I was going to refer to JD Vance as a demagogue, which he surely is, but it lets him off the hook, it’s too tame. I now think “American Nazi” is a more appropriate and telling moniker.
The “seeing” of what is actually happening is important. The fact that Trump’s approval rating is falling gives one hope that more are seeing. However, four out of 10 Americans (per average polls) seem to prefer to remain blind. How can that be, unless American nazism appeals more than we would like to admit?
I doubt that is so. Vance is a chameleon. He is an avowed Christian to other Christians. He is a nativist to other nativists. He is a pronatalist to others of that ilk. He is a MAGA supporter and Trump loyalist to the MAGA hordes; and he is Everyman to the unaffiliated. In short, he is an unprincipled careerist who will do whatever it takes to reach the pinnacle of power.
You describe him as a chameleon but I have always thought of Vance as a Shapeshifter. While across some traditions there are "good" shapeshifters, among many indigenous cultures the Shapeshifter is synonymous with deception and a symbol of untrustworthiness or hidden motives to be feared. Definitely fits Vance.
Yes, shapeshifter is the better term for JD. Chameleons are so much more interesting and colorful than to have his name associated with such diverse species of lizards as these age-old creatures.
Even using reptiles and shapeshifters to describe JD Vance is too kind when he has about as much charm and charisma as the styrofoam couch cushions that he’s into.
It may be that all Vance has to do to “reach the pinnacle of power” is wait…and hope that the president becomes disabled before January 20, 2029. However, I concur that we need to relentlessly label him as a nazi.
thanks for the link...good to hear that Pope Bob is on it. I think the Pope can be a transformational figure for the Church...all it takes is a rebel American.
Words matter. In the current environment the "Nazi" epithet can be easily shrugged off as being overused. Thus we should resort to clear and unambiguous language by describing Trump, Vance and their enablers as evil. For that is undeniable.
Also, as an athiest perhaps I am missing some subtle aspect of religion but to me "Christian nationalist" is an oxymoron.
History is usually written after events. Timothy Snyder sees so clearly that heit can write tomorrow’s history today—not by magic, but by understanding the enduring patterns of human nature.”
JD Vance is an acolyte of fascist aficionado Curtis Yarvin who says "America needs to rid of its dictatorphobia". Tells you all you need to know about Just Dance.
They haven't felt it yet. Trump n fake Xtains have carefully blocked and bought news sources for years now. Over the past decades, I lived at times in Red States and tried to tell my Blue State friends what direction the Moses Mike Putin informed crowd wants to take us. No one believed me. Progressives were and are also insulated. (Feel the Berne? He's never taken responsibility. And wtf happened to The Nation mag?) BTW: resource esp if you're teaching https://www.interfaithalliance.org/post/3-things-to-know-about-the-anti-christian-bias-task-force
Thanks SB, your comment is a good set of questions to ask ourselves.
Tim Snyder has studied tyranny and political tyranny over many decades, and is one of the best tutors when it comes to your second paragraph’s questions. It is a strange decline which we are observing (those ‘four-out-of-ten Americans). We would not have imagined this collapse; it’s not clear how much is institutional in character (media and consumerism in the US), and how much reflects ‘personal choice’ (the notorious ‘banality of evil’ written about by Hannah Arendt).
From abroad (Scotland in my case), the US doesn’t look like it’s going to stop its slide towards illiberal, centrally authoritarian government soon. There seems to be further suffering ahead.
We are fortunate to have one of the world's best scholars of Fascism, Nazism, and Genocide, and also a son of Ohio, call this ethnic cleansing what it is.. Can the MSM do the same? This Tim Snyder post should be published as widely as possible, including in the MSM, such as the New York Times.
Please note, too, Larry, how he does a couple of extra special things in his revised piece here:
1) he details, celebrates the contributions the Haitians have made to Springfield resurgence, and;
2) he nabs the Roberts court (Long Dong Clarence court, largely fascist, enabler to U.S. big money) for its, their worst criminality -- that is how its, their "overwrought performative neutrality . . . is dishonest in itself."
