Jonathan P. Baird

When it comes to little-known, important stories about Jewish resistance to the Nazis in the 1930’s and after, the story of Fritz Bauer stands out. Hailing from Stuttgart, Bauer was a lawyer, a judge and a prosecutor in Germany both before the Nazis came to power and after they were vanquished.

For 38 years, he used his legal skills to defend democracy and then later to pursue Nazi war criminals. After the war, his mission was lonely and he faced unremitting German hostility.

People might assume that after the Nazis were defeated in 1945, public opinion turned. That was not the case for many years in Germany.

There was a protection racket or it could be called a conspiracy of silence to hide Nazi crimes. The German judiciary remained reluctant to prosecute Nazis. Thousands of former Nazis were returned to positions of power in West Germany in government ministries, the police and the judiciary. Only a very tiny number of Germans who participated in war crimes or crimes against the Jewish people ever faced prosecution.

This history is little-known as the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union superseded the demise of German fascism. It is notable that in 1958 Germany’s highest court, the Federal Constitutional Court, claimed that not one of the verdicts of the Nuremberg trials was legally valid.

Bauer was a legal renegade. To appreciate his later accomplishments after World War 2, it helps to know about the pre-war period. Bauer became a criminal judge as a young man in 1930. Unlike most judges who were conservatives, Bauer was a member of the German Social Democratic Party, a left party opposed to fascism. Although he was Jewish, he downplayed his background.

Even before they came to power, the Nazis targeted Jewish judges. Victimized by anti-semites who made accusations, Bauer was demoted and taken off criminal cases. He had become better known because he and Kurt Schumacher, the head of the Social Democrats in Stuttgart travelled around Germany giving speeches defending the Weimar democracy. It was a time of intense political polarization.

After the election in 1933 with Hitler appointed Chancellor by President von Hindenburg, Nazi partisans arrested Bauer and sent him to a concentration camp where he spent eight months. He faced torture and relentless abuse. The Nazis forced him to clean the “twelve-cylinder”, a filthy pit beneath the camp’s latrine.

As noted, Bauer managed to get out of the concentration camp. He believed his release was due to friends in the judiciary. Out of captivity, he was treated like a criminal. He could no longer earn a living as an attorney as Jewish lawyers were banned. Bauer and his family escaped to Denmark which also proved to be a hostile environment. As the Nazis pursued their opponents in Denmark, Bauer ended up locked up again first in a Copenhagen prison and then in an island prison camp. He got out after a couple months.

In 1943, Bauer heard there was a plan to round up Denmark’s Jews. He went into hiding. He and his family escaped to Sweden in a motorboat owned by a Danish fisherman. His family members who had remained in Stuttgart were murdered by the Nazis.

When the Nazis capitulated in May 1945, Bauer wanted to return to Germany as soon as possible. Regarded as “too Jewish”, Bauer remained a pariah. He could not get any job offer even though he tried to sell himself as now having “no religion”. In spite of a very strong legal background, the Jewish tag diminished employability prospects because of profound anti-semitism that remained the rule in Germany.

He resettled in Germany in 1949. He was finally able to get a legal job as a provincial attorney general in an obscure court close to the East German border. It was from this perch that Bauer made his mark.

Prosecuting Nazis was not the path to success and popularity in Germany. A case came along though that grabbed Bauer. A prominent former Nazi, Otto Ernst Remer, had called the plotters of a July 1944 attempt on Hitler’s life “traitors”. At issue in the case was whether Remer had made a factually false statement.

Being media savvy, Bauer engaged the press. He used the trial as a consciousness-raising exercise about the evils of fascism. Bauer persuasively argued that disobeying a tyrant was patriotic. Remer ended up with only a three month sentence he never served but Bauer succeeded in sparking a national debate.

It was not lost on Bauer that the Holocaust was not the focus of the Nuremberg trials in 1945. The Nuremberg prosecutors picked 24 defendants who were tried for waging a war of aggression. Nuremberg did not focus on the concentration camps. The Holocaust was included in the list of indictments but it played a marginal role in the trials.

Bauer gained fame and notoriety because unlike almost all other German jurists he pursued bringing Nazi criminals to justice. Nothing like that had been done by the German judicial system. Thousands of Germans implicated in mass murder simply disappeared into the post-war normalcy of everyday life.

In 1957, an Argentine Jew, Lothar Hermann, privately wrote Bauer that he knew Adolf Eichmann, chief organizer of the Holocaust, was alive in Buenos Aires. Eichmann was living under an assumed name and Hermann had his address. The West German intelligence service had known about Eichmann since 1952 but sat on the information. Even worse, Nazis like Eichmann, were protected by a well-connected network of sympathizers.

Bauer secretly passed his Eichmann file onto the Israeli secret service, the Mossad. He could tell virtually no one because experience had proven that any leak would allow Eichmann to escape. Bauer’s work had been frequently thwarted by other civil servants sharing information and warning Nazi suspects in advance of their possible arrest. In this instance, Bauer played a key role behind-the-scenes in Eichmann’s apprehension by the Israelis.

In 1963-1964, in Frankfurt, Bauer pursued his most audacious mass trial, prosecuting war crimes committed at Auschwitz. Bauer sought to reveal the historical truth of that concentration camp. He recruited the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich to prepare expert reports on Nazi persecution. He selected defendants who represented a cross section of the whole camp that would expose the system as a whole. In his biography, titled Fritz Bauer, Ronen Steinke wrote:

“Bauer and his team of prosecutors wanted to highlight the division of labor that had enabled the Nazi killing machine to run so smoothly, a division of labor that historians would later identify as the key structural feature of the Holocaust…The savage efficiency with which the mass killings were performed depended on highly specialized tasks being distributed through the Nazi workforce in a factory-like manner.”

