Protesters shouting 'Nazi scum' throw milkshake over Trump supporter

The man, who said he was from London, said he was 'angry' to have been targeted.

metro.co.uk

Metro.co.uk reported earlier that Pro-Trump supporters have been barricaded inside a pub by police as clashes broke out in London during Trump’s state visit. 

In the shocking video, a large group of angry demonstrators could be seen surrounding the man – who was wearing a Make America Great Again cap – before throwing the McDonald’s iced drink over him.

They shouted ‘Nazi’ to the man in Parliament Square before they started pushing him around. 

Facebook removed 3 billion fake accounts over a six-month period

Facebook said it had removed more than 3 billion fake accounts over the past two quarters, a spike in inauthentic activity that the tech giant attributed to “unsophisticated” bad actors that are caught in the act of creating scores of fake profiles in batches.

www.washingtonpost.com

Between October and March, Facebook reported it removed or labeled 

• 11.1 million pieces of terrorist content
• 52.3 million instances of violent or graphic content
• 7.3 million posts, photos or other uploads containing hate speech
• 1.4 million pieces of content that violated its rules against selling guns, gun parts or ammunition
• 1.5 million items about drugs, including marijuana.

Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt recently wrote an article about fascism ("Fascism Anyone?," Free Inquiry, Spring 2003, page 20). Studying the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile), Dr. Britt found they all had 14 elements in common. He calls these the identifying characteristics of fascism. The excerpt is in accordance with the magazine's policy.

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.
6. Controlled Mass Media Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Opinion | The G.O.P. Goes Full Authoritarian

Only Trump’s flamboyant awfulness stands in the way of his party’s power grab.

www.nytimes.com

If you want to understand what’s happening to our country, the book you really need to read is “How Democracies Die,” by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.

As the authors — professors of government at Harvard — point out, in recent decades a number of nominally democratic nations have become de facto authoritarian, one-party states. Yet none of them have had classic military coups, with tanks in the street.

What we’ve seen instead are coups of a subtler form: takeovers or intimidation of the news media, rigged elections that disenfranchise opposing voters, new rules of the game that give the ruling party overwhelming control even if it loses the popular vote, corrupted courts.

The classic example is Hungary, where Fidesz, the white nationalist governing party

1. has effectively taken over the bulk of the media
2. destroyed the independence of the judiciary
3. rigged voting to enfranchise supporters and disenfranchise opponents
4. gerrymandered electoral districts in its favor
5. and altered the rules so that a minority in the popular vote translates into a supermajority in the legislature.

The states “are in danger of becoming laboratories of authoritarianism as those in power rewrite electoral rules, redraw constituencies and even rescind voting rights to ensure that they do not lose.”

Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don't toe the line.

As for civil servants, the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spoke up for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publicly intimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening to call for their major corporate clients to boycott them.

Elsewhere, a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that "waterboarding is torture" was stripped of the security clearance she needed in order to do her job.

When Goebbels purged the civil service in April 1933, attorneys were "coordinated" too, a step that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow.

The Dark Charisma of Hitler

Adolf Hitler seemed an unlikely leader, so how did he manage to turn from a nobody in 1913 into the chancellor and fuehrer of the German people?

www.cbc.ca

Episode 1:

Adolf Hitler seemed an unlikely leader - fuelled by anger, incapable of forming normal human relationships and unwilling to debate political issues. Such was the depth of his hatred that he would become a war criminal arguably without precedent in history.

Yet this strange character was once loved by millions. How was this possible, and what role did Hitler's alleged 'charisma' play in his success?

With the help of testimony from those who lived through those times, film archive - including colour home movies - and specially-shot documentary footage, this film reveals how Hitler managed to turn from a nobody in 1913 - someone thought 'peculiar' - into the chancellor and fuhrer of the German people.