Jonathan P. Baird

For anyone concerned about the advance of authoritarianism in America, there has been plenty to worry about. In spite of his multiple criminal prosecutions, the Republican presidential frontrunner appears to be running neck and neck with President Biden.

With his vermin comment and his talk about the nation’s blood being poisoned, Trump has been sounding more fascist-like. He explicitly calls for the jailing of his political opponents. Last year on his social media he advocated termination of the Constitution. It is an open question whether American democracy would survive another Trump presidency.

The Democratic response to this fascist threat has been tepid at best. Where are the full-throated opponents of American-style fascism?

Almost no one knows the 1940’s story of Frances Sweeney, an incredibly brave anti-fascist organizer and writer from Boston. The journalist I.F. Stone described her:

“Fran Sweeney could not be discouraged, could not be beaten down, could not be frightened, could not be put in her place. She was a one-man crusade, She burned with some of the hottest and most inextinguishable passion for social justice that I have ever seen.”

Sweeney’s example offers hope and inspiration for all who are concerned about saving our democracy and about moving America forward in a progressive direction. Out of her own creativity and initiative, Sweeney played a pivotal role in crippling the far right in Boston. Activists today could learn from this history. Her story should be much more widely known.

Most people probably think of Boston as a liberal cosmopolitan city. There is no more reliably blue metropolitan area. So it might be surprising for readers to learn that in 1940 Boston was a fascist stronghold.

In the period leading up to World War II, there was a powerful far right movement in America. One leader of the movement was the Detroit-based radio priest Father Charles Coughlin who was enormously popular. Coughlin’s weekly show on Sunday had over 30 million listeners, almost one-quarter of the entire American population.

Massachusetts Governor and four-time mayor of Boston James Michael Curley called Boston “the most Coughlinite city in America”. Curley said “Politicians tripped over one another to be seen with him”.

Coughlin was much more than a radio personality. He inspired the organization of the Christian Front, a far right organization with particularly strong chapters in Boston and New York. Toeing the German Nazi line, Coughlin called for the United States to stay out of any European war. Before World War II, that seemingly anti-war position was widely popular.

The Christian Front blamed hostilities in Europe on the Jews. Coughlin equated Jews with communists and he reprinted the fraudulent antisemitic screed, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, in his magazine.

Supporters of the Christian Front sold the magazine, ironically named Social Justice, after Mass in many Catholic parishes in Boston. Boston Cardinal William O’Connell was silent about the Christian Front and its vicious antisemitism while many Catholic priests soft-pedaled the far right politics. From 1939-1942, the Christian Front was highly visible with its offices located downtown on the second floor of the Copley Square Hotel.

In the early 1940’s, Jews in Boston were getting physically assaulted. Gangs of Catholic teens entered Jewish neighborhoods with blackjacks and brass knuckles. The gangs beat up Jewish residents and vandalized stores. They rampaged through Jewish parts of Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan.

As an Irish Catholic with universalistic values, Sweeney was appalled by Coughlin and the Christian Front. She was disgusted that Catholics who themselves had been victims of discrimination would turn around and discriminate against Jews. She organized an American-Irish Defense Association to create a counter voice and she launched her own offensive against the Christian Front.

Sweeney turned to journalism as her primary vehicle to expose the Christian Front and as a way to motivate Irish Catholics to stand against fascism. She pushed the Boston Herald to cover the Christian Front and she herself had a weekly column, Rumor Clinic, that she used to correct misinformation.

Her hard-hitting articles led to her being pushed out of the conservative Herald. She launched a new publication in late 1942, the Boston City Reporter. It was a four page mimeographed newsletter that came out monthly. She exposed Christian Front leaders’ ties to Nazis and showed how they cloaked antisemitism behind attacks on globalists and international bankers. She quickly built a paid subscriber base and got the newsletter mailed to thousands in Irish neighborhoods in Boston.