U.S. schools have relentlessly churned out meritocratic elites whose common denominator centers on this hollow, "performative neutrality." But of course they're not at all neutral. Don't we owe most to Timothy Snyder his acumen in locating their fascism to the actual history they half-witlessly, half churlishly serve?
Thanks for underscoring these two key points in Tim Snyder's excellent post, especially the tragic plight of Haitians in Springfield Ohio. He does provide a careful, thoughtful, and even passionate analysis of the background to, and implications of, the most recent Supreme Court anti-immigration decision. "Ethnic cleansing has now been endorsed by the Supreme Court." and "The ethnic cleansing of Springfield would be the first. 'JD Genocide,' or perhaps 'Genocide Vance' . . . "
My brief comment earlier today reflects a continuing frustration that few MSM sources are willing to call Trump regime's policies by their historical names, i.e., ethnic cleansing and fascism, including the Nazis, whom Tim Snyder mentions over twenty times in his discussion. His historical perspective on what is happening in our country deserves much wider distribution, including by the MSM, even the NYT!
The talk of “Bood Tribes” is chilling. As Shakespeare writes in the Merchant of Venice, “Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? “. All blood is red and all humans. And just to state the obvious, Haitians are Christian too, not that that should matter. We have fallen so far in such a short time.
Such a shame then that the Bard should have made the author of that speech, Shylock, one of the most disagreeable villians in his plays prompting scholars still even today to debate whether he was antisemitic. After all, Shakespeare would have been aware of Marlowe's 'Jew of Malta' and the Lopez Affair. The speech itself is a defence of his bloodlust.
I totally agree, but I thought something important should be said about all this blood talk. My own feeling is all blood is red and we are all humans and that’s the defining blood.
Disgusting, immoral and criminal. Our congregation is located in an area of Philadelphia blessed with Haitian immigrants who volunteer at our Free Fridge and Food pantry. We will do everything we can to protect them.
As someone who also grew up in Ohio, the SCOTUS decision, along with the Stephen Miller program, this makes me incandescently angry. It is also, as you point, incredibly stupid and shortsighted. If even DeWine is against it...
Vance is a vicious, lying, racist demagogue - a lot smarter and more ruthless than Trump. What a joke that he claims to be a Roman Catholic. As Liz Cheney said about Trump, he shouldn't be let near the Oval Office should he run for president in '28, which he is certain to do. As to SCOTUS - the reactionary Big Six are a disgrace - especially when once considers that Amy Conan Bryant has two adopted Haitian children. What the hell is she thinking?
She is as bigoted as the rest of them. Note her descriptions of her children at her swearing-in (or around that time.) The 2 Haitian children got very lukewarm praise, unlike the white kids.
As ever, I yield to absolutely no one in the depth of my regard for Professor Snyder. And this essay is a perfect example of why he merits the most profound respect, as a commentator, researcher, scholar, academic historian, and ultimately as a political philosopher. (Note that ascending order.)
He presents the rationale of SCOTUS’ decision. (Note that a rationale and a reason are, as here, rarely the same.)
He discusses the lie about language on which this rationale was based.
He presents –exhaustively—Vance’s agency in this. ‘Create the lie, then create the solution.’
He repeatedly warns about the ground-level consequences, as threatened by Trump from the start of his campaign to today.
He finally states: “The violence, once it comes, changes normality…the ‘it’ is right there in front of our faces.”
Again –I have said this repeatedly – Professor Snyder is warning us, as loudly and clearly and unambiguously as he can, about the immediate, current, ongoing collapse of our democratic liberal order. It is one thing for a kid in a protest to yell “Nazi!” at a cop; but Professor Snyder arguably knows more than do 99.99% of all living humans what a Nazi really is, does, and has done. When he talks about Nazis, we had better listen and act. And we show little or no signs of doing so.
From Wannsee to SCOTUS to Springfield seems a closer and closer distance.
