Trump Will Never Tweet That He Has Decided To Institute Fascism Per Se

The regime is moving at break-neck speed to set its neo-fascist agenda in cement and change the country fundamentally. “Billboards. TV campaigns. Radio programs. The anti-immigrant government… uses different levers to influence public opinion… Even school textbooks… [T]he far-right leader’s message is now woven into the school curriculum.” The country’s Constitution has been re-written and the judiciary reshaped. The leader’s appointees or supporters dominate many artistic institutions and universities. A growing number of plays and exhibitions have had nationalist undertones. Religious groups and nongovernment organizations critical of [his party] have seen funding dry up. He has especially vilified pro-democracy organizations funded by the Hungarian-American philanthropist, George Soros… National opinion surveys are used to steer public opinion as much as collect it, while history is also up for grabs. The government has jousted with educators over textbooks while promoting a narrative of… victimhood and ethnocentrism.”

Steve Bannon: “He’s my hero… the most significant guy on the scene right now.” But “That scene, some say, is the unraveling of democracy… on the “threshold of autocracy.” Another supporter insists that “The government is using its democratic legitimacy not only to reform the state but to reform the society… This is common in democratic societies.”

The leader is doing what he can “to increase the life span of his governance.” And a vert well-connected “right-wing theorist has written widely that the duty of nongovernmental groups is to preserve national identity and uphold Christian values. Most tellingly, he argues that since an elected government represents the will of the people— and since civil society should strive to fulfill the people’s will— then civil society exists to carry out a ruling party’s manifesto, rather than to challenge it. “Obviously, civil society needs to help and support the government to follow through with its promises,” [he] said in an interview this month. “This is an incredibly important thing.”

But while tax dollars are channeled towards government supporters, the government has simultaneously squeezed alternative sources of funding for NGOs that oppose its ideas, especially human rights groups and arts groups, universities and churches.

Sounds like what the Trumpist Regime is headed for, but this was something I read in the NY Times when Roland was trying to persuade me to go back to Hungary with him. To close for comfort?

think tank called Veritas, has a more demonstrably political aim. Its main mission is to provide revisionist interpretations of 20th-century Hungarian history— including the reign of Miklos Horthy, the autocrat who led Hungary before and during the Second World War.

Soon after Veritas was founded in 2014, its director, Sandor Szakaly, gave a sense of what this revision might involve. He described the deportation of Jews under Horthy in 1941 as a mere “police action against aliens.”

This kind of revisionism has also crept into the national curriculum. High school graduates can now be tested on the new preamble to the Hungarian Constitution— a controversial text which implies that Hungarian nationality is exclusively Christian, even though Hungary has a substantial Jewish minority. Its wording also reduces the agency of Hungarian officials in the final year of the Second World War, during which time hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were murdered.

To exert greater influence over churches and synagogues themselves, Fidesz has also stripped hundreds of religious institutions of their legal status, and scrapped their state funding.

And like Trump, Viktor Orban, Hungary’s elected fascist leader is a Putin puppet. Don’t recall Hungary’s rehabilitated national hero, Admiral Miklos Horthy? About a year ago were tried putting his legacy into the context of another Hungarian fascist and current day admirer of his (and Trump, Sebastian Gorka. Or watch this if you want to get a better idea of where Trump’s brand of neo-fascism is leading:

Let's Revisit A Serious Personnel Problem Señor Trumpanzee Has Inside The White House: A Real Live Nazi

It's impossible to say authoritatively which of Trump's advisors and co-conspirators is the very worst. Together they compose an America kakistocracy-- a word coined in 1829 by English novelist Thomas Love Peacock in his book The Misfortunes of Elphin, defined as "government by the worst, most unscrupulous, or least qualified citizens." That certainly;y describes Team Trump-- White House and Cabinet, top to bottom. I suppose if you insisted on digging down, you would have to say the ones who have the most impact on Trump and can make something happen are the worst-- so Bannon. Would anyone dispute that he's the worst of the Trumpists? No one with any sense. But there is Sebastian Gorka, a very severely mentally ill Hungarian who managed to get a green card by lying that he had never been associated with a fascist organization. Last month we took a close look at what Gorka has been up to and why he poses a danger to the country. Thursday the Forward's Lili Bayer led with an explosive exclusive about his Nazi connections. Real-thing Nazis, not dress-up Alt-right closet cases like Milo and that one everyone punches in the face wherever he goes. Gorka, she wrote, ", is a formal member of a Hungarian far-right group that is listed by the U.S. State Department as having been 'under the direction of the Nazi Government of Germany' during World War II." Trumpy-the-Clown does it again!

