Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Truth to Power, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister, worker's rights
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From The Flag To The Cross: Fascism American Style
From The Flag To The Cross: Fascism American Style is the title of a recently published anthology edited by Zachary Sklar and our own Michael Smith. Co-host Jim Lafferty wrote the introduction. The book draws from seven key interviews with prominent socialist thinkers in the United States and Canada. They include Margaret Kimberly, Henry Giroux, Dianne Feeley and Bill Mullen. Bill will also be joining Michael and Jim in the guest seat. He’s Professor Emeritus of American Studies at Purdue University and author of We Charge Genocide! American Fascism and the Rule of Law.
Chris Hedges who is also included in this book, writes “when fascism comes to America, it will be mass of recitations of the pledge of allegiance, the Christian cross and the flag.” We’ll explore these frayed boundaries of Christian fascism, capitalism, and the assaults on free speech and censorship while highlighting the strategies of community based actions.
Guest – Michael Steven Smith is the author, editor, and co-editor of many books, mostly recently Imagine: Living In A Socialist U.S.A. and “The Emerging Police State,” by William M. Kunstler. He has testified before committees of the United States Congress and the United Nations on human rights issues. Mr. Smith lives and had practiced law in New York City with his wife Debby, where on behalf of seriously injured persons he sues insurance companies and occasionally the New York City Police Department.
Guest – Jim Lafferty is the Executive Director Emeritus of the National Lawyers Guild in Los Angeles and the host of The Lawyers Guild Show on Pacifica Radio’s Los Angeles station, KPFK. Jim has been a national leader in the peace and social justice movement for 60-years. He served as a national Coordinator of the National Peace Action Coalition, the group that organized the largest protests against the U.S. war in Vietnam, and in leadership positions in other peace coalitions opposing various imperialist U.S. wars. In the early 1960’s he was the national Director of the National Lawyers Guild during its historic work in the South. In the mid-1960’s until the 1980’s, Jim was in the private practice of law in Detroit, Michigan, where he specialized in Selective Service law, employment discrimination law, and civil rights law. He serves on the governing board of the A.C.L.U. of Southern California, is a member of the steering committee of the national Julian Assange Defense Committee, and a Fellow at the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Southern California.
Guest – Bill Mullen is professor emeritus of American studies at Purdue University and the co-founder of The Campus Anti-fascist Network. He’s also co-author of The Black Antifascist Tradition and We Charge Genocide: American Ashes and the Rule of Law. He’s a contributor to the just published Law And Disorder book From the Flag to the Cross: Fascism American Style.
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Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Violations of U.S. and International Law
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University Capitulates To Censorship Policies
VI. Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution, observed that sometimes decades go by without very much happening and other times decades happen within weeks. In a sense we are living through such a time. It is comparable to the great transformation several centuries ago, when feudalism was finally subdued and capitalism flowered. The obligations of the master to the serf were severed and workers were left on their own in the new ruthless capitalist society.
The harshness of capitalism was ameliorated by social legislation, most notably by the reforms instituted in the 1930s in the Roosevelt era when we got Social Security, unemployment compensation, government jobs, workers compensation, and later Medicare and Medicaid and food supplements.
These ameliorative measures are now targeted and have been partially been taken away by the ruling rich, the new kings of capital, the 800 and some billionaires we have in America now and their MAGA movement led by the odious Donald Trump. One of the goals of the MAGA movement,which they’ve been largely successful, has been to dominate relations over the major institutions of our society, including the mass media, the Supreme Court, independent government agencies, major law firms, the Congress, and most lately, the large private universities, such as Harvard and Brown and Columbia.
Guest – retired Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi held the Edward Said Chair of Middle Eastern history for nearly two decades. He is the author of numerous books, including The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017. Although retired he had been scheduled to teach his long standing popular class on Middle East history. After Columbia University capitulated to the Trump administration with respect the administration taking control over the university, Professor Khalidi was no longer able to teach his class in an honest unfettered fashion. We discuss the situation and his open letter denouncing the perfidy of acting Columbia University president Carol Shipman in her school’s capitulation and we put this in historical context.
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US-Brazil Relations Diverge
The United States isn’t the only country grappling with profound political polarization. As the 2026 presidential elections in Brazil draw near, the world’s eyes are on the criminal prosecution and house arrest of its former president, the far right, Jair Bolsonaro, sometimes known as the Trump of the Tropics.
