Article 2 — Tuesday, September 15, 2020.
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As promised, our webmaster Winton Wedderburn and I shall post this series of articles here on our website at humanitycollege.org . Our means are limited, but we hope we will be able to explain the situation to you in an honest way. Please read, comment, and share. Circulating would greatly help.
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Scenario 2 by which Trump could return to power (and unleash full-blown fascism).

Violence, Fear of Violence, and Pro-Police White Backlash. — The unfolding situation in the aftermath of George Floyd in Minnesota, Jacob Blake in Wisconsin and many more such incidents of police brutality on Blacks indicate that (1) on one hand, a small but organized group of protesters is turning more violent, and it is entirely possible that the violence is being instigated and exploited by pro-Trump forces, and (2) even though they are few and far between compared to the vast majority of young people — black, white and brown — protesting peacefully, huge right-wing propaganda is branding the entire Black Lives Matter movement as violent and un-American. They are labelling Biden, Harris and the Democratic Party to be supporters of the street violence.

Social media like Facebook are not stopping this fear-mongering and rumor-spreading, and in this climate, outlandish conspiracy theory groups such as Q-Anon as well as white supremacist groups that mushroomed in Trump administration are having a field day. They are putting fear in people’s minds that if Biden becomes president, anti-American street thugs would take over, and a Biden-Harris government would defund police completely, bringing total lawlessness across the country. And to many Americans, a woman vice presidential candidate, and that too someone from the minority community, is unacceptable. A social backlash against an Obama presidency has rapidly surged.

Fear mongering and putting fear in people’s minds work like magic. I clearly remember when back in 1988, a similar tactic worked to bring a sinking George H. W. Bush candidacy back to a winning ticket in the eleventh hour of the campaign. Michael Dukakis — who was far ahead — did not have an answer to the fear mongering, racist propaganda that the Republican Party had unleashed two months before the elections.

Already in white suburban-dominated states such as Pennsylvania, Minneapolis, Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida, the race is tightening, and even though nearly two hundred thousand people have died of Covid-19 in the past six months under an inefficient and indifferent Trump administration, a historically anti-Black American electorate is showing signs that it would forgive Trump and his horrific failure to save lives, and perhaps hand him another victory. To them, a radical Black uprising — violent or not — is more dangerous and threatening than a total failure of the health care system that killed four times as many people as the number of soldiers killed in Vietnam over ten years.

To them, it’s unimportant how the rest of the civilized world has controlled the pandemic, and how the richest country on earth could not. To them, it’s irrelevant that USA is the only developed country in the world where health care is a privilege, and not a right.

A re-election of Trump and his white supremacist forces would turn America into a totalitarian, fascist state, destroying democracy and plurality. But these voters couldn’t care less. This climate is a stark reminder of how Hitler rose to power in 1930’s.

In 2016, Trump played the anti-immigrant card and branded Mexican immigrants as rapists and thugs. In 2020, Trump is playing the anti-BLM card, and branding Black solidarity resistance movement as violent, un-American, and forces of anarchy.

So far, Biden and Harris and Democratic Party have not been able to forcefully challenge these lies. We keep watching with extreme frustration and disbelief.

(To be continued every Tuesday until the Election Day)

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