| Sean Cubitt via nettime-l on Wed, 28 Jan 2026 01:58:12 +0100 (CET) |
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| <nettime> Acountry on the brink - and sanctions |
agreed the people of the US are the only people who can change this xit.
and agreed the “administration” uses social media gtropes of flame wars and outrage to attract headlines
and yet
follow the money: and also follow where it isn’t going. In alphabetical order, the rationale for sanctions on Belarus are stated thus
I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, determine that the actions and policies of certain members of the
Government of Belarus and other persons to undermine Belarus’ democratic processes or institutions, manifested most recently in the fundamentally undemocratic March 2006 elections, to commit human rights abuses related to political repression, including detentions and disappearances, and to engage in public corruption including by diverting or misusing Belarusian public assets or by misusing public authority, constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,…
This might sound familiar. if you take out the word ‘Belarus’ and substitute your favourite oligarchy
Sanctions on Cuba are – like France’s insistence on collecting its so-called debt from Haiti for the slaves it lost – pure vengeance.
Sanctions on Iran are directly responsible for economic and civil chaos, savage repression, mass murder. Or if you prefer, sanctions have had no effect whatever on the situation in Iran
Tariffs are sanctions with the gloves on. They are effective only on territories that prefer money to the good of the people.
A peruse of current and past sanctions at the Office of Foreign Assets Control is an education:
<https://ofac.treasury.gov/sanctions-programs-and-country-information>
Sanctions Programs and Country Information | Office of Foreign Assets Control<https://ofac.treasury.gov/sanctions-programs-and-country-information>
ofac.treasury.gov<https://ofac.treasury.gov/sanctions-programs-and-country-information>
[favicon.ico]<https://ofac.treasury.gov/sanctions-programs-and-country-information>
The US regime’s stablecoin-driven determination to maintain USD supremacy is their one weak spot. Blockchain may even make it survive the impending AI crash
Sanction the dollar now!
s
On 27 Jan 2026, at 11:35 am, nettime-l-request@lists.nettime.org wrote:
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Francine Prose: America feels like a country on the brink
(Michael Benson)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2026 12:34:41 +0100
From: Michael Benson <kinpix2001@gmail.com>
To: nettime-l@lists.nettime.org
Subject: Re: <nettime> Francine Prose: America feels like a country on
the brink
Message-ID:
<CAF3eCHEdZTOEdtLKSBbcqBCnmd5v7uEC8t5uEW0yeETd4rPwpg@mail.gmail.com>
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Hi Felix, Ted, Brian, Patrice, everybody:
Greetings from Ljubljana. A lot of interesting thoughts there in response
to Francine's piece. In fairness to her, her core message, within our
endless blizzard of distractions, with the shit perpetually hitting the
fans?a version of Orwell's boot on the face forever, I suppose?was: stay
focused on the most important thing.
For her that is: A coup is underway. We are "on the brink."
We can quibble about this. And I agree with Ted that no, actually we're in
a post-coup situation. But I think her effort to wave away the distractions
is interesting, is not just rhetorical, and underlines how crucial it is to
try to discern signals in all that noise.
Concerning where we are, years ago, reacting to a text from a friend who
sent me word, as I sat waiting for an early flight in CDG, about the
Republicans in Congress failing to vote to remove Trump from office
immediately after January 6th, I responded that this would now be a
"creeping coup." This was followed by everything we know, including the
inexplicably weak response by the Biden Justice Department in attempting to
hold the instigator of January 6th responsible, Biden's own vanity in not
accepting his own decline in time to throw the door open to a credible
Democratic primary, the media's continuous, ongoing, credulous, infuriating
susceptibility to being mesmerized by the ongoing catnip of Trumpian
provocations, etc etc.
And so here we are. It's a classic case of "gradually, then suddenly." The
coup has indeed taken place.
Felix's point:
And the white nationalists? I don't know. They will not go away, but they
are not a majority.
Sure they will not go away. And sure, they are a minority. But it reminds
me of that observation, when Serbian radicals seized the massive amounts of
JNA (Yugoslav National Army) weapons that had been stored in Bosnia during
the Cold War (stored there with an eye to that territory being the logical
mountainous redoubt to take a stand in if the USSR or NATO invaded, much as
it had been when the Germans, Italians and Hungarians did in 1941-45), that
you certainly don't need to be in a majority to destroy the work of
generations. Not at all. You can be a distinct minority. You only need to
have seized the weapons and so have a monopoly of force. Then you can trash
everything.