In 2022, Bolsonaro lost re-election, but it was by one of the most narrow margins in Brazil’s history. And his supporters and allies continue to hold substantial influence within Brazil’s government. Donald Trump is a personal friend and ally of Bolsonaro, and since the latter’s prosecution, he’s levied massive tariffs against Brazil and imposed sanctions against the country’s chief judge, including revoking his U.S. visa.
Our guest sees the fraying of US-Brazil relations to be troubling. Brazil is the world’s fourth largest democracy and seventh-largest economy. It has the greatest biodiversity on the planet, and is known as the earth’s lungs because it is home to a third of the world’s rain forests. The air we breathe literally depends on Brazil.
Guest – James N. Green is Professor of Brazilian History and Culture at Brown University, and former President of the Brazilian Studies Association. He is the author or co-editor of eleven books on Brazil, including Brazil: Five Centuries of Change; Beyond Carnival: Male Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Brazil and We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States. Professor Green serves as National Co-Coordinator of the US Network for Democracy in Brazil, and he’s the President of the Board of Directors of the Washington Brazil Office.
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Become A Supporter of Law and Disorder
Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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A Genocide Foretold: Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine.
The world looks on in horror as Israel continues its genocidal assault on the Palestinian people. According to Benjamin Netanyahu, “the only inevitable outcome will be the wish of Gazans to emigrate outside of the Gaza Strip,” he told this to lawmakers at a leaked closed-door meeting. “But our main problem is finding countries to take them in.” According to our guest today, Chris Hedges, the Israeli war in Gaza “marks the end of a world where humanitarian law, conventions that protect civilians…matter.”
In a recent piece, Hedges claims that “the genocide in Gaza is part of a pattern. It is the harbinger of genocides to come. It puts to rest the lie of human progress, the myth that we are evolving morally. Only the tools change. Where once we clubbed victims to death, or chopped them to pieces with broadswords, today we drop 2,000-pound bombs on refugee camps, spray families with bullets from militarized drones or pulverize them with tank shells, heavy artillery and missiles.”
Guest – Chris Hedges, the journalist and author spent two decades as a foreign correspondent serving as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for The New York Times where he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He is the author of 14 books including War is a Force That Gives us Meaning, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-wrote with the cartoonist Joe Sacco, and The Death of the Liberal Class. His recent book is A Genocide Foretold: Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine.
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The MAGA Ideology and the Trump Regime
As V.I. Lenin observed, “There are times in history when nothing happens for decades and other times when decades happen within days” He should know. He was the leader of the Russian revolution which overthrew the feudal Tsar and changed the history of the 20th century. We are living in a time when history is unfolding very rapidly. Trump and his coterie of the upper 1/10 of 1 percent aligned with the mostly lower middle class MAGA movement have taken huge steps upending and overturning the kind of democracy, however, limited by race and class, that we have lived with since gaining independence from England 250 years ago.
We are experiencing the transition to a new absolutist executive. Trump and the ideologues who have shaped his MAGA movement is a president who acts on the premise that whatever he does is lawful. He claimed full power to close down departments like the Department of Education, impound congressionally authorized spending, deport people without due process, while ignoring the courts. This is what he calls “a unitary executive.”
The classic definition of fascism is that it is one of the political forms that capitalism may assume in its monopoly imperial phase. It has a material foundation in a tenuous alliance between sectors of the extremely rich monopoly capitalists and a mobilized lower middle class. The key to fascist rule is the privatization of large parts of the government on behalf of the monopoly class. This ideology now in ensconced in the White House.
The right wing is opposed to environmental governance, they don’t believe in climate change. They are against open borders, universal healthcare, and green energy. Those who advocate for these beneficial movements are called “cultural Marxists.”They refer in a derogatory way to all contemporary progressive political causes. They call it “woke.” They use the term as it means to belittle all social justice struggles against racism and inequality, Its most common usage is as a racist dog whistle.
These fascists want to secure their rule by getting control of the entire cultural apparatus of society, a process that the Nazis, the German fascists of their time,called “bringing it into line.” The current attack on universities is the most recent example.
Guest – John Bellamy Foster is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Oregon. He is a prominent scholar on ecology and the author of many books, including “Trump in the White House: Tragedy and Farce”. Professor Foster is the editor of the venerable socialist magazine “Monthly Review“ and the author of the article The MAGA Ideology and the Trump Regime in its recent May 2025 issue.
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law
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Placeless: Homelessness in the New Gilded Age
Homelessness in the USA has reached catastrophic proportions. In New York City alone 125,000 people are homeless. One out of eight children in public school are homeless. Shelters for homeless people are overflowing. Many sleep outside or in the subway system. Their conditions of life have driven many of these people over the edge.The problem is long-standing and quite evident.
There’s a lack of affordable housing. Why? Because building affordable housing is not as profitable as building luxury housing. How realistic is it to get money for affordable housing when the oligarchy in power lacks empathy and only seeks to enrich itself, shift money from the bottom to the top, and poor people have very little political clout in the two party system.
Guest – Patrick Markee is a prominent advocate and policy analyst known for his extensive work on homelessness in New York City. He worked at the Coalition for the Homeless for several decades. Markee’s forthcoming book Placeless: Homelessness in the New Gilded Age pinpoints systemic factors such as economic and equality, housing affordability, and policy decisions that have perpetuated homelessness since the regular administration 40 some years ago.
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Silencing Those Speaking Out Against The US-Israel War In Palestine
All across this country, academic freedom is under severe attack. Why? Well, at colleges and universities, professors and students who dare to speak out in defense of the Palestinian people and condemn Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people, have been censored, disciplined, fired, deported, and arrested. Universities are told who they can hire and what they can teach under the threat of the cut-off of grant money. This is so that, in our ever more authoritarian country, centers of opposition can be brought into line, as they were in Germany. And these attacks on academic freedom are not limited to actions by university administrators, but include those by the federal government, as well.
Visiting scholars, adjuncts and lecturers without tenure have had their contracts terminated, or haven’t been renewed. Some had their classes suddenly cancelled. Faculty members who espouse views contrary to official U.S. policy vis-a-vis the Israeli-U.S. war in Palestine have been criticized in ways that have trampled on their reputations and hurt their careers. As an excuse for this present-day McCarthyism, college and university administrators, and President Trump, often claim their censorious actions are undertaken only on behalf of ensuring their Jewish students feel “safe” on campus and to fight so-called “anti-Semitic speech and actions” on campus. But there is a distinct lack of evidence to support their claimed motivation. In fact, the largest pro-Palestinian actions on campuses are often organized by Jewish groups, such as Jewish Voice for Peace.
We ask our guest Professor Alan Wald about McCarthy-styled witch hunts against academic personnel, and learn how federal law is being misused as a mechanism of political repression against academia. We’ll also discuss the role that controversy over slogans such as those condemning Zionism play in this new attack on academic freedom, and what strategies are best employed today by the opponents of Israel’s war in Gaza against these attacks, as the ever more deadly Israeli-U.S. war in Palestine continues.
Guest – Professor Alan Wald, the H. Chandler Davis Collegiate Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan…which, I might add, is my alma mater. Professor Wald has authored nine books related to today’s topic. He has been a socialist scholar since the 1960’s, and is currently an editor of the journal Against the Current, as well as a member of the editorial board of Science and Society. Professor Wald is also a founder of the University of Michigan’s Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine committee.
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Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Freedom Of Speech, Gaza, U.S. Militarism, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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A New Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement Amid Tension
In 2015 the United States and Iran negotiated an agreement designed to allow Iran to develop peaceful uses of nuclear energy, but not nuclear weapons. That agreement was terminated in 2018 during Trump’s first administration, and sanctions on Iran were re-imposed, sanctions that have proven to be very damaging to Iran’s financial well-being. Now, Trump has said his new administration is prepared to enter into a new nuclear non-proliferation agreement with Iran. But at the recent conclusion of what was the third round of U.S.-Iran negotiations on the issue, negotiations that appear to have gathered momentum, Israel’s Netanyahu has demanded that even Iran’s nuclear program for peaceful uses be dismantled, something Iran has steadfastly refused to consider.
Will Israel be successful in opposing Iran’s development of a nuclear program even if it is limited to peaceful uses? If Iran will not agree to give up its peaceful uses of nuclear energy, is a war between Israel and Iran inevitable? Meanwhile, the back-and-forth attacks by Israel on Iran and Iran on Israel continue. Just last week the Houthis, an Iran proxy, dropped a missile near Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport. All of this raises the question, “Would the Trump Administration join Israel if it waged war on Iran, perhaps including its nuclear facilities and how would other Middle Eastern nations respond if war did break out between Israel and Iran and, perhaps, with the United States fighting alongside Israel?”
Guest – Richard Becker is the Western Regional Coordinator of the ANSWER—Act Now to Stop War and End Racism—Coalition, and the author of Palestine, Israel the U.S. Empire and of the book The Myth of Democracy and the Rule of the Banks.
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Entrenching Authoritarianism: Expanding the Terrorism Framework and the Infrastructure of Surveillance to Repress Expression and Stifle Dissent
Recently, the Center For Constitutional Rights along with a group of four human rights organizations together with legal clinics published a new report urging the United Nations to denounce the accelerated disintegration of democracy in the US. The report focuses on the US government’s increasing criminalization and repression of free speech, dissent, and protest under the guise of “national security.” The report was then submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Council, which is scheduled to formally review the United States compliance with its human rights obligations in November. The link to the report is above.
Guest – Attorney Nadia Ben-Youssef, the Advocacy Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights is quoted saying “Our hope is that the report sounds the alarm for the international community to act with greater urgency to challenge this administration and its belligerent efforts to dismantle constitutional protections and international law.” She directs all advocacy around issues related to the promotion of civil and human rights. Together with the legal, advocacy, and communication teams, Nadia identifies opportunities for the Center for Constitutional Rights to make strategic cultural and political interventions that shift public narrative and policy on our issues.
Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Illegal Immigration, Supreme Court, Targeting Muslims, Violations of U.S. and International Law, War Resister
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Chris Hedges: Trump 2.0
Trump 2.0 is qualitatively different from his first term in office. This time Trump and his allies have brought down a tsunami on us, creating fear and chaos. Tens of thousands of government workers have been fired. Thousands have been deported, some to a torture prison in El Salvador. Due process was ignored. The court orders challenging this have been ignored, as well.
With his extreme tariff measures, Trump has damaged our economy, and it looks like there may be a recession down the road. Trump has promised to use the Army and National Guard to suppress protests. Should there be an act of violence committed by a lone wolf, Trump could use it as an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and call out the troops. This is all too reminiscent of what happened in Germany when a lone wolf set fire to the German parliament building. Hitler used this as a pretext for suspending civil rights and civil liberties and outlawing the communist and socialist parties, which were huge at the time.
Moreover, and most importantly, not only politics, but the culture of our country is being changed, as well. The Department of Education has been disbanded. Books are banned. Certain words are forbidden. Universities have come under Trump’s control, starting with Columbia University in New York City The great Kennedy Center, a mecca for U.S. culture, has been taken over by Trump and his Philistine allies.
Chris Hedges, the journalist and author spent two decades as a foreign correspondent serving as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for The New York Times where he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He is the author of 14 books including War is a Force That Gives us Meaning, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, which he co-wrote with the cartoonist Joe Sacco, and The Death of the Liberal Class. Chris’ forthcoming book is titled A Genocide Foretold.
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The Great Moral Crime Of Our Time
Israeli -American killing of the Palestinian people living in Gaza is the great moral crime of our time. Gaza is a strip of land 25 miles long and 5 miles wide situated on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea immediately South of Israel. It used to have a population of 2.3 million people and was one of the most densely populated areas on the planet.
The Palestinian people have been murdered by American made bombs dropped on them from American planes and American drones for the last year and a half. A short cease-fire, was recently unilaterally broken by Israel, which resumed the killing in preparation for the removal of the entire population to the Sudan or the Sinai desert in Egypt.
Guest – Philip Weiss is the founder of Mondoweiss, a news and opinion website known for its critical perspective on Zionism and Israeli government policies as well as his support for Palestinian rights. Weiss, a former mainstream journalist, launched Mondoweiss in the mid 2000s as a personal blog before it evolved into a larger platform. His background includes work with publications such as the New York Observer and Esquire magazine. Overtime, Mondoweiss has built a team of contributors and has become a significant voice in progressive circles when it comes to Middle Eastern policies.
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