Sweeney exposed the talented leader of the Boston Christian Front, Francis Moran, as a paid Nazi propagandist. Moran was, in fact, an agent of the Nazis, recruited by a Nazi SS officer and consul, Herbert Scholz. This was like early day Michael Flynn, where you had an unregistered lobbyist working without disclosing his connections.

Sweeney’s efforts led to the Boston police intervening and actually shutting down the Christian Front. About the mission of the Boston City Reporter, Sweeney wrote:

“The object of the Boston City Reporter is and always has been to tell the public who is using prejudice against entire races and religions for undemocratic purposes – and how.”

Sweeney organized young people to be reporters, including Nat Hentoff, who later became a writer for the Village Voice. Hentoff dedicated his memoir Boston Boy to Fran Sweeney. Hentoff was among the young Jews who had gotten beat up by the antisemitic gangs. Sweeney gathered 14 affidavits from Jews who had been beaten and got the story publicized. Her efforts helped to stop the physical assaults on Jews in Boston.

Cardinal O’Connell threatened to excommunicate her from the church if she kept writing but she never did. Sweeney died of heart problems at age 38 in 1944. Her story is told in Charles Gallagher’s fascinating book, Nazis of Copley Square.

Fran Sweeney shows the difference one person can make.

For any close observer of the MAGA movement, the last week or two has been extremely revealing. Donald Trump and the MAGA movement are telling us exactly what they intend to do if they re-gain power. Shredding the constitution, Trump plans to replace democracy with strongman rule. This assertion is not based on the words of a raving leftist. It is coming straight from the horse’s mouth.

Americans are accustomed to expecting the same political horse races that have characterized past presidential elections. That is the definition of normalcy. What is different about Trump 2024 is that it is focused on achieving power, not necessarily winning any election.

It is not that Trump does not want to win. Because he and his allies have a terrible record of losing elections, Trump has a Plan B, C, D and E. Elections are too risky and unreliable for Trump.

January 6 is a blueprint of sorts. After 60 courts rejected his Big Lie, after his false elector scheme failed and after Mike Pence did not come through for him, Trump opted for a violent coup attempt. There is absolutely no reason not to expect a repeat violent performance in 2024.

The truth is that we came remarkably close to losing democracy in 2020. No one knows how 2024 will play out. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, extremist judges and misinformation remain key Trump weapons. We do know that Trump will say he won regardless of the result.

Losing is less of an option now for Trump because losing would very likely mean prison time. 91 felony counts can focus the mind. If he can connive his way to power, he will make the criminal cases go away. He has a long career of evading consequences for shady behavior. This is someone with absolutely no respect for democracy, the rule of law or elections.

As was revealed in the last week by former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis, Trump had no intention of leaving the White House in 2020, even after he lost. Ellis told Kilton County Ga prosecutors that Trump’s senior aide Dan Scavino told her “the boss” was not leaving the White House “under any circumstances”. This was after all legal challenges were exhausted.

When she testified before the January 6 Committee Ellis recalled that Trump told his Chief of Staff Mark Meadows: “I don’t want people to know that we lost. It is embarrassing, figure it out. We need to figure it out.” Trump ultimately could not change the 2020 result but for 2024, desperation will likely be the mother of invention.

The Trump playbook is not hard to figure. He doesn’t abide by any election result. Any election he doesn’t win is a fraud. He has said and will say the 2024 election is rigged. For his followers he will plant the idea that he couldn’t lose a fair election. A loss is per se proof of fraud. As for his criminal prosecutions, regardless of evidence, they are simply dismissed as witchhunts.

If he wins the presidency again, retribution is the major Trump theme. As Ben Collins has said: “Trumpism is no longer a political movement. It’s a violent fairy tale of revenge on political enemies”. Trump has vowed to use the Justice Department to go after his political adversaries. The hit list includes Joe Biden and his family, his former Chief of Staff John Kelly, his former Attorney General Bill Barr, his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley.

