CALL THEM OUT IS OUR NEW ALBUM. LPs WILL BE HERE EVENTUALLY, BUT IN THE MEANTIME WE HAVE CDs. 25 SONGS IN 41 MINUTES. GET IT PLEASE.
The saddest part aside from Jay not being here of course, is that the memorial cancer benefit show held every year was not on last year and will not be this year too, for obvious reasons. It was a good time for people to commiserate and share some laughs and tears, not to mention it was actually a fun show to be at and to play . I miss our dysfunctional community .
Jay Brown, RIP.
The 29th will mark the 14th anniversary of the passing of Jay Brown of local Victoria band Alcoholic White Trash . This day is remembered with sadness and some laughter, as Jay was always one with the obnoxious jokes and was loved by many in this town. He was a punk from childhood until his passing . I haven't met too many people as dedicated as he was, even going to shows when cancer was taking him down and making him weak. I will never forget him.
Here's an old writeup from Ty Stranglehold right after Jay's passing away.
The amerikkkan warmongers will continue to threaten, bully, and ultimately invade and/or bomb whoever doesn't go along with their world domination. Imperialism is not a "policy", it's an ever expanding system and will not subside just because a new asshole is in power. And that new asshole is biden.
The Senate confirmation hearings for Biden’s cabinet appointees — which began the week of Jan. 18 — should serve as a sharp warning of the continuation of dangerous U.S. war policies.
Jan. 25, 2020, Philadelphia.
The corporate media has focused on Biden’s promise to overturn many of former-President Trump’s policies. But Biden pledged throughout his campaign to make “no substantial change” — and his foreign policy appointments show he meant that. Despite the media talk of justice, new policy and diversity, behind the scenes the same old U.S. militarist policies are being reinforced through Biden’s cabinet choices and their direct ties to industry-funded think tanks and military contractors.
Biden’s cabinet nominations follow the failed imperialist policies of the Trump, Obama, Bush Jr., Clinton and Bush Sr. administrations of the past three decades. These choices are ominous for working people in the U.S. and for people around the world suffocating under the knee of U.S. imperialism.
The appointment and testimony of war hawk Anthony Blinken, nominated to serve as secretary of state, is one of many searing examples of Biden’s militarist stance.
Blinken, in his Jan. 19 confirmation testimony, was clear that he supports expanding imperialist war in Syria, saying: “The U.S. is not doing enough.” He is for “unrelenting pressure on North Korea [the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea]” to “cut off all resources.” He is for expanded deployment of missiles to surround and pressure China. He is for new demands and continued sanctions on Iran. He supports continued efforts to overthrow the elected government of Venezuela. (Blinken’s full testimony is available at tinyurl.com/yyr7k58w.)
Blinken also testified: “Our commitment to Israel’s security is sacrosanct, and this is something that the president–elect feels very strongly.” He repeatedly praised Trump policy on normalizing relations between apartheid Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, emphasizing: “There are a number of things from where I sat that the Trump administration did beyond our borders that I would applaud.” Right-wing racist South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham called Blinken an “outstanding choice.” (Washington Post, Jan. 19)
Military-industrial insiders
Blinken, a former deputy secretary of state under Obama, is well–known for trading on his past government positions to get lucrative consulting jobs with military contractors. Blinken co-founded WestExec Advisors, a secretive consulting firm for military industries like Boeing and for major banks and investment firms such as Bank of America and Blackstone.
WestExec has actually been called a shadow “government-in-waiting” for former Obama administration officials tied to U.S. military policy. (politico.com, Nov. 23, 2020) It boasts on its website that its name “is derived from ‘West Executive Avenue,’ the closed street that runs between the West Wing of the White House and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. It is, quite literally, the road to the Situation Room.”
WestExec partners are former government officials, military officers and diplomats. By defining themselves as “strategic consultants,” they can avoid becoming registered lobbyists or foreign agents and can thus (re)enter government service without the one-year wait required of paid lobbyists. The clients who consult with WestExec are kept secret.
