An eye-opening read. Laboratories of Autocracy - GOP war on democracy

[Grasswire2]

[link:https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/11/28/2066084/-An-interview-with-David-Pepper-Laboratories-of-Autocracy-author-about-the-GOP-war-on-democracy|


Excerpt, interviewed here by expert on RW extremists David Neiwert:

DN: Yeah. It seems to me that there is ... People are so wedded to the necessity to believe that things will be normal, that things can be normal, that they're really blinkering themselves as to the reality of what we're dealing with right now. People just don't want to see it. They don't want to know about it. Of course, there's a huge chunk of the population out there that pays zero attention to politics anyway because they don't believe it affects them, and I think the next few years might give them a rude awakening.

But more than that, I think within the mainstream Democrat Party, as well as within the mainstream media, there's really this desire to believe that, "Oh, things can be normal again. We can go back to normalcy," and I don't see normal returning for a long time, and especially not if we don't start putting our shoulders to the wheel.

David Pepper: Absolutely. I mean, I think that we will not have normal again until there's accountability in multiple ways, and there needs to be accountability for Jan. 6. There needs to be accountability for Trump and corruption that he brought, but the other thing that's happening is there is no accountability anymore in state-level politics. The reason they never stop attacking constitutional rights, be they voting rights or women's right to choose or whatever, [is] even when their laws that they pass are struck down, they never lose their office. Every once in a while there's a corruption prosecution, normally by the feds, because within states they just don't happen against their own party, but there's so rarely any accountability that there's never any pushback to more normal politics, even when—again, this Texas law, I don't think it's been brutal today. If it has been, I haven't seen the news, but my guess is that Texas law will be stopped by this court because of the mechanism of that lawsuit sort of part of it.

But in a normal world of politics, attacking women's right to choose in that way would actually cost people their offices in the next election, but in our current politics in these statehouses, we're essentially no longer working within democratic governance. I mean, these statehouses are no longer small-D democratic. They're about to get worse, and so these folks can just ... They keep doing this, and they never stop because there's never accountability. So, normalcy can be achieved if over the coming years we start getting accountability back into the conversation. Right now, there's just almost no accountability for the most antidemocratic behavior we're seeing.

[niyad]

1. The "Democrat Party"???

[aggiesal]

2. Yeah that's my first indication that ...

he listens to RW Radio and watches Fox Nooze.

[monkeyman1]

3. If they go back to fcc old rules , most of these am radio --

station's would be off the air in about 24 hr's ! right wing has made up it's own rules ! think i'm bull shitting , look it up ! lush limpdick started all this crap ! proven fact !

[aggiesal]

4. Do you remember when ...

TV & Radio stations would announce
"Following is an editorial from our station manager."
Then the following week we'd hear
"The following is a rebuttal to last week's station manager editorial."

I haven't heard this in years.

I believe it's because the RW doesn't want their listeners to have critical thinking skills.

[monkeyman1]

6. remember it well , I built radio & tv tower's for 51 yrs !

ya ' won't now day's because of these rich bitch's buying am station's & putting out there right wing bull -shit ! there's 1 good thing about the republican Taliban,if ya want something done , do not depend on the grand ol' party for a god damn thing ! they haven't done anything right since good ol' ABE Lincoln ! look it up ? we have a senate minority leader = draft dodger, ex-commander of who know's what =draft dodger, house minority leader who has the leadership of a gas station attendant, a congresswoman that graduated from a g.e.d. I.Q. test. and so I could have so much fun with this.

[Grasswire2]

8. See his bio and list of publications below.

He is the pre-eminent watcher of RW extremist groups -- has been for more than twenty years now.

[Grasswire2]

5. Do you have any idea who David Niewert is, and the work he has done?

Evidently not.

David Neiwert is an American freelance journalist and blogger. He received the National Press Club Award for Distinguished Online Journalism in 2000 for a domestic terrorism series he produced for MSNBC.com.[1] Neiwert has concentrated in part on extremism in the Northwest.[2]

He worked at newspapers around the Pacific Northwest from 1978–1996, notably in Idaho (at Sandpoint, Blackfoot, Lewiston, Moscow, and Twin Falls); Montana (Missoula); and in western Washington (Kent, Bellevue, and Seattle). He went to work at MSNBC.com in 1996 as a writer-producer, and continued there through late 2000. Since then, he has focused on writing books and producing his blog Orcinus, which tends to report on the crossover between the mainstream and the far right. The blog won early recognition in the liberal blogosphere in the form of consecutive Koufax Awards for Best Series in 2003 and 2004.[citation needed]

The Northwest Progressive Institute named its annual awards to the region's best liberal bloggers after Neiwert.[3] He edited the political blog Crooks And Liars from 2008–2012. As of 2018, Neiwert worked with the Southern Poverty Law Center as their Pacific Northwest correspondent.[4] His book, And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border, won the 2014 International Latino Book Award for general nonfiction.

In January 2019, Neiwert left the SPLC blog Hatewatch to join Daily Kos as a correspondent.[5]

Neiwert's 2020 book Red Pill, Blue Pill discusses how radicalization and conspiracy theories may be opposed on the individual level.[6][7]

[Grasswire2]

7. David's publications

Publications Edit

Neiwert, David (2020). Red Pill, Blue Pill: How to Counteract the Conspiracy Theories That Are Killing Us. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books. ISBN 9781633886261.[8]

Neiwert, David (2017). Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump. London New York: Verso. ISBN 978-1-78663-423-8.

Of Orcas and Men: What Killer Whales Can Teach Us, 2015 (ISBN 978-1468308655)

And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border, 2013 (ISBN 978-1568587257)[9][10]

The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right, 2009 (ISBN 978-0981576985)[11][12][13]

Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community, 2005 (ISBN 978-1403967923)[14][15]

Death on the Fourth of July: The Story of a Killing, a Trial, and Hate Crime in America, 2004 (ISBN 978-1403969002)

In God's Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest, 1999 (ISBN 978-087422175

[aggiesal]

9. Maybe someone should tell him it's ...

The Democratic Party not the Democrat Party.

You say Democrat Party, I say you're a RW hack.

[niyad]

10. While I appreciate the information that you

provided about him, please note that ALL I did was question the use of the rw "Democrat party".

I don't care who they are, or what their credentials, whenever people use that particular label, I will point it out.

[LymphocyteLover]

11. Just heard an excellent interview with Pepper on a local Indiana podcast

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/indiana-politics-with-deb-chubb/id1549788681?i=1000544166717

[LymphocyteLover]

12. Just bought his book-- such an important topic

“It’s the statehouses, stupid.”

Laboratories of Autocracy shows that far more than the high-profile antics of politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Jim Jordan—and yes, even bigger than Donald Trump’s "Big Lie”—it’s anonymous, often corrupt politicians in statehouses across the country who pose the greatest dangers to American democracy.

Because these statehouses no longer operate as functioning democracies, these unknown politicians have all the incentive to keep doing greater damage, and can not be held accountable however extreme they get. This has driven steep declines in states like Ohio and others across the country. And collectively, it’s placed American democracy in its greatest peril since the dawn of the Jim Crow era.

But Pepper doesn’t stop there. He lays out a robust pro-democracy agenda outlining how everyone from elected officials to business leaders to everyday citizens can fight back.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1662919573?psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&ref_=chk_typ_imgToDp