The Auschwitz trial did not result in long sentences for the defendants. The judges assigned responsibility for the crimes of the Holocaust only to the men who gave the orders like Hitler, Heydrich and Himmler.

In 1968, Bauer died. His personal bravery paved the way for greater change that came over ten years after he was gone as Germany did ultimately reckon more with the legacy of the Holocaust. One of Bauer’s own prosecutors described him as “ a powder keg”.
During his life he faced constant death threats and late night phone callers screaming things like “Die, you Jewish pig!”.

Whether democracy and the rule of law will survive in America may depend on whether there are jurists and prosecutors with the courage of a Fritz Bauer.

It is hard not to feel hopeless and cynical in the face of mass shootings like Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas. The national failure to act is long-standing and could not be more apparent. Beyond sending prayers, all legislation has been sclerotically deadlocked in Congress. Republicans, captive to the gun lobby, stonewall. Democrats lack the votes to move forward any gun control legislation.

If we step back though, it should be clear that these mass shootings are not inevitable. They are largely preventable. It is not a given that the United States should have a gun homicide rate 25 times higher than peer advanced countries. The problem is too easy access to too many guns.

There are estimated to be over 400 million guns in the U.S.. Constitutional protection for gun ownership does not preclude reasonable regulation of guns. No constitutional right is absolute. While the Supreme Court appears poised to loosen gun restrictions in a New York case, that does not mean that all gun control reforms will not pass constitutional muster.

In spite of the current political balance of forces and the likelihood the filibuster can stop reform now, there is a strong and popular gun control agenda which could be winning but it requires a long-term perspective. It will take some years to achieve to get the votes. Such an agenda could, over time, significantly reduce mass shootings.

The organization, Everytown for Gun Safety, has an agenda of reforms: background checks on all gun sales, red flag laws, prohibiting people with dangerous histories from having guns, banning assault weapons, and barring high capacity magazines and bump stock devices.

Background checks are currently required for all gun sales by licensed gun dealers but not for unlicensed sellers. Unlicensed sellers could be doing business at gun sales or online. If you have a felony conviction or a domestic violence restraining order or some other reason to evade a licensed seller, no universal background check fast tracks lethal access. Why in the world should this be allowed?

According to Everytown for Gun Safety, one in three mass shooters have been legally prohibited from possessing firearms at the time of their shooting. We should not be making it so easy for mass shooters.

Red flag laws allow relatives or law enforcement to temporarily remove a person’s access to guns when there are warning signs that the person is in crisis and they might harm themselves, family members or others. Such laws require a due process hearing before a judge.

Nineteen states already have such laws. Everytown for Gun Safety says that in 56% of mass shootings, the shooter exhibited dangerous warning signs before the shooting. In 2020, Governor Chris Sununu vetoed a red flag bill that passed the N.H. Legislature. Do we really want people who are threatening others or themselves to have access to lethal weapons? That is crazy.

One thread that has been inadequately explored by the media is the relationship between mass shooting and hatred of women. In so many mass shootings, misogyny motivates violence and guns have had a major presence just as they have in everyday domestic violence. Guns are typically the weapon of choice.

Guns seem to provide abusers a sense of empowerment they are lacking in their life. Earlier in my life, when I represented domestic violence victims in court, I was struck by how abusers used their guns to threaten, intimidate and control their victims. More than half of mass shootings are domestic violence-related.

Preventing people with dangerous histories from having guns should be a no-brainer. If you are a convicted felon, a domestic violence abuser under a restraining order, a convicted stalker or someone suffering from severe mental illness, guns are not for you. Under these circumstances, the law should mandate forfeiture of lethal weapons and gun rights.

Now there is a creepy online subculture of incels, misogyny and male supremacy. Mass shootings are almost exclusively committed by men. We should be studying how and why male rage is playing.a role in these shootings. The mass murder committed by an incel in Isla Vista, California in 2014 is a blueprint and reflects an ideological viewpoint.

Quite a few of these mass shootings connect up to a violent ideology of the far right. The shooters are often performing for an online audience of male supremacist and white supremacist haters. It is generally a mistake to see these shooters as lone wolves. I suggest, as in Buffalo, their motivation is revealing and provides clues for those investigating why these shootings are happening.

Mass shooters typically now use assault weapons which are really military weapons. They fire far more bullets much faster than manual-action hunting rifles. When assault weapons are used in a mass shooting six times as many people are shot. Each round from an assault weapon also inflicts greater damage to the human body than a round from a typical handgun.

High capacity magazines and devices like bump stocks also have no legitimate civilian use. They are about killing more people faster. Bump stocks are used to convert rifles into machine guns. The 2017 Las Vegas shooter who used AR-type rifles with bump stocks shot over a thousand rounds in a matter of minutes. He killed 59 and injured over 500 others.

As with assault rifles, high capacity magazines (defined as ammunition feeding devices capable of holding more than 10 rounds) lead to many more shot quickly without needing to pause to reload. Mass shooting incidents where the firearm was equipped with a high-capacity magazine resulted in nearly five times as many people shot and twice as many fatalities.

It is highly likely those opposed to any gun control will talk about the slippery slope and how gun control would interfere with self-defense. It should be clear that such arguments are false on their face. Many gun control reforms do not interfere with law-abiding gun owners’ rights.

There are no miracle cures for America’s mass shootings but that does not mean that nothing can be done. It is going to take political will and a long-term strategy committed to reducing the incidence of mass shootings. Mass shootings are a horrible indictment of America and they should be considered unacceptable for any civilized society.

Among the extremely upsetting aspects of the Buffalo domestic terror shooting is the news that a great many Americans accept some version of the great replacement theory, the ideology espoused by the Buffalo shooter. That theory holds that elites are attempting to destroy the white race through systematic replacement by non-white groups.

