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The Ultimate Test of Allegiance

3 October 2025 AIMN Editorial, By Peter Brown, https://theaimn.net/the-ultimate-test-of-allegiance/

Watching American politics from afar, it’s often easy to get lost in the noise and drama. But sometimes, a fundamental issue cuts through the static – one that should alarm every citizen and international onlooker alike. What I see now is a direct challenge to one of the most sacred principles of their republic. To see that foundational principle now being tested is, frankly, chilling.

The bedrock principle of the American military is its oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” This sacred commitment is deliberately to an idea, a set of laws, and a nation – not to a person. Yet, they now face the unsettling prospect of a commander-in-chief, Donald Trump, who has consistently demonstrated that his primary demand is personal loyalty.

This creates a terrifying binary choice for the armed forces, with monumental repercussions for the republic.

Scenario One: They Pledge Loyalty to Him

If the military and its leadership were to prioritise loyalty to the president over loyalty to the Constitution, the very foundation of their democracy would crack. The armed forces would be transformed from a guardian of the state into a potential tool of a single leader. Orders that test constitutional boundaries would go unchallenged. The principle of civilian control of the military would remain in letter, but be utterly corrupted in spirit, becoming personal control of the military. The chain of command would exist not to execute the law, but to execute the will of one man.

Scenario Two: They Refuse

If the military holds fast to its constitutional oath, the result would be a crisis of a different kind. A president demanding personal fealty would inevitably view any constitutional resistance as disloyalty. We could see the politically charged dismissal of principled military leaders, creating a “Saturday Night Massacre” scenario within the Pentagon. This would shatter morale, politicise the most respected institution in the country, and create a dangerous rift between a president and the very forces tasked with protecting the nation.

This is not a partisan issue; it is a foundational one. The immense power of the U.S. military must never be contingent on a personality. The terrifying truth of the current moment is that they are forced to contemplate a scenario where the ultimate check and balance – the military’s refusal to follow an unlawful order – could be triggered, with consequences that would ripple through history.

The men and women in uniform swear an oath that ends with “So help me God.” The question they must all ask is: what happens if their commander-in-chief asks them to break it?

October 4, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Theatre of the absurd

Roswell, 2 Oct 25 https://theaimn.net/theatre-of-the-absurd/

The headliner, of course, was the Commander-in-Chief, Donald Trump. But this was not a presidential address; it was a campaign rally in search of an enemy. Instead of a coherent strategy, the assembled warriors were treated to the familiar Trumpian symphony of digressions, personal boasts, and factual free-association. While the apocryphal tale of a president explaining the melting point of aluminum is a perfect metaphor, the reality was often just as bewildering. This is the man who once claimed that fallen soldiers were “suckers” and “losers” – an hallucination that surely left the Army Chief of Staff staring blankly at his shoes.

The spectacle of the world’s most powerful military being led by a man who treats complex briefings like open-mic night is comedy enough. But every great act needs a sidekick. Enter Pete Hegseth, the cable news warrior turned unofficial advisor, who stepped in to provide the second act of this two-part farce.

If Trump was the master of ceremonial confusion, Hegseth was the sergeant of petty discipline. His message to these titans of modern warfare? Shave.

Yes, shave. While the world smoldered, the sage counsel from the sidelines was that the solution to modern warfare’s challenges lay not in advanced cyber strategy or diplomatic finesse, but in a closer shave. Draped in the language of “warrior culture” and a fight against “wokeness,” Hegseth’s prescription was the ultimate reduction of military virtue to a matter of grooming. It was a disrespect so profound it looped back into comedy. These are men and women who have borne the unimaginable weight of sending troops into battle; to imply they lacked the basic discipline to manage their own facial hair was not just an insult – it was a joke.

The true comedy of this entire spectacle was not in any single gaffe or ridiculous order. It was in the devastating contrast. It was the sight of a room filled with the heirs to Patton and Nimitz being lectured on reality by a man who seemed to have learned his history from a cereal box, and then being scolded on personal hygiene by a commentator playing soldier.

