Portside

The climate crisis has long been escalating. We’ve reached a new level of existential threat. Now, some elements of the right wing are using the crisis to advance eco-fascism—an ideology that sees climate change migrants as a threat to “our America.

If Americans needed any further proof that Donald Trump’s toxic presidency has corroded the Republican Party beyond recognition, Rep. Matt Gaetz just proved the argument in grand fashion.

Germany today, the right-wing AfD cries out, sounding like Adolf Hitler: 'Panicked nightmares are increasing in our land, especially unfortunately among blonde women! And this in our own country. It is insufferable!" And they are winning elections!

It's not just the sexual assault allegations. Brett Kavanaugh's contempt for women is a defining characteristic of his ideology — and the political movement that groomed him. Once malice is embraced as a virtue, it is impossible to contain.

Why is the US Christian nationalist right looking to Russia? The thought shatters old notions as odd indeed. It's supposed to be the left that's cozy with Russia. Since 1990 it's a new world. Newsweek gives a peek into it...

Forbes published piece Saturday showing how far privatization is being pushed - nationalize public libraries, along with public schools and the post office. After public backlash, two days later, Forbes took the story down.

Proto-Fascism - seeding of the political ground for full-born fascism, tends to move from threat to reality when principal segments of finance capital no longer consider parliamentary democracy, their preferred form of rule, to be a guarantor of their hegemony. That tendency is increasingly global.

Trump's strategy and campaign is to appeal to majority white, working class voters who have economic anxiety and fear of demographic change. Trump's candidacy viewed in the context of historical continuity - nativism is a primary political discourse in American history. Trump has shown us that it is just as powerful now as in the 1850s or the 1920s. Indeed, "Make America Great Again" recalls the 1920s Ku Klux Klan's appeal for "100% Americanism."

Events in Germany are truly alarming - with the Alternative for Germany (AfD) moving up into third place and both the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) slipping. This is connected with the immigrant wave but laden with too many nasty memories - and there is rightward shifts in France, Poland, Slovakia, Denmark and Sweden.