Trump explained in Claremont that he sees his political enemies as “vermin”. When he is talking about “Communists, Marxists, Fascists and Radical Left thugs” that is substitute language he uses to describe Democrats and any opponent. The term “vermin” is straight from Nazi lexicon. It is the language they used to describe Jews.

What do you do to vermin? You exterminate. When asked about the use of the term “vermin”, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung responded:

“Their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”

The Washington Post has reported that Trump will invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military to quell civil demonstrations. I am sure he remembers, not fondly, the enormous women’s marches that ushered in his term in 2017.

As for his dictatorial plans, Project 2025 is a good place to begin. Crafted by his allies in the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 is a recipe for a vastly expanded Executive Branch power. The plan is to give Trump dictatorial powers.

immigration is an area where Trump has been most explicit. He plans to deport many millions of immigrants. He wants to detain them in what his aide Stephen Miller calls “vast holding facilities on open land in Texas near the border” while they wait to be expelled. Trump wants to get rid of due process hearings so that he can expedite removals.

Contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment and the U.S. Supreme Court case of United States v Wong Kim Ark, he wants to end birthright citizenship by executive order. He wants to impose an ideological test on immigrant entry and he wants the freedom to revoke visas from foreigners for any reason. He would re-impose a Muslim ban and Title 42 which falsely claimed immigrants carried infectious diseases,

Stephen Miller has explained that MAGA plans a massive anti-immigration blitz to overwhelm legal opposition. Dissatisfied with Federalist Society lawyers, Trump wants to utilize lawyers who are to the right of Attila the Hun to pursue a brand of autocratic “legality”. It may be a challenge to find such unethical extremist lawyers but from past experience I would have to say probably not.

While the concentration camps are allegedly being created to hold immigrants awaiting deportation, it is a fair question to ask if others Trump deems as “vermin” will also land there.

Considering what is at stake in 2024, public response to the threat represented by MAGA has been muted. Brian Klaas said “we are sleepwalking toward authoritarianism”. Americans have an anti-fascist tradition that is deeply rooted in our history. It is time for sleepwalkers to awake.

For those committed to a two state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, events since October 7 have been a worst case scenario. I begin from the premise that the fates of both people are inextricably intertwined. An ultimately just settlement can only come from recognizing common humanity and from insuring civil rights for both. No side has clean hands.

The Hamas attack on October 7 was absolutely sickening. Attacking and shooting young people at a rock concert is the definition of evil. Going from home to home massacring families is not the action of any liberation movement. In the New Yorker, David Remnick wrote that Hamas fighters methodically planned the Kibbutz attacks for two years with the intent to kill as many as possible and to take hostages. The killing was not spontaneous improvisation.

Hamas is a theocratic terrorist organization which has constantly called for Israel’s annihilation. That goal is in their charter. Hamas aims for a single caliphate throughout the Middle East. A senior Hamas official, former Foreign Minister Ghazi Hamad, has vowed to repeat the horrific attacks of October 7 ‘again and again’.

Hamas poses an existential threat to Israel’s survival. I would not fault the Israelis for finding a continuing threat to southern Israel border communities unacceptable. No Israeli government could survive in the future if it doesn’t take that threat seriously. How many Israelis living on a kibbutz in southern Israel would feel safe returning to live there?

From a Jewish perspective, the killing of 1400 Israelis evoked Holocaust trauma. It is the worst massacre of Jews since 1945. I don’t think most non-Jews get how deep in Jewish historical experience and memory these events penetrate.

Jew-hating has a history that embraces crusades, inquisitions, blood libels and conspiracy theories, pogroms and a Holocaust. The Hamas slaughter of innocent civilians should be seen in that context and anyone who brushes off these murders has a shallow understanding of antisemitism.

That said, Israel’s response, its assault on Gaza, also must be forcefully condemned. The Israelis are not pinpointing their October 7 attackers for retribution. They are collectively punishing all Gazans.