Not to belabor this, but that's why anyone on the "right" side (by which I
mean, correct) immediately understood how manifestly unfair it was to then
impose an arms embargo on the region, because the so-called Bosniaks were
unarmed and exposed and the Serbian nationalist forces under Mladic and
Karadzic had tanks, artillery, everything they needed for ethnic cleansing
and mass murder. As I recall, some good pious peaceniks on this very list
found that position appalling and untenable. It's when I started to realize
that the old Left, which knew fascism when it saw it, and understood the
necessity to fight it, had long since atrophied and fragmented.
Ted writes:
I'm not one of those left-identified bombasts who naively believes the
president of Harvard should risk the entire university's existence for the
fleeting glory of speaking truth to power.
There's a lot to unpack here, but my initial reaction to this is: Why not?
And who says it has to be fleeting? And why would that be naive? If any
educational institution on the planet would seem to have the resources to
fight back, wouldn't it be Harvard, with its $57 billion endowment? A
university founded in 1636, prior even to the witch trials in nearby Salem?
Doesn't an a-priori acceptance that taking a stand risks the "entire
university's existence" for a moment of "fleeting glory" already give Trump
and his dimwit fascists far more power than they really have? In the same
way that accepting the narrative, pumped endlessly out of Moscow, that
Russia is winning the war against Ukraine, gives Moscow far more power than
it really has? After all, the Russians have conquered a grand total of 1%
more Ukrainian territory in the last two years than they had in early 2024,
at a staggering cost. They can't even take all of Donbas.
However I agree with Ted's larger point that the question now clearly isn't
how to parse the meaning of the word fascism, or quibbles about
brinkmanship, but WTF to do about it.
In that line I have been finding Rebecca Solnit's posts in Meditations in
an Emergency well worth reading. I won't summarize it here, but it's to be
found at:
http://meditationsinanemergency.com
Best,
Michael
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: <nettime-l-request@lists.nettime.org>
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2026 at 09:14
Subject: nettime-l Digest, Vol 31, Issue 14
To: <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Francine Prose: America feels like a country on the brink
of an authoritarian takeover (TG) (Felix Stalder)
2. Re: nettime-l Digest, Vol 31, Issue 13 (Nat Gravenor)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:53:51 +0100
From: Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com>
To: nettime-l@lists.nettime.org
Subject: Re: <nettime> Francine Prose: America feels like a country on
the brink of an authoritarian takeover (TG)
Message-ID: <f0137a46-bc93-425b-9fa8-3cec35f85fb0@openflows.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
On 1/26/26 22:16, Brian Holmes via nettime-l wrote:
The question, What is to be done*with these fascists* is definitely a good
one. It follows the question, How can Trump be removed? that Ted posed
about a year ago, asserting that*he will have to be removed*, which is
true beyond doubt. I have thought about that question a lot in the
intervening year.
My hunch is that he cannot be removed from the outside, I mean by forces
outside his coalition of fossil industries, tech, and white
nationalists. The power of the state to squash dissent, to arbitrarily
change the rules are, to force rational institutions into submission, to
declare the state of emergency (as all the podcast-Schmittians in his
entourage are so eager for) is just too great. Maybe the Supreme Court
is going to limit some of the more capricious declarations of
emergencies (tariffs), but I don't hold my breath.
But what about the coalition itself? The fossil industries are massive,
but the economics are clearly tilting towards "renewable" energies. Not
for environmental, but for technological and geopolitical reasons. And,
yes, the US is a large market that can insulate itself, but it's an ever
shrinking part of the global economy. Not even the full force of the US
state can stop that. It can delay and make it more costly, but it feels
like that tipping point has been passed. Even the Europeans announced
today a new 100 GW wind power project. That's more energy than the UK
produces and certainly much cheaper and much quicker than building the
equivalent of 100 nuclear power plants. It's not even close. And the
shock over Greenland might have provided them with some incentive not to
back down again.
I find the contrast between the fossil empire (US) and the electric
empire (China) to be a very useful way of framing how a lot of
structural issues interrelate.
The tech industry is universally hated. Just read the comment sections
of say, Breitbart on stories about Elon Musk or Tesla. There is no love
there. But it brings in a lot of money and holds a lot of power. But it
has bet everything on AI, and it's difficult to see how this bet can be
sustained much longer. AI will stay, but trillion-dollar investments in
assets that have a very short life span and for which there is no clear
demand will bump, at some point, against a hard limit. If crypto falls
into a winter in parallel, the knives will come out.