They were called to Washington to confront the nation’s enemies, only to find that the real absurdity was already in the room. The mission, it turned out, wasn’t in some distant desert or contested sea lane. The mission was to survive an administration that confused the Situation Room for a green room and treated its most decorated leaders like unruly recruits. It wasn’t just a failure of policy; it was a masterpiece of political theatre, a comedy of errors where the stakes just happened to be the security of a nation.

(Meanwhile, on another planet):

“The generals in the audience today praised my speech and said they haven’t heard anything better since General Patton, but said mine was more inspiring”

October 2, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

US senator says he is concerned energy secretary acting in nuclear firm’s interest

. U.S. Senator Edward Markey sent a letter to President Donald
Trump on Tuesday saying he is concerned U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright
is working in the interest of nuclear power company Oklo (OKLO.N), opens
new tab, of which he used to be a board member. Markey, a Democrat, noted
that the administration is moving ahead with plans to allow Oklo to build a
nuclear waste reprocessing plant and transfer government-held plutonium
from nuclear weapons to use as fuel in planned reactor projects.

Reuters 23rd Sept 2025, https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-senator-says-he-is-concerned-energy-secretary-acting-nuclear-firms-interest-2025-09-23/

September 28, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Nuke Power is Trump/Fascist Power…and an Epic Global Failure.

Karl Grossman – Harvey Wasserman, 15 Sept 25, https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/09/15/nuke-power-is-trump-fascist-powerand-an-epic-global-failure/

Donald Trump has torched atomic power’s last illusion of credible regulation. He’s destroyed the last shreds of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, exponentially raising the likelihood of an apocalyptic radioactive disaster while escalating America’s transition to energy fascism. His nuclear boosterism has been joined by the core of the Democratic Party, including California’s Governor Gavin Newsom among many others.

But the low-cost zero-carbon tsunami of green Solartopian technology may yet prove unstoppable in the marketplace.

For the first time in US history, a president has fired a sitting NRC commissioner. Another has resigned. A DOGE flunky with zero nuclear expertise has decimated the NRC’s technical support staff.

The NRC has always acted, as the Boston Globe has put it, “more like an industry booster than a watchdog.” But a recent Washington Examiner headline may comprise the Commission’s ultimate epitaph: “Regulators fear dismissal if they slow Trump nuclear power plans.”

The commissioners themselves have nearly all been absurdly industry-friendly. But the rank-and-file NRC staff offered significant expertise. Now even that is gone.

Trump now loudly demands the commissioners “rubber stamp” Small Modular Reactors that are untested, unproven, uninsured and hyper-expensive. Industry supporters worry that soaring delays and prices followed by underperformance, accidents and radiation releases due to unreliable, unregulated construction could doom the technology.

Safety concerns have been confirmed by the refusal of the insurance industry to cover damages from an accident. The refusal stretches back to 1957, when Congress approved the Price-Anderson Act, shielding the industry from a requirement to get private insurance. Thus the “nuclear clause” in every U.S. homeowners policy says: “This policy does not cover loss or damage caused by nuclear reaction or nuclear radiation or radioactive contamination.”

“The NRC has always been a nuclear lapdog, not a watchdog. But under the Trump Administration’s new executive orders” expediting a drive for nuclear power in the U.S. “the lapdog has had its teeth removed. Its vocal cords cut. It can’t bite. It can’t bark, even if it wanted to!” said Arnie Gundersen, a form top executive in the nuclear power industry and now as chief engineer of Fairewinds Associates a leading challenger nuclear power.

As the orders, notes the U.S. Department of Energy, state: “The executive orders instruct the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to create an expedited pathway to approve reactors” and “expand American nuclear energy capacity from around 100 GW [gigawatts] today to 400 GW by 2050.”