In a new poll, the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found one in three Americans believe in some variant of replacement theory. The theory had been fringe. The poll appears to indicate it is much more widely accepted by the American public.

The great replacement theory is often framed as anti-immigrant because they are the supposed replacers but in the case of Buffalo, the shooter blamed black people.The shooter argued genetics, white superiority and black inferiority. Somehow, he convinced himself that the threat to white people was so dire it justified mass murder.

Fear of whites becoming a minority in America along with fixation on white birthrates and white fertility consumed him. He maintained there is a genetic basis for the racial IQ gap. He also argued there is a genetic basis for higher rates of crime committed by black people.

His belief system led him to drive three hours to a largely black zip code he did not know and shoot complete strangers. He killed ten people and wounded three.

In his writing, the shooter also argued that blacks were not intelligent enough to engineer the replacement of whites. He blamed the Jews as the masterminds behind replacement. He said Jews control academia, the media and industry. He connected Jews to child abuse and pedophilia. Finally, he argued that Jews were behind both the NAACP and Black Lives Matter.

I do wonder, given the rural area where the shooter lived, if he had ever had any kind of personal contact with a black person or a Jewish person in his life. He became a fascist through internet browsing. He said he was bored during the pandemic. His goal was to kill as many black people as possible.

There is no great mystery in how replacement theory became popularized. It used to be circulating very narrowly among white nationalists, Klansmen and neo-Nazis. Then cable TV, especially FOX and Tucker Carlson picked it up, sanitized it and mainstreamed it. Carlson doesn’t talk about Jewish cabals but the message is essentially the same. Instead of a Klansman in a robe, you have a very respectable-looking preppy wearing a suit.

The replacement theory is now talking points for all kinds of Republican candidates.

The New York Times investigation of Carlson identified more than 400 episodes of Carlson’s show where he pushed core principles of great replacement theory. Carlson reframed the issue as voter replacement. He has argued that President Biden weaponized immigration as a political tool to strengthen Democrats and weaken the power of white people.

There is little question that white nationalists love Tucker Carlson. Carlson remains extremely popular. His show remains the most watched cable news show for American adults between 25-54. In his book Rising out of Hatred, Eli Saslow showed how white nationalists consider Carlson one of their own because of his ability to carry their message into the public space like no one else.

It is a mistake to conflate the Buffalo shooter’s actions with mental illness. The shooter was meticulous in his planning and execution. As with the other white supremacist mass shooters in New Zealand, Pittsburgh and El Paso, a warped ideology drove him.

CNN reported the shooter had studied previous hate attacks and shootings. He had visited the Tops supermarket in early March and then again the day before the shooting. He had considered attacking a church or elementary school but chose a supermarket because of the number of people that go to grocery stores.

He looked to Google’s “popular time” graph for the Tops supermarket to figure the best time for his attack. He planned the attack for the time the store would be busiest so he could shoot the most people.

Rather than mental illness, I would locate the Buffalo shooting inside the context of American history. The great replacement theory is not new. Since the very beginning of America, there has been a struggle between the forces committed to the preservation of white power and those fighting for multi-racial democracy.

The Buffalo shooter is part of a deep-seated tradition of racism and white supremacy that goes back to the earliest days of the republic. The founding generation created a white republic. Democratic ideals were compromised by accommodation with slavery.

The three-fifths clause of the U.S. Constitution declared that for purposes of representation in Congress enslaved blacks would be counted as three-fifths of the number of white inhabitants of that state. The three-fifths clause remained in effect until passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.

Ironically, the best argument for great replacement can be made by Native Americans. The country was founded on genocide and extermination of indigenous people. White people have been the replacers of Native Americans.

Along the way in American history, those committed to preservation of white supremacy have a formidable track record, using law and violence. I think of Dred Scott and the Supreme Court saying “Black people have no rights which the white man was bound to respect”. After Reconstruction, there was Jim Crow and the lynching of over 4000 African Americans.

The twentieth century featured the battle against racial segregation. Many white people persistently attempted to maintain white power. For example, Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo wrote a book in 1947 titled Take your choice: separation or mongrelization. An influential racist, Bilbo was a senator from 1935 to 1947. He claimed he was not prejudiced but he argued that he would rather see his race blotted out with an atomic bomb than destroyed by interbreeding and intermarriage.

I submit that the recurrence of mass murders committed by white supremacists is best addressed through anti-racist education in schools. Young people need to understand the harmfulness of white supremacy. Opposing critical race theory and education about racism is moving in a completely wrong direction. We need anti-racist education to counter the online white supremacists who target and prey on young people.

The Buffalo shooter’s half-baked ideas need to be confronted and refuted. There is no white genocide or imminent collapse of white people. Nor is there any replacement. Change is a constant but the Buffalo shooter’s ideas were a product of ideological delusion. Demographic change is not “an invasion”.

President Biden was right when he called white supremacy “a poison”. Experience shows that the “grooming” we should be most concerned about is the online grooming of young people into hateful white supremacists.The Buffalo shooting was a modern-day lynching. It is way past time for the horrifying practice of lynchings to end.

The Democrats are facing a scary mid-term election. Parties in power typically lose ground in the mid-terms. Add high gas prices and inflation to the mix, issues where voters often blame office-holders, and Democratic odds plummet.

As a big tent party, perspectives vary dramatically about how Democrats should respond to a possible electoral debacle. Party centrists like President Biden and former President Obama seem to think there is primarily a communication problem. Democrats have failed to make their case to the public. As Obama has said, “we got a story to tell, just got to tell it”.

Both President Biden and Obama would tout the virtues of the American Rescue Plan and the Administration’s COVID-19 response. While these accomplishments are real and did confer benefits to many Americans, as a political strategy, this is a guaranteed loser.

