so here we have this is a video from DW
news which is a German uh public
broadcaster and they’re going to give us
a little bit of the background to the
assassination of Shinzo Abe the former
Japanese leader so let’s go ahead and
listen to some of that and then I’ll
give you more information on it Japan’s
former prime minister Shinzo Abe has
died after being shot at a campaign
event police say a 41 year old man has
been arrested in connection with the
shooting ABI was the country’s longest
serving Premiere and was well known for
his strong economic and defense policies
his killing has shocked yet Japan the
nation where Firearms are strictly
regulated and political violence so let
me just comment on that real quick there
were a bunch of uh people who lean right
and who are very pro-gun rights who used
the killing of Shinzo Abe to say look at
that bro obviously uh gun control laws
don’t work that is such a flipping and
glib and stupid response because there’s
only nine gun deaths per year in Japan
nine we have 39 000.
in the U.S
so
you gotta look at the macro statistics
and the macro statistics paint a very
very clear picture but they think
because one person was killed with a gun
they’re like oh well obviously gun
control laws don’t work well I’ll ask
those people would you rather have nine
gun deaths a year or 39 000 gun deaths a
year now by the way I’m not their laws
are super strict like way more strict
than what my preferences are but
you have to call a spade a spade and say
in terms of reducing gun violence oh it
absolutely works I mean there’s a
trade-off and you have no right at all
to a firearm there but it works in terms
of uh from a public safety perspective
anyway I digress this is extremely rare
[Music]
handled to the ground
what appears to be a weapon lying on the
road nearby clearly a makeshift weapon I
mean held together I think with literal
duct tape
people ran to the age of Japan’s former
prime minister as he lay seriously
wounded
he was quickly transferred to helicopter
and flown to hospital
at this point his condition was
described as critical but doctors were
unable to save him
confirming his death the hospital said
the 67 year old had suffered two deep
wounds including to his heart
the area in the city of Nara where this
veteran politician had been giving an
election campaign speech is now a crime
scene
the assassination has shocked Japan a
country where gun violence is rare
this is a dustedly and barbaric Acts
that took place in the midst of an
election
this is the basis of a democracy
and it’s absolutely unforgivable I would
like to use the harshest words to
condemn this act
Shinzo Abe was first elected Prime
Minister of Japan in 2006 making him at
52 the country’s youngest ever premier
it proved short-lived a year later he
quit following a string of party
scandals he was also suffering from
health problems
but he wasn’t gone for long in 2012 he
was back promising to revive Japan’s
flagging economy following years of
deflation
he even put his own name on the plan
urbanomics now by the way he was part of
What’s called the liberal Democratic
party in Japan but understand that the
liberal Democratic party is actually the
conservative party in Japan so I know
it’s so weird all these different
countries have these names for their
political parties and it will be like
contradictory to the actual ideology
that they have and that gets frustrating
and annoying but I just want everybody
to understand that he was a conservative
Abe was also hawkish on defense
expanding Japan’s military role after
years of pacifism yes let me explain
that a little bit there’s there’s um
pacifism in the Japanese Constitution
which was the United States either
helped write it or did write it after
World War II they made Japan a pacifist
Nation
for obvious reasons I mean they Japan
had allied with Nazi Germany they were
an Empire uh they had a viciously
barbaric Empire they you know massacred
Koreans they massacred uh Chinese when
they were an Empire and so they made
pacifism in the Constitution and Shinzo
Abe wanted to roll back the pacifism
that was in there and uh you know build
up the Japanese military
approved a controversial policy and he
failed to formally rewrite the country’s
pacifist Constitution
he did though bolster Japan’s security
alliance with United States
Abe was considered a strong leader on
the world stage but in 2020 he again