The elite order, known as the Vitézi Rend, was established as a loyalist group by Admiral Miklos Horthy, who ruled Hungary as a staunch nationalist from 1920 to October 1944. A self-confessed anti-Semite, Horthy imposed restrictive Jewish laws prior to World War II and collaborated with Hitler during the conflict. His cooperation with the Nazi regime included the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews into Nazi hands.

Gorka’s membership in the organization-- if these Vitézi Rend leaders are correct, and if Gorka did not disclose this when he entered the United States as an immigrant-- could have implications for his immigration status. The State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual specifies that members of the Vitézi Rend “are presumed to be inadmissible” to the country under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Gorka-- who Vitézi Rend leaders say took a lifelong oath of loyalty to their group-- did not respond to multiple emails sent to his work and personal accounts, asking whether he is a member of the Vitézi Rend and, if so, whether he disclosed this on his immigration application and on his application to be naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 2012. The White House also did not respond to a request for comment.

But Bruce Einhorn, a retired immigration judge who now teaches nationality law at Pepperdine University, said of this, “His silence speaks volumes.”

Gorka's hero Admiral Worthy with his other hero

The group to which Gorka reportedly belongs is a reconstitution of the original group on the State Department list, which was banned in Hungary until the fall of Communism in 1989. There are now two organizations in Hungary that claim to be the heirs of the original Vitézi Rend, with Gorka, according to fellow members, belonging to the so-called “Historical Vitézi Rend.” Though it is not known to engage in violence, the Historical Vitézi Rend upholds all the nationalist and oftentimes racial principles of the original group as established by Horthy.



Einhorn said these nuances did not relieve Gorka of the obligation, if he’s a member, to disclose his affiliation when applying for his visa or his citizenship.

“This is a group that advocates racialist nativism,” said Einhorn. If Gorka did not disclose his affiliation with it, he said, this would constitute “failure to disclose a material fact,” which could undermine the validity of both his immigration status and claim to citizenship.

“It’s a material fact that, if disclosed, would have provoked a significant inquiry into the specific post-war role of this organization and Gorka’s activities in it,” he said.

Before serving 17 years as an immigration judge, Einhorn was deputy chief at the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations. The unit, which has since been disbanded, was charged with finding and deporting Nazis and members of other extremist groups who entered America illegally by lying about or hiding their background. He noted that individuals who apply for both visas and citizenship are specifically asked to name all organizations they belong to due to the government’s interest in scrutinizing those affiliated with extremist groups, and in particular those on the State Department’s list.

If Gorka did not disclose his Vitézi Rend affiliation, said Einhorn, he thereby “foreclosed the opportunity for U.S. officials to pursue that inquiry with him.” No statute of limitations exists for such violations, he noted.

...Gorka, who pledged his loyalty to the United States when he took American citizenship in 2012, is himself a sworn member of the Vitézi Rend, according to both Gyula Soltész-- a high-ranking member of the Vitézi Rend’s central apparatus-- and Kornél Pintér-- a leader of the Vitézi Rend in Western Hungary who befriended Gorka’s father through their activities in the Vitézi Rend.

Soltész, who holds a national-level leadership position at the Vitézi Rend, confirmed to the Forward in a phone conversation that Gorka is a full member of the organization.

“Of course he was sworn in,” Pintér said, in a phone interview. “I met with him in Sopron [a city near Hungary’s border with Austria]. His father introduced him.”

“In today’s world it is rare to meet anyone as well-bred as Sebastian or his father, Pali,” he added.

If correct, Gorka’s membership in the order is notable because, as Pintér and other members explained, affiliation is possible only via a solemn initiation rite in which new members take an oath swearing undying allegiance to the Hungarian nation and the Vitézi Rend’s goals:

“I, Vitez [name], swear on the Holy Crown that I know the Order’s goals and code, and based on the orders of the Captain and Order Superiors will follow them for the rest of my life. I never betrayed my Hungarianness, and was never and am not currently a member of an anti-national or secret organization. So help me God.”

Several commentators also noted that in his 2008 doctoral dissertation at Hungary’s Corvinus University, Gorka presented his name as Sebastian L. v. Gorka. The “v.” is an initial used by members of the Vitézi Rend.

But Gorka did not use the initial only in academic papers.

In June 2011, Gorka testified in front of the House Armed Services Committee. His official testimony did not list his name as Sebastian L. Gorka, but rather as Dr. Sebastian L. v. Gorka.

“Of course, only after the oath,” György Kerekes, a current member of the Vitézi Rend, told the Forward when asked if anyone may use the initial “v.” without going through the Vitézi Rend’s application process and an elaborate swearing-in ceremony.

As the son of a member of the Vitézi Rend, Gorka is eligible to apply for membership. But membership is not bestowed automatically, and he cannot use the initial in his name without actively applying for membership and taking the formal oath to the organization.