I agree, 100% with your very thorough affirmation of Professor Snyder's brilliant work. The chilling reality of the compromised, corrupted SCOTUS majority, and the march toward brutality and violence leaves me wondering (again) what are we to do??
WHAT IF... Every concerned citizen in Ohio AND SURROUNDING STATES, went to their clubs, churches, synagogues, study groups, and sign-waving compatriots, and said: LET'S GO TO SPRINGFIELD! IT'S TIME TO STAND AGAINST THE EVIL OF THIS UN-AMERICAN BRUTALITY EXERCISED. Let's be PRESENT, not as combatants but as WITNESSES. Let us STAND IN THE GAP against the LIE - That's what Christians do! That what AMERICA does. Let us show up iin such numbers - unarmed, nonviolent, and prepared to invoke the laws of this land to stand firm - to "get in the way". Let our grandchildren remember us as a generation who "made some good trouble" - even risked a little something - when the soul of a nation was at stake.
As a life-long Christian believer and pastor, I know HUNDREDS of Christians who have given their lives supporting and seeking the welfare of Haitians, who cannot possibly buy the lie that these people are a threat to American national security! And they must be STUNNED by this evidence that the highest court in this land have chosen blindness to such evil! The very humanity of our society is at stake.
There are some who are neither Christian nor pacifist who may not want to witness the destruction of our democratic republic, but who want to interrupt that historical retrogression. By way of parallel, remember that Gandhi led India against the British, not against the Nazis. Had he led against the Nazis, things may have turned out differently.
I wonder how the conversations at home go for JD Vance after one of his many vilifications of immigrants who had rightly feared for their own lives in their countries of origin? Or maybe it's just that they arrived on our shoes as poor as church mice and didn't have the wherewithal to attend the best private schools?
I sincerely hope that JD Vance being supported by American Nazis effectively disqualifies him from becoming our president.
A brilliant essay. Sad and frightening. TheBund, the America Firster, Lindbergh,Father Coughlin, Henry Ford.Blood libels, The Protocols of the Elders and then the Holocaust not to forget the Einzatsgruppen, Auschwitz,Sobibor,Mathhaussn ,the list goes on. Are we to tolerate Naziism in America. Bad enough we have phony wars,kidnapping of leaders, rising antisemitism, and a total white washing of American slavery and imperialist history. Add to this the rise of White Christian Nationalism as the pinnacle of American citizenship. The ignorance of leadership, the politicalcontrol of the Oligarchs, the grifting and corruption of the leading family of the Administration. All the above are where America is and is going as it slips beneath the waves in its declining leadership and influence in the world. Economy is touted as being strong but its moral example is moving to extinction. Can the American Phoenix arise to again occupy the beacon on the hill. The next election may just may put the wind beneath the Phoenix's wings. We can only hope Martin Luther King was correct in predicting the trajectory of the moral universe and its'bending toward justice'.
What happened in Springfield did not begin with policy. It began with a lie, a small, contemptible lie about cats and ducks, manufactured by a vice president in coordination with men who march with swastikas, amplified into a national hallucination, handed to a president who made it a promise. Delivered to a Supreme Court that chose, in writing, not to see any of it.
That is not negligence. That is complicity with extra steps.
The majority did not ignore the context by accident. They invoked it , "context matters," they said, and then discarded it. What remains is a ruling that functions as institutional cover for what Snyder correctly names. The Court did not merely permit the executive to act. It laundered the act. It handed back to power a clean receipt for something filthy.
Here is the thing about a big lie: it does not need you to believe it. It only needs you to stop saying otherwise. The Supreme Court has now done that work on behalf of the state.
There are ten thousand people in Springfield. Fifteen hundred children in Springfield schools. A city that was genuinely recovering, that Haitians helped recover, about to be deliberately destroyed in the name of saving it from destruction that never happened.
The lie will have become "true." That is always how this works.