resigned citing poor health
it’s more just so everybody understand
it’s more
corruption than you know oh I have
health problems there were political
scandals and he uses the health thing as
an excuse
politics though was always in his blood
right up until the end
for more we can now apprecame so that’s
enough of that now let me give you some
more information on them
so um this is on the guy who killed him
the man accused of assassinating former
Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe had
reportedly told investigators he
targeted Abe because he suspected he had
ties to a religious group that took a
huge donation from his mother law
enforcement sources cited by Kyoto news
had the suspect identified as 41 year
old tetsuya yamagami had first planned
to attack a leader of the unnamed
religious group before settling on Abe
instead yamagami is said to have told
police The Killing had nothing to do
with politics homemade guns and items
thought to be explosives were found
during a search of yamagami’s home on
Friday just hours after he allegedly
used a homemade firearm to gun Abe down
in front of a crowd watching him deliver
a campaign speech in the city of Nara
sources cited by Kyoto news said
yamagami admitted to traveling to
another city a day earlier where Abe had
had also given a campaign speech the
police chief of the perfect prefecture
which is the Japanese it’s a state
basically where the shocking killing
took place admitted on Sat today that
there were problems with the safety
measures taken and took full
responsibility for the lapses that led
to Abe’s death so look I haven’t seen
anything particularly convincing on the
motives of the guy who did this
assassination this is the line that I’ve
heard
um
seems kind of weak if you ask me I saw
some speculation that effectively the
guy who did The Killing was like
part of Japan’s version of Q Anon if you
will
um I don’t know I don’t know none of
this stuff seems particularly convincing
or solid to me in terms of developing a
motive
um more on Shinzo Abe here this is in
The Daily Beast Shinzo Abe was Trump
before Trump except he pulled it off
Japan’s former prime minister Shinzo Abe
died on Thursday in a scene reminiscent
of the Yakuza films he loved so much
that’s of course the Japanese Mafia
gunned down in a crowd by a lone shooter
who didn’t even try to escape the nation
was shocked to learn that he had passed
away when it was reported by state
broadcaster NHK there were many hoping
that he might still pull through and
Nara passerbys began to place flowers on
the site where he was shot some praying
for his safe journey through the spirit
world to his next Incarnation 15 years
before the bloody incident Shinzo Abe
was considered politically finished when
he resigned from office during his first
dentist prime minister he was exhausted
disliked and unable to weather the
tsunami of scandals that surrounded his
cabinet but in 2012 he came back from
the graveyard of failed Prime Ministers
to rule for almost eight years when news
spread that he had been shot twice and
was in critical condition his supporters
hoped that he might be able to pull off
another miracle a physical resurrection
that didn’t happen but the man who
Donald Trump adviser Stephen Bannon
famously praised As Trump before Trump
leaves behind a legacy that may have
forever changed pan he reduced it to a
Perpetual one-party democracy that seems
unlikely to change ABI certainly seems
to have had a Playbook that was similar
to Donald Trump’s he was a populist who
tapped into racism and fears of change
to stoke his base and consolidate power
during his Exile from Power Abe and his
cabinet members allied with anti-korean
and other xenophobic groups Abe drummed
up anti-korean sentiment to bolster his
support and made sure his allies did the
dog whistles while he kept his hands
clean while Trump portrayed immigrants
as the boogeyman threatening Japan I
think that was supposed to say
threatening America Abe latched on to
deep-rooted anti-korean sentiment
towards both the Korean residents of
Japan who stayed after the war and
citizens of South and North Korea former
colonies of Japan he appointed ariko
yamatani a woman closely associated with
the flamingly anti-korean group zaitoku
Kai to be the head of the National
Public Safety commission that oversees
National Police agency the National