Gorka’s self-identification to a congressional committee as Dr. Sebastian L. v. Gorka thus indicates that Gorka either misrepresented his identity to Congress in 2011 or is currently misrepresenting his affiliation with the Vitézi Rend, potentially having taken an oath to Hungarian nationalist and racist principles.

The Vitézi Rend, which was established in 1920 for Horthy’s loyal followers, is listed by the State Department as one of many groups in Germany and the countries it occupied as collaborationist “criminal organizations” with the Nazis as determined by the post-war International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. The group was among those Horthy rewarded with real estate taken from hundreds of thousands of Jews his government deported to Nazi concentration camps.

Dissolved in Hungary after World War II under the terms of the Allies’ armistice with Hungary, it was reconstituted by veterans’ groups in exile, including prewar members of the group appointed by Horthy. It was re-established inside Hungary after communism’s collapse in 1989. According to State Department guidelines, while Vitézi Rend membership “does not automatically render the alien ineligible for a visa, the applicant has the burden of establishing that, despite being a member of a designated criminal organization, he or she did not participate in activities that would fall within the purview of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The guidelines cite a provision of the act barring entry to the United States to “participants in Nazi persecution, genocide, or the commission of any act of torture or extrajudicial killing.”

...Though Gorka did not respond to inquiries about his relationship to the Vitézi Rend, when the Forward revealed in February that he had co-founded a political party together with former members of the Hungarian far-right Jobbik party and wrote articles for a Hungarian paper known for its anti-Semitism, the White House aide responded on Twitter by quoting a friend: “Sharing a room w Helen Keller does not make 1 blind; sharing a subway car w Albert Einstein does not make 1 a genius.”

But Einhorn, the immigration expert, stressed a larger moral principle was at stake.

“Gorka is part of an administration issuing travel bans against countries and people as a whole,” he said. “For someone who is part of this effort to not answer your question [about his membership] and yet support what’s gong on in the West Wing where he works is the height of hypocrisy. The administration that makes so much of protecting us from extremists while looping the guilty in with the innocent should at least require its officials tell the truth.”

Thursday Jerry Nadler sent a letter to the Regime asking for information of Gorka. He told Señor Trumpanzee he was "extremely disturbed" after reading the report in the Forward and asked Trump to immediately clarify whether Gorka is indeed a member of this racist and anti-Semitic group (Vitézi Rend), "and, if so, that you take appropriate action."

Because of Vitézi Rend’s close association with the Nazi regime, under State Department guidelines, members are “presumed to be inadmissible to the United States.” If Sebastian Gorka is indeed a member of this organization, as high-ranking leaders of the organization claim he is, he would have been required to disclose this information on his immigration application, and on his application to be a naturalized U.S. citizen. Failing to do so, he may have been withholding important material facts about his background from the United States, in violation of the law. Therefore, I am asking that you provide the House Committee on the Judiciary with Sebastian Gorka’s immigration application and his application to be a U.S. citizen, so that the Committee can be assured that he did not enter this country under false pretenses.

The uncertainly over Mr. Gorka’s membership in this racist and anti-Semitic organization, and the White House’s silence in answering questions regarding his status, raise further concerns that this issue is not being treated with the urgency it deserves. Whether or not Mr. Gorka was honest in his immigration and citizenship applications, if he does in fact have ties with the Historical Vitézi Rend, I hope that you would have no place for someone who shares that organization’s offensive views in your Administration.

I look forward to your reply.

So far, Trump is refusing to reply to Nadler's letter. Maybe it will come up eventually in the impeachment hearings.

Meet Sebastian Gorka, Another Sick, Dangerous Nazi Trump Has Brought Into The Government

Fox's pajama boy Nazi Sebastian Gorka never tells the truth about anything-- never

Elizabeth Warren is being pummeled by Republicans trying to demonize her. I imagine this will go on not just from now until her 2018 reelection, but from now 'til her 2020 presidential nomination. Yesterday she told her supporters why the attacks from the far right don't phase her-- her beliefs are strong and clear. Here's what she laid out as why the GOP attacks don't get to her:

• I believe that the big banks need tougher rules and more accountability-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting for Wall Street reform, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe that students should be able to get an education without getting crushed by debt-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting for debt-free college, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe that nobody who works full time should live in poverty-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting to raise the minimum wage, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe that after a lifetime of hard work, seniors should be able to retire with dignity-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting to protect and expand Social Security and Medicare, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe in climate change-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting to protect our air and water, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe in common sense gun reform-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting to keep our kids safe from military-style assault weapons, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe that a woman has a right to make health care decisions over her own body and I support Planned Parenthood-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting for women’s health, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• I believe that millionaires and billionaires should pay at least the same tax rates as their secretaries-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting to stop the special breaks and loopholes, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

• And I believe that powerful corporations and billionaires have too much influence over our politics-- and so do the majority of Americans. You can call me a boogeyman for fighting for campaign finance and ethics reform, but our agenda is America’s agenda.

