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Authoritarianism / Fascism
Project 2025 Tracker
LGBTQ Federal Workers Brace for a McCarthyist Purge
in Mother JonesSeventy years ago, at the height of the McCarthy eraâwhen federal employees with left-wing views were routinely interrogated and fired for being suspected communistsâa related purge of queer workers was underway. In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order listing âsexual perversionâ as a basis for terminating federal civil service employees, on the theory that gay men and lesbians were susceptible to blackmail by the countryâs enemies. In what became known as the Lavender Scare, at least 5,000 federal workers were fired for suspected homosexuality over the next two decades.
âMore people were targeted during that period for being gay or for engaging in same-sex intimacy than were targeted for being communist,â says San Francisco State University professor Marc Stein. The firings rippled out to state and local governments and the private sector, he adds, âaccompanied by notions that the gay people were weak, were divisive in workplaces, were not strong representatives of a moral United States.â Itâs taken decades since then for LGBTQ people to gain acceptance in public life, including in the federal workforce. Not until the Obama administration was Eisenhowerâs executive order formally rescinded.
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Now, the very programs and support groups that have helped queer folks integrate could create risks for their participants. Employee resource groups like Michaelâs have been shutting down operations and wiping their websites, afraid of putting their members at risk in the openly hostile Trump administration.
âWeâve gone dark,â a former LGBTQ resource group leader in the Department of Agriculture tells Mother Jones. âWe have pulled our contact lists off of government systems. Personally, as someone who has been very involved in queer spaces, I went through and deleted a bunch of emails and contacts, because I have lists of queer employees, and I am afraid if someone in the Trump administration gets their hands on it.â
âIâm scared for the people Iâve been trying to help,â says a trans worker for the Interior Department who is involved in employee resource groups. âPeople came to us because they needed community, needed connection. We were trying to keep each other safe. Now, weâre all just this big target.â
Marco Rubio May Have Just Banned Trans Foreigners Seeking Visas From US Entry
The document, titled âGuidance for Visa Adjudicators on Executive Order 14201: âKeeping Men Out of Womenâs Sports,ââ is ostensibly focused on preventing transgender athletes from traveling to the U.S. However, one section appears to apply far more broadly, targeting all transgender visa applicantsânot just athletes. It mandates that âall visas must reflect an applicantâs sex at birthâ and grants officials the authority to deny visas based on âreasonable suspicionâ of a personâs transgender identity.
âBoth immigrant and nonimmigrant visa applications request that an applicant identify their sex as either male or female. Moreover, all visas must reflect an applicantâs sex at birth,â the cable reads. When verifying an applicantâs sex assigned at birth, it states that the adjudicator can ârely on documents provided by the applicant,â but that âif other evidence casts reasonable doubt on the applicantâs sex, you should refuse the case under 221(g) and request additional evidence to demonstrate sex at birth.â
The memo goes on to state that applicants âmisrepresenting their purpose of travel or sexâ could be targeted for permanent ineligibility. It states that some common scenarios that would trigger this is if the misrepresentation is âmaterial,â which it states would be the case for transgender athletes entering for an athletic competition. However, even this section does not limit it to transgender athletes - many other reasons for entry may be considered âmaterialâ for transgender entrants⊠for instance, transgender activists, immigrants fleeing oppressive regimes, and more could be swept up under this provision.
"A woman is like a child": MAGA quickly turns its sights on stripping Republican women of power
in SalonFor ambitious women who wanted to climb the ranks of Republican politics, anti-feminism has long been the steadiest of ladders. The propaganda value of their gender outweighed their party's larger hostility to women in leadership.
But now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned and Donald Trump is back in the White House, many on the right feel they no longer need to hide the naked sexism fueling their movement or put up with the annoyance of women in even token leadership positions. As Kiera Butler at Mother Jones reports, the anti-abortion movement is embroiled in an escalating civil war right now over these issues. Male leaders of the Christian right have been swarming Kristan Hawkins, the 39-year-old head of a "student" anti-abortion group, demanding her ejection from the movement. It started after she objected to Republican legislators introducing bills to charge women who get abortions with murder, an extreme move she fears will backfire on the movement. But mostly it was about growing male anger on the Christian right that women are allowed leadership positions at all.
"Removed [sic] this woman from public service," declared influential Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon, part of the "TheoBros" movement that includes the leadership of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's church. Soon other TheoBros jumped in, declaring "We need Christian men leading the fight against abortion," arguing that women's suffrage was a mistake, and accusing Hawkins of emasculating her husband by being "busy jet-setting."
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Webbon and the TheoBros have been clamoring more loudly in recent months about their wish to strip women, especially their own wives, of the right to vote. "You won't let women vote? Well, our society doesn't let five-year-olds vote," Webbon explained in a May podcast. He added that "a woman is like a child" and that "God has appointed men to protect them." As Sarah Stankorb at the New Republic documented, there has been growing support in Christian nationalist circles "for the repeal of the 19th Amendment and support a 'household vote' system in which men vote on behalf of their families." Hegseth's former sister-in-law reports she heard him echo similar sentiments.
Politicians Are Curtailing Liberties and Chastising the Public Over Contrived Antisemitism
for Sydney Criminal LawyersThe political stoking of the spate of antisemitic hate crime scenario, which was concurrently being debunked by admissions from law enforcement in the same reports, staff at the Daily Telegraph concocted the idea for a report that it had entitled âUndercover Jewâ in its internal documentation, and it involved a man wearing an Israeli flag cap being sent into various situations.
Israeli Australian man Ofir Birenbaum was employed by the Murdoch rag to be the undercover Jew, wearing a Star of David on his cap, as well as video glasses to record the incident, although the known provocateur has since denied he was recording footage. And what occurred in Enmore at the Cairo Takeaway was set to be repeated in various suburbs throughout Greater Sydney.
The idea was simple, send Birenbaum into the café to provoke an antisemitic response, as the Cairo Takeaway openly displays its support for Palestine on the side of its building, via a Scott Marsh mural.
So, the Jewish man entered the café, ordered at the counter and then received no derision or ridicule, although a staff member did follow him out of the premises as he left, only to find a Daily Telegraph journalist and two camerapeople waiting outside.
This discovery has only served to support suspicions that these incidents are being manufactured to convey a community riddled with antisemitism. The Murdoch scenario serves as a domestic example of what the federal police consider may be orchestrated by foreign actors paying locals to commit the crimes. And it further serves to leave the public suspicious of the authorities.
The End of Days Inn
For over half a century, Trump has operated within a transnational organized crime network whose goal is to strip the US down and sell it for parts, much like the oligarch raids after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They have been aided in this endeavor by institutions, in particular the DOJ, which has long protected Trump, and by members of the Democratic Party serving as controlled opposition.
Many Americans did not want to believe this final twist. It is harder to reckon with betrayal than with a straight liar.
But the footage of a grinning Joe Biden with Donald Trump â the man who Biden claimed is a fascist who will destroy America and then handed the keys to the country, promising to accommodate him â seems to have finally woken folks up.
I warned you for nine years, because I wanted you to be prepared. Biden was a Placeholder President designed to fill the four years between two terms of Trump while plutocrats shifted American political culture sharply to the right. Media gutted, Twitter decimated, activism destroyed, books censored, minorities demonized, public health annihilated, victims blamed, empathy scorned.
That is the main thing they are after now: your empathy. They want you to hate each other so you donât hate them first.
They want you to buy into every cheap cliché and every manipulated poll. They want you to hate each other so much, you agree to their plan of tearing this country into warring fiefdoms for oligarchs to plunder. They want you to prey on the vulnerable, even though you are vulnerable too, so that the powerful can escape scrutiny.
They want you to cheer your own demise, mistaking it for someone elseâs.
Why Was Hitler Elected?
Nazism is a kind of âauthoritarian populism.â Populism is a political ideology that posits that politics is a conflict between two kinds of people: a real people whose concerns and beliefs are legitimate, moral, and true; a corrupt, out-of-touch, illegitimate elite who are parasitic on the real people. Populism is always anti-pluralist: there is only one real people, and they are in perfect agreement about everything. (Muller says populism is âa moralized form of antipluralismâ 20).
Populism become authoritarian when the narrative that the real people have become so oppressed by the âeliteâ that they are in danger of extermination. At that point, there are no constraints on the behavior of populists or their leaders. This rejection of what are called âliberal normsâ (not in the American sense of âliberalâ but the political theory one) such as fairness, change from within, deliberation, transparent and consistent legal processes is the moment that a populist movement becomes authoritarian (and Machiavellian).
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Authoritarian populism always has an intriguing mix of victimhood, heroism, strength, and whining. Somehow whining about how oppressed âwe areâ and what meany-meany-bo-beanies They are is seen as strength. And that is what much of Hitlerâs rhetoric wasâso very, very much whining.
And that is something else that authoritarian populism promises: a promise of never being held morally accountable, as long as you are a loyal (even fanatical) member of the in-group (the real people).
In authoritarian populism, the morality comes from group membership, and the values the group claims to haveâvalues which might have literally nothing to do with whatever policies they enact or ways they behave.
Mirroring Trump, Peter Dutton takes aim at diversity and inclusion workforce
Mr Dutton's incendiary speech â his first major statement of the year â sets up a direct clash and contrast to Anthony Albanese who is campaigning for re-election by celebrating Labor's efforts to expand the nation's "care economy" and boost services to the elderly, families with young children, and people with disabilities.
In addition the opposition leader's promise to dismantle the role of "culture, diversity and inclusion" advisers seeks to mirror Donald Trump's successful political campaign in last year's US presidential race when he took aim at what are known in the US as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
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Describing the federal bureaucracy's growth under Labor as a "completely unsustainable economic situation", Mr Dutton said he would deploy newly appointed shadow for government efficiency Jacinta Price to help "scale back the Canberra public service in a responsible way".
Senator Price has also vowed to review funding for Welcome to Country ceremonies.
Whose hands on our education? Identifying and countering gender-restrictive backlash
in Advancing Learning and Innovation on Gender Norms (ALIGN)Around the world, gender-restrictive actors are organising to suppress gender-equality in schools. ALIGNâs review of the latest evidence reveals that anti-gender backlash in education is taking place from contexts as diverse as Afghanistan, Chile, Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, South Africa, Uganda, the US.
This ALIGN Report focuses on the activities of gender-restrictive actors and organisations who seek to promote a narrow vision of gender relations through the education system. The research shows that their influence is expanding efforts to entrench patriarchal social norms and a binary view of gender, and gaining ground across the globe.
Common aims and tactics include: to remove comprehensive sexuality education from schools, restrict girls access to learning, reinforce patriarchal gender stereotypes in textbooks and reject gender-inclusive policies in school environments. These groups are sustained by deep financial networks which drive effective strategies to amplify misinformation, provoke parental protests, and impose traditional family values.
Political reporters are actively covering up Trumpâs racism
Trump said at his Thursday news conference that his conclusion that diversity had something to do with the crash was âcommon senseâ.
But common sense tells us he was being racist.
â âItâs probably a black personâs fault this bad thing happenedâ as a reflexive explanation is just a racist statement, thereâs not a level of substantiation that makes it not racist,â Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer posted on Bluesky.
âHe's not blaming DEI, he's blaming women and non white people,â wrote MSNBCâs Chris Hayes.
âThese people are segregationists and their position is that no one who isnât a white man is qualified to do skilled work of any kind,â New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote on Bluesky. He then added: "i think it is important to say that the open and explicit racism of the president and the vice president isnât just uncouth or âcontroversialâ but a direct attack on tens of millions of americans and a dereliction of their duty to represent the entire country."