And the white nationalists? I don't know. They will not go away, but
they are not a majority.
So, I think the changes that the coalition fractures are real,
particularly if the AI motor stops pulling the economy.
But what then? It's clear that things will not go back; Biden tried to
do that, and he failed; the conditions are just not there anymore.
I think the best shot is to build up and support those forces that
aligned with the electric paradigm shift. It's still tech, but a
different one, it's still minerals, but different ones.
And that's not only a technical questions but one that cuts across all
sectors. And it needs the imagination that another world is possible,
because the send of inevitability that fascism portrays (the law of the
jungle is the true state of nature), is its most powerful weapon.
--
| |||||||||||||||| http://felix.openflows.com |
| |||||||||| https://tldr.nettime.org/@festal |
| for secure communication, please use signal |
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2026 09:13:36 +0100
From: Nat Gravenor <natgravenor@gmail.com>
To: nettime-l@lists.nettime.org
Subject: Re: <nettime> nettime-l Digest, Vol 31, Issue 13
Message-ID:
<CAMjwTo_evDD7dOWs-ksE-YnJgif2uECx5BRJRj7KdEdFLFpCtg@mail.gmail.com>
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On the brink? This sounds like Germany circa 1934.
Am Mo., 26. Jan. 2026 um 22:17 Uhr schrieb <
nettime-l-request@lists.nettime.org>:
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Today's Topics:
1. Francine Prose: America feels like a country on the brink of
an authoritarian takeover (TG) (Patrice Riemens)
2. Re: Francine Prose: America feels like a country on the brink
of an authoritarian takeover (TG) (GM - tedbyfield)
3. Re: Francine Prose: America feels like a country on the brink
of an authoritarian takeover (TG) (Brian Holmes)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2026 13:56:15 +0000 (UTC)
From: Patrice Riemens <patrice@puscii.nl>
To: "<nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets"
<nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>
Subject: <nettime> Francine Prose: America feels like a country on the
brink of an authoritarian takeover (TG)
Message-ID: <315211796.242135.1769435775543.JavaMail.zimbra@puscii.nl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/25/america-feels-like-a-country-on-the-brink-of-an-authoritarian-takeover
America feels like a country on the brink of an authoritarian takeover
Francine Prose
This is the news we should be paying attention to. At least for the
moment, everything else is a distraction
Mon 26 Jan 2026
When we talk about our inability to pay attention, to concentrate, we
often mean and blame our phones. It?s easy, it?s meant to be easy. One
flick of our index finger transports us from disaster to disaster, from
crisis to crisis, from maddening lie to maddening lie. Each new
unauthorized attack and threatened invasion grabs the headlines, until
something else takes its place, and meanwhile the government?s attempts to
terrorize and silence the people of our country continue.
So let me break it down. There is one story: our country is on the brink
of an authoritarian takeover. In Minneapolis an innocent poet and an ER
nurse at a VA hospital were both killed in cold blood by federal agents.
It
is happening now. Toddlers are being sent to detention centers; videos of
their gyms for kids recall the youth choruses that the Nazis so proudly
showed off at the Terez?n concentration camp. Intimidation and violence
are
being weaponized against the citizens of Minneapolis, some of whom are
afraid to leave their houses for fear of being beaten, arrested and
shackled, regardless of whether they are US citizens or asylum seekers or
people from another country peacefully living and working here for
decades.
That is the news we should be paying attention to. At least for the
moment, everything else is a distraction. I?m glad to have been informed
about the heavy snow outside my window today and the local weather-travel
advisory, but frankly, it?s snowed here before ? so why is it leading the
news?
Donald Trump?s inability to tell Greenland from Iceland during his speech
at Davos is embarrassing, awful, sort of funny ? but it?s hardly the first
time he?s made a mortifying mistake. I too want the Epstein files
released,
I want to know who is guilty, I want justice and respect for the
survivors.
But unless those revelations bring down the perpetrators, it?s not ? for
the moment ? the story.
The story is what?s happening in Minneapolis. And even that requires
focus. Already the killing of Alex Pretti has partly diverted our
attention
from the killing of Renee Good.