Police agency he also embraced uh Nippon
kaiji a conservative Shinto cult and
political Lobby you could aptly compare
his alliance with them to Trump’s
absorption of the Tea Party and other
far-right elements of the Republican
Party
even while out of power the liberal
Democratic party with Abe exerting
influence developed plans for a new
Imperial Constitution for Japan the
removal of the post-war Constitution
which was written with the help of the
American occupation not by them as some
claim now during his political Exile Abe
even briefly became head of an extremist
Think Tank Nihon sosei which is create
Japan made up of ldp liberal Democratic
party lawmakers and other conservative
superstars in May 2012 the organization
released a clip of him Gathering titled
the swearing-in of the revised
Constitution for Japan in which he and
his cronies discussed the ldp’s
substitute Constitution there were some
astonishing moments a former Minister of
Justice nagasi jinen appointed during
Abe’s first term in office told the
crowd the people’s sovereignty basic
human rights and pacifism these three
things date to the post-war regime
imposed by MacArthur General MacArthur
on Japan therefore we have to get rid of
them by making the Constitution our own
Abe loudly applauded this get rid of
basic human rights democracy and wage
Warfare also restore the emperor to
power
in other words make Japan great again
it’s no wonder that years later Steve
Bannon would say that Abe was Trump
before Trump Abe for many
excuse me Abe for many years the most
powerful man in Japan’s ruling political
party the liberal Democratic party in
fact he was campaigning for their
candidates in the coming Upper House
elections when he was shot on Thursday
the ldp was founded in 1955 by Abe’s
grandfather a former war criminal who
also served as prime minister they were
funded with money from Yakuza associate
and CIA operative yoshio Kodama but
starting with his Fall From Grace the
ldp’s popularity sank in 2009 it seemed
like Japan might really change and for
the better for only the second time
since 1955 the perpetually corrupt and
archley conservative liberal Democratic
party was kicked out of power and the
liberal egalitarian feminist leaning
Democratic party of Japan took hold of
The reigns of power it was a revolution
but it didn’t last long the dpj had
risen to power partly with expectations
that they would be cleaner and less
criminal than the ldp but then one
scandal after another implicating the
party’s top management and unsavory ties
with the Yakuza through dirt on their
squeaky clean image the lower house
elections of 2012 were a political
meltdown almost all the opposition
parties including the dpj were decimated
and we know who returned from the
political graveyard ready to rule Japan
with a rusty iron fist Shinzo Abe was
quick to take revenge upon his critics
once back in power labeling the liberal
newspaper Asahi shimbun an enemy of the
people later he would tell Donald Trump
you should handle the New York Times the
way I handled acai
wow he bullied the left-wing media and
whined and dimed the right-wing media
dragging Japan’s press freedom from 11th
in the world to as low as 72nd Place in
in world rankings in 2014 he created a
cabinet Personnel Bureau which exercised
ruthless control of bureaucratic
appointments assuring that any
government worker who didn’t toe the
line or released information
contradicting the government was either
shunned fired or sidelined so very
authoritarian on press freedoms is what
you’re learning here
it worked very effectively and some
high-ranking officials even took it upon
themselves to cover up Abe related
scandals without direct orders to do so
television anchors and pundits that were
too critical of Abe vanished from the
airwaves the world’s largest newspaper
the yomiyuri shimbun smeared the biggest
critic in the education Ministry for
frequenty frequenting sexy bars in
kabukicho so smearing his political
opponents
he had no qualms about using the media
for defamation campaigns and the media
and eager for spoon-fed Scoops was happy
to comply eventually in 2020 the weight
of political scandals and an
investigation into election law
violations by Abe forced him to resign
under the guise of medical issues a few
months later he threw his political
secretary onto the bus and was more or
less exonerated he kept a low profile