Sounds good for America, right? At the same time CNN was outlining why right-wing money bags and Vegas/Macao gambling mobster Sheldon Adelson was braying about why Trump would be the best American president ever-- for Israel. Adelson ponied up over $80 million to Republicans and right-wing causes in the 2016 cycle. He's the agent for Israel's political right in America. Funny, because while Adelson was talking with GOP donors about how good Trump would be for his version of Israel, Lili Bayer was writing at the [Jewish Daily] Forward about how one of the fascist shits surrounding Trump, Sebastian Gorka, is an actual Nazi, not someone playing pretend.

When photographs recently emerged showing Sebastian Gorka, President Donald Trump’s high-profile deputy assistant, wearing a medal associated with the Nazi collaborationist regime that ruled Hungary during World War II, the controversial security strategist was unapologetic.

“I’m a proud American now and I wear that medal now and again,” Gorka told Breitbart News. Gorka, 46, who was born in Britain to Hungarian parents and is now an American citizen, asked rhetorically, “Why? To remind myself of where I came from, what my parents suffered under both the Nazis and the Communists, and to help me in my work today.”

But an investigation by the Forward into Gorka’s activities from 2002 to 2007, while he was active in Hungarian politics and journalism, found that he had close ties then to Hungarian far-right circles, and has in the past chosen to work with openly racist and anti-Semitic groups and public figures.

Gorka’s involvement with the far right includes co-founding a political party with former prominent members of Jobbik, a political party with a well-known history of anti-Semitism; repeatedly publishing articles in a newspaper known for its anti-Semitic and racist content; and attending events with some of Hungary’s most notorious extreme-right figures.

...In the United States, Gorka, who was appointed deputy assistant to the president on January 20, is known as a television commentator, a professor and an “alt-right” writer who describes himself as a counterterrorism expert. A close associate of Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, Gorka is now part of Bannon’s key in-house White House think tank, the Strategic Initiatives Group. The newly formed group consists of figures close to Trump and is seen by some as a rival to the National Security Council in formulating policies for the president.

Gorka, who views Islam as a religion with an inherent predilection for militancy, has strong supporters among some right-leaning think tanks in Washington. “Dr. Gorka is one of the most knowledgeable, well-read and studied experts on national security that I’ve ever met,” Joseph Humire, executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society, told the Forward. Humire has known Gorka for nearly a decade, and considers him “top-notch.”

Born in London to parents who fled Hungary’s post-World War II Communist regime, Gorka has had a career that’s marked by frequent job changes and shifting national allegiances. The U.S. government is the third sovereign state to hire him in a national security role. As a young man, he was a member of the United Kingdom’s Territorial Army reserves, where he served in the Intelligence Corps. Then, following the fall of Communism in Hungary, he was employed in 1992 by the country’s Ministry of Defense. He worked there for five years, apparently on issues related to Hungary’s accession to NATO.

Gorka’s marriage in 1996 to an American, Katharine Cornell, an heir to Pennsylvania-based Cornell Iron Works, helped him become a U.S. citizen in 2012.

It was during his time in Hungary that Gorka developed ties to the country’s anti-Semitic and ultranationalist far right.

During large-scale anti-government demonstrations in Hungary in 2006, Gorka took on an active role, becoming closely involved with a protest group called the Hungarian National Committee (Magyar Nemzeti Bizottság). Gorka took on the roles of translator, press coordinator and adviser for the group.

Among the four Committee members named as the group’s political representatives was László Toroczkai, then head of the 64 Counties Youth Movement. Toroczkai founded that group in 2001 to advocate for the return of parts of modern-day Serbia, Slovakia, Romania and Ukraine to form a Greater Hungary, restoring the country’s pre-World War I borders.

In 2004, two years before the Movement’s involvement in the 2006 protests, Hungarian authorities opened an investigation into the Movement’s newspaper, Magyar Jelen, when an article referred to Jews as “Galician upstarts” and went on to argue: “We should get them out. In fact, we need to take back our country from them, take back our stolen fortunes. After all, these upstarts are sucking on our blood, getting rich off our blood.” At the time of the article’s publication, Toroczkai was both an editor at the paper and the Movement’s official leader.

Toroczkai currently serves as vice president of Jobbik and is the mayor of a village near the border Hungary shares with Serbia. Last year, he gained notoriety in the West for declaring a goal of banning Muslims and gays from his town.

In January 2007, inspired by the 2006 protests and his experience with the Hungarian National Committee, Gorka announced plans to form a new political party, to be known as the New Democratic Coalition. Gorka had previously served as an adviser to Viktor Orbán, now Hungary’s right-wing nationalist prime minister. But following Orbán’s failed attempts to bring down Hungary’s then-Socialist government, Gorka grew disenchanted with Orbán’s Fidesz party.