Indiscriminately bombing a trapped population is a war crime. Since October 7, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, over 11,000 Palestinians have been killed, including 4000 children. That number of deaths is unspeakable. Much of the population of Gaza have been forced from their homes raising fears of a second Nakba. Israel has cut off food, water, fuel and electricity.

This behavior violates international law and it is appalling. There is a principle of proportionality in the law of war that holds reasonable care must be taken in attacking military objectives so that civilians are not needlessly injured. In their rage, the Israelis have tossed that principle aside. They are not distinguishing between Hamas and the broader community of Palestinians.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant described Palestinians as “human animals”. That type of dehumanization opens the door to barbarism and he is hardly alone in voicing that type of sentiment. It is common on the Israeli far right. Leaders like Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Rabbi Dov Lior and anti-gay religious extremist Avi Maoz routinely get away with making disgusting and hateful racist, misogynistic and homophobic remarks.

There must be an immediate ceasefire. Negotiations for return of the hostages should be a top priority. A prisoner swap is needed to save as many lives as possible. Beyond that, every effort must be expended to prevent a wider war which could run the risk of engaging greater powers. The U.S. has mistakenly allowed Israel to act with impunity. U.S. policy has been anything but even-handed.

The ground invasion of Gaza is a trap for Israel as is the idea of Israel occupying and politically controlling Gaza indefinitely. It will backfire on the occupiers and will only increase antisemitism world-wide. Also, as has been pointed out, Hamas will be recruiting its next generation of fighters from the families of the bereaved. Hamas wants to lure Israel into bloodier engagements.

The goal of completely destroying Hamas is an impossible fantasy. Even if the Israelis kill off much of the Hamas leadership, there will be a new incarnation of something even worse, akin to the birth of ISIS in Iraq. This is a road that will never lead to any just peace.

So much responsibility falls on the Netanyahu government. To maintain his personal power, his ultimate goal, Netanyahu made a deal with the devil, allying with the most extreme Jewish fanatics, fascists, and messianic settlers. Netanyahu sold himself as the protector of Israel. Preoccupied with his own criminal trials, Netanyahu utterly failed. He will always be remembered in Israel for the security failure of October 7.

It is not remembered that Netanyahu supported and propped up Hamas as a way to sabotage the possibility of a two state solution. In an effort to strengthen Hamas relative to the Palestinian Authority, Netanyahu facilitated the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars from Qatar into Gaza. It is an open question whether some of that money financed October 7 and other Hamas terrorism.

By boosting a partner Netanyahu knew Israelis would not, for good reason, accept, Netanyahu aimed to kill off the peace process. Instead his conniving blew up in his face.

Netanyahu’s administration degraded Israel’s military readiness in south Israel because their higher priority was supporting West Bank settlers, his political allies.That failure needs its own commission to explore how that could have happened.

Meanwhile settlers have escalated assaults and murders of West Bank Palestinians. Many of the settlers are religious extremists who believe the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea has been biblically granted to Israel. Netanyahu has let the fanatics run wild. The Israeli military has not reined them in.

The American response to Israel/Gaza as exemplified in the House’s wrong-headed censure of Rashida Tlaib must instead be focused on stopping the war and returning hostages. Tlaib is being scapegoated. Israel’s military actions are only creating more misery and hate across the region. The situation demands a political, not a military solution.

On October 25, a category 5 hurricane, Otis, caused catastrophic damage to Acapulco and surrounding areas on the west coast of Mexico. Otis had winds of 165 miles per hour. It left Acapulco looking like a post-apocalyptic war zone.

High-rise hotels had their windows and interior walls blown out. Sunken and flipped-over boats littered the beaches and harbor areas. Residents are still searching for the missing and dead bodies continue to be pulled from coastal waters. The storm destroyed many homes, blew off roofs, uprooted trees and caused huge mudslides.

The National Hurricane Center said, “There are no hurricanes on record even close to this intensity for this part of Mexico.” So far there are 48 people dead and 58 people missing. The storm knocked out electricity and phone service and left Acapulco with no drinking water.