Under Trump, “Nuclear safety is in complete free fall at NRC, and there is no parachute,” said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist at the organization Beyond Nuclear. “For example, the agency’s staff and licensing board have already shockingly approved an unprecedented, extremely risky restart of the closed Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan. To restore the operating license, the NRC cobbled together an ad hoc and convoluted regulatory pathway in close collusion with Palisades’ owner, reckless Holtec International. Holtec has zero experience or competence with operating a reactor, repairing one, building or restarting one, let alone at a problem-plagued nuclear lemon like Palisades.”

Palisades is “a badly designed, poorly built, and now dangerously age-degraded 60-year-old reactor that cannot begin to meet modern-day safety standards, which are themselves under serious attack by Trump, DOGE, and the industry,” said Kamps. “If the NRC commissioners reject our appeals and rubberstamp Palisades’ unneeded restart, it will risk a Chornobyl- or Fukushima-scale radioactive catastrophe, an existential threat to 21 percent of the entire planet’s surface freshwater supply, the Great Lakes.”

Further, by approving the Palisades restart, the NRC appears to be getting ready to approve “copycat closed reactor restarts at Three Mile Island-1 nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, and the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant in Iowa,” he said.

Said Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service: “The atmosphere in the agency is clearly one where people who speak out will likely be first on the DOGE reduction-in-force list and everyone left is on notice that they could be next. As much as the chilling effect, my concern is also that inspections and enforcement could well be ending. Even if they keep resident inspectors at reactors to comply with the Atomic Energy Act, they may be taken off inspection duty and told to work on license applications and rewriting the regulations.”

Said Michel Lee, chairman of the Council on Intelligent Energy & Conservation Policy:

“To truly understand the developing safety and security threat, you have to connect the dots.”

“First you have the series of Trump executive orders demanding a rushed buildout of the nuclear-military-industrial complex. These orders and other actions being undertaken by administration, especially DOGE, are effectively dismantling the nation’s long-established nuclear regulatory scheme,” said Lee, an attorney.

“Cost-benefit analysis is being directed to focus on the ‘benefits’ of nuclear,” she continued. “Transparency is being drastically reduced. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is being ‘reformed,’ and its mission now explicitly includes ‘facilitating nuclear power.’ The Department of Energy and the Department of Defense—apparently now the “Department of War”—are now designated as facilitators in the processing of nuclear reactor license applications. This whole enterprise is stated as needed for national security and to promote energy intensive industries, namely AI.”

“So, all that is worrisome enough. Now connect the dots with the demolition derby going on across the broader federal regulatory landscape, with other independent agencies and boards deemed no longer independent and the vast numbers of federal employees—the ones not laid off—losing labor union rights and protections,” said Lee. “Connect the dots and draw your own picture.”

Among the complex of 94 licensed nuclear power plants in the United States, the myriad owners display wildly varying levels of competence, corruption and criminal behavior.

In the 1979 Three Mile Island disaster, the NRC and plant owners lied about radiation releases, their health impacts, and the reactor’s melted core. They produced no credible epidemiological studies of radiation impacts on nearby downwinders but still claim without basis that “no one was harmed.”

In California, NRC resident site inspector Dr. Michael Peck was purged by the NRC for warning that Diablo Canyon’s reactors cannot withstand a credible earthquake. His warning was trashed. Had any of the many large earthquakes that have recently shaken our planet hit in central California in the fault-studded area where Diablo Canyon is located, downwind Los Angeles could now be a radioactive wasteland.

Diablo’s owner, Pacific Gas & Electric, has pleaded guilty to 92 federal manslaughter felonies for incinerating eight San Bruno, California residents in an avoidable 2010 gas pipeline fire, and more than 80 people who perished after PG&E ignited the Northern California infernos that destroyed the California town of Paradise.

The owners of the decrepit Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear power plants bribed Ohio’sHouse Speaker, now in federal prison, with $61 million.