Polls show that 74 percent of Americans think America is “on the wrong track”. Biden’s approval rating has fallen sharply, especially among young people. Are Democrats really going to run on the idea that Americans need to appreciate how good their lives are? Reporter John Nichols of the Nation Magazine shows how this would be a replay of 1994 and 2010. Centrist Democrats tried essentially the same play with losing results.

Let me lay out the progressive response for how Democrats should forge ahead. To be the party of the people, not their corporate donors, the Democrats need a course correction. They need to stand for some tangible progressive goals and they need some additional accomplishments to point to that could mobilize their base.

The Democratic leadership is profoundly out of touch with its own party base. Unlike the Republicans who embrace the outrage of their base no matter how crazy, Democratic leaders are generally terrified of their base. You often hear it said that Democrats bring a knife to a gun fight. Sometimes it seems like Democrats don’t know how to fight.

Since Roe v Wade stands on the brink of being overturned, I will cite the example of abortion rights. Americans, and particularly American women, are facing an epic disaster: the loss of constitutional rights that have been guaranteed for fifty years. It is hard to overstate the magnitude of the loss.

While Republicans prioritized restricting and eliminating abortion, Democrats have long sidelined abortion rights. Many Democratic leaders have been afraid to even say the word “abortion”. Joe Biden himself did not say the word until 200 days into his presidency.

The Roe news demonstrates the poverty of the Democratic response. Even though Roe has been under serious attack for at least 40 years, Democrats failed to codify the law or take steps to prepare for the current horrendous outcome. Whether it was the Hyde Amendment or state restrictions on abortion, Democrats have often conciliated the anti-abortion forces. For many years they have been afraid to make abortion an issue they stood behind.

Even now, Democratic Party leadership including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn are supporting Texas anti-abortion Congressman Henry Cuellar in a primary battle against abortion rights advocate and civil rights attorney Jessica Cisneros. The FBI recently raided Cuellar’s home and campaign office.

This is how Democratic leaders fight for abortion rights when Roe is going down the drain? They support an anti-abortion politician being investigated for corruption over a highly competent and competitive pro-choice candidate. The Democratic leadership is committing political malpractice. It looks like party leaders stand for nothing except their own power.

There is a complete lack of vision on the Democratic side. In contrast, the Republicans engineered a long-term campaign to destroy all abortion rights in the U.S.. They will likely try to extend bans beyond the states where abortion becomes outlawed. Whether it is access to medication abortion, the right to travel to states where abortion is legal for care or the criminalization of those having abortions and their medical providers, legal challenges are certain.

A wider constellation of rights than just abortion rights stand gravely endangered. The same reasoning employed by Justice Alito could be used to overturn marriage equality, LBGTQ rights and contraceptive rights.

Although highly unpopular, the anti-abortion forces stand on the brink of success. Their movement-building has obviously been very effective. They are in the process of gutting reproductive rights for millions.

Democrats can learn from the anti-abortion movement. Democrats need to flip the script and build an abortion rights movement that has its own moral fervor. The anti-abortion movement had lost Roe v Wade by a 7-2 Supreme Court margin. It took 50 years of organizing but the movement shows how an outsider political movement can strengthen the insider political battle and change the composition of the Court.

The Democratic brand is damaged goods because it has failed to deliver. Even holding the White House and both Houses of Congress, Democratic accomplishments are so disappointing. The high hopes of Build Back Better have been dashed. Biden could not use the bully pulpit to corral Manchin or Sinema. In spite of looming climate catastrophe, the Democrats did not succeed in passing even the climate provisions of Build Back Better. Nor could they protect voting rights.

To regain the political initiative, Democrats need to stand up for working people, not the professional-managerial elite. So many Americans are struggling with low wages, debt, homelessness and too-expensive housing and lack of health care. The gap between the ultra-rich and everyone else has become immense.

I believe the best course for Democrats is to stand for goals that represent change like Medicare for all, $15 minimum wage, cancellation of significant student loan debt, support for union organizing, immediate action on climate, unequivocal support for abortion rights and protection of voting rights. Democrats must oppose the disgusting hate and xenophobia from the other side.

To win, Democrats will need a big turnout from their core constituencies including working people, women, minorities and young people. Even without Congress, Biden could do some things which would mobilize his base.

Biden could use executive authority to forgive the first $50,000 in federal student loan debt for every borrower with federal student loans. He could find more ways to support union organizing which he seems inclined to do. He could crack down on Wall Street and monopolies. He could expand the refugee cap for immigrants. He could grant clemency to Native American leader, Leonard Peltier.

Democrats need to give their voters reasons to turn out. The absolute debasement of the Republican Party does not guarantee Democratic turnout. Democrats need to junk their unearned self-righteousness. The reversal of Roe is a warning shot and much worse could come down.

Democrats will never match Republicans in amoral ruthlessness but you have to admire the Republican level of fight and never backing off. Too often Democrats appear scared of their own shadows as has been the case with abortion rights.

The swimmer, Diana Nyad once said, “A champion is someone who never gives up”. The Democrats could use some of that spirit. The stakes could not be much higher.

Our politics keep getting more backwards and stupid. I will give my examples but these are just a small sampling on what could be a much longer list.