In his email exchange with the Forward for this article, Gorka explained: “The Coalition was established in direct response to the unhealthy patterns visible at the time in Hungarian conservative politics. It became apparent to me that the effect of decades of Communist dictatorship had taken a deeper toll on civil society than was expected.”

Gorka co-founded his political party with three other politicians. Two of his co-founders, Tamás Molnár and Attila Bégány, were former members of Jobbik. Molnár, a senior Jobbik politician, served as the party’s vice president until shortly before joining Gorka’s new initiative, and was also a member of the Hungarian National Committee during the 2006 protests, issuing statements together with extremist militant figures such as Toroczkai.

Jobbik has a long history of anti-Semitism. In 2006, when Gorka’s political allies were still members of Jobbik, the party’s official online blog included articles such as The Roots of Jewish Terrorism and Where Were the Jews in 1956?, reference to the country’s revolution against Soviet rule. In one speech in 2010, Jobbik leader Gabor Vona said that “under communism we licked Moscow’s boots, now we lick Brussels’ and Washington’s and Tel Aviv’s.”

In founding the New Democratic Coalition, Gorka and the former Jobbik politicians aimed to represent “conservative values, decidedly standing up to corruption and bringing Christianity into the Constitution,” according to the party’s original policy program. At the time, Hungary’s constitution was secular.

The party’s founders did not see themselves as far right or anti-Semitic.

“I knew Gorka as a strongly Atlanticist, conservative person,” Molnár, the former Jobbik vice president and co-founder of Gorka’s party, told the Forward in a phone conversation. He added that he could not imagine Gorka having anti-Semitic views.

...In December 2004, the U.S. State Department reported bluntly to Congress that, “the weekly newspaper Magyar Demokrata published anti-Semitic articles and featured articles by authors who have denied the Holocaust.”

Who wrote Trump's CPAC speech yesterday?

In the summer of 2007, Bencsik became one of the founders of the Hungarian Guard, a now-banned paramilitary organization known for assaulting and intimidating members of Hungary’s Roma community. The perpetrators in a spate of racially motivated murders of Roma in 2008 and 2009 were found to have connections to the Guard.

Gorka’s articles for Magyar Demokrata focused not only on decrying Hungary’s then-Socialist government, but also on highlighting the perceived injustices of the Treaty of Versailles, the post-World War I agreement that led to the loss of two-thirds of prewar Hungary’s territory.

“We fought on the wrong side of a war for which we were not responsible, and were punished to an extent that was likely even more unjust-- with the exception of the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire-- than any other punishment in the modern age,” Gorka wrote in a 2006 article in Magyar Demokrata.

Asked about his choice of journalistic outlets, Gorka wrote, “I am […] unfamiliar with Bencsik. I believe it was one of his colleagues who asked me if I wanted to write some OpEds.” Gorka told the Forward that his writing at the time shows “how everything I did was in the interests of a more transparent and healthy democracy in Hungary. This included a rejection of all revanchist tendencies and xenophobic cliques.”

Gorka’s claim to be unfamiliar with Bencsik must be weighed against his deep immersion in Hungarian politics and Benscik’s status as a major figure in Hungary’s right-wing political scene. At the time, Gorka gave public interviews as an “expert” on the Hungarian Guard, which Bencsik helped to found. In one 2007 interview, Gorka clarified his own view of the Guard, saying, “It’s not worth talking about banning” the group. Despite its extreme rhetoric against minorities, Gorka said, “The government and media are inflating this question.”

It was in mid-February that Gorka’s affinity for Hungarian nationalist and far-right ideas first came to the American public’s attention. Eli Clifton of the news website Lobelog noticed from a photograph that the new deputy assistant to the president had appeared at an inauguration ball in January wearing a Hungarian medal known as Vitézi Rend [up top]. The medal signifies a knightly order of merit founded in 1920 by Admiral Miklos Horthy, Hungary’s longtime anti-Semitic ruler and Hitler’s ally during World War II. Notwithstanding this alliance, and the group’s designation as Nazi-collaborators by the U.S. State Department, many within Hungary’s right revere Horthy for his staunch nationalism during the overall course of his rule from 1920 to 1944.

Breitbart, the “alt-right” publication, where Gorka himself served as national security editor prior to joining the White House staff, defended his wardrobe choice, writing on February 14 that, “as any of his Breitbart News colleagues could testify, Gorka is not only pro-Israel but ‘pro-Jewish,’ and defends both against the threat of radical Islamic terrorism.”

