trump aligning supporters with global far-right movement to destroy democracy
December 17, 2023, Letters from an American, Prof. Heather Cox Richardson
It seems that former president Donald Trump is aligning his supporters with a global far-right movement to destroy democracy.
On Saturday, in Durham, New Hampshire, Trump echoed Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s attacks on immigrants, saying they are “poisoning the blood of our country”—although two of his three wives were immigrants—and quoted Russian president Vladimir Putin’s attacks on American democracy. Trump went on to praise North Korean autocratic leader Kim Jong Un and align himself with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, the darling of the American right wing, who has destroyed Hungary’s democracy and replaced it with a dictatorship.
Trump called Orbán “the man who can save the Western world.”
Dr. Sarah Riccardi-Swartz, a professor of religion and anthropology at Northeastern University, explained in The Conversation what Trump is talking about. Autocrats like Orbán and Putin—and budding autocrats like Trump—are building a global movement by fighting back against the expansion of rights to women, minorities, and LGBTQ+ people.
Russian leaders have been cracking down on LGBTQ+ rights for a decade with the help of the Russian Orthodox Church, claiming that they are protecting “traditional values.” This vision of heteronormativity rewrites the real history of human sexuality, but it is powerful in this moment. Orbán insists that immigrants ruin the purity of a country, and has undermined women’s rights.
Riccardi-Swartz explains that this rhetoric appeals to those in far-right movements around the world. In the United States, “family values” became tied to patriotism after World War II, when Chinese and Soviet communists appeared to be erasing traditional gender roles. Those people defined as anti-family—LGBTQ+ people and women who challenged patriarchy—seemed to be undermining society. Now, as dictators like Putin and Orbán promise to take away LGBTQ+ rights, hurt immigrants, and return power to white men, they seem to many to be protecting traditional society.
In the United States, that undercurrent has created a movement of people who are willing to overthrow democracy if it means reinforcing their traditional vision. Christian nationalists believe that the secular values of democracy are destroying Christianity and traditional values. They want to get rid of LGBTQ+ rights, feminism, immigration, and the public schools they believe teach such values. And if that means handing power to a dictator who promises to restore their vision of a traditional society, they’re in.
It is an astonishing rejection of everything the United States has always stood for.
The White House today responded to Trump’s speech. White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said: “Echoing the grotesque rhetoric of fascists and violent white supremacists and threatening to oppress those who disagree with the government are dangerous attacks on the dignity and rights of all Americans, on our democracy, and on public safety…. It’s the opposite of everything we stand for as Americans.”
Trump Is Disqualified From the 2024 Ballot, Colorado Supreme Court Rules
NY Times – just in
It’s the first court to find that the disqualification clause of the 14th Amendment applies to Mr. Trump, in addition to affirming that he engaged in insurrection.
Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy pledged on Tuesday to remove himself from Colorado’s Republican primary ballot in response to the state’s Supreme Court’s ruling that former President Donald Trump is ineligible to run in the state over his activity surrounding Jan. 6. …
ABC News – late yesterday
(Colorado voters should write in Ramaswamy on their ballots to show support for Trump!)
Not impressed with Vivek. A lot of posturing going on there.
Could be he’s looking to be Trump’s VP.
Hopefully he will settle for US Ambassador, if anything.
To do that, he just needs to buy him McDonalds burgers.
Lest we forget ~ the original plan was to lose to Hillary in 2016 and start a media outlet where he could make millions if not billions of dollars televangelizing the rubes about how the election was rigged against him.
Though arguably it was rigged in his favor, with Russian money and our media bought and paid for it was only through late-night shenanigans in three swing states that the White House was delivered, and we heard about how it was rigged against him until he lost in 2020.
Now running not for president but from life-in-prison with the media, congress and the corporations all in the bag the riggers are writing the narrative for the claim the election is rigged against him in 2024.
These creatures can’t come up with anything new …