I liked your comments! I do not live in the USA and I identify as "global citizen" - a term coined by Marshall McLuhan (probably the first media ecologist) when I was in my teens. Neil Postman of New York University founded the first media ecology department.
The complicity you describe IS outrageous. Anne Wilson Schaef wrote many books - one of them called "When Society Becomes an Addict". She died just a few years ago but she was definitely on target. My thoughts are with all the people in Springfield.
Thanks for making the case so clearly that Vance is a White Christian Nationalist/Nazi. It's refreshing to be able to say it -- he is a whited sepulchre.
The Supreme Court disgusts me with their decision regarding the Haitians. JD Vance disgusts me as well. I know he was running for VP at the time but he was still a senator from Ohio and, as far as I am concerned, it was sickening to see him throw his own constituents under the bus. I hope GOP voters keep Springfield in their minds in 2028--he could do it over and over again just like Trump.
Your step by step account of how the lies originated and metastasized, and now are embedded in law, horrified me first thing in the morning. Waking up to the incipient legally endorsed ethnic cleansing program - today Haitians and Venezuelans, so many targets for tomorrow - made me feel like I am in 1930s Germany. This may be one of the most important essays you’ve written, and my guess is that only a few will read it through in our TL:DR world. And I can anticipate that valid, necessary resistance to the ethnic cleansing à la Minneapolis will be the excuse for a violent crackdown. It feels like an early chapter in “Black Earth” or “Bloodlands.”
From the essay: "In April the House of Representatives passed legislation extending protected status for Haitians. But the Senate would have to agree and the president would have to choose not to exercise his veto." So it's possible, but not likely. (But getting the legislation passed for releasing the Epstein documents was also possible but not likely - - but it passed and was signed.) It's worth a try to get the Senate to pass temporary protected status legislation, even if just to get them on record about it.
We were in Springfield last Wednesday and Thursday, a place we deliberately chose on a cross country trip. We went to KetKet, a Haitian restaurant, to express our support and grief at what is happening to them. And to Springfield. Everyone was warm and welcoming and the food was delicious. As a Black woman, I know American racism when I see it and it’s been always clear that this is racism, rabid racism. I’ve been a civil rights lawyer for more than 40 years, so I’ve read abominable court decisions; I cried reading this one.
Our next stop was central South Carolina…. There is no way to deny Prof. Snyder’s analysis and the historical parallels. But learned my grandfather was a leader of the anti-lynching movement there, so I take strength and courage from his example.
We must stand up to this new iteration of racism and fear, in any way we are each able to do so.
I was going to refer to JD Vance as a demagogue, which he surely is, but it lets him off the hook, it’s too tame. I now think “American Nazi” is a more appropriate and telling moniker.
The “seeing” of what is actually happening is important. The fact that Trump’s approval rating is falling gives one hope that more are seeing. However, four out of 10 Americans (per average polls) seem to prefer to remain blind. How can that be, unless American nazism appeals more than we would like to admit?
I doubt that is so. Vance is a chameleon. He is an avowed Christian to other Christians. He is a nativist to other nativists. He is a pronatalist to others of that ilk. He is a MAGA supporter and Trump loyalist to the MAGA hordes; and he is Everyman to the unaffiliated. In short, he is an unprincipled careerist who will do whatever it takes to reach the pinnacle of power.
You describe him as a chameleon but I have always thought of Vance as a Shapeshifter. While across some traditions there are "good" shapeshifters, among many indigenous cultures the Shapeshifter is synonymous with deception and a symbol of untrustworthiness or hidden motives to be feared. Definitely fits Vance.
I wonder who JD is between shapes? A no one with no real connection to other human beings.
Yes, shapeshifter is the better term for JD. Chameleons are so much more interesting and colorful than to have his name associated with such diverse species of lizards as these age-old creatures.
Even using reptiles and shapeshifters to describe JD Vance is too kind when he has about as much charm and charisma as the styrofoam couch cushions that he’s into.