• The Florida Department of Education is banning dozens of math books because they contain questions and exercises based on critical race theory. This is a head scratcher. Hello, but math and critical race theory do not exactly go together. They are like apples and oranges. Next thing you know, Florida will be banning math books for mention of Bigfoot.
• Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has been saying women who have abortions were manipulated into it by Satan. Greene says Satan promised women they would be married if they did his bidding, abortion-wise. She has also said the Catholic Church is run by Satan. Say what you will about Greene but she does have a hotline to Satan. Beelzebub is apparently whispering in her ear.
• During confirmation hearings, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) falsely accused new Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson of giving child pornographers unusually lenient sentences and soft treatment. Republicans pushed the nonsensical narrative that anyone who supported her confirmation was sympathetic to pedophilia. It is telling they felt compelled to adhere to a Q’Anon story line.
• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s press secretary, Christina Pushaw, described his anti-gay “Don’t say gay” law as “the Anti-Grooming Bill”. She tweeted that if you are against the bill “you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children”. The obsession with grooming is also pure Q’Anon conspiracy theory. What’s next: accusing Democrats of practicing witch craft?
• CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, is holding its upcoming conference in Hungary, a country that has undermined democracy, curbed free media and dispensed with judicial independence. The keynote speaker of the CPAC Conference will be Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a long-time supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin. CPAC is enamored with Orban’s attacks on LGBTQ rights as well as his immigration hardline. This is a kind of anti-democratic handwriting on the wall, showing a fawning admiration for authoritarianism.
• Reported by Hugo Lowell of the Guardian, the Justice Department has alleged that Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers militia, was trying to reach former President Trump on January 6 to allow his group to forcibly stop the transfer of power to Joe Biden. The call to a Trump confidant who remains unidentified occurred after the Capitol was stormed. With others from the Oath Keepers leadership, Rhodes made the call on speaker phone and implored the person to get Trump’s authorization. Rhodes had quick reaction forces with guns and ammunition near the capitol. The Trump confidant who Rhodes contacted refused his request to speak with Trump. Rhodes is charged with seditious conspiracy because of his role on January 6.

I am sure there are those who will object to the characterization of these examples as backwards or stupid. As pointed out by Steven Nadler, stupidity is not the same as ignorance or incompetence or folly. Nadler writes:

“Stupidity is a kind of intellectual stubbornness. A stupid person has access to all the information necessary to make an appropriate judgment, to come up with a set of reasonable and justified beliefs and yet fails to do so.”

The examples I cited might appear to be random and disconnected but I would suggest they reflect a process of intellectual and political degeneration. Unfounded accusations of grooming or pedophilia are vicious name-calling. This is not your grandfather’s Republican Party. We have been witnessing the transformation of a formerly conservative party into a fascist cult.

Americans generally do not pay that much attention to politics and, by and large, they are failing to see the fascist threat. Republicans aren’t just accepting another different set of ideas. Their thinking is clouded by disinformation, conspiracy theories, hate and fear. They want to go back to a magic time (“Make America Great Again”) that never existed. Alexander Hemon writes:

“Fascism’s central idea, appearing in a small repertoire of familiar guises, is that there are classes of human beings who deserve diminishment and destruction because they’re for some reason (genetic, cultural, whatever) inherently inferior to “us’.”

Fascists think the inferior group contaminates the nation or the white race. They see the supposedly inferior group as destroying our culture.

This is exactly the approach the Trump cult is taking to immigrants. This goes back at least to Trump’s June 2015 ride down the golden escalator when he tagged Mexicans as “bringing drugs” and as “rapists”. He wanted “a total and complete shutdown on Muslims entering the U.S.”. Trump called Latinos “animals” and “invaders”.

Trump’s message has been simple: we must take action or perish as a nation. Fascism is less a set of beliefs than a set of actions to fight. It is not just about owning the libs. It is about hurting people you hate. A sense of grievance and scoring-settling permeates MAGA. Chauncey de Vega put it this way:

“Fascism is an anti-human philosophy. It channels death. It is “masculine” in the most crude, negative, regressive, destructive and dangerous sense of that word. It embraces, encourages and endorses violence and views compromise, intellect and reason as “feminine” weakness.”

I found it revealing that according to former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Trump wanted to deploy the military in Washington D.C. to shoot those demonstrating and protesting the murder of George Floyd. While not all Republicans are members of the Trump cult, they are now the dominant faction.

The mass media has minimized and tried to normalize the Republican Party’s new incarnation. It would be a grievous mistake if Democrats underestimate the Trump cult. They won once already. They consistently push a disproven Big Lie and they organized a coup to topple democracy. They lost but got over 74 million votes in 2020.

This threat is deadly serious. It is Democrats versus fascists now. As with abortion rights, if given the chance, fascists will roll back the clock on a wide range of human rights. All who care about democracy must realize this is no joke.

“Steven Donziger Walks Free After 993 Days of ‘Completely Unjust’ Detention “He should have never been detained for even one day,” said an Amnesty International official, “as it has been clear the whole process against him has been in retaliation for his human rights work that exposed corporate wrongdoings.”

JAKE JOHNSON
April 25, 2022

Human rights lawyer Steven Donziger walked free Monday after 993 days of detention stemming from his decades-long legal fight with Chevron, which deployed its vast resources in a campaign to destroy Donziger after he won a $9.5 billion settlement against the fossil fuel giant over its pollution of the Amazon rainforest.

“Corporations must not be allowed to continue abusing the U.S. justice system to silence and intimidate human rights defenders.”

“It’s over. Just left with release papers in hand,” Donziger wrote on Twitter. “Completely unjust that I spent even one day in this Kafkaesque situation. Not looking back. Onward.”

Donziger’s case has attracted global attention and outrage, with the United Nations high commissioner on human rights calling his prolonged detention a violation of international law. Lawmakers in the United States have also decried Donziger’s prosecution as an “unprecedented and unjust legal assault.”

“We are relieved that Steven Donziger will finally recover his freedom after almost 1,000 days of arbitrary detention, which included 45 days in prison and over 900 days under house arrest,” Daniel Joloy, senior policy advisor at Amnesty International, said in a statement Monday. “He should have never been detained for even one day, as it has been clear the whole process against him has been in retaliation for his human rights work that exposed corporate wrongdoings.”

