Much credit to this post.
- Under her jurisdiction, in "progressive" San Francisco, 56% of all inmates in SF jails were black, along with 40% of all arrests (Only 5.8% of the population is black). Ignores police brutality, protected 14 of her officers who were caught sending extremely racist text messages. Oversaw San Francisco’s felony conviction rate rising from 52% to 67% in only 3 years.
- As part of her tough on crime approach she assigned senior prosecutors to misdemeanors like graffiti and vandalism, tripling the number of cases brought to trial.
- After a federal judge orders California to expand prison releases to reduce crowding, her office argued in court that if forced to release these inmates early, prisons would lose an important labor pool.
- Spent years jailing disproportionately black nonviolent cannabis users while opposing taking cannabis off DEA’s list of most dangerous substances and literally laughing at the idea of legalizing it multiple times, even as her Republican opponent ran to the left of her on the issue. She then tried to pander by admitting to smoking herself despite prosecuting others, but got her story all wrong. Drug convictions under her office soared, convicting more people of marijuana possession than her predecessor (she also admitted to smoking marijuana) 2
- Laughs about threatening parents with jailtime for truancy. 2. The stories of several mothers she jailed.
- Pushed a law that forced schools to turn over undocumented students to ICE.
- Opposed reforming California’s three-strikes law, which is the only one in the country to impose life sentences for minor felonies and incarcerates black people at 12x the rate as white people, three different times, even while her Republican opponent supported reform.
- Tried to deny a transgender inmate healthcare and endangered trans women by forcing them into mens prisons, leading to the rape and torture of at least one trans inmate.
- Appealed a judge ruling that the death penalty was unconstitutional and won on a technicality, resulting in continued executions.
- Supports the controversial DNA search technique that can be used on people even if they’ve not been charged with a crime.
- Supported the discriminatory practice of cash bail in court, until 2016.
- Protected serial child rapists by refusing to prosecute in the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.
- Lied about her state’s solitary confinement to block a suit by inmates, claiming there was none in California when there were about 6,400 victims of the practice, which is considered torture.
- Opposed legislation that would require independent investigation of fatal police shootings despite criticism from many civil rights advocates including California’s Legislative Black Caucus.
- Opposed statewide implementation of police body cameras and ignored police brutality, multiple officers raping a teenager, and other officers sharing racist and homophobic messages, despite multiple requests from the public defender.
- Stood by silently as $730 million was spent on moving inmates to for-profit private prisons.
- Fought to uphold wrongful convictions from her office, in one case, she witheld information about a police lab tech who was fabricating evidence (and a judge admonished her for it). She refused DNA testing to prove the innocence of a man on death row. Defended Johnny Baca’s conviction for murder even though judges found a prosecutor presented false testimony at the trial, to which she relented only after a video of the oral argument received national attention and embarrassed her office. She hid evidence of exculpaltory evidence of a man who was convicted solely by one witness (he is still serving a 70 year prison sentence). When evidence pointed towards a black defendant being framed by police, Harris avoided DNA testing to keep him on death row.
- Used a technicality to stop the release of a man serving 27 years-to-life after being wrongfully convicted of possession of a knife under the three-strikes law she supported. When civil rights groups and nearly 100,000 petition signatures got him released after 14 years she took him back to court again for a crime he didn’t commit.
- Protected several of her officers with records of misconduct, by refusing to provide their names to defense attorneys, so that their convictions would be upheld and people would stay in prison.
- “Systematically violated defendants’ civil and constitutional rights” in crime lab scandal.
- Kept her Orange County DA office from being charged for running an unconstitutional jailhouse informant program they tried to cover up.
- Oversaw a state prosecutor falsifying a confession to get a life sentence and then destroyed the evidence, upheld a conviction secured by a prosecutor lying under oath, and oversaw the framing of another man. The officers were not fired, but the state was forced to pay out ~13M USD.
- She fought against providing compensation to those her office wrongly convicted.
- Sponsored a bill allowing for prosecutors to seize profits before charges are even filed and opposed a bill that would reform civil asset forfeiture.
- Defended a prison’s religious discrimination in hiring policy
- Refused to review a case in which a pharmaceutical CEO killed his wife but made it look like a suicide after their son died under mysterious circumstances as well.
- Refused to prosecute PG&E for its massive gas pipeline explosion.
- Claimed to be unaware of sexual harassment and retaliation by her top aide over a 6 year span.
- Refused to investigate Herbalife’s exploitation and fraud, received donations from people connected to the corporation.
- Refused to prosecute Trump's treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin, despite his bank's illegal forelosure practices, which ruined thousands of lives. She also was the only democratic presidental candidate to get money from him.