It may be that all Vance has to do to “reach the pinnacle of power” is wait…and hope that the president becomes disabled before January 20, 2029. However, I concur that we need to relentlessly label him as a nazi.
Agreed.
There's evidence of his links to Opus Dei. Talk about inflated.
https://garethgore.substack.com/p/my-audience-with-pope-leo
thanks for the link...good to hear that Pope Bob is on it. I think the Pope can be a transformational figure for the Church...all it takes is a rebel American.
I call those folks "shapeshifters." Even if Vance is a shapeshifter, one shape is as a Nazi going after the "other."
That is very precise, and I love it.
Words matter. In the current environment the "Nazi" epithet can be easily shrugged off as being overused. Thus we should resort to clear and unambiguous language by describing Trump, Vance and their enablers as evil. For that is undeniable.
Also, as an athiest perhaps I am missing some subtle aspect of religion but to me "Christian nationalist" is an oxymoron.
Words do matter, even if shrugged off. A Nazi is a Nazi is a Nazi, I think Gertrude Stein would agree.
And so would the late Ivana Trump if she were still alive. She said that tRump kept, on his bedside table, a copy of Hitler's speeches.
Agreed on the oxymoron.
History is usually written after events. Timothy Snyder sees so clearly that heit can write tomorrow’s history today—not by magic, but by understanding the enduring patterns of human nature.”
JD Vance is an acolyte of fascist aficionado Curtis Yarvin who says "America needs to rid of its dictatorphobia". Tells you all you need to know about Just Dance.
They haven't felt it yet. Trump n fake Xtains have carefully blocked and bought news sources for years now. Over the past decades, I lived at times in Red States and tried to tell my Blue State friends what direction the Moses Mike Putin informed crowd wants to take us. No one believed me. Progressives were and are also insulated. (Feel the Berne? He's never taken responsibility. And wtf happened to The Nation mag?) BTW: resource esp if you're teaching https://www.interfaithalliance.org/post/3-things-to-know-about-the-anti-christian-bias-task-force
Thanks SB, your comment is a good set of questions to ask ourselves.
Tim Snyder has studied tyranny and political tyranny over many decades, and is one of the best tutors when it comes to your second paragraph’s questions. It is a strange decline which we are observing (those ‘four-out-of-ten Americans). We would not have imagined this collapse; it’s not clear how much is institutional in character (media and consumerism in the US), and how much reflects ‘personal choice’ (the notorious ‘banality of evil’ written about by Hannah Arendt).
From abroad (Scotland in my case), the US doesn’t look like it’s going to stop its slide towards illiberal, centrally authoritarian government soon. There seems to be further suffering ahead.
Regards,
Anthony.
We are fortunate to have one of the world's best scholars of Fascism, Nazism, and Genocide, and also a son of Ohio, call this ethnic cleansing what it is.. Can the MSM do the same? This Tim Snyder post should be published as widely as possible, including in the MSM, such as the New York Times.
Please note, too, Larry, how he does a couple of extra special things in his revised piece here:
1) he details, celebrates the contributions the Haitians have made to Springfield resurgence, and;
2) he nabs the Roberts court (Long Dong Clarence court, largely fascist, enabler to U.S. big money) for its, their worst criminality -- that is how its, their "overwrought performative neutrality . . . is dishonest in itself."
U.S. schools have relentlessly churned out meritocratic elites whose common denominator centers on this hollow, "performative neutrality." But of course they're not at all neutral. Don't we owe most to Timothy Snyder his acumen in locating their fascism to the actual history they half-witlessly, half churlishly serve?
Phil,
Thanks for underscoring these two key points in Tim Snyder's excellent post, especially the tragic plight of Haitians in Springfield Ohio. He does provide a careful, thoughtful, and even passionate analysis of the background to, and implications of, the most recent Supreme Court anti-immigration decision. "Ethnic cleansing has now been endorsed by the Supreme Court." and "The ethnic cleansing of Springfield would be the first. 'JD Genocide,' or perhaps 'Genocide Vance' . . . "
My brief comment earlier today reflects a continuing frustration that few MSM sources are willing to call Trump regime's policies by their historical names, i.e., ethnic cleansing and fascism, including the Nazis, whom Tim Snyder mentions over twenty times in his discussion. His historical perspective on what is happening in our country deserves much wider distribution, including by the MSM, even the NYT!