“In 1979 my father was awarded a declaration for his resistance to a dictatorship, and although he passed away 14 years ago, I wear that medal in remembrance of what my family went through and what it represents today, to me, as an American,” Gorka told Breibart on February 15, as the controversy regarding his choice to wear a Horthy-era medal intensified.

But the medal was not the first time Gorka expressed appreciation for symbols that many associate with Hungary’s World War II-era Nazi sympathizers. In 2006, Gorka defended the use of the Arpad flag, which Hungary’s murderous Arrow Cross Party used as their symbol. The Hungarian Arrow Cross Party killed thousands of Jews during World War II, shooting many of them alongside the Danube River and throwing them into the water. Gorka told the news agency JTA at the time that “if you say eight centuries of history can be eradicated by 18 months of fascist distortion of symbols, you’re losing historic perspective.”

After the failure of his new party in 2007, Gorka moved to the United States and over the past 10 years has worked for the Department of Justice, Marine Corps University, National Defense University, and Joint Special Operations University. Former colleagues in the States questioned the quality of Gorka’s work on Islam, and said that he shied away from publishing in peer-reviewed journals, according to the Washington Post.

Retired Lt. Col. Mike Lewis told the Post that when Gorka was lecturing to members of the armed forces, he “made a difficult and complex situation simple and confirmed the officers’ prejudices and assumptions.”

...Over the past few weeks, Gorka has become an informal spokesman for the White House, appearing on radio and television shows to defend Trump’s rhetoric and policy choices-- including those that are relevant to the Jewish community.

Asked during a February 6 talk show to acknowledge that it was “questionable” for the White House to leave out any specific mention of Jews as the Nazis’ target in its Holocaust Remembrance Day statement, which referred only to “innocent people” being victimized, Gorka called the criticism “asinine."

“No, I’m not going to admit it,” he said. “It’s absurd. You’re making a statement about the Holocaust. Of course it’s about the Holocaust because that’s what the statement’s about. It’s only reasonable to twist it if your objective is to attack the president.”

It remains unclear whether the White House ever took a deep look into Gorka’s activities in Hungary. Six White House staffers have reportedly been dismissed for failing FBI background checks; Gorka was not among them.

In 2002, Hungary’s intelligence service denied Gorka a security clearance. Gorka was nominated by the right-wing Fidesz party as its candidate to be an expert in an investigation into allegations that then-Prime Minister Péter Medgyessy had served as a counterintelligence officer during the Communist era. At the time, Gorka’s earlier ties to British intelligence were considered a concern, and he was ultimately not allowed to take part in the investigation.

Gorka’s friends and close associates in the United States do not believe that he is ideologically part of Hungary’s far right.

...Gorka’s former political partners in Hungary are pleased with his successes in Washington.

“I am happy, because this could be good for Hungarian-American relations,” said Molnár, the former Jobbik vice president and co-founder of Gorka’s short-lived party, in his conversation with the Forward. “But I was surprised…No Hungarian public figure has ever been so close to the White House.”

Does Nazi iconography indicate someone might be a Nazi?

Hungary Blocks Refuge For Syrians Seeking Asylum In Europe

Trump's wall will be much fancier

Hungary's right-wing Fidesz Party won enough parliamentary seats in 2010 (263, more than two-thirds) to be able to ride roughshod over the country's post-Communist democracy. They were even able to change the constitution, although they have since lost two by-eletions and no longer have that power. The really far right party-- a neo-Nazi outfit called Jobbik-- came in third and won 47 seats. 

Right after the election Oszkár Molnár, Fidesz member of parliament, told the media that "I love Hungary, I love Hungarians, and I prefer Hungarian interests to global financial capital, or Jewish capital, if you like, which wants to devour the whole world, but especially Hungary," and, later, that gypsy women deliberately try to induce birth defects for financial gain. "I have checked this," he said, "and it’s true; they hit their bellies with a rubber hammer so that they’ll give birth to handicapped kids." The party is anti-Semitic, homophobic and nationalistic. You can imagine what their friends in the fascist Jobbik-- who are far more anti-Semitic, homophobic and nationalistic-- have to say. Things like "we must prepare for armed battle against the Jews."

No doubt you read the grisly news about the Hungarian grocery truck filled with 71 corpses that was found over the border in Austria. The dead are Syrian refugees fleeing ISIS and the country's civil war.

Migrants fearful of death at sea in overcrowded and flimsy boats have increasingly turned to using a land route to Europe through the Western Balkans. They start in Greece, which they can reach via a short boat trip from Turkey, then move on through Macedonia, Serbia and into Hungary, where thousands have been crossing the border every day, crawling over or under a razor-wire fence meant to keep them out.

Most go from there to other countries in the European Union, sometimes paying smugglers to drive them, but the discovery of the bodies in the truck showed there is no truly safe path.