The story ? masked agents, arrests, violence, kidnappings, deportations
without due process ? is happening all over the country, but in smaller
increments, without as much pushback, and so far without the death of two
innocent, middle-class, white bystanders. The story is about how decent
and
unselfish Renee Good and Alex Pretti were and about the falsehoods being
told about them.
The story is not letting ourselves be distracted from the real and present
threat to our democracy. That threat is the story which our print,
electronic and social media should be bannering at the top of every feed
and every front page, every day. To consistently run that below the
weather
report is, quite frankly, to betray the struggles of the people of
Minneapolis.
The story is what we do now to support our fellow Americans in the midwest
and to keep the violence and repression from spreading even further into
our own streets and backyards. The story is avoiding the future that
Stephen Miller and his minions are planning for us.
The story is how we do it: not long after the 2017 inauguration of Donald
Trump, I wrote, in these pages, about our need to stage a national strike.
I know now that I underestimated the difficulties ? the amount of
organization required, the need to strategize, the necessity to support
and
provide for people who will lose their livelihoods if they walk off the
job. But many people are already scared to go to work or send their kids
to
school.
Such a shutdown would be an enormous undertaking, to say the least. But
it?s been done. Gandhi and Martin Luther King achieved at least some of
their goals without resorting to violence. The people of Minneapolis have
stopped business as usual in the city. That energy can ? and needs - to
spread. Not to be alarmist, but unless we stay focused, it may soon be too
late.
This morning I went off ? I apologize! ? on a college classmate who sent
an email link to a video of birds that others might want to watch as
?relief from the weather and the news?. I wasn?t saying we should stop
enjoying the birds. I?m thrilled that so many robins elected to stick
around this winter. I even like watching the crows and turkey vultures
pick
the roadkill clean.
But I don?t really want ?a relief? from the loss of Renee Good and Alex
Pretti or from the resistance beginning in Minneapolis. To crudely
paraphrase Ecclesiastes, there is a time for everything. And this may not
be the time to distract ourselves with the latest scandal or diplomatic
blunder or with amusing images of the creatures who don?t much care if the
humans beneath the snow-covered rooftops are living under a cruel and
authoritarian regime.
Francine Prose is a former president of PEN American Center and a member
of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2026 12:27:03 -0500
From: GM - tedbyfield <tedbyfield@gmail.com>
To: nettime-l@lists.nettime.org
Subject: Re: <nettime> Francine Prose: America feels like a country on
the brink of an authoritarian takeover (TG)
Message-ID: <CB8C1806-CA61-4719-88FC-FECFCE282074@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Just a few minutes ago I wrote:
?? The same fools who enabled this catastrophe with their
interminable arendtsplaining and pedantic denialism expect us to attend
to their interminable babbling about how wrong they were. They should
step aside and give their bully pulpits to people who were right when it
mattered. ??
These *postmature antifascists*, as I like to call them, are a dime a
dozen and best ignored. Francine Prose is a reasonably distinguished
person, deeply intelligent and clearly of good faith ? she plays on
our team, so to speak. But anyone who?d write *now* that the US
?feels like a country on the brink of an authoritarian takeover?
should be read with some skepticism, because the US is far past that
brink.
We?ve watched the prestigious institutions of one sector after another
? national governments abroad and government entities at home,
national and even transnational corporations, mighty universities, major
media outlets, pillars of civil society, and on and on ? quailing
before Trump & Co. It?s perfectly understandable why they?d do so,
and even a *rational choice*; I?m not one of those left-identified
bombasts who naively believes the president of Harvard should risk the
entire university?s existence for the fleeting glory of ?speaking
truth to power.? But even so, to spend the last year watching this
happen and *then* argue the US is ?on the brink?? WTF criteria would
the country need for even the most prudent person to say we?ve gone
over the brink?!
Prose?s own words are ?our country *is* on the brink,? but The
Guardian?s editors changed that to ?feels like? for their headline
because out of journalistic caution. But that subtle shift, from fact to
subjective impression, is in keeping with Prose?s own piece. It spends
more time on the space cynical sysadmins used call PEBKAC, for Problem
Exists Between Keyboard and Chair. If you read her essay, most of it?s
concerned with phones screens, snow, media, robins, etc ? novelistic
detail that puts us in the shoes, and chair, of a Serious Person.