Recently confirmed Biden cabinet nominee General Lloyd Austin has been affiliated with WestExec Advisors, as well as sitting on the board of the one of the largest U.S. weapons manufacturers, Raytheon. Austin formerly served as commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and special forces in Syria. His appointment required a special waiver since by U.S. law; the secretary of defense must be a civilian.
Avril Haines, recently confirmed as Director of National Intelligence, has also been affiliated with WestExec. As the former deputy director of the CIA, Haines headed its drone program and helped create the legal justification for targeted killings as a normalized action within U.S. foreign policy. Along with assassination by drone strikes, she supported U.S. economic sanctions that attack the nutrition and health of civilian populations of entire countries.
According to Politico News, WestExec is loaded with other former top Democratic national security and foreign policy officials who raised money for the Biden campaign, have joined his transition team or have served as unofficial advisers. Many other consultants are expected to receive Biden appointments. (tinyurl.com/y2hydkdm)
Think-tank war hawks
There are a variety of other think-tank and strategic consulting firms that provide extremely well-funded positions for government officials — both Republicans and Democrats — between government appointments. The role of these think tanks is to develop a well-vetted and experienced staff who are on-call to serve corporate power both inside government and out.
A 2020 report from the Center for International Policy found that defense contractors, as well as U.S. government national security and defense agencies, contributed more than $1 billion to 50 of the most influential U.S. think tanks over the last five years. (tinyurl.com/y45jkd52)
Other recent think-tank appointees by Biden include Kathleen Hicks as deputy secretary of defense. She served as senior vice president of CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies), the most hawkish think tank in Washington. CSIS is funded by and acts as an “influence center” for giant military industries such as BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Hicks opposes the drawdown of U.S. troops from South Korea, Afghanistan and Syria.
Kurt Campbell — chairman of The Asia Group, a “strategy and capital advisory” think tank — has been appointed to the newly created position of National Security Council Indo-Pacific coordinator. Campbell, as the former deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, was considered the architect of Obama’s “Pivot to Asia.” This was a provocative policy of repositioning missile batteries, troops and aircraft carriers to encircle China and threaten the DPRK. His new role as Biden’s “Asia Czar” is to integrate anti-China strategy and strengthen U.S. alliances in the region.
The naming of Victoria Nuland as under secretary of state is especially revealing of Biden’s militarist policy. Nuland has served as the CEO of CNAS (Center for New American Security), another well-funded military think tank. She has also been with the Albright Stonebridge Group, a think tank set up by former-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Nuland served in both the Bush-Cheney administration and the Obama-Biden administration.
Under the latter administration, as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, Nuland bragged that she helped engineer the 2014 fascist coup that overthrew the elected government of Ukraine, using $5 billion in funding from National Endowment for Democracy.
All these appointees promoted U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya; starvation sanctions on Venezuela, Korea and Iran; and U.S. plans to reinforce NATO against Russia, surround the DPRK and especially threaten China militarily and economically.
These appointments contradict those liberal and social democratic forces who argued that Biden could be pushed into progressive policies by left pressure.
Wars abroad — and wars at home
Within 24 hours of Biden’s inauguration, a large convoy of U.S. military supported by helicopter gunships headed into Syria from Iraq, according to the SANA, the Syrian state news agency. The convoy of 40 trucks, loaded with weapons and logistical materials, reinforced illegal bases in the area. Tons of U.S. heavy equipment were observed travelling toward U.S. positions at the Conoco oil and gas field. This aggression continues the direct imperialist theft of Syria’s oil resources and is intended to disrupt Syria’s efforts to rebuild and provide for its war-torn population. (tinyurl.com/y3tor8fq)
This convoy movement showed the Biden administration’s rush to affirm its absolute commitment to ruthlessly enforce U.S. imperialist interests, within a “two-party system” unified in serving U.S. capitalism.
U.S. wars provided guaranteed profits and lucrative military contracts stretching back through decades to banks and military industries. The trillions for endless war leaves working people in the U.S. holding empty promises, while they struggle and die in the surge of the COVID-19 virus, in the grip of racist police and under the collapsing infrastructure of an economy in crisis.
The trillions spent on war for profit could easily alleviate all these crises and give health, housing and hope to the millions of U.S. working and oppressed people.
We've all been bombarded with the rhetoric since birth about how the freedom loving countries do not imprison people for their political beliefs, because after all , we have freedom of speech , unlike those other place that don't allow it . This is all untrue , as is much of the hollow nonsense coming out of the mouths of our leaders. Read this :
The U.S. “justice” system, like every institution of a capitalist state, is a weapon designed and wielded by the billionaires to beat workers into submission. Special bodies of armed troops, deputized by the ruling class, round up workers by the millions and contrive laws to justify locking them in dangerously toxic conditions.
This is how capitalists can extract profit from the unpaid labor of workers, while simultaneously keeping them under lock and key to prevent them from organizing to fight back. The defining feature of all U.S. instruments of class warfare is white supremacy, so the violence inflicted on the working class is disproportionately and predominantly aimed at Black, Brown and Indigenous workers.
Under these conditions, the incarceration of every worker is political in nature. The system that cages them is political — the result of carefully designed policies ratified by the state. The poor and oppressed people who fill U.S. concentration camps, whether they are called “migrant detention facilities” or “correctional facilities,” are there because of the politics of capitalism and white supremacy.
But the term “political prisoner” has special resonance, because it is used to refer to those revolutionary soldiers who were specifically targeted for threatening the existence of this rotten, unjust system. Many of them are members of revolutionary organizations that the state sought to destroy through subterfuge, assassinations and frame-ups.
To identify an incarcerated worker as a political prisoner is to say that the state went to extraordinary lengths and expended special resources to concoct a reason to lock them away from their comrades and community. Political prisoners are prisoners of consciousness who fight for the liberation of their nation, their people or the working class as a whole.
The FBI and other police forces in the U.S. fought viciously to kill the revolutionary character of the social upheaval of the 1960s and ’70s. Dozens of political prisoners who were ensnared in this fascist assault are still in prison to this day.
Mumia Abu-Jamal, journalist, scholar and former Black Panther, still in prison after 39 years, is perhaps the most internationally recognized political prisoner in the U.S. The slogan “Free Mumia!” is an indictment of white supremacy as a whole.
Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur is one political prisoner who escaped execution by incarceration. The people of Cuba warmly welcomed her as an exile.
Ana Belén Montes has been in a federal prison since 2001 for providing classified information to the government of Cuba, which helped protect that socialist project from U.S. interference.
The administrations of Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump have created a whole new generation of political prisoners. Some have avoided immediate imprisonment, but are still in the state’s crosshairs. They include Red Fawn Fallis and Michael “Rattler” Markus, Oglala Lakota Water Protectors who faced off against federal troops at Standing Rock to fight for the environment and their sovereignty in 2016; Anthony Smith, a Philadelphia organizer who was targeted by the feds for his community leadership during the Black Lives Matter uprisings; and Chelsea Manning, who was convicted of espionage after she publicly exposed proof of U.S. war crimes in Iraq.
And outside North America, the U.S. and its proxies lock up those leaders who endanger its most important imperialist projects, most notably in Palestine — where Zionist occupation forces currently have Ahmad Sa’adat, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, Tareq Mattar, Khalida Jarrar, Khitam Saafin and Mays Abu Ghosh in custody.
‘Let’s get it done in ’21’
Since mass incarceration is a form of class warfare, another way to characterize political prisoners is as prisoners of war. This is one way elder revolutionaries were characterized in a recent statement issued jointly from the Safiya Bukhari-Albert Nuh Washington Foundation, the Guillermo Morales/Assata Shakur Community & Student Center, the Coalition to Free Russell Maroon Shoatz “NOW,” the New York City Community Survival Program and the Universal Zulu Nation — World Department of Community Affairs. It called upon the movement to make 2021 the “Year to Free All Captured U.S. Political Prisoners.”
“Contrary to the racist statements by today’s fascist police unions,” the statement read, “our elders are absolutely no threat to carry out physical participation in the resuming of any war between the old police forces, who not only also took part in the conflict but who still have never been charged, convicted or imprisoned for their own armed police actions, murders and illegal wars on our Black, Brown [and] Oppressed communities during the Anti-Vietnam War, Pro-African Liberation, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Black Liberation, Ecological, Educational, Cultural [and] The U.S. New Afrikan/Puerto Rican/Native American Independence Movements.”
The statement, signed by veteran Black Panther-Zulu King Sadiki “Bro. Shep” Ojore Olugbala, includes a list of 23 elder political prisoners who were born before 1955 and who must be released immediately, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic rages through the prisons. The virus has already killed 2,133 U.S. prisoners.
The crisis is only getting worse. According to the Marshall Project, over 200 prisoners have died so far this month, making January 2021 the deadliest single month so far of the coronavirus pandemic for prisoners.
Demand their immediate release!
Workers World Party demands the immediate release of all political prisoners, especially those for whom the COVID-19 virus poses a heightened risk. In solidarity and in joining the call to make 2021 the Year of the Political Prisoner, we raise the names of some of these revolutionary soldiers:
We're at the point now where people accept everything their government says about this "pandemic" due to fear and ignorance, and those who once thought critically are now following the herd . Of course there's a real virus out there , but forcing healthy people to wear masks over something they can't see and know nothing about just doesn't seem logical. When you throw fear into the mix, there is no room for rational thought . There are many different factors that bring the number of deaths up or down, depending on where you live and what your health situation is , but I'm not going to go into that here.
Read this short article.
Important article by John C. A Manley. First published in October 2020
“A group is suing Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum and Tulsa Health Department Executive Director Bruce Dart, saying the city’s mask mandate is harmful to healthy people,” reports Activist Post. The group includes business owners and two doctors who “are asking the city to immediately repeal the mask mandate which was passed by city council last month.”
At a press conference, optometrist Robert Zoellner said:
“…the fear factor has got to step back. This idea that I don’t want to give you something that I don’t even know that I have is almost at the point of ridiculous. Let’s use some common sense.”
Dr. James Meehan, MD followed by warning that mask wearing has “well-known risks that have been well-studied and they’re not being discussed in the risk analysis.
“I’m seeing patients that have facial rashes, fungal infections, bacterial infections. Reports coming from my colleagues, all over the world, are suggesting that the bacterial pneumonias are on the rise.
“Why might that be? Because untrained members of the public are wearing medical masks, repeatedly… in a non-sterile fashion… They’re becoming contaminated. They’re pulling them off of their car seat, off the rearview mirror, out of their pocket, from their countertop, and they’re reapplying a mask that should be worn fresh and sterile every single time.”
Dr. Meehan adds:
“New research is showing that cloth masks may be increasing the aerosolization of the SARS-COV-2 virus into the environment causing an increased transmission of the disease…”
In conclusion, Dr. Meehan states:
“In February and March we were told not to wear masks. What changed? The science didn’t change. The politics did. This is about compliance. It’s not about science… Our opposition is using low-level retrospective observational studies that should not be the basis for making a medical decision of this nature.”
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Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
John C. A. Manley has spent over a decade ghostwriting for medical doctors, as well as naturopaths, chiropractors and Ayurvedic physicians. He publishes the COVID-19(84) Red Pill Briefs – an email-based newsletter dedicated to preventing the governments of the world from using an exaggerated pandemic as an excuse to violate our freedom, health, privacy, livelihood and humanity. He is also writing a novel, Brave New Normal: A Dystopian Love Story. Visit his website at: MuchAdoAboutCorona.ca. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
What's going to happen today ? Another assault from the fascistic/imperialist trump forces so the other imperialist ( although maybe less of a fascist ) has a harder time getting into office ? Stupid motherfuckers. What do they actually think biden is going to do ? Will anyone's lives really change all that much ? Maybe ask the sweatshop workers or those living in places the u.s. has decimated.
An unprecedented 25,000 National Guard troops from 50 states plus thousands of local and Capitol police are expected to occupy the U.S. capital by Jan. 20. This armed force’s announced goal: Prevent a violent attack on the inauguration of the 46th president and allow a transition to the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris administration. Exit Trump.
Philadelphia, Jan. 9.
National Guard troops and state police guarded many state capitol buildings on Jan. 17 in anticipation of ultrarightist demonstrations. Few fascist protesters showed up, indicating their current cautious mood.
Despite its disorganization and defeat after three hours, the Jan. 6 pro-fascist assault on the Capitol sowed terror in Congress and shocked the public. It aimed to stop the certification of the presidential election and keep Trump in office. The attack had his blessing, giving it the earmark of an attempted coup.
The lack of punishment on the spot, the apparent collaboration by elements in the state apparatus with the fascists and the vast publicity the assault drew — all stoked credible fears that an even bigger attack might be launched during the inauguration.
Now, leading up to Jan. 20, two forces confront each other. Both forces are repressive, and both serve the interests of the property-owning imperialist ruling class. Yet they must be distinguished from each other.
One side is the “legal” power of the state apparatus — military, police, courts, prisons. The other is the “extralegal” paramilitary armed force of dozens of militia and fascist organizations, gathered under the banner of Trump and united by their extremist ideology of white supremacy.
On the outside of this internecine confrontation is a third force: the working-class movement, including Black Lives Matter, migrant, union, women’s, LGBTQ2S+, environmental, disabled, youth and all other popular movements.
This popular movement can be courageous and bold and win enormous support, as BLM did last summer. At this moment these sectors are mostly unarmed. They have united in their mutual opposition to Trumpism.
Let’s take a closer look at the class forces confronting each other.
The establishment state apparatus
Reports from Washington describe the National Guard and police preparations as setting up a “Green Zone.” U.S. occupation forces in Baghdad used the same name for the area of the Iraqi capital containing the mammoth U.S. Embassy and other official buildings.
In Baghdad’s Green Zone, U.S. troops set up auto crossings, used cement barriers to prevent truck bombings of buildings, carried out continuous surveillance and prepared for battle in an attempt to prevent attacks by the Iraqi resistance. The Green Zone was part of a war zone; it was part of U.S. imperialism’s occupation of Iraq.
The biggest force on hand in Washington, D.C., is the National Guard. According to extensive media reports, the FBI, Secret Service, Capitol and Metropolitan police forces play a supplemental role. Federal and local police agencies have been investigating and arresting people identified as participants in the assault on the Capitol.
While Congress managed to certify the election at around 3:45 a.m. Jan. 7 — after reconvening following the assault — nevertheless 147 Republicans voted against certification. That so many Republicans stayed with Trump’s Big Lie about the election results indicated he still had substantial ruling-class support, despite the revulsion voiced in most establishment media.
In the next week, however, many ruling-class institutions abandoned Trump, even those who had previously supported him. The Wall Street Journal, the National Association of Manufacturers, Deutsche Bank (a source of loans for Trump’s businesses) dumped him, and some Republican politicians jumped ship.
Social media monopolies like Facebook and Twitter cut Trump off from direct media appeal to his base. Corporations and foundations which have supported Republican candidates financially promised to cut off funds from those who voted against certification.
On Jan. 12, the eight generals who make up the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff signed and sent a public letter to all 1.3 million members of the U.S. military. The statement condemned the “violent riot in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021,” called on all troops to avoid extremism and made the Pentagon’s position clear: “On Jan. 20, 2021, in accordance with the Constitution, confirmed by the states and the courts, and certified by Congress, President-elect Biden will be inaugurated and will become our 46th commander in chief.”
Sending the message to all troops indicates that military leadership takes seriously the fact that veterans and a handful of active duty troops were in on the Jan. 6 attack on Congress. Since the Army is 40% people of color and the National Guard 25%, the generals fear that exacerbated racist animosity will wreck their force’s cohesion.
Figuratively, ruling-class forces had a vision of a QAnon leader wearing horns (or even someone with orange hair) directing their fortunes. Most agreed that was a bad idea.
The fascist forces
A great majority of local police around the country have supported Trump. Some individual cops participated in the assault on Congress, and many people with fascist ideology look to or are recruited by the police. While police officers are part of the legal state apparatus, they are susceptible to fascist and especially racist ideology.
On Jan. 6, the leading fascist forces included the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, Boogaloo Bois (whose stated goal is to spark a racial civil war), assorted militias and some open KKK and Nazis — a replay of Charlottesville, Va., August 2017. They carry weapons to protests, invoking the Second Amendment. Most groups’ ideology is a mix of misogyny, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and anti-communism/socialism, but the main theme uniting them is white supremacy.
Since 2017 the QAnon cult, which joined the fascists in the Capitol on Jan. 6, has become a mass phenomenon. It targets politicians and business leaders, mostly establishment Democrats, accusing them without evidence of those kinds of unspeakable crimes that arouse mass revulsion. QAnon looks to Trump as their champion, and he thanks them for their support.
On Jan. 6, the president and his sleazebag cronies unleashed this hatred-driven mob on their rivals — including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, other Democrats and even Vice President Mike Pence, whom they considered a traitor. The Trump cabal did this with the tacit support of a majority of Republican members of Congress, who were lined up to oppose Biden’s certification.
Trump’s role inciting mayhem
The outgoing president’s urging played a key role. Hard-core fascists might be willing to take risks; they are ten times more willing if a U.S. president orders them to. That’s a tacit promise of impunity. And for the thousands there who were not as hard-core, the presidential push was enough to bring them along to support those ready to rampage.
What made it vintage Trump was that he promised he would join the march, but didn’t. He considers the rioters “low-class” trash.
What formed a perfect storm was the collaboration of the Capitol Police, whose leaders refused to prepare its defense. Even after Rep. Maxine Waters urged and questioned them on Dec. 31, they did little. Without their usual overwhelming might managing this protest, some police fraternized with the fascists. Others “did their job” protecting Congress.
The result: fascists killed one cop, cops killed one attacker, three others died, including one attacker the fascists themselves trampled. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund and others under him have since resigned.
Those who incited the assault, like Trump and Rudy Giuliani, did so knowing that a crowd storming the Capitol might injure or kill their political opponents. Not to mention that a frenzied white-supremacist and misogynist mob might lynch any person of color they got their hands on — for example, the young progressive and outspoken women of color representatives of “the Squad,” like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who rightfully feared such a threat.
This type of pogrom has happened before in U.S. history, when KKK-led mobs deposed local governments where Black people held office, such as in Wilmington, N.C., in 1898. (tinyurl.com/y48n8pma)
Unlike a military coup to put a junta in power or choose a new executive, the Jan. 6 assault needed only to stop the certification of Trump’s loss. It was similar to the U.S.-backed coups in Yugoslavia in October 2000 deposing Slobodan Milosevic and in Ukraine in February 2014 evicting Victor Yanukovich — both based on unproven claims of election fraud, both occurring with a Democrat in the White House.
Similar fascist assaults intimidating politicians in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona could have canceled the votes of cities with many African American and Latinx voters, reversed Biden’s victories and reelected Trump. In a phone call, the outgoing president had tried earlier to push Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find the votes” he would need to erase his loss there.
It looks like Trump will have to leave on Jan. 20, and he may face another impeachment trial in the new Senate.
Working-class response
On Jan. 20 it is likely the massive presence of National Guard troops will discourage any mass fascist mobilization. However, the fascist movement can still recruit and take action far away from military concentrations.
The crisis in capitalist society that fuels the growth of fascist and other irrational ideologies among the masses shows no signs of abating. COVID-19, the cyclical capitalist crisis after the pandemic has calmed — if that happens — and the climate crisis all threaten political stability in the center of world imperialism. The U.S. continues to lose prestige and power worldwide.
To rely on the state’s repressive forces to stop a fascist upsurge in a growing crisis is to disarm the working class — which includes all sectors of people who depend on selling their labor power to survive — leaving it vulnerable.
Assuming a smooth transition to the Biden/Harris government, the working class and people’s rights organizations of all nationalities and genders must wrestle with how to organize self defense against fascism, independent of the state apparatus. We encourage all groups to take the necessary steps.
The movement must find ways to directly appeal to the rank-and-file troops of the National Guard and the Army to encourage anti-fascism and their refusal to turn their guns on the peoples’ movements. The stronger the popular movement grows and the more decisively it acts, the better it can win over “undecided” persons and neutralize those tempted to join the fascists.