Keeping in mind the nature of the right-wing nationalist government in Budapest, it should come as no surprise that the Hungarians aren't exactly facilitating the movement of Syrains refugees through their country. No one wants to stay in the close-minded little fascistic state, but the Hungarians don't want them even traveling through. The Hungarians have built a fence along their southern border-- although not the big beautiful one Trump envisions on our own border. Tens of thousands of refugee families are fleeing for their lives, and the Hungarians are extremely hostile to them and have been accused of inhumane treatment.

Surveying a section of the razor-wire barrier that Hungary has built along its 110-mile border with Serbia, Mr Baloch [a spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees] said: “This is Fortress Europe coming into being. “It’s a reminder of the Iron Curtain. Can Europe really hide behind walls and fences when these desperate people need help? Seeking asylum is not a crime.”

Meanwhile the chief of staff for Viktor Orban, Hungary's rightist prime minister, told a local newspaper, "If we do not take meaningful steps"-- presumably steps beyond the teargas Hungarian soldiers are using on refugees-- "we will become a lifeboat that sinks beneath the weight of those clinging onto it." And this despite the fact that none of the refugees want to stay in Hungary any longer than it takes to pass through to Austria, Germany and beyond. Orban gins up resentment against the refugees with wild claims that there are risks of terrorism, crime and unemployment. 

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says he is "horrified and heartbroken" and that a "large majority" of people undertaking such dangerous journeys are refugees who have the right to protection and asylum. He called on all governments to act with compassion and humanity.

Why Most Jews Don't Seriously Consider Voting For Republicans

Not many Jews vote for right-wing political parties. Jewish families usually put a huge premium on education and equality and, let's face it, right-wing political parties couldn't exist without ignorance and bigotry. All through history, however, there have always been a minority of Jews steeped in the same kind of ignorance and prejudice that afflicts other communities. Even if Obama isn't terribly popular among Jews, the vast majority of them voted against Romney and his crackpot, extremist Party of Hatred. Most Jews-- at least outside of Israel-- have learned, and learned the hard way, that the kind of Hatred and Bigotry at the core of the Republican Party, and at the core of all fascist-oriented parties, sooner or later and always works out badly for the Jews. Obama's 70% support among Jewish voters was down 4% since he creamed McCain in 2008 but the 4% drop in the Jewish vote for Obama in the 2012 versus 2008 race is consistent with the modest percentage drop Obama experienced with several other constituencies-- including college graduates, whites, independents, voters under 30 and Catholics.

I bet you didn't know that Budapest has the second biggest synagogue in the world, the Dohány Street Synagogue, second only to Temple Emanu-El in New York City. At one point Jews made up 23% of Budapest's population. That point was just before the rise of fascism in the 20th Century, a time when the right-wing mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, nicknamed Hungary's capital Judapest. Before Hitler came to town, Hungary's homegrown fascist, Admiral Miklós Horthy, had a series of full fledged pogroms against Hungarian Jews on increasingly aggressive levels. By 1941 there were only 861,000 Jews left in Hungary, and there were massacres and widespread murders but it wasn't until German troops occupied Hungary that Horthy allowed deportation of Jews to German death camps. 437,402 Jews were deported by the Hungarians, 90% of whom died in German death camps, particularly Auschwitz. Winston Churchill was getting intelligence that led him to write to his Foreign Secretary that "There is no doubt that this persecution of Jews in Hungary and their expulsion from enemy territory is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world." Of the 861,000 Hungarian Jews in 1941, there were about 200,000 survivors by the time Horthy was saved from the Soviets by Americans, which allowed him to live out the rest of his life in luxury in Portugal (which was still a fascist dictatorship until 1974).

In case you're wondering why all the background on Hungarian Jews, there's been a little incident in Budapest recently. Hungary's third biggest political party is the Jobbik party, very much Hungary's Tea Party and widely considered neo-fascist, anti-Semitic and homophobic, although they describe themselves in a way that would make any Fox News viewer feel perfectly comfortable: "a principled, conservative and radically patriotic Christian party." The party got going in 2003 as a protest movement against-- believe it or not-- "the war against Christmas."

Earlier this month one of Jobbik's Parliamentary leaders, Márton Gyöngyösi, told the legislature it is time “to assess ... how many people of Jewish origin there are here, and especially in the Hungarian parliament and the Hungarian government, who represent a certain national security risk.”