My comment above about pedantic denialists was prompted by a piece by
Jonathan Rauch in The Atlantic ? ?Yes, It?s Fascism,? with the
subhead ?Until recently, I thought it a term best avoided. But now,
the resemblances are too many and too strong to deny.? He too spends
much of his time maundering on about his subjective process, then he
conjures up one of those ?best practice?-style lists cribbed from a
melange of Authorities on Authoritarianism ? Snyder, Eco, Paxton, etc
? of criteria needed for anointing something Officially Fascist. He
introduces the list with a choice bit of rhetoric that doffs its hat to
some sort of ?methodology? but ultimately affirms his own capricious
authority: ?Fascism is not a territory with clearly marked boundaries
but a constellation of characteristics. When you view the stars
together, the constellation plainly appears.? A decade too late, but
who?s counting?
Well, I am, actually. Not so much the exact number of years have passes
since I argued that Trump would need be forcibly removed from the White
House (ten), but more the qualitative sense of time that permeates
people?s thinking and enables their passivity. When you say we?re
*on the brink?, you?re saying it hasn?t ?really? happened yet,
which justifies passivity. Arguing it isn?t ?really? fascism
achieves the same effect by slightly different means, by focusing on
discernment. Saying of something evil that ?this is what _______ looks
like? ? fascism, authoritarianism, whatever, it doesn?t matter
because it?s all just content for a mad lib ? does it as well, but
with a semiotic twist: it may or may not not actually *be* _____, but it
?looks like? it. And, of course, protestation like ?this isn?t
who we are? and ?we?re better than this? do the same, but in
still other ways. The list of these rhetorical sleights of hand could go
on and on.
I have to make clear that the people saying these things should be
assumed to be acting in good faith, caring for the public interest, and
all those other warm-fuzzy things. I don?t mean to speak poorly of
them as individuals. But as a *class* they?re pretty problematic,
because the sum total of their efforts is to postpone the venerable
question *what is to be done?* And in much the same way that they are,
by their own admission, postmature antifascists, we should assume that,
given the chance, they?d be among the first to prematurely declare
victory over the fascists ? because that?s when liberals would have
to ask the much rougher question what is to be done *with these
fascists?*
Cheers,
Ted
On 26 Jan 2026, at 8:56, Patrice Riemens via nettime-l wrote:
Original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/25/america-feels-like-a-country-on-the-brink-of-an-authoritarian-takeover
America feels like a country on the brink of an authoritarian takeover
Francine Prose
This is the news we should be paying attention to. At least for the
moment, everything else is a distraction
Mon 26 Jan 2026
When we talk about our inability to pay attention, to concentrate, we
often mean and blame our phones. It?s easy, it?s meant to be easy.
One flick of our index finger transports us from disaster to disaster,
from crisis to crisis, from maddening lie to maddening lie. Each new
unauthorized attack and threatened invasion grabs the headlines, until
something else takes its place, and meanwhile the government?s
attempts to terrorize and silence the people of our country continue.
So let me break it down. There is one story: our country is on the
brink of an authoritarian takeover. In Minneapolis an innocent poet
and an ER nurse at a VA hospital were both killed in cold blood by
federal agents. It is happening now. Toddlers are being sent to
detention centers; videos of their gyms for kids recall the youth
choruses that the Nazis so proudly showed off at the Terez?n
concentration camp. Intimidation and violence are being weaponized
against the citizens of Minneapolis, some of whom are afraid to leave
their houses for fear of being beaten, arrested and shackled,
regardless of whether they are US citizens or asylum seekers or people
from another country peacefully living and working here for decades.
That is the news we should be paying attention to. At least for the
moment, everything else is a distraction. I?m glad to have been
informed about the heavy snow outside my window today and the local
weather-travel advisory, but frankly, it?s snowed here before ? so
why is it leading the news?
Donald Trump?s inability to tell Greenland from Iceland during his
speech at Davos is embarrassing, awful, sort of funny ? but it?s
hardly the first time he?s made a mortifying mistake. I too want the
Epstein files released, I want to know who is guilty, I want justice
and respect for the survivors. But unless those revelations bring down
the perpetrators, it?s not ? for the moment ? the story.
The story is what?s happening in Minneapolis. And even that requires
focus. Already the killing of Alex Pretti has partly diverted our
attention from the killing of Renee Good.
The story ? masked agents, arrests, violence, kidnappings,
deportations without due process ? is happening all over the
country, but in smaller increments, without as much pushback, and so
far without the death of two innocent, middle-class, white bystanders.
The story is about how decent and unselfish Renee Good and Alex Pretti
were and about the falsehoods being told about them.