“Corporations must not be allowed to continue abusing the U.S. justice system to silence and intimidate human rights defenders or anyone else exposing their wrongdoing,” Joloy added.

The legal battle began in 1993 when Donziger and other attorneys—on behalf of tens of thousands of farmers and Indigenous people who lived near the Ecuadorian Amazon—filed a class-action lawsuit against Texaco alleging that the company contaminated the rainforest with its oil drilling operations.

Chevron, which purchased Texaco in 2001, denied the allegations, but an Ecuadorian court in 2011 ordered the U.S. based oil and gas corporation to pay a $9.5 billion settlement—a ruling that Ecuador’s Supreme Court later upheld.

Claiming the settlement was fraudulently obtained, Chevron withdrew its assets from Ecuador, refused to pay the settlement, and launched a massive legal attack on Donziger, suing him in New York City.

“My prosecutor has financial links to Chevron, my judge has financial links to Chevron, the charging judge… has investments in Chevron.”

In 2014, a federal judge with ties to Chevron ruled that Donziger was guilty of a “pattern of racketeering activity,” a charge he has denied. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan’s decision was based on testimony from a witness who later admitted to lying.

When Donziger refused to comply with Kaplan’s order to hand his cell phone and computer over to Chevron, arguing that the devices contained sensitive client information, Kaplan charged Donziger in 2019 with six counts of criminal contempt and the attorney was placed under house arrest while awaiting trial.

After the Southern District of New York declined to take up the case against Donziger, Kaplan appointed a Chevron-connectedprivate law firm to pursue the prosecution. Kaplan then chose U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska—previously a member of the Chevron-funded Federalist Society—to preside over the case.

“So my prosecutor has financial links to Chevron, my judge has financial links to Chevron, the charging judge, Judge Kaplan, has investments in Chevron, and they’re denying me jury,” Donziger said in an interview last year.

Last July, Preska found Donziger guilty on all six counts of criminal contempt of court, a decision he slammed as an “obvious travesty of justice.” Donziger was sentenced in October to six months in federal prison, where he remained until December, when he was transferred back to house arrest under a coronavirus-related early release program.

Given that Donziger spent more than two years in detention before even receiving a trial, his sentence has been deemed the longest “ever recorded for a misdemeanor charge.”

Human rights and environmental organizations have urged U.S. President Joe Biden to pardon Donziger, slamming his prosecution as “retaliation for his work in defense of the rights of Indigenous peoples in Ecuador who were victims of Chevron Corporation’s oil dumping.”

Donziger emphasized in a video posted to Twitter Sunday that Chevron is still pursuing a civil case against him:

Joloy of Amnesty International said Monday that while Donziger is finally free from detention, “the end of this sentence does not mean the end of the injustices Steven has faced.”

“The U.S. government,” said Joloy, “must fully implement the decision of the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, including launching an impartial and independent investigation into the circumstances that led to Steven’s arbitrary detention, to prevent something like this from happening again.”

The French writer, Honore de Balzac, once wrote, “Behind every great fortune, there is a crime”. Today’s crop of billionaires are determined to prove Balzac right. Tax cheating is a billionaire specialty in the crime world.

A new ProPublica investigation looked at the tax records of the top .001% wealthiest Americans. All earn more than $110 million a year. ProPublica found that between 2014-2018, the 25 wealthiest Americans paid a tax rate of about 3.4%. In 2018, Elon Musk, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, paid zero income taxes.

In contrast, the average single worker earning $45,000 paid an average tax rate of 21% while a married couple with one child who earned $200,000 paid a rate of 26%.

ProPublica found two big reasons for why the super-rich are taxed at lower rates. First, much of their wealth is accumulated through investments, like stocks. Second, they use charitable donations to get huge deductions. A goal of their financial shenanigans is to escape wealth from being classified as “income”, subject to taxation.

Theoretically, our tax system was designed to tax the rich at higher rates than everyone else but it hasn’t worked out that way. The super-rich run a variety of scams. They hide billions outside the U.S. in tax havens like the Cayman Islands or Switzerland. They have legions of lobbyists to avoid taxes while writing tax policies in their favor. They have long argued, like for 40 years, that tax rates on the wealthiest would promote growth and trickle down but the trickle-down never happens.

It helps the billionaires that the Internal Revenue Service has been de-fanged. Between the years 2010-2017, Congress reduced the IRS budget with the number of IRS tax auditors cut by one-third. The primary beneficiaries were corporations and the super-wealthy.

Audits of households making more than $1 million a year have fallen by nearly three-fourths in recent years. Almost inexplicably, the IRS has focused more on poor taxpayers. Overall, the IRS conducted 675,000 fewer audits in 2017 than it did in 2010. The result is many billions in lost revenue every year with the super-rich getting away with murder.

Since the pandemic, the nation’s 735 billionaires have seen their collective wealth skyrocket by 62% while worker earnings have inched forward by just 10%.

Considering the enormous gains made by billionaires , it is remarkable how little commentary has focused on them. The super-rich are masters of evasion. They have transcended accountability but there are some things that deserve to be said.

Compared to robber barons of old, they have junked any notion of noblesse oblige. The concept of noblesse oblige goes back to the late nineteenth century. The idea was that there is an unwritten obligation for people of great wealth to act honorably and generously to others. Whatever their checkered history, earlier robber barons like Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller are examples.

What is different about our current crop of billionaires is their absolutely voracious, unfettered hyper-greed. While you can find examples of billionaire philanthropy (for example, Bill Gates), billionaires now are generally conscience-free predators who seize every opportunity to expand their wealth.

How many billions is too much? I am afraid they have set no limit. They are fundamentally about amassing unprecedented fortunes for themselves. Does the DSM have a diagnosis for such unrestrained behavior, such bottomless greed?