for months but couldn’t resist the
Limelight Shinzo Abe failed to change
even one word of Japan’s constitution in
the end but did pass several laws that
are still eating away at it including
article 9 Japan’s Declaration of
pacifism his greatest achievement having
so thoroughly discredited opposition
parties in critical media that Japan
isn’t even reminiscent of a two-party
democracy it’s a one-party democracy
where the media has its tails between
its legs and is likely to stay that way
for decades
so
um
that gives you
um a look into who Shinzo Abe is what
his ideology is and um the background
around that
and then also look it super conservative
guy
um
wanted to be more militaristic make
Japan less pacifist uh hardliner on
immigration
anti-korean anti-chinese authoritarian
when it comes to the Press now that’s
not none of this is to say that homeboys
should have been assassinated of course
not uh but you should understand the
background and who Abe is and again as
far as the motive of the guy who did The
Killing
I still don’t have any answer that I
find uh convincing I told you what’s
been reported but you know I have a
feeling that maybe over time we’ll learn
more or maybe we’ll never learn more but
that’s not I don’t think that’s the full
the full reasoning so by the way we’ll
end on this note
um
as a result of the assassination now
Shinzo Abe’s right-wing party the
liberal Democratic party as it’s called
is even more popular
they surged in the polls after the
assassination so
there you have it
um you know giant political event and um
of course other world leaders have come
out and and uh
offered condolences and Trump said
something about
um Abe being assassinated uh Trump had
played golf with him a number of times
random side point but
anyway there you have it uh momentous
event of a former Japanese leader being
assassinated hey y’all do me a favor and
like And subscribe it helps out big time
in the algorithm click the Bell as well
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watch that video on screen right now
you know you want to
Jacob Stanley: How Fascism Works
By uncovering disturbing patterns that are as prevalent today as ever, philosopher Jacob Stanley reveals in How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them that the stuff of politics—charged by rhetoric and myth—can quickly become policy and reality. Only by recognizing fascist politics, he argues, may we resist its most harmful effects and return to democratic ideals.
For this conversation Stanley is joined by Harvard associate professor of History Elizabeth Hinton.
Racism makes societies vulnerable to fascism
37:36
look I’m white but it’s in my
self-interest to fight against racism
because it opens my society to fascismAre economics responsible for fascism?
54:22
for family issues back in Ohio and I
54:25
would go through rural Ohio but I see no
54:27
feline annex and I’d see poverty and
54:30
nobody Cambridge you about under and and
54:35
it wasn’t covered you know and so I
54:37
always say follow the money and there’s
54:39
no money in the rural areas and
54:41
globalism works in Boston and San
54:43
Francisco but it doesn’t seem to work in
54:46
rural America and so I always think that
54:49
globalism is doomed and democracy is
54:53
doomed if they can’t figure out a way to
54:55
put rural Americans into this economy
54:59
that doesn’t that that doesn’t seem to
55:02
have happened I was I was in southern
55:04
Ohio and a family gathering in Lebanon
55:07
Ohio and the fireman was talking to me
55:09
in there was part of the group and he
55:11
said he’s retiring early because he
55:13
can’t stand picking up opioid addicts in
55:15
a little talons Ohio with 10,000 people
55:17
he’s got a five six calls a day take
55:21
care of over those people and people
55:23
shooting out in cars
55:25
so yeah and this is little little
55:29
hometown you know Warren Ohio is dead so
55:37
you’re raising a couple different relate
55:39
related points but both very important
55:41
first of all we haven’t talked much
55:42
about political economy and I think it’s
55:45
very important to talk about political
55:46
economy as as a factor also in the
55:50
factor in the far-right movement like
55:52
what’s happening it’s all right now
55:55
fascism is not fascist politics not
55:57
being used to like buttress military
56:00
empire as much as its used to other one
