CARTOON: LEAVING THE US -- Fascism Scholar Jason Stanley Issues 'A Warning To America'

“I love America because it doesn’t have kings. I don’t love America because we can punch other people in the nose."

Cartoons by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy

Fascism Scholar Jason Stanley Leaving The US

7-minute video

By Ben Blanchet
HuffPost (5/1/25)

A Yale University professor leaving the U.S. for Canada revealed Monday why President Donald Trump is launching a “brutal attack on America’s freedoms” and its democratic institutions.

“The message is that they’re going to do a kind of stochastic terrorism against our country. They’re going to target people one by one so that those who are in fear will shut up, essentially,” said Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor and an expert in fascism, told MSNBC’s Ana Cabrera.

“And universities are filled with fear already,” he added. “They’re ceasing to make public statements. They’re not banding together. Right now they’re targeting noncitizens for, you know, writing in student newspapers.”

He went on, “I’m sure, or I suspect, they’ll start pulling people’s passports, targeting U.S. citizens for various reasons, and exploiting Americans’ ignorance.”

Stanley told MSNBC that he’s taking a roughly 25% salary cut to leave the Ivy League university’s faculty for the University of Toronto in the fall.

A warning to Americans

He added that the move is mostly about the safety of his two children, who are Black and Jewish, along with his desire to send a “warning” to Americans that’s “consonant” with his work.

Stanley told Vanity Fair that he had received the offer from Toronto before Columbia University bent the knee to Trump’s funding threats ― fueled by accusations that the school was failing to protect Jewish students from antisemitism amid peaceful pro-Palestinian protests last year.

The school’s president caved to the Trump administration with a sea of policy changes, a move that Stanley likened to a hostage — with their kidnappers behind them— “declaring that they’ve seen the light.”

“This crackdown, Columbia’s capitulation to this, is a grave sign about the future of academic freedom,” Stanley told MSNBC.

Aside from schools caving to Trump, he turned to the cases of Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish national working on her Ph.D. at Tufts University. Both had shown support for Palestinians before being detained and sent to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana.

Stanley — who recently told The Guardian that his grandmother and father fled Berlin, the capital of Nazi Germany, in 1939 — slammed the Trump administration for using his religion to go after academic freedom and “crushing” universities in the name of “protecting” his people.

“I love America because it doesn’t have kings. I don’t love America because we can punch other people in the nose,” he told MSNBC.

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Stochastic Terrorism: The repeated use of hate speech or other vilifying, dehumanizing rhetoric by a political leader or other public figure that inspires one or more of the figure’s supporters to commit hate crimes or other acts of violence against a targeted person, group, or community. (Britannica)

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Jason Stanley On Erasing History: How Fascism Works

“One of the most significant threats that a class hierarchy can face is a universally accessible and excellent public school system.”

[Editor’s Note: This is an extremely important discussion that explains and frames what we see rapidly unfolding now in the United States and how Trump and the fascist right are themselves cynically manipulating and exploiting anti-antisemitism . — MT]

The Chris Hedges Report (3/26/25)

Jason Stanley, author, American philosopher and Yale professor, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to give proper context to what fascism means and how the Trump administration’s second term could really mean the completion of the American fascist state.

59-minute video

“The zone of freedom is shrinking.” — Jason Stanley

HYPOCRITE EXPOSES HIMSELF: Two-Faced Marco Rubio Leads Assault On Free Speech!

“Nobody thinks that their own speech should be censored and their own ideas should be censored — there isn't anybody. So, lots of people claim to believe in free speech when it's their speech that's under attack, but then the minute that its ideas they don't like that's under attack, they're the first to embrace it.”

— Jenin Younes of the New Civil Liberties Alliance.

The Jimmy Dore Show (4/2/25)

18-minute video

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TRUMP THUMP: Attacking Workers…Again!

Latest Trump Order Seen As Command To Workers: 'Fall in Line Or Else'

"It is time for all decent forces to condemn Trump and Musk's unlawful actions and decry the assault on the right of public employees to organize."

By Jon Queally
Common Dreams (3/28/25)

President Donald Trump's latest attack on the working class was delivered in the form of an executive order late Thursday that seeks to strip the collective bargaining rights from hundreds of thousands of federal government workers, a move that labor rights advocates said is not only unlawful but once again exposes Trump's deep antagonism toward working people and their families.

The executive order by Trump says its purpose is to "enhance the national security of the United States," but critics say it's clear the president is hiding behind such a claim as a way to justify a broadside against collective bargaining by the public workforce and to intimidate workers more broadly.