Just to cite a recent example, why is Jeff Bezos fighting so hard to deny workers a union that could provide better wages and working conditions? In 2021 Amazon reported record profits of more than $35 billion. Surely the company can easily afford a union. The other side of the coin of the extreme wealth of billionaires is crushing workers. Many Americans appear to be unaware of that dark side relationship.

In his book, Davos Man, Peter S. Goodman provides a good description of the billionaires:

“Those reared in the most exclusive communities, educated at the fanciest schools, and intertwined in the most elite social networks have leveraged their privileges to secure unfathomable wealth, shuttling in their private jets between their beachfront villas and their mountain redoubts, buying their children passage to Ivy League universities, while stashing their holdings on Caribbean islands and other territories beyond reach of a tax collector.”

Goodman argues that the super-rich are expert at finding ways to evade taxation focused on income. Through the use of accountants, lawyers and lobbyists they move money around like a giant game. They buy politicians from both parties to do their bidding. Their public relation shills try to make it seem like the status quo is inevitable. They fail to speak out when authoritarian demagogues blame immigrants and threaten democracy as their big concern remains protecting their ungodly amount of money.

Contrary to the protestations of the billionaire class, a wealth tax is eminently doable. Our tax code is archaic and needs to be reformed so that hidden wealth can be reached. During the 2020 Democratic primaries, both Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren advocated such a tax.

Sen. Sanders proposed a a 1% annual tax on fortunes greater than $32 million with increases reaching to 8% for those whose wealth exceeded $10 million. Sen. Warren favored a 2% annual tax on fortunes greater than $50 million and 3% above $1 billion. If enacted, it was estimated both proposals could raise over two trillion dollars over the ten year period from 2020-2029.

That kind of revenue could guarantee universal health care and child care, could greatly expand affordable housing, could assist the cancellation of much student loan debt and could help address our looming climate catastrophe.

More recently, President Biden, as part of his proposed budget for fiscal year 2023, has also proposed a wealth tax on billionaires.

It is entirely predictable that the billionaires will howl to the heavens about any tax. They always will say it is unworkable but such a tax would be highly popular. It would require more bodies at the IRS and more expertise with complex tax issues but the rewards would be great.

A long time ago Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote:

“We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few but we can’t have both.”

Those words still ring true.

One of the most despicable aspects of the Trump presidency was the hate that administration directed against immigrants. Children in cages and family separation come immediately to mind. Immigrants seeking asylum or refuge in the U.S. were demonized and were seen as part of a supposedly uncontrolled invasion.

In the fifteen months since Trump’s presidency ended, the immigration crisis has continued to receive much coverage by the media with Republicans claiming President Biden is responsible for a massive surge in illegal immigration.

Conservatives also became comfortable arguing the Great Replacement theory saying that Biden and Democrats were opening borders to nonwhite immigrants who would steal the jobs of white Americans. FOX personality Tucker Carlson repeatedly has made this argument as has Congressman Matt Gaetz.

The Great Replacement theory, another conspiracy theory, has white supremacist and neo-nazi roots. The theory has different iterations but the gist is that liberal elites are trying to change the population demographics in the U.S. to favor people from the Third World over white Americans. Jews are often seen as manipulating in the background.

When the Anti-Defamation League criticized Carlson and said the Great Replacement theory was dangerous, racist and xenophobic, Carlson responded “Well (expletive) them”. He said the Anti-Defamation League was “racist”.

I would suggest that Tucker Carlson is trying to normalize white supremacy and create a narrative that is contrary to the facts. The Great Replacement theory has about as much truth as QAnon. Carlson is playing a dangerous game, feeding the public disinformation.

Since 2021, immigration into the United States has plunged. This was a result of restrictive American immigration policies and a decline in international travel because of COVID-19. Although it got little publicity, a new report from the Census Bureau found that net international migration into the U.S. increased by about 247,000 people in 2021. This was the lowest annual level since 2010, hardly an invasion.

The number of immigrants who came into the country in 2021 is half the number of people who came into the country between 2019-2020. It is way below numbers from 2015-2016 when 1,049,000 came into the U.S.

Media coverage of immigration has fed on misleading data and images. James Risen, a reporter for the Intercept, has shown that conservatives focused on the number of apprehensions along the southwestern border in 2021 rather than the number of people who migrated to the U.S. and were allowed to stay. The focus on apprehensions did not consider how many times the same person made repeated efforts to cross the border. That significantly inflated the numbers.

Many of the people who repeatedly tried to cross the border were victimized by Title 42, a public health statute the government has used to carry out expulsions from the U.S.. Under Title 42, people seeking asylum got no chance to make their asylum case. They are summarily expelled with public health used as an excuse to shut down legal migration.

Trump and now Biden are making it impossible for those with legitimate claims for asylum to have due process. They are forced to remain in Mexico under often dangerous conditions. Under Biden, the non-profit Human Rights First has documented nearly 10,000 cases in which people blocked from seeking asylum by Title 42 in the U.S. have been kidnapped, tortured, raped and violently attacked in Mexico.

It is embarrassing and shameful to see any Democrats supporting Title 42 expulsions. Such expulsions are scientifically baseless and the policy is known to be a “Stephen Miller special”. Title 42 does not prevent the spread of COVID-19. Going along with this Stephen Miller-Trump creation is pandering to white supremacy.

At the same time immigration to the U.S. has reduced, we are having a major labor shortage in America. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as of the end of February 2022, there were 11.3 million open jobs. There are two million fewer working-age immigrants living in the U.S. than there would have been if pre-2020 immigration trends had continued. One million are college-educated. We need workers to fill these positions and it hurts the economy that they are not here.

Low immigration has worsened the labor shortage. Even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, not exactly a left-wing outfit, has called for a doubling of legal immigration. Instead of spurning immigrants, many more should be welcomed.