Despite the vulnerability of all nuclear power plants in the U.S. and the criminal incompetence of so many atomic owner/operators, there are no realistic plans to evacuate any major American city facing radioactive clouds like those that spewed from Chernobyl and Fukushima. And with Trump destroying FEMA and the NRC, the public can expect no workable warning. Without insurance, a public health safety net, or a feasible emergency response apparatus, countless residents of Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, et. al, will lose their lives, health, homes and property. Martial law will become inevitable.

As renewables advance, the economics of atomic power make ever less sense. Zero new large reactors are under construction in the U.S. The two at the V.C. Summer site in South Carolina have been abandoned, wasting $9 billion. Two at the Vogtle, Georgia nuclear plant site took 15 years to build and cost $40 billon, double their original time frame and price tag.

The 94 operating US plants can’t compete with renewables.

Nor can much-hyped Small Modular Reactors, already plagued with massive overruns, delays, cancellations, and no promise of significant power generation for at least a decade. Unproven plans to reopen dead reactors like Palisades and TMI-1 involve cost projections very far beyond already proven, readily available renewables.

All commercial reactors emit radioactive Carbon14. Additional greenhouse gases come with both reactor operations and the mining, milling, and enrichment of radioactive fuel, along with the as-yet unsolved demands of storing spent stuff.

All nuclear power plants scorch the planet at 300 degrees Centigrade, killing billions of fish with hot water outtakes that have repeatedly forced much of the French fleet—among others—to shut. Immensely expensive fusion reactors would burn at 100 million degrees Centigrade, far hotter than the sun.

Major breakthroughs in renewables have made wind, solar, geothermal, wave energy, batteries, and efficiency far cheaper, safer, cleaner, faster-to-build, and more job-producing than nukes or fossil fuels.

Renewables are now capable of producing all the planet’s energy needs at far less cost than any fossil/nuclear generators while operationally creating virtually zero greenhouse gases. Recent advances in wave energy, solar panels installed over aqueducts and canals, “balcony solar” in Germany and elsewhere keep the technology ever on the rise.

But there are powerful forces still pushing nukes, all of them bound up with fascism. Atomic reactors were first meant to produce fissionable material for atomic weapons. The nuclear power/nuclear war connection has always been intimate.

Trump’s fierce attacks on wind and solar aim primarily to preserve market share for the fossil/nuke billionaires who buy his elections. That income is at the core of American fascism.

Nuke apologists who claim to simultaneously support both atomic power and renewables suffer a deadly delusion. Every dollar wasted on the “Peaceful Atom” delays the vital transition to the green-powered Earth that the human species must have to survive.

Renewable technologies offer the public the power to own and control the

decentralized nature-based power supply essential to any future democracy on this planet—which is precisely what the fossil/nuke industry most hates about them.

Atomic power is a corporate/military-based technology designed to keep all electric and political power under the firm fascist grip of the likes of Donald Trump and his billionaire beneficiaries. Its mission in their eyes is to obliterate all renewables, not to co-exist in some “all the above” delusion.

Nuke reactors burn the planet at 300 degrees Centigrade while spewing radioactive carbon 14, and even more carbon in the mining, milling, enriching, transporting and then burying nuclear fuel. Should any reactor explode it would turn much of the US into a radioactive wasteland while opening the door to martial law and a Trumpian dictatorship.

The astonishing success of new green supply, storage and efficiency has completely dwarfed nukes and fossil fuels in terms of cash, climate and competitive economics.

It’s a revolution that’s been seized by China, handing it near-total control of the export market in wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, electric cars—and thus the global economic future. Worldwide roughly 90% of new energy installations involve wind, solar or batteries, with the vast majority being controlled by the Chinese. The New York Times has recently reported on how China is spectacularly advancing, “pulling away” in “selling clean energy to the world.”

Thus Trump and California Governor Newsom have teamed up with an insane death squad of “liberal” pro-nuke Democrats to decimate the America’s once-vanguard green industries and their long-lost lead in the global economy.