The talk of “Bood Tribes” is chilling. As Shakespeare writes in the Merchant of Venice, “Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? “. All blood is red and all humans. And just to state the obvious, Haitians are Christian too, not that that should matter. We have fallen so far in such a short time.
Thank you.
Embrace Portia's quality of mercy. Transcends religions.
Such a shame then that the Bard should have made the author of that speech, Shylock, one of the most disagreeable villians in his plays prompting scholars still even today to debate whether he was antisemitic. After all, Shakespeare would have been aware of Marlowe's 'Jew of Malta' and the Lopez Affair. The speech itself is a defence of his bloodlust.
I totally agree, but I thought something important should be said about all this blood talk. My own feeling is all blood is red and we are all humans and that’s the defining blood.
I had to look both up. Now I am more educated! I had never heard of Marlowe's "Jew of Malta" nor of the Lopez affair.
Disgusting, immoral and criminal. Our congregation is located in an area of Philadelphia blessed with Haitian immigrants who volunteer at our Free Fridge and Food pantry. We will do everything we can to protect them.
This is the best response.
File for asylum tomorrow for everyone. That is what the churches can do. Help them do the paperwork for free and help cover mailing costs etc.
Thank you Emma, we have joined other faiths at both national and local level to support both legal action and peaceful protest on the ground.
As someone who also grew up in Ohio, the SCOTUS decision, along with the Stephen Miller program, this makes me incandescently angry. It is also, as you point, incredibly stupid and shortsighted. If even DeWine is against it...
Lee, I would like to use your excellent phrase, “incandescently angry”. I often am that way.
Vance is a vicious, lying, racist demagogue - a lot smarter and more ruthless than Trump. What a joke that he claims to be a Roman Catholic. As Liz Cheney said about Trump, he shouldn't be let near the Oval Office should he run for president in '28, which he is certain to do. As to SCOTUS - the reactionary Big Six are a disgrace - especially when once considers that Amy Conan Bryant has two adopted Haitian children. What the hell is she thinking?
It's Amy Coney Barrett. I didn't know she has adopted Haitian children. That makes her decision in this case very disturbing!
She is as bigoted as the rest of them. Note her descriptions of her children at her swearing-in (or around that time.) The 2 Haitian children got very lukewarm praise, unlike the white kids.
I found that true as well??
We are blessed to have a scholar of the history of atrocity, among other things, observe and record our current events.
Thank you, Tim.
As ever, I yield to absolutely no one in the depth of my regard for Professor Snyder. And this essay is a perfect example of why he merits the most profound respect, as a commentator, researcher, scholar, academic historian, and ultimately as a political philosopher. (Note that ascending order.)
He presents the rationale of SCOTUS’ decision. (Note that a rationale and a reason are, as here, rarely the same.)
He discusses the lie about language on which this rationale was based.
He presents –exhaustively—Vance’s agency in this. ‘Create the lie, then create the solution.’
He repeatedly warns about the ground-level consequences, as threatened by Trump from the start of his campaign to today.
He finally states: “The violence, once it comes, changes normality…the ‘it’ is right there in front of our faces.”
Again –I have said this repeatedly – Professor Snyder is warning us, as loudly and clearly and unambiguously as he can, about the immediate, current, ongoing collapse of our democratic liberal order. It is one thing for a kid in a protest to yell “Nazi!” at a cop; but Professor Snyder arguably knows more than do 99.99% of all living humans what a Nazi really is, does, and has done. When he talks about Nazis, we had better listen and act. And we show little or no signs of doing so.
From Wannsee to SCOTUS to Springfield seems a closer and closer distance.