"President Trump's latest executive order is a disgraceful and retaliatory attack on the rights of hundreds of thousands of patriotic American civil servants—nearly one-third of whom are veterans—simply because they are members of a union that stands up to his harmful policies," said Everett Kelley, president of the 820,000-member American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the nation's largest union of federal workers.

"The labor movement is not about to let Trump and an un-elected billionaire destroy what we’ve fought for generations to build. We will fight this outrageous attack on our members with every fiber of our collective being." —Liz Shuler, AFL-CIO

The far-reaching order, which cites the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act as the source of his presidential authority, goes way beyond restricting collective bargaining and union representation at agencies with a national security mandate but instead tries to ensnare dozens of federal agencies and classifications of federal workers who work beyond that scope.

According to the Associated Press, the intent of the order "appears to touch most of the federal government."

AFL-CIO president, Liz Shuler, responded with disgust to the order, pointing out that the move comes directly out of the pre-election blueprint of the Heritage Foundation, which has been planning this kind of attack against the federal workforce and collective bargaining for years, if not decades.

"Straight out of Project 2025, this executive order is the very definition of union-busting," said Schuler in a Thursday night statement. "It strips the fundamental right to unionize and collectively bargain from workers across the federal government at more than 30 agencies. The workers who make sure our food is safe to eat, care for our veterans, protect us from public health emergencies and much more will no longer have a voice on the job or the ability to organize with their coworkers for better conditions at work so they can efficiently provide the services the public relies upon."

Shuler said the order is clearly designed as "punishment for unions who are leading the fight against the administration's illegal actions in court—and a blatant attempt to silence us."

Silencing workers

The White House practically admitted as much, saying in a statement that "Trump supports constructive partnerships with unions who work with him; he will not tolerate mass obstruction that jeopardizes his ability to manage agencies with vital national security missions." In effect, especially with a definition of "national security" that encompasses a vast majority of all government functions and agencies, the president has told an estimated two-thirds of government workers they are no longer allowed to disagree with or obstruct his efforts as they organize to defend their jobs or advocate for better working conditions.

"With this order, Trump is trying to destroy unions and labor rights as we have known them for 100 years," said Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, in a statement on Friday.

"Trump's attempt to end federal labor unions is his most dangerous attack on working America so far," Casar added. "We must all rise up to stop this—in the streets and in the halls of Congress—or else Trump will hand over every last one of our rights to the billionaires."

Bullying tactics

Describing the move as "bullying tactics" by Trump and his administration, Kelley said the order represents "a clear threat not just to federal employees and their unions, but to every American who values democracy and the freedoms of speech and association. Trump’s threat to unions and working people across America is clear: fall in line or else."

"These threats will not work. Americans will not be intimidated or silenced. AFGE isn't going anywhere. Our members have bravely served this nation, often putting themselves in harm’s way, and they deserve far better than this blatant attempt at political punishment," he added.

WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 11: Members of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union protest against firings during a rally to defend federal workers in Washington, DC on February 11, 2025.Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images

Both AFGE and the AFL-CIO said they would fight the order tooth and nail on behalf of federal workers—and all workers—who have a right to collective bargaining and not to be intimidated for organizing their workplaces, whether in the public or private sector.

"To every single American who cares about the fundamental freedom of all workers, now is the time to be even louder," said Shuler. "The labor movement is not about to let Trump and an un-elected billionaire destroy what we've fought for generations to build. We will fight this outrageous attack on our members with every fiber of our collective being."

Kelley said AFGE was "preparing immediate legal action" in response to Trump's order and vowed to "fight relentlessly to protect our rights, our members, and all working Americans from these unprecedented attacks."

Protection from corrupt politicians

Jeffrey Hauser, executive director of The Revolving Door Project, a progressive watchdog, said, "Contrary to what Trump, Musk, and even neoliberals claim, a strong civil service is critical to the country. Few innovations have served the public interest more than the government permitting public employees to band together and create the protection of a union against politicians carrying water for America's most rapacious and least moral corporations."

With the arrival of Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, now on the scene, Hauser said it's more vital than ever that public sector unions have the ability to protect the government workforce that has been targeted by the president and his appointed henchmen at DOGE, including world's richest man Elon Musk.

"It is time for all decent forces to condemn Trump and Musk's unlawful actions," said Hauser, "and decry the assault on the right of public employees to organize."

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