They’re at the same time dooming our democracy to permanent nuclear dictatorship and our economy to the dead-end radioactive dump of a profoundly failed technology—all at once dooming our democracy, our prosperity and our planet. Thankfully, Solartopian green technologies can reverse the death spiral—if we make it happen.

As physicist Amory Lovins, professor of Energy and Environment at Stanford University, has just written: “An intensive influence campaign seeks to resurrect a ‘nuclear renaissance’ from the industry’s slow-motion collapse documented in the independent annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report. Claims that past failures won’t recur have convinced many politicians that socializing nuclear investments rejected by private capital markets, weakening or bypassing rigorous safety regulation, suppressing market competition, and commanding military reactor and data-center projects as a national-security imperative will restore nuclear expansion and transform the economy. This illusion neatly fits the industry’s business-model shift from selling products to harvesting subsidies.”

“A few awkward facts intrude,” Lovins continues. “Even the most skilled firms and nations keep delivering big reactors with several times the promised cost and construction time. A swarm of startup firms that have never built a reactor are dubiously rebranding their inexperience as a winning advantage. New designs are said to be so safe they don’t need normal precautions (though not safe enough to waive nuclear energy’s unique exemption from accident liability). Political interference in nuclear licensing is eroding public confidence. Proposed smaller reactors cost more per kWh, produce more nuclear waste per kWh, and often need more concentrated fuel directly usable for nuclear weapons.”

“And nuclear power faces the same fundamental challenges as fossil fuels: uncompetitive costs, runaway competitors, dwindling profits, and uncertain demand. Few, if any, vendors have made profits selling reactors—only fueling and fixing them. Nuclear electricity loses in open auctions, so only Congressional bailouts–$27 billion ($15 billion paid out) in 2005, $133 billion in 2021-22, tens of billions more in 2025 — saved most existing U.S. reactors from closure.”

“Now comes another vision: powering the glorious new world of artificial intelligence,” Lovins went on. “This may be a trillion-dollar bubble, but it’s sellable until market realities intervene. The International Energy Agency expects data centers, mostly non-AI, to cause only a tenth of global electricity demand growth to 2030, doubling their share of usage—to just 3%. So AI won’t eat the grid. But IEA forecasts renewables will power data-center growth 10-20 times over, while Bloomberg NEF predicts over 100. Nuclear lost the race to power the grid, so new reactors have no business case or operational need.”

Harvey Wasserman wrote the books Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth and The Peoples Spiral of US History. He helped coin the phrase “No Nukes.” He co-convenes the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition at www.electionprotection2024.org  Karl Grossman is the author of Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power and Power Crazy. He the host of the nationally-aired TV program Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman (www.envirovideo.com)

September 23, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Trump and the Shadow of Fascism

22 September 2025 Michael Taylor, https://theaimn.net/trump-and-the-shadow-of-fascism/

In recent months, accusations that Donald Trump and his administration embody fascism have become more frequent. The word carries historical weight, and using it carelessly risks turning it into a mere insult. But the question is worth asking seriously: how many characteristics of fascism can be seen in Trump’s presidency – and his ongoing movement?

Political theorists have identified common traits of fascist regimes: cult of personality, scapegoating of minorities, attacks on the press, obsession with law and order, disinformation, and disdain for democratic norms. Viewed through this lens, Trump and his administration tick many of the boxes.

Trump has built a cult of personality unlike any modern U.S. president, insisting that loyalty to him is more important than loyalty to law or country. He scapegoats immigrants, Muslims, and political opponents, framing them as existential threats to “real Americans.” He repeatedly called the media “the enemy of the people,” sought to revoke press credentials, and encouraged investigations into his critics.

Perhaps most concerning was his open disdain for democratic norms. From loyalty tests for judges and civil servants to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Trump treats democracy as conditional – acceptable only if it delivered the outcome he wanted.