I agree, 100% with your very thorough affirmation of Professor Snyder's brilliant work. The chilling reality of the compromised, corrupted SCOTUS majority, and the march toward brutality and violence leaves me wondering (again) what are we to do??
WHAT IF... Every concerned citizen in Ohio AND SURROUNDING STATES, went to their clubs, churches, synagogues, study groups, and sign-waving compatriots, and said: LET'S GO TO SPRINGFIELD! IT'S TIME TO STAND AGAINST THE EVIL OF THIS UN-AMERICAN BRUTALITY EXERCISED. Let's be PRESENT, not as combatants but as WITNESSES. Let us STAND IN THE GAP against the LIE - That's what Christians do! That what AMERICA does. Let us show up iin such numbers - unarmed, nonviolent, and prepared to invoke the laws of this land to stand firm - to "get in the way". Let our grandchildren remember us as a generation who "made some good trouble" - even risked a little something - when the soul of a nation was at stake.
As a life-long Christian believer and pastor, I know HUNDREDS of Christians who have given their lives supporting and seeking the welfare of Haitians, who cannot possibly buy the lie that these people are a threat to American national security! And they must be STUNNED by this evidence that the highest court in this land have chosen blindness to such evil! The very humanity of our society is at stake.
There are some who are neither Christian nor pacifist who may not want to witness the destruction of our democratic republic, but who want to interrupt that historical retrogression. By way of parallel, remember that Gandhi led India against the British, not against the Nazis. Had he led against the Nazis, things may have turned out differently.
I wonder how the conversations at home go for JD Vance after one of his many vilifications of immigrants who had rightly feared for their own lives in their countries of origin? Or maybe it's just that they arrived on our shoes as poor as church mice and didn't have the wherewithal to attend the best private schools?
I sincerely hope that JD Vance being supported by American Nazis effectively disqualifies him from becoming our president.
Au contraire- it probably adds to his credentials with some voters.
Every journalist needs to ask vance, tucker and rubio to respond to megyn kelly's statement. We need each of those 3 on the record right now.
A brilliant essay. Sad and frightening. TheBund, the America Firster, Lindbergh,Father Coughlin, Henry Ford.Blood libels, The Protocols of the Elders and then the Holocaust not to forget the Einzatsgruppen, Auschwitz,Sobibor,Mathhaussn ,the list goes on. Are we to tolerate Naziism in America. Bad enough we have phony wars,kidnapping of leaders, rising antisemitism, and a total white washing of American slavery and imperialist history. Add to this the rise of White Christian Nationalism as the pinnacle of American citizenship. The ignorance of leadership, the politicalcontrol of the Oligarchs, the grifting and corruption of the leading family of the Administration. All the above are where America is and is going as it slips beneath the waves in its declining leadership and influence in the world. Economy is touted as being strong but its moral example is moving to extinction. Can the American Phoenix arise to again occupy the beacon on the hill. The next election may just may put the wind beneath the Phoenix's wings. We can only hope Martin Luther King was correct in predicting the trajectory of the moral universe and its'bending toward justice'.
I would add that we need to PUSH IT towards justice.
The Court Has a Name Now…
Amazing work here.
What happened in Springfield did not begin with policy. It began with a lie, a small, contemptible lie about cats and ducks, manufactured by a vice president in coordination with men who march with swastikas, amplified into a national hallucination, handed to a president who made it a promise. Delivered to a Supreme Court that chose, in writing, not to see any of it.
That is not negligence. That is complicity with extra steps.
The majority did not ignore the context by accident. They invoked it , "context matters," they said, and then discarded it. What remains is a ruling that functions as institutional cover for what Snyder correctly names. The Court did not merely permit the executive to act. It laundered the act. It handed back to power a clean receipt for something filthy.
Here is the thing about a big lie: it does not need you to believe it. It only needs you to stop saying otherwise. The Supreme Court has now done that work on behalf of the state.