56:04
other than Yemen and so it is but but it
56:07
it’s being used to like funnel money
56:10
into oligarchs hands and blah and sort
56:13
of like throw sand in the face of people
56:14
with genuine economic concerns but the
56:17
OPA
56:18
I mean it’s not just the rural Midwest
56:20
like my partner is a doctor physician in
56:23
New Haven New Haven Connecticut has a
56:25
horrific OPA opioid problem I mean the
56:27
pharmaceutical companies I mean they
56:31
delivered a whole bunch of opioids to a
56:34
lot of people and and it’s a problem
56:37
that is the dhih industrialized areas
56:41
I mean opiates horrific it’s like what
56:44
60,000 deaths last year 70,000 deaths so
56:48
so but and it’s it’s tricky figuring out
56:53
you know Carl Hart’s work would say it’s
56:54
it’s mainly an economic problem you
56:56
solve people’s economic issues and
56:58
they’re not gonna be opioid addicts but
57:02
but but you’re you’re I mean one thing
57:06
about the economic anxiety point is that
57:09
if you look at who was affected by the
57:12
Great Recession the group that was most
57:15
affected by the Great Recession I think
57:16
were people of color but they didn’t
57:18
flee into the arms of fascism you know they
57:20
didn’t start voting for or you know they
57:24
didn’t vote for Trump so I I don’t think
57:27
so it can’t I think that economic and
57:31
and then you look worldwide my book is
57:33
about the world and you look at Poland
57:36
like the Civic Platform in Poland
57:38
like the Civic Platform expanded the GDP
57:41
radically Poland was doing really well
57:43
economically and then law and justice
57:45
came in and did all these tactics and
57:48
one look at Bavaria one of the richest
57:51
areas in the world Bavaria is filled
57:53
with this you say oh say offer so the
57:57
economic anxiety does not match all the
58:00
areas it can explain it can explain why
58:03
some groups in some areas fall prey to
58:06
this politics but looking
58:09
internationally the politics gets a grip
58:13
and even looking nationally because it
58:15
gets a grip on some groups and not the
58:17
other others and if you look at if you
58:19
look at and my book is about why it gets
58:21
a grip when it’s so obviously a false
58:24
promise and so in the United States when
58:26
we talk about the poor working class we
58:28
– we – the white working class we forget
58:31
a chapter and Du Bois as black
58:33
reconstruction is a poor white you know
58:35
we have to talk about the psychological
58:37
wages of whiteness we have to talk about
58:39
and and the response is of course an
58:41
economic response is a labor movement a
58:43
labor movement you know when they smash
58:46
the labor movements in the Upper Midwest
58:48
suddenly people felt much more prey to
58:50
this kind of politics and so you know so
58:55
I think we do face this crisis we need a
58:57
labor movement that’s why they went
58:59
after the labor movement we’re in a
59:01
crisis after the Janice decision and and
59:05
so we have to rebuild the labor we
59:07
wouldn’t give people economic hope I’m
59:09
not sure it’s as globalization as much
59:10
as it’s the lack of a of a of a labor
59:13
movement in the United States
59:14
I mean German manufacturing is doing
59:17
fine and German labor is doing fine
59:22
history and making history no but I
59:26
guess how do you make it known
59:29
given that the I mean given what you’re
59:32
talking about you know the attack on
59:34
truth the discrediting of sources the
59:37
control of educational boards or
59:39
institutions by people who might not be
59:42
in their interest a place you know I
59:43
mean so what I don’t know if that’s I
59:50
mean if doing it’s having conversations
59:54
like this I mean I think it’s it’s it’s
59:56
really up to us and this is like in
59:59
terms of thinking about what is the role
60:00
of academics right now I mean people who
60:03
do research is – it’s one I think that
60:07
qualitative research in general is just
60:09
D legitimized and it’s it’s dismissed as
60:13
not being true despite the fact that you
60:16
know my I don’t use my data doesn’t come
60:18
from surveys it’s not in document since
60:24
the ways in which I’m interpreting those
60:25
documents just like it’s the ways in
60:26
which other people are interpreting
60:27
their quantitative data and so I think