Where the comparison to fascism is less exact is in the total control of society and the economy. Trump has not dissolved Congress, suspended elections (yet), or nationalised industry. The courts, press, and opposition party remain functional, though under immense and constant pressure. This distinction is crucial, but it may also reveal fascism’s modern adaptation rather than its absence. Historical fascism seized power through overt revolution; the Trumpist method appears to be the exploitation of democratic institutions from within, using their inherent weaknesses and freedoms – such as free speech and political polarisation – to consolidate power. The goal seems not to be to abolish the system outright, but to render it so subservient to a single leader that its formal structures become a façade.

What we are left with is not a carbon copy of 1930s Europe but something closer to what scholars call “authoritarian populism” or “illiberal democracy.” Still, the overlap is close enough to warrant alarm. The cult of personality, the scapegoating, the attacks on democratic institutions – these are not harmless quirks of an unconventional politician. They are warning signs.

These signs are amplified by a key tactic of modern authoritarianism: the creation of a parallel information ecosystem. Through relentless propaganda, the delegitimisation of factual reporting, the embrace of conspiracy theories, and the promotion of outlets that serve as state-media proxies, a significant portion of the population is persuaded to live in a reality defined not by shared facts, but by the leader’s will. This breaks the common ground necessary for democratic debate and makes accountability impossible.

If anything, Trump’s movement shows how easily a democracy can slide toward authoritarianism without formally abolishing elections or rewriting constitutions. The question now is not whether Trumpism matches fascism perfectly, but whether we are willing to ignore the unmistakable echoes. The history of the 20th century teaches us that fascism does not arrive in a day; it arrives in degrees, often masked by populist appeal and enabled by those who believe the institutions are too strong to fail. The warning is not that America has become a fascist state, but that it has proven vulnerable to the very playbook that leads there.

September 23, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Political witch hunts and blacklists: Donald Trump and the new era of McCarthyism

September 19, 2025 , Shannon Brincat, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of the Sunshine Coast, Frank Mols, Senior Lecturer in Political Science, The University of Queensland, Gail Crimmins, Associate professor, University of the Sunshine Coast, https://theconversation.com/political-witch-hunts-and-blacklists-donald-trump-and-the-new-era-of-mccarthyism-265389?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Weekender%20-%2019th%20September%202025&utm_content=The%20Weekender%20-%2019th%20September%202025+CID_d7a6e5ec27e543170fba8540bf95d6ea&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=Political%20witch%20hunts%20and%20blacklists%20Donald%20Trump%20and%20the%20new%20era%20of%20McCarthyism

A modern-day political inquisition is unfolding in “digital town squares” across the United States. The slain far-right activist Charlie Kirk has become a focal point for a coordinated campaign of silencing critics that chillingly echoes one of the darkest chapters in American history.

Individuals who have publicly criticised Kirk or made perceived insensitive comments regarding his death are being threatened, fired or doxed.

Teachers and professors have been fired or disciplined, one for posting that Kirk was racist, misogynistic and a neo-Nazi, another for calling Kirk a “hate-spreading Nazi”.

Journalists have also lost their jobs after making comments about Kirk’s assassination, as has the late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel.

A website called “Expose Charlie’s Murderers” had been posting the names, locations and employers of people saying critical things about Kirk before it was reportedly taken down. Vice President JD Vance has pushed for this public response, urging supporters to “call them out … hell, call their employer”.

This is far-right “cancel culture”, the likes of which the US hasn’t seen since the McCarthy era in the 1950s.

The birth of McCarthyism

The McCarthy era may well have faded in our collective memory, but it’s important to understand how it unfolded and the impact it had on America. As the philosopher George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Since the 1950s, “McCarthyism” has become shorthand for the practice of making unsubstantiated accusations of disloyalty against political opponents, often through fear-mongering and public humiliation.

The term gets its name from Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Republican who was the leading architect of a ruthless witch hunt in the US to root out alleged Communists and subversives across American institutions.

The campaign included both public and private persecutions from the late 1940s to early 1950s, involving hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Millions of federal employees had to fill out loyalty investigation forms during this time, while hundreds of employees were either fired or not hired. Hundreds of Hollywood figures were also blacklisted.