There are ten thousand people in Springfield. Fifteen hundred children in Springfield schools. A city that was genuinely recovering, that Haitians helped recover, about to be deliberately destroyed in the name of saving it from destruction that never happened.
The lie will have become "true." That is always how this works.
Johan
"A lie will cross the world while the truth is tying its sandals."
Roman proverb
Dear Johan,
I liked your comments! I do not live in the USA and I identify as "global citizen" - a term coined by Marshall McLuhan (probably the first media ecologist) when I was in my teens. Neil Postman of New York University founded the first media ecology department.
The complicity you describe IS outrageous. Anne Wilson Schaef wrote many books - one of them called "When Society Becomes an Addict". She died just a few years ago but she was definitely on target. My thoughts are with all the people in Springfield.
Maybe Vance needs a new name: J. Darth Vader
In a comment a few weeks ago someone made a typo, and his name came out “ JV Dunce”
Thank you.
If you like creative music look for the Marsh Family in Great Britain (on YouTube)
They address the politics using familiar tunes and their song lines are on target as well.
Thank you!
As always, Johan, penetrating insights here. Thank you!
And we have a grandchild of immigrants to thank for this ruling:
https://grandma1943.substack.com/p/great-grandma-speaks-out-2c1?r=1hdkhs&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Thanks for making the case so clearly that Vance is a White Christian Nationalist/Nazi. It's refreshing to be able to say it -- he is a whited sepulchre.
The Supreme Court disgusts me with their decision regarding the Haitians. JD Vance disgusts me as well. I know he was running for VP at the time but he was still a senator from Ohio and, as far as I am concerned, it was sickening to see him throw his own constituents under the bus. I hope GOP voters keep Springfield in their minds in 2028--he could do it over and over again just like Trump.
Your step by step account of how the lies originated and metastasized, and now are embedded in law, horrified me first thing in the morning. Waking up to the incipient legally endorsed ethnic cleansing program - today Haitians and Venezuelans, so many targets for tomorrow - made me feel like I am in 1930s Germany. This may be one of the most important essays you’ve written, and my guess is that only a few will read it through in our TL:DR world. And I can anticipate that valid, necessary resistance to the ethnic cleansing à la Minneapolis will be the excuse for a violent crackdown. It feels like an early chapter in “Black Earth” or “Bloodlands.”
Is there any legal route to challenge this decision?
Can there be a new case based on presentation of evidence of conditions in Haiti? Overturning of the Homeland Security eval?
I understand last week's decision turned on the inaccurate finding against racist motivation.
Can we adopt them?
Do you mean the children under 16?
Is Congress able to pass a new law to protect those vulnerables?
From the essay: "In April the House of Representatives passed legislation extending protected status for Haitians. But the Senate would have to agree and the president would have to choose not to exercise his veto." So it's possible, but not likely. (But getting the legislation passed for releasing the Epstein documents was also possible but not likely - - but it passed and was signed.) It's worth a try to get the Senate to pass temporary protected status legislation, even if just to get them on record about it.
Totally agree
"Is Congress able . . .?"
I salute you, Peter, on your -- even if unintentional -- sense of humor.
We were in Springfield last Wednesday and Thursday, a place we deliberately chose on a cross country trip. We went to KetKet, a Haitian restaurant, to express our support and grief at what is happening to them. And to Springfield. Everyone was warm and welcoming and the food was delicious. As a Black woman, I know American racism when I see it and it’s been always clear that this is racism, rabid racism. I’ve been a civil rights lawyer for more than 40 years, so I’ve read abominable court decisions; I cried reading this one.
Our next stop was central South Carolina…. There is no way to deny Prof. Snyder’s analysis and the historical parallels. But learned my grandfather was a leader of the anti-lynching movement there, so I take strength and courage from his example.
We must stand up to this new iteration of racism and fear, in any way we are each able to do so.
Yes, Punkette is right, bless you!
More importantly, please bump this comment by Colette up beside the insights from SB (currently at top-of-the-likes).
Regards, Anthony
Bless you, Colette! ♥️