60:30
that you know right now the other kind
60:32
of struggle going on in universities is
60:34
the growing attack in many ways on the
60:39
liberal on liberal arts in general which
60:41
is tied to the developments that Jason
60:43
described so eloquently in the book so I
60:45
think part of it is you know doing the
60:48
work of having discussions like this
60:50
it’s amazing that there’s so many people
60:53
here and we’re having this really engage
60:55
an important discussion that takes a lot
60:57
out of us but that’s I think part of our
61:00
responsibility as as researchers as
61:03
scholars as intellectuals to try to
61:06
write in accessible ways Jason was just
61:08
telling me that he’s been on the radio
61:10
for like ten hours this week that’s
61:13
doing the work that’s doing that
61:14
important work and I think part of the
61:17
difficulty is in many in in many
61:19
instances we we end up kind of preaching
61:21
to the choir you can only go on Berkeley
61:25
radio so many times I mean
61:29
– is also kind of moving into different
61:34
spaces where we might be less
61:35
comfortable when I get invited to speak
61:38
with libertarian or white ring groups
61:40
are I’m happy to go because knowing that
61:44
I might be walking into an abrasive
61:45
situation you know I tried to make my
61:49
book and my research as undeniable as
61:52
possible and I think the argument that
61:53
you’ve laid out in this book is also
61:55
undeniable and that’s how I think we can
61:58
begin to think about re-educating
62:01
correcting the false narratives and
62:04
erasing the untruths the mythic past
62:07
that’s been created in history is I
62:09
think really historical work is really
62:12
key to that we don’t know how we got
62:14
here unless we really really understand
62:16
the past yeah I just want I just want to
62:23
say you know that’s why do boys ends
62:26
ends black reconstruction at the
62:28
propaganda of history and that’s why
62:29
he’s so corny and capitalizes truth you
62:32
know that’s that’s that’s what gets me
62:34
upset when people attack for instance
62:36
african-american studies as as has been
62:39
happening a lot or Gender Studies
62:41
because they’re trying to tell the
62:42
actual truth of a story that’s not told
62:45
and you know and that that’s that’s why
62:48
dude you know Dubois is always so corny
62:50
about truth see like he’s like you know
62:52
when you know erasure and erasure is
62:55
never truth you know so and of course
62:59
the backlash is always like a little bit
63:01
of like at Yale what happened the I mean
63:04
I could have told my colleagues the
63:05
English department they added googy Wafi
63:07
Unga this this goes back to you they had
63:08
a GUI hua Theon go to one course and and
63:12
there were like 20 articles from
63:14
right-wing media about how they’re
63:15
eliminating Shakespeare at Yale and it
63:18
hit them so by surprise I was like my
63:21
colleagues in the English department
63:21
like what happened what happened we’re
63:23
gonna go as death threats I’m like yeah
63:25
you added an African writer to a
63:28
required course you know so that’s the
63:32
and we we have academic administrators
63:34
here they can tell you about this but
63:36
there’s there’s you know the very ID so
63:39
true like multiple perspective
63:41
which doesn’t mean multiple perspectives
63:43
doesn’t mean there’s many truths there’s
63:45
only one truth that’s why Dubois
63:47
capitalizes it but the truth involves
63:49
you know that the Nate what happened to
63:52
the indigenous populations as well as
63:55
what happened to Dale Carnegie
64:02
[Music]
64:07
[Applause]
Boris Johnson and the Coming Trump Victory in 2020
In the postindustrial wasteland, the working class embraced an old Etonian mouthing about unleashed British potential.
Donald Trump, in his telling, could have shot somebody on Fifth Avenue and won. Boris Johnson could mislead the queen. He could break his promise to get Britain out of Europe by Oct. 31. He could lie about Turks invading Britain and the cost of European Union membership. He could make up stories about building 40 new hospitals. He could double down on the phantom $460 million a week that Brexit would deliver to the National Health Service — and still win a landslide Tory electoral victory not seen since Margaret Thatcher’s triumph in 1987.
The British, or at least the English, did not care. Truth is so 20th century. They wanted Brexit done; and, formally speaking, Johnson will now take Britain out of Europe by Jan. 31, 2020, even if all the tough decisions on relations with the union will remain. Johnson was lucky. In the pathetic, emetic Jeremy Corbyn, the soon-to-depart Labour Party leader, he faced perhaps the worst opposition candidate ever. In the Tory press, he had a ferocious friend prepared to overlook every failing. In Brexit-weary British subjects, whiplashed since the 2016 referendum, he had the perfect receptacle for his “get Brexit done.”
Johnson was also skillful, blunting Nigel Farage’s far-right Brexit Party, which stood down in many seats, took a lot of Labour votes in the seats where it did run, and ended up with nothing. The British working class, concentrated in the Midlands and the North, abandoned Labour and Corbyn’s socialism for the Tories and Johnson’s nationalism.
In the depressed provinces of institutionalized precariousness, workers embraced an old Etonian mouthing about unleashed British potential. Not a million miles from blue-collar heartland Democrats migrating to Trump the millionaire and America First demagogy.
That’s not the only parallel with American politics less than 11 months from the election. Johnson concentrated all the Brexit votes. By contrast, the pro-Remain vote was split between Corbyn’s internally divided Labour Party, the hapless Liberal Democrats, and the Scottish National Party. For anybody contemplating the divisions of the Democratic Party as compared with the Trump movement’s fanatical singleness of purpose, now reinforced by the impeachment proceedings, this can only be worrying.
The clear rejection of Labour’s big-government socialism also looks ominous for Democrats who believe the party can lurch left and win. The British working class did not buy nationalized railways, electricity distribution and water utilities when they could stick it to some faceless bureaucrat in Brussels and — in that phrase as immortal as it is meaningless — take back their country.
It’s a whole new world. To win, liberals have to touch people’s emotions rather than give earnest lessons. They have to cease being arid. They have to refresh and connect. It’s not easy.
Facebook reaches about one-third of humanity. It is more powerful than any political party — and it’s full of untruths, bigotry and nonsense. As Sacha Baron Cohen, the British actor, said last month of the social media behemoths: “The truth is that these companies won’t fundamentally change because their entire business model relies on generating more engagement, and nothing generates more engagement than lies, fear and outrage.”
That’s the story of Brexit, a national tragedy. That’s the story of Johnson, the man of no convictions. That’s the story of Trump, who makes puppets of people through manipulation of outrage and disregard for truth. That’s the story of our times. Johnson gets and fits those times better than most. He’s a natural.
“Brexit and Trump were inextricably linked in 2016, and they are inextricably linked today,” Steve Bannon told me. “Johnson foreshadows a big Trump win. Working-class people are tired of their ‘betters’ in New York, London, Brussels telling them how to live and what to do. Corbyn the socialist program, not Corbyn the man, got crushed. If Democrats don’t take the lesson, Trump is headed for a Reagan-like ’84 victory.”
I still think Trump can be beaten, but not from way out left and not without recognition that, as Hugo Dixon, a leader of the now defeated fight for a second British referendum, put it: “There is a crisis of liberalism because we have not found a way to connect to the lives of people in the small towns of the postindustrial wasteland whose traditional culture has been torn away.”
Johnson, even with his 80-seat majority, has problems. His victory reconciled the irreconcilable.
- His moneyed coterie wants to turn Britain into free-market Singapore on the Thames. His new
- working-class constituency wants rule-Britannia greatness combined with state-funded support. That’s a delicate balancing act. The breakup of Britain has become more likely. The strong Scottish National Party showing portends a possible second Scottish referendum on independence.
This time I would bet on the Scots bidding farewell to little England. And then there’s the small matter of what Brexit actually means. Johnson will need all his luck with that.
As my readers know, I am a passionate European patriot who sees the union as the greatest achievement of the second half of the 20th century, and Britain’s exit as an appalling act of self-harm. But I also believe in democracy. Johnson took the decision back to the people and won. His victory must be respected. The fight for freedom, pluralism, the rule of law, human rights, a free press, independent judiciaries, breathable air, peace, decency and humanity continues — and has only become more critical now that Britain has marginalized itself irreversibly in a fit of nationalist delusion.
Kris Kobach Is the G.O.P. at Its Worst
In his race to be Kansas’ next governor, Kris Kobach represents the ugliest part of today’s Republican Party. He also sounds a lot like the president.
.. Kris Kobach, the state’s secretary of state — and quite possibly the most pernicious public official in America... This distinction is not conferred lightly. Mr. Kobach has labored for it long and hard, notably in the areas of voter suppression and nativism. He is best known for having been the vice chairman of President Trump’s ugly voter fraud commission, spawned in 2017 to root out the millions of illegal voters who Mr. Trump’s ego pathetically, and falsely, claimed had cost him the popular vote in 2016. The commission was dissolved this January, having failed to find any evidence of widespread fraud, but having succeeded in raising Mr. Kobach’s national profile and cementing his reputation as a master purveyor of Trumpism.Mr. Kobach on Wednesday declared victory at a noon news conference, acknowledging that only 191 votes separated him from Mr. Colyer and that the election result may change as provisional and other ballots are counted. Awkwardly, as the state’s top election official, Mr. Kobach would be the person charged with overseeing any recount of votes. Unless he recused himself, which he has said he would not.Mr. Kobach is running for governor on a promise to “Make Kansas Great Again.” (#MKGA!).. Starting with a failed run for Congress in 2004, Mr. Kobach has regularly sounded the alarm that illegal immigration and widespread voter fraud are destroying this nation. Indeed, he has suggested that fraud played a role in his congressional defeat.A former constitutional law professor with degrees from Yale, Harvard and Oxford, Mr. Kobach’s specialty is concocting creative legal arguments to achieve controversial political ends — such as, say, forcing Mexico to pay for a border wall. (His plan: use a provision in the Patriot Act to track and tax the remittances that undocumented immigrants send home to family members.)He was the brains behind the self-deportation proposal for which Mitt Romney was widely mocked in his 2012 presidential run.
.. As an adviser to immigration hard-liners in Arizona — including the felonious-until-pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio — he helped write the state law that, among other measures, tasked the local police with verifying the citizenship of anyone they had “reasonable suspicion” to believe was undocumented.
.. ProPublica and The Kansas City Star recently detailed Mr. Kobach’s 13-year history of pitching his consulting services to small towns, helping them enact such ordinances. This has been a profitable gig for Mr. Kobach, but not so much for the towns in question, some of which wound up drowning in legal fees after trying to defend measures that ultimately proved unenforceable.
.. His crowning achievement as secretary of state was a law passed in 2011 requiring people to prove their citizenship before registering to vote. Or, rather, it was his crowning achievement until a federal judge this year struck down the law as unconstitutional.
In the course of that case, Mr. Kobach so violated basic courtroom rules that he was held in contempt and, among other humiliations, ordered to take six hours of legal education.
.. he has a flair for the dramatic and isn’t overly concerned with facts.
.. His speeches contain plenty of red meat, such as comparing Planned Parenthood to the Third Reich’s Josef Mengele.
.. Until early 2017, Mr. Kobach spent several years hosting a local call-in show, on which he held forth on such terrors as the “illegal alien crime wave” that he warned was decimating America.
.. He also got a kick out of indulging the dark fantasies of listeners, such as the 2014 caller fearful that the immigration policies of then-President Barack Obama would lead to the “ethnic cleansing” of whites.
.. Then there was the 2015 caller anxious about whether Mr. Obama might one day decree that “any black person accused of a crime, charged with a crime, is not going to be prosecuted.”
“Well, it’s already happened more or less in the case of civil rights laws,” Mr. Kobach soothed. “So I guess it’s not a huge jump.”
.. in Mr. Kobach, Mr. Trump clearly sees a kindred spirit.