The campaign also involved the parallel targeting of the LGBTQI+ community working in government – known as the Lavender Scare.

And similar to doxing today, witnesses in government hearings were asked to provide the names of communist sympathisers, and investigators gave lists of prospective witnesses to the media. Major corporations told employees who invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify they would be fired.

The greatest toll of McCarthyism was perhaps on public discourse. A deep chill settled over US politics, with people afraid to voice any opinion that could be construed as dissenting.

When the congressional records were finally unsealed in the early 2000s, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said the hearings “are a part of our national past that we can neither afford to forget nor permit to reoccur”.

Another witch hunt under Trump

Today, however, a similar campaign is being waged by the Trump administration and others on the right, who are stoking fears of the “the enemy within”.

This new campaign to blacklist government critics is following a similar pattern to the McCarthy era, but is spreading much more quickly, thanks to social media, and is arguably targeting far more regular Americans.

Even before Kirk’s killing, there were worrying signs of a McCarthyist revival in the early days of the second Trump administration.

After Trump ordered the dismantling of public Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs, civil institutions, universities, corporations and law firms were pressured to do the same. Some were threatened with investigation or freezing of federal funds.

In Texas, a teacher was accused of guiding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) squads to suspected non-citizens at a high school. A group called the Canary Mission identified pro-Palestinian green-card holders for deportation. And just this week, the University of California at Berkeley admitted to handing over the names of staff accused of antisemitism.

Supporters of the push to expose those criticising Kirk have framed their actions as protecting the country from “un-American”, woke ideologies. This narrative only deepens polarisation by simplifying everything into a Manichean world view: the “good people” versus the corrupt “leftist elite”.

The fact the political assassination of Democratic lawmaker Melissa Hortman did not garner the same reaction from the right reveals a gross double standard at play.

Another double standard: attempts to silence anyone criticising Kirk’s divisive ideology, while being permissive of his more odious claims. For example, he once called George Floyd, a Black man killed by police, a “scumbag”.

In the current climate, empathy is not a “made-up, new age term”, as Kirk once said, but appears to be highly selective.

This brings an increased danger, too. When neighbours become enemies and dialogue is shut down, the possibilities for conflict and violence are exacerbated.

Many are openly discussing the parallels with the rise of fascism in Germany, and even the possibility of another civil war.

A sense of decency?

The parallels between McCarthyism and Trumpism are stark and unsettling. In both eras, dissent has been conflated with disloyalty.

How far could this go? Like the McCarthy era, it partly depends on the public reaction to Trump’s tactics.

McCarthy’s influence began to wane when he charged the army with being soft on communism in 1954. The hearings, broadcast to the nation, did not go well. At one point, the army’s lawyer delivered a line that would become infamous:

Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness […] Have you no sense of decency?

Without concerted, collective societal pushback against this new McCarthyism and a return to democratic norms, we risk a further coarsening of public life.

The lifeblood of democracy is dialogue; its safeguard is dissent. To abandon these tenets is to pave the road towards authoritarianism.

September 21, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Will the US Continue to Aid, Abet, and Arm Genocide in Gaza?

Every leader should move now to end our complicity.

Katrina vanden Heuvel, 16 Sept 25, https://www.thenation.com/article/world/israel-genocide-complicity-gaza-palestine/

he United States is aiding and abetting genocide in Gaza. This horror has the support —like so many of our most disastrous foreign debacles from Vietnam to Iraq—of both political parties.

As more and more children die of starvation and the famine deepens, as the Netanyahu government begins its attack on Gaza City, moving to occupy all of Gaza, as Israeli soldiers and bulldozers systematically level city after city in Gaza, the criminal horror is reaching its obscene goal: the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza (and, if Netanyahu’s ministers have their way, all of the occupied West Bank).