The story is not letting ourselves be distracted from the real and
present threat to our democracy. That threat is the story which our
print, electronic and social media should be bannering at the top of
every feed and every front page, every day. To consistently run that
below the weather report is, quite frankly, to betray the struggles of
the people of Minneapolis.
The story is what we do now to support our fellow Americans in the
midwest and to keep the violence and repression from spreading even
further into our own streets and backyards. The story is avoiding the
future that Stephen Miller and his minions are planning for us.
The story is how we do it: not long after the 2017 inauguration of
Donald Trump, I wrote, in these pages, about our need to stage a
national strike. I know now that I underestimated the difficulties ?
the amount of organization required, the need to strategize, the
necessity to support and provide for people who will lose their
livelihoods if they walk off the job. But many people are already
scared to go to work or send their kids to school.
Such a shutdown would be an enormous undertaking, to say the least.
But it?s been done. Gandhi and Martin Luther King achieved at least
some of their goals without resorting to violence. The people of
Minneapolis have stopped business as usual in the city. That energy
can ? and needs - to spread. Not to be alarmist, but unless we stay
focused, it may soon be too late.
This morning I went off ? I apologize! ? on a college classmate
who sent an email link to a video of birds that others might want to
watch as ?relief from the weather and the news?. I wasn?t saying
we should stop enjoying the birds. I?m thrilled that so many robins
elected to stick around this winter. I even like watching the crows
and turkey vultures pick the roadkill clean.
But I don?t really want ?a relief? from the loss of Renee Good
and Alex Pretti or from the resistance beginning in Minneapolis. To
crudely paraphrase Ecclesiastes, there is a time for everything. And
this may not be the time to distract ourselves with the latest scandal
or diplomatic blunder or with amusing images of the creatures who
don?t much care if the humans beneath the snow-covered rooftops are
living under a cruel and authoritarian regime.
Francine Prose is a former president of PEN American Center and a
member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences
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Message: 3
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2026 15:16:21 -0600
From: Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>
To: "<nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets"
<nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>
Subject: Re: <nettime> Francine Prose: America feels like a country on
the brink of an authoritarian takeover (TG)
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The question, What is to be done *with these fascists* is definitely a
good
one. It follows the question, How can Trump be removed? that Ted posed
about a year ago, asserting that *he will have to be removed*, which is
true beyond doubt. I have thought about that question a lot in the
intervening year.
Then there is also the question, What is to be done with ourselves, with
each one of us? Which may not be the least of the problems.
The liberals, no doubt Francine Prose among them, had to wait until white
middle-class people were gunned down to start getting serious about the
fascist takeover. So that was their limit. One could complain that Gaza
should have taught them that, that George Floyd's murder should have
taught
them that, that Afghanistan or Vietnam or whatever grotesque American
imperialist war should have taught them that long ago. It's true, but
since
we have to get on with the business of removing Trump from power, all
these
complaints are not to be forgotten, but instead to be relativized. The
liberals are part of an evolving political spectrum, like the leftist
intellectuals and the anarchists, who *will have to admit that they
actually live in this country* (dixit Ted again).
On the basis of actions at the grassroots, mostly led by Latinos but
picked
up increasingly widely, the Democrats have finally started to step up, as
individual representatives and to some degree as a party. For them too,
the
country is "suddenly" on the brink of authoritarianism. Why did it take so
long? Small "d" democratic politics does not only happen in the voting
booth. It happens when molecular forces at the grassroots, and in the
institutions, and in the professions, all start relaying distinct demands
with a common sense of urgency. At moments of crisis these demands pierce
the usual capture of political representatives by interest groups. The
process is finally starting in the US. But it's a long way from removing
Trump from power (although probably a lot closer to removing ICE from
Minnesota).
What to do with the fascists is a harder question. There are a lot of
fascists now. My sense is that liberal denial of real problems allowed all
this to get much worse than it had to. I think that as Americans, most of
us participate in some way in that denial. Just like Europeans
participated, for convenience, in the processes that made the US into the
global hegemon. We evaded our responsibilities, in exchange for careers,
money, entertainment, or just the cheap and ever-available pleasures of
cynicism and nihilism.
Broken institutions are terrifying - because violence leaps into the
institutional void. But there are reasons why those institutions broke.