The idea that nonwhite immigrant workers are taking jobs from white Americans is not supported by the facts. Many immigrants have worked in dead-end low-paying manual-intensive jobs like fruit-picking and work in the meat and poultry industries. Some are in the service sector, working in fast food joints. These are jobs many white workers typically shun. Immigrants are not replacing white workers, more often than not white workers do not want these jobs because of dangerous conditions or low pay.

The conservative narrative about immigrants is a thread deeply embedded in American history. Earlier waves of immigrants to the U.S. have faced wariness and xenophobia. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924 and now Trump’s nativism are consistent in their animus toward immigrants. The historian Erika Lee writes:

“Americans have labeled immigrants threatening because they were poor, practiced a different faith, were nonwhite. They have argued that immigrants were too numerous, were not assimilating, were taking jobs away from deserving Americans, were bringing crime and disease into the country, held dangerous political ideals, were un-American or even hated America.”

There is a body of experience showing where white supremacy and xenophobia end. After getting dehumanized, immigrants get killed. The conservative narrative about immigrants is another Big Lie. It is racist scapegoating. Xenophobia, not immigration is the real danger to America.

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Over the last 40 years, the American labor movement has been stomped. The percentage of American workers in unions has drastically declined, down to 10.3%, which is the lowest rate in decades. The decline is no accident and it is not primarily from self-inflicted wounds. Employers have turned union-busting into an art.

At the same time unions were being crushed, neither political party did anything to help. The Republicans are owned by the 1% bosses and their record is consistently anti-labor. Trump pretends to be a populist but he has always been anti-union. Unfortunately, the Democrats also have failed to respond. Defending labor has been a low priority for Democrats.

This background makes the organizing victory of the Amazon workers in New York all the more stunning. In a vote of 2654-2131, the Amazon Labor Union, the ALU, shocked the world and scored a victory that could inspire all underdogs.

For those unfamiliar with the labor movement or union organizing, I would offer that the deck has been stacked against labor for a very long time and organizing success has been like snow in April. It happens but you won’t see it too often. To be successful now is very hard.

I can speak from some personal experience. Earlier in my life, I spent nine years trying to organize unorganized workers. For seven years, I worked at Mass General Hospital in Boston trying to organize the service workers. Management deployed strategies very similar to those used against the Amazon workers. It is a well-trod path.

First, management hires a union-busting law firm. They figure a plan for creating fear and intimidation. Typically this involves firing union activists. They play on existing divisions to try and divide and conquer. They use captive audience meetings to badmouth the union. Whether or not unfair labor practices are alleged by union activists, no outside entity effectively interferes with the anti-union practices. Workers learn they have little protection.

The Amazon workers in New York relied on a highly creative, personalized strategy. The organizers were workers in the company. They did not rely on any organized union. They created an independent union, getting initial funding from a GoFundMe. Derrick Palmer, the Vice-President of organizing for the ALU, described how they succeeded:

“At the end of the day, having workers organize workers, I feel like that was really the game-changer because I don’t think Amazon ever expected that to happen.”

Amazon had argued that the union was a third party from outside. Considering that the organizers worked in the shop, that approach backfired. Through publicly available information, the ALU showed that Amazon was paying each anti-union consultant $3200 per day to turn workers against the union. Amazon spent $4.3 million on the union-busting firm not even counting the legal work.

It was actually the many union busters who were walking around the warehouse talking to workers who were the outsiders.

The ALU camped out near the warehouse to meet with workers and answer questions. They used social media videos, organized in break rooms off work time, held regular barbecues near the warehouse and held phone banks. When management held captive audience meetings, the pro-union workers interrupted and talked back, showing no fear.

As the election drew near, the ALU passed out union shirts and workers started wearing them in the warehouse. The ALU also passed out lanyards. These acts showed workers the strength of union support all over the warehouse and helped to break down fear.

Meanwhile, Amazon insulted the union organizers calling them “thugs” and they called Christian Smalls, co-founder of the ALU “not smart or articulate”. Smalls was a former supervisor at Amazon. Amazon fired him in Spring 2020 when he led a walkout over inadequate COVID-19 safety measures by the company.

Many of the classic reasons workers form unions were at play with Amazon. There is a lack of job security. The turnover rate is very high and workers are terminated for many reasons. The pace of work is brutal and Amazon relentlessly clocks expectations. The investigative journalist Will Evans has found that “the company’s obsession with speed has turned its warehouses into injury mills”.

Supposedly “essential workers” are not well-compensated even though in 2021 Amazon reported record profits of more than $35 billion. Since the pandemic Amazon’s profits have absolutely skyrocketed but there is no willingness to share the wealth. There is an unsurpassed level of greed here. Remember: in 2018 it was Bernie Sanders who shamed Amazon into paying a $15 an hour minimum wage. Shamelessness defines Amazon.

The Amazon workers must now get management to the bargaining table to negotiate a contract. This may be very difficult because it is a safe bet Amazon bosses would hate such a precedent.

The positive examples of the Amazon workers as well as the recent victories at multiple Starbucks locations show the effectiveness of the worker-to-worker organizing strategy. To reverse labor’s decline, the union movement must pour resources into organizing the unorganized. Walmart, Target, McDonald’s, Burger King, Uber, Lyft, Kroger and many others are all fair game.

While President Biden has laudably voiced support for the Amazon workers, there is a problem with the Democratic Party’s follow through. If workers are not getting the PRO Act aimed to help organizing or the labor provisions of Build Back Better, it is fair to ask: what are the Democrats delivering? It appears to be mostly talk.

To kickstart a renewed labor movement, more pro-worker legislation is needed to give union organizing a chance. The long-time employer game plan of intimidation, firing and unfair labor practices needs to be stopped.