While all signatories to the Genocide Convention have the right—and indeed the duty—to intervene to halt this slaughter, only two countries have the power to actually stop the genocide: the Israeli government that is committing it and the US government that is aiding, abetting, and arming it. The US could stop this criminal assault by ending its support for Israel, cutting off the flow of arms, ammunition, bombs, and military coordination and demanding and helping to organize immediate, emergency humanitarian relief. To do any less makes us complicit in the ongoing crime.

Across the world—and within Israel itself—some brave leaders have demanded an end to the horror.

David Grossman, Israel’s leading literary and moral voice, says that for many years he has refused to use the word genocide, but now he must—“with immense pain and with a broken heart.”

Two leading Israeli human rights groups—B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel—released a report on “Our Genocide,” detailing the unfathomable violence and concluding that there is “no doubt” that since October 2023, the Israeli regime has been responsible for carrying out genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza strip.” Physicians for Human Rights Israel provided a medical-legal analysis documenting Israel’s deliberate destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza, as well as other systems critical for the survival of the Palestinian civilian population.

The special rapporteur of the United Nations has reported on the companies and countries profiting from the “economy of genocide.”

Back In January 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that there was a plausible risk that Israel’s actions amounted to genocidal acts—long before the systematic starvation became apparent. The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then–Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and a former Hamas commander on the suspicion of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

A growing number of countries have suspended all or part of their arms shipments to Israel, including Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada. Last month, in a resolution passed by 86 percent of its members, the oldest and largest association of genocide scholars concluded that Israel’s nearly two-year military campaign in Gaza meets “the legal definition of genocide,” The resolution, by the International Association of Genocide Scholars, added to a growing chorus from human rights organizations and academics concluding that Israel is committing genocide by “killing members of the group” and “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” according to Emily Sample, a member of the association’s executive board.

Across the world, citizens of conscience demonstrate in greater and greater numbers, demanding an end to the horror.

And in the United States where the responsibility and the complicity are the greatest?

Courageous Jewish scholars like Omer Bartov and writers like Peter Beinart have spoken out early against the calamity.

More than 1,000 rabbis have called for Israel to allow humanitarian aid, stating “we cannot condone the mass killings of civilians…or the use of starvation as a weapon of war

After months of looking the other way, more and more of the mainstream US media are beginning to awake to the humanitarian catastrophe that is being inflicted on the Palestinians.

But among those who could actually bring the horror to an end, courage is in short supply.

Only 13 members of Congress have been willing to state the obvious: that Israel is committing genocide. House minority whip Katherine Clark declared that the “genocide and destruction” in Gaza needs to end—only to walk back her comments a few days later.

The Senate Resolution submitted by Senator Bernie Sanders to block some weapons sales to Israel received not one Republican vote. Instead, Republicans line up behind Donald Trump, who muses about beachfront properties in Gaza and tells Israel to hurry up and finish the job.

A Gallup poll showed only 8 percent of Democrats support Israel’s military action in Gaza. The Sanders Resolutions received support from a majority of the Senate Democratic caucus, yet those still refusing to stand up include Senator Charles Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, as well as Senator Corey Booker, who styles himself as a voice for human rights.

This is no longer a policy debate. This is now an urgent question of basic humanity. Will the United States continue to arm genocide in Gaza? Will legislators continue to support an unconscionable crime against humanity—or act to end it? As more Palestinians starve to death, as more doctors and aid workers and journalists are murdered, as needed food and water continues to be withheld, as families are huddled into smaller and smaller open-air camps, no amount of censorship, doubletalk, lies, or excuses can hide the true horror.

There is no excuse for inaction. There is no escape from responsibility. Each legislator, official, and officer will have to look in the mirror. Complicity in this crime will destroy their reputations. Growing numbers of their constituents, their neighbors, even their own children will demand to know why they chose complicity rather than courage.

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Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

America is aiding, abetting, and arming that genocide.

Every American should stand up to protest the horror being committed in our names.

Every leader should move now to end our complicity. 

Every American should stand up to protest the horror being committed in our names.

Every leader should move now to end our complicity.

September 20, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment