danger. If Mr. Trump is re-elected, even under the more optimistic scenarios the economic and political risks to our country will be innumerable.”
Innumerable risks. And The Guardian, which claims it has the ‘passion and determination to bring readers quality, truth-seeking reporting on the world’ has the nerve to print such crap?
Now that I no longer have direct access to the leading Fake News venues (because I cancelled my online subscription to both WaPo and The New York Times) I have to depend on the charity of others like my sister who sent me an article from the WaPo which really puts all this nonsense about the fascist ‘threat’ to bed where it belongs.
If you’re still supporting the Fake News here’s a link to the article which appeared yesterday on the WaPo website. Or if you’ve decided that the WaPo doesn’t deserve your ten bucks a month, you can download the article from my website right here.
Either way, the bottom line is that the primary media supporters of the so-called turn to fascism are now spending most of their time fighting amongst themselves. And what are they fighting about? Not who’s going to lead the fascist charge. Not who should write a 21st-Century version of Mein Kampf. And not who is going to head the MAGA ticket after Trump finishes his second term in 2028.
No, what they are fighting about is who can sell the most crap on their website to a market which, according to someone who has studied the alt-right business sector, is not a ‘renewable resource.’ There’s a set of four tumblers on Sidney Powell’s website which you can buy for eighty bucks. Or you can buy a tank-top on Michael Flynn’s website store with a logo which reads ‘#FightLikeAFlynn.’ And then there’s the website of another loony, alt-right attorney, Lin Wood, who is peddling a #FightBack hoodie for $64.99.
But here’s the bottom line. To sell junk on the internet you need users to visit your online store, which means you need traffic to your website . And not one of the websites currently selling t-shirts, coffee mugs or hoodies is willing to let anyone count their traffic using an analytical engine like SimilarWeb. I can get traffic reports from the usual, Fake News sites (NYT, WaPo), or from alt-right news channels like Breitbart or Fox, or even from a self-styled conspiracy promoter like Alex Jones.
Either the MAGA-like hucksters like Powell and Flynn are blocking SimilarWeb from pulling their traffic or maybe they just don’t have anyone visiting their websites and stores at all. For that matter, I can’t get traffic numbers from Trump’s website which showed a decline of daily visits between May and October of nearly 80 percent. Then his visit numbers also disappeared.
If you’re going to make an argument about how a fascist party or fascist movement is on the brink of seizing power from a democratic government that has only been around for more than two hundred years, shouldn’t you be able to show that the number of people who want fascism to succeed is going up, not down?