Jeb Bush with Republican Jew counter Fred Malek

That's why Jews tend to shy away from right-wing parties. I mean have you heard anyone talk like that since... since... since Richard Nixon hired Fred Malek as his official "Jew counter." Malek, by the way, is still an extremely powerful Republican Party operative and was National Finance Committee co-chair for John McCain in 2008. This year he ran the American Action Network, a fascist-oriented SuperPAC, which had considerably more success than Karl Rove's various PACs, money laundering operations and scam outfits did. Malek's American Action Network spent $$11,660,232 ($4 million of which was contributed, ironically, by America's top Kapo group, the Republican Jewish Coalition) on behalf of a repulsive batch of right-wing hatemongers very much like himself who are trying to win congressional races. His 4 biggest efforts were to try to reelect fanatics Jeff Denham-- successfully smearing former astronaut Jose Hernandez with $2,508,581 in patently false ads-- Chip Cravaack ($1,668,529) and Daniel "Taliban Dan" Webster ($1,119,279) and to elect John Shimkus' horrifyingly corrupt chief of staff Rodney Davis against progressive champion David Gill ($1,482,562). Other miscreants whose campaigns Malek was funneling money to included Gambino Crime Family congressman Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm of Staten Island ($16,930), pro-rape Republican Richard Mourdock ($645,151), and deranged California wingnut Tony Strickland ($168,717), who lost.

Will A Worldwide Depression Cause Fascism To Rise In Europe Again? Can It Be Stopped?

Europe moves right... again

I've had friends who have been saying we've been in a Depression since the last year of Bush's disastrous term. But they don't have Nobel Prizes in economics. NY Times columnist/Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman is a Nobel laureate and he's managed to not call it a depression-- until this week. And not just a depression, but one that is already starting to inspire a fascist reaction, the way the Great Depression of the 1930s did in much of the world. He points out that the euro crisis "is killing the European dream. The shared currency, which was supposed to bind nations together, has instead created an atmosphere of bitter acrimony." Spain just elected a far right government. Italy and Greece had far right governments imposed on them by banksters backed by Germany.

[D]emands for ever-harsher austerity, with no offsetting effort to foster growth, have done double damage. They have failed as economic policy, worsening unemployment without restoring confidence; a Europe-wide recession now looks likely even if the immediate threat of financial crisis is contained. And they have created immense anger, with many Europeans furious at what is perceived, fairly or unfairly (or actually a bit of both), as a heavy-handed exercise of German power.

Nobody familiar with Europe’s history can look at this resurgence of hostility without feeling a shiver. Yet there may be worse things happening.

Right-wing populists are on the rise from Austria, where the Freedom Party (whose leader used to have neo-Nazi connections) runs neck-and-neck in the polls with established parties, to Finland, where the anti-immigrant True Finns party had a strong electoral showing last April. And these are rich countries whose economies have held up fairly well. Matters look even more ominous in the poorer nations of Central and Eastern Europe.

Last month the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development documented a sharp drop in public support for democracy in the “new E.U.” countries, the nations that joined the European Union after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not surprisingly, the loss of faith in democracy has been greatest in the countries that suffered the deepest economic slumps.

And in at least one nation, Hungary, democratic institutions are being undermined as we speak.

One of Hungary’s major parties, Jobbik, is a nightmare out of the 1930s: it’s anti-Roma (Gypsy), it’s anti-Semitic, and it even had a paramilitary arm. But the immediate threat comes from Fidesz, the governing center-right party.

Fidesz won an overwhelming Parliamentary majority last year, at least partly for economic reasons; Hungary isn’t on the euro, but it suffered severely because of large-scale borrowing in foreign currencies and also, to be frank, thanks to mismanagement and corruption on the part of the then-governing left-liberal parties. Now Fidesz, which rammed through a new Constitution last spring on a party-line vote, seems bent on establishing a permanent hold on power.

The details are complex. Kim Lane Scheppele, who is the director of Princeton’s Law and Public Affairs program-- and has been following the Hungarian situation closely-- tells me that Fidesz is relying on overlapping measures to suppress opposition. A proposed election law creates gerrymandered districts designed to make it almost impossible for other parties to form a government; judicial independence has been compromised, and the courts packed with party loyalists; state-run media have been converted into party organs, and there’s a crackdown on independent media; and a proposed constitutional addendum would effectively criminalize the leading leftist party. [Sounds like he's describing the Republican Party in states like Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida.]

Taken together, all this amounts to the re-establishment of authoritarian rule, under a paper-thin veneer of democracy, in the heart of Europe. And it’s a sample of what may happen much more widely if this depression continues.

It’s not clear what can be done about Hungary’s authoritarian slide. The U.S. State Department, to its credit, has been very much on the case, but this is essentially a European matter. The European Union missed the chance to head off the power grab at the start-- in part because the new Constitution was rammed through while Hungary held the Union’s rotating presidency. It will be much harder to reverse the slide now. Yet Europe’s leaders had better try, or risk losing everything they stand for.

And they also need to rethink their failing economic policies. If they don’t, there will be more backsliding on democracy-- and the breakup of the euro may be the least of their worries.

Uh, oh-- is America in any kind of shape to stand up to the rise of fascism overseas, the way FDR did in the 