Their collapse can also represent a possibility, the possibility for
reconstruction (an urgent need that follows every civil war). There's a
steep learning curve ahead for anyone who wants to participate in removal
and rebuilding. First, because you have to get over denialism and take the
problems of *this country* seriously. Second, because you have to find a
way to deal with 40% of the Republican base, who *still* think Trump is
doing a great job.
More effort, citizens and non-citizens, if you don't want to live under a
dictatorship.
Brian
On Mon, Jan 26, 2026 at 11:27?AM GM - tedbyfield via nettime-l <
nettime-l@lists.nettime.org> wrote:
Just a few minutes ago I wrote:
?? The same fools who enabled this catastrophe with their
interminable arendtsplaining and pedantic denialism expect us to attend
to their interminable babbling about how wrong they were. They should
step aside and give their bully pulpits to people who were right when it
mattered. ??
These *postmature antifascists*, as I like to call them, are a dime a
dozen and best ignored. Francine Prose is a reasonably distinguished
person, deeply intelligent and clearly of good faith ? she plays on
our team, so to speak. But anyone who?d write *now* that the US
?feels like a country on the brink of an authoritarian takeover?
should be read with some skepticism, because the US is far past that
brink.
We?ve watched the prestigious institutions of one sector after another
? national governments abroad and government entities at home,
national and even transnational corporations, mighty universities, major
media outlets, pillars of civil society, and on and on ? quailing
before Trump & Co. It?s perfectly understandable why they?d do so,
and even a *rational choice*; I?m not one of those left-identified
bombasts who naively believes the president of Harvard should risk the
entire university?s existence for the fleeting glory of ?speaking
truth to power.? But even so, to spend the last year watching this
happen and *then* argue the US is ?on the brink?? WTF criteria would
the country need for even the most prudent person to say we?ve gone
over the brink?!
Prose?s own words are ?our country *is* on the brink,? but The
Guardian?s editors changed that to ?feels like? for their headline
because out of journalistic caution. But that subtle shift, from fact to
subjective impression, is in keeping with Prose?s own piece. It spends
more time on the space cynical sysadmins used call PEBKAC, for Problem
Exists Between Keyboard and Chair. If you read her essay, most of it?s
concerned with phones screens, snow, media, robins, etc ? novelistic
detail that puts us in the shoes, and chair, of a Serious Person.
My comment above about pedantic denialists was prompted by a piece by
Jonathan Rauch in The Atlantic ? ?Yes, It?s Fascism,? with the
subhead ?Until recently, I thought it a term best avoided. But now,
the resemblances are too many and too strong to deny.? He too spends
much of his time maundering on about his subjective process, then he
conjures up one of those ?best practice?-style lists cribbed from a
melange of Authorities on Authoritarianism ? Snyder, Eco, Paxton, etc
? of criteria needed for anointing something Officially Fascist. He
introduces the list with a choice bit of rhetoric that doffs its hat to
some sort of ?methodology? but ultimately affirms his own capricious
authority: ?Fascism is not a territory with clearly marked boundaries
but a constellation of characteristics. When you view the stars
together, the constellation plainly appears.? A decade too late, but
who?s counting?
Well, I am, actually. Not so much the exact number of years have passes
since I argued that Trump would need be forcibly removed from the White
House (ten), but more the qualitative sense of time that permeates
people?s thinking and enables their passivity. When you say we?re
*on the brink?, you?re saying it hasn?t ?really? happened yet,
which justifies passivity. Arguing it isn?t ?really? fascism
achieves the same effect by slightly different means, by focusing on
discernment. Saying of something evil that ?this is what _______ looks
like? ? fascism, authoritarianism, whatever, it doesn?t matter
because it?s all just content for a mad lib ? does it as well, but
with a semiotic twist: it may or may not not actually *be* _____, but it
?looks like? it. And, of course, protestation like ?this isn?t
who we are? and ?we?re better than this? do the same, but in
still other ways. The list of these rhetorical sleights of hand could go
on and on.