- A favorite candidate of wall street. Helped raise money with a former wells fargo banker who defended the fake accounts scandal.
- Voted to give Trump increased military spending two different times.
- Supports Trump escalating the war in Syria. Co-sponsored a "destabilize Iran" bill.2
- Supports Israel’s right-wing government and cozies up to AIPAC, co-sponsored resolution against Obama in support of illegal settlements, does not support Palestinian rights, and calls BDS “anti-semitic”. Another Anti-Palestine rant at AIPAC, 2. Condemned pro-palestine protestors of Netanyahu's July 2024 visit to the US congress as "despicable, hateful, and anti-semitic"
- Is against open borders, opposed calls to tear down 700 miles of border fence.
- Fought to limit amount of land indigenous tribes could place in trust and tried to take reservation land away from a tribe just to keep them from evicting a non-indigenous man who had lived there without paying rent for 24 years.
- Mocks the activist call to “build more schools, less jails”. Mocks criminal justice reformers as unrealistic..
- Voted two different times to block federal funding for abortions.
- Wants to use solar panels and green energy... to make war.
- Tells guatemalan immigrants: "don't come here"
- Appoints a communication director who was outraged that ICE didn't pick up two undocumented commentators on MSNBC.
The stakes are too high to not organize, voting for the Dems doesn't stop fascism, or even delay it.
MAGA is popular for the same reason other nationalist, fascist movements have risen over the course of modern history: as a response to Capitalist decay. MAGA isn't popular for genetic reasons, intellectual inferiority, or other reasons like that, but as a common class interest. All of the descriptors in the OP are consequences of the driving factor of class interests, not the drivers themselves.
Fascism is most often represented as an alliance between the Petite Bourgeoisie and Bourgeoisie proper, driven by the Petite Bourgeoisie, as monopolization of Capital results in competition becoming more and more difficult, and the Petite Bourgeoisie faces Proletarianization. To prevent the Petite Bourgeoisie from joining the Proletariat in solidarity, the Bourgeoisie proper turns their hatred against the Proletariat and Lumpenproletariat.
What does this all mean, in practical, American terms? Small business owners, landlords, ie the "middle class," is shrinking in power, so the Small Business Owners are aligning with billionaires like Musk and Bezos against immigrants, workers, unhoused peopled, gender/sexual minorities, women, ethnic minorities, and more.
How do we fix this? Grow the Petite Bourgeoisie and restore their position? Absolutely not! That's when fascism is established. Trying to "turn the clock back to the good old days" results in dramatic reductions in worker rights and a solidification of power.
What we need to do is establish Socialism. A victory of the Proletariat, a folding of the large monopolist syndicates into the public sector so they can be centrally planned for the public good, rather than privately planned for profit, is the way forward. This is the way to escape fascism's rise. This is the way to defeat MAGA.
I recommend reading the book Blackshirts and Reds, fascism's irrationality has rational, material origins, that can be understood and defeated, and it isn't in the "marketplace of ideas."
How's that radical rise of the proletariat going for those in Venezuela? How did it go for the Soviets after Lenin? How'd that whole great leap forward go for the farmers in Maoist China?
Or perhaps you are of the "These are not true Marxist regimes. There's never been a true Marixst state" camp. Gee, I wonder fucking why? Perhaps because it doesn't work. Marxism is unsustainable at scale.
You want a commune, go for it. A town of co-op of farms, by all means. Perhaps even a small city state, just beware, if you introduce a power vacuum, some smooth talking snake oil salesman is going to try to fill it.
Venezuela is doing alright, not great but it isn't really a Socialist state. The USSR had great success in many areas, like a doubling in life expectancy, free healthcare, free education, huge increases in home ownership, and more. The PRC struggled during the Great Leap Forward, Mao was only about 70% good, Deng course-corrected back to Marxism-Leninism.
No, AES states exist and Marxism works. Cuba, the PRC, Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, etc. are all guided by Marxism-Leninism. Socialism guides the largest economy on the planet, if it couldn't scale then it wouldn't have.
I am not advocating for Communes, I don't know where you got the idea that I was.
You seem to be papering over the part where a shit ton of their own people died, so I don't think this really works as a pitch. You'd need to find a way to ensure that mass death wouldn't happen again, and then succinctly express it.
Anyone who does mass executions is a fucking monster. Probably better to leave this out of the pitch.
I can discuss in-depth with you if you'd like, but Blackshirts and Reds is the perfect book for you. AES is by no means a fantasy wonderland, but it is a dramatic improvement on existing conditions. The Kuomintang and the Tsars were more brutal than the Communists, and that brutality lasted for centuries.