The most amazing thing about the storm was its rapid intensification. Immediately before the storm, weather forecasters predicted Otis to be a category 1 hurricane. Catching everyone by surprise, including the residents of Acapulco, within a period of twelve hours, Otis went from tropical storm to category 5 hurricane.

The water off Acapulco had a temperature of almost 90 degrees. Hurricanes draw energy from warm surface waters. I don’t think it has been realized that oceans have absorbed 90% of global warming. The writer Zoe Schlanger wrote in the Atlantic. “A hot ocean is hurricane food”. Schlanger quoted Jeff Masters, a hurricane specialist:

“Hurricanes are heat engines. They take heat energy from the oceans, in the form of the water vapor that they evaporate from it, and convert it to the kinetic energy of their winds.”

Considering the magnitude of Otis, it has garnered remarkably little attention. It was a blip in the news. I am afraid this is consistent with the way climate change is being reported. Denialism and ignorance reign. Sure there are many other competing news stories that merit great concern but the refusal to recognize climate is the story with the greatest potential to come back to bite us.

Everything happens in a context and Otis is one of 23 separate billion dollar climate disasters in 2023. Just off the top, there was the wildfire in Maui, Hurricane Idalia in Florida, the record-breaking heatwaves in South Europe and China, the crazy smoke from Canada’s wildfires that blanketed American cities with an orange sky, the floods in Libya in September that killed over 11,000 and the flood in Montpelier.

Living in New England seemed to offer some insulation from climate change but the events this summer in Montpelier showed that to be an illusion. Who would have thought that would happen? Probably like others I nursed the mistaken belief that the northern New England ecosphere offered some of the best protection against climate disaster.

In spite of all these weather events staring us in the face, there is an ongoing failure to acknowledge the obvious. The U.N. Secretary General Antonio Gutteres put his finger on it. “Climate breakdown has begun”. But instead of any unified global response, there is inaction. Where is the will to at least try and mitigate the damage?

Hurricane Otis and the other 22 climate disasters this year are a direct result of the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. The evidence is in and it is not controverted except by climate change-denying quacks. There is an overwhelming consensus among scientists about climate change.

You might think humanity would have a stake in its own self-preservation but the pursuit of profit would appear to win out. Time is of the essence but humans don’t have a great track record of working together across national boundaries. Still, what alternative is there. Humanity must come together very quickly with a shared climate agenda.

The obstacles are admittedly enormous. There is already a huge amount of global warming in the pipeline because of the continued burning of fossil fuel. Fossil fuel companies are pretending there is no climate emergency. Almost unbelievably, they are doubling down on fossil fuel expansion.

In a distracted world, they see no end to oil demand. ExxonMobil just spent $59.5 billion acquiring U.S. shale oil producer, Pioneer Natural Resources. Chevron announced it is purchasing Hess, an oil and gas company for $53 billion in stock. Their behavior is beyond selfish. It reflects the worst, most short-sighted capitalist mentality. They are depending on the world not paying attention.

Leadership on climate is sadly missing in our political parties. The Republicans are anti-intellectual and anti-science, an utterly lost cause. An NPR poll in August found that 70% of Republicans saw climate change as either a minor threat or no threat at all. In the House, the Republicans just voted to slash 39% of the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. They also voted to require the Biden administration to advance oil drilling off the Alaska coast.

The Democrats’ record on climate is, at best, mixed. While the Biden administration pushed and passed a significant climate-smart economic stimulus in 2022, it also approved a large drilling project known as Willow on federal land in Alaska. Based on the science, there should be absolutely no new investment in oil, gas or coal. Democratic urgency on climate is lacking.

The disaster in Acapulco is a window into the future. Surprise, rapidly-intensifying super-storms will increasingly be with us, causing predictable death and mayhem. We are in uncharted waters. Brushing aside and minimizing epic storms is a pathway to hell.