I have to make clear that the people saying these things should be
assumed to be acting in good faith, caring for the public interest, and
all those other warm-fuzzy things. I don?t mean to speak poorly of
them as individuals. But as a *class* they?re pretty problematic,
because the sum total of their efforts is to postpone the venerable
question *what is to be done?* And in much the same way that they are,
by their own admission, postmature antifascists, we should assume that,
given the chance, they?d be among the first to prematurely declare
victory over the fascists ? because that?s when liberals would have
to ask the much rougher question what is to be done *with these
fascists?*
Cheers,
Ted
On 26 Jan 2026, at 8:56, Patrice Riemens via nettime-l wrote:
Original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/25/america-feels-like-a-country-on-the-brink-of-an-authoritarian-takeover
America feels like a country on the brink of an authoritarian takeover
Francine Prose
This is the news we should be paying attention to. At least for the
moment, everything else is a distraction
Mon 26 Jan 2026
When we talk about our inability to pay attention, to concentrate, we
often mean and blame our phones. It?s easy, it?s meant to be easy.
One flick of our index finger transports us from disaster to disaster,
from crisis to crisis, from maddening lie to maddening lie. Each new
unauthorized attack and threatened invasion grabs the headlines, until
something else takes its place, and meanwhile the government?s
attempts to terrorize and silence the people of our country continue.
So let me break it down. There is one story: our country is on the
brink of an authoritarian takeover. In Minneapolis an innocent poet
and an ER nurse at a VA hospital were both killed in cold blood by
federal agents. It is happening now. Toddlers are being sent to
detention centers; videos of their gyms for kids recall the youth
choruses that the Nazis so proudly showed off at the Terez?n
concentration camp. Intimidation and violence are being weaponized
against the citizens of Minneapolis, some of whom are afraid to leave
their houses for fear of being beaten, arrested and shackled,
regardless of whether they are US citizens or asylum seekers or people
from another country peacefully living and working here for decades.
That is the news we should be paying attention to. At least for the
moment, everything else is a distraction. I?m glad to have been
informed about the heavy snow outside my window today and the local
weather-travel advisory, but frankly, it?s snowed here before ? so
why is it leading the news?
Donald Trump?s inability to tell Greenland from Iceland during his
speech at Davos is embarrassing, awful, sort of funny ? but it?s
hardly the first time he?s made a mortifying mistake. I too want the
Epstein files released, I want to know who is guilty, I want justice
and respect for the survivors. But unless those revelations bring down
the perpetrators, it?s not ? for the moment ? the story.
The story is what?s happening in Minneapolis. And even that requires
focus. Already the killing of Alex Pretti has partly diverted our
attention from the killing of Renee Good.
The story ? masked agents, arrests, violence, kidnappings,
deportations without due process ? is happening all over the
country, but in smaller increments, without as much pushback, and so
far without the death of two innocent, middle-class, white bystanders.
The story is about how decent and unselfish Renee Good and Alex Pretti
were and about the falsehoods being told about them.
The story is not letting ourselves be distracted from the real and
present threat to our democracy. That threat is the story which our
print, electronic and social media should be bannering at the top of
every feed and every front page, every day. To consistently run that
below the weather report is, quite frankly, to betray the struggles of
the people of Minneapolis.
The story is what we do now to support our fellow Americans in the
midwest and to keep the violence and repression from spreading even
further into our own streets and backyards. The story is avoiding the
future that Stephen Miller and his minions are planning for us.
The story is how we do it: not long after the 2017 inauguration of
Donald Trump, I wrote, in these pages, about our need to stage a
national strike. I know now that I underestimated the difficulties ?
the amount of organization required, the need to strategize, the
necessity to support and provide for people who will lose their
livelihoods if they walk off the job. But many people are already
scared to go to work or send their kids to school.
Such a shutdown would be an enormous undertaking, to say the least.
But it?s been done. Gandhi and Martin Luther King achieved at least
some of their goals without resorting to violence. The people of
Minneapolis have stopped business as usual in the city. That energy
can ? and needs - to spread. Not to be alarmist, but unless we stay
focused, it may soon be too late.
This morning I went off ? I apologize! ? on a college classmate
who sent an email link to a video of birds that others might want to
watch as ?relief from the weather and the news?. I wasn?t saying
we should stop enjoying the birds. I?m thrilled that so many robins
elected to stick around this winter. I even like watching the crows
and turkey vultures pick the roadkill clean.
But I don?t really want ?a relief? from the loss of Renee Good
and Alex Pretti or from the resistance beginning in Minneapolis. To
crudely paraphrase Ecclesiastes, there is a time for everything. And
this may not be the time to distract ourselves with the latest scandal
or diplomatic blunder or with amusing images of the creatures who
don?t much care if the humans beneath the snow-covered rooftops are
living under a cruel and authoritarian regime.
Francine Prose is a former president of PEN American Center and a
member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences
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