Twisting words, false labeling, Fascist tactics

The FBI conducted an “armed raid?”

Nonsense.

They negotiated for six months to get papers back that had been removed 18 months before. Yes, 18 months.

They got an official lawyer from Mar-a-Lago to attest they had received everything in June. Oops, 12 more boxes, some of them full of top (or worse) secret files.

That lawyer will face charges for a false sworn statement.

On the day of the serving of the search warrant, they had called ahead, made a schedule that avoided having the ex-president there (!), and went in. All the photos you saw on TV with armed personnel at Mar-a-Lago? They were Secret Service Personnel in place to protect the ex-president’s residence.

That’s a raid? That’s a raid by the “FBI Gestapo?”

Hardly. Of course the people using those terms are lying. Of course those people pumping out those falsehoods have a motive: Tell stupid people a bald-faced lie and get them to send money. Get the ultra-right wing nuts and the Proud Boys and the other Fascist groups to stir up hatred, more hatred. Wind up their little soldiers and point them at the imagined “enemy.”

Even go so far as to prepare for a possible armed Civil War using false anti-police rhetoric to stir up the faithful but oh-so-gullible believers. And always, always, use religious arguments to pretend to take the moral high ground.

Here are the new phrases they are coming up with, phrases and labels they will use from now until 2024:

“Democrats are Communists.” Socialism as a derogatory label is not hard-hitting enough. So they are starting to use the term Communist for anyone who is not a right-wing so-called patriot.

“America is not a democracy.” Already political candidates are claiming America has never been a democracy. Yes, I am serious, that’s the claim by actual candidates. “We’re a Republic and have only ever been a Republic based on the Constitution.” Either they have no idea what the USA form of government is, or they are twisting facts to serve their need to redefine America away from a one-vote-per-person democracy (as written in the Constitution).

“Liberals are responsible for racism, slavery and the Ku Klux Klan.” Oh, yes, they are serious, these propaganda merchants for the ultra-right. They even support flying the Confederate Flag, professing that it represents “an oppressed people” who truly admire non-whites (meaning “Blacks, and brown people”).

Never mind that the Confederacy’s vice president, Alexander Stephens, proclaimed:

“The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution…. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the ‘storm came and the wind blew.’

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

These and other lies and evil propaganda will be flooding the airwaves and internet. Here’s every right-minded citizen’s responsibility: FIGHT BACK and argue to try and right this ship before it sinks — taking our country with it.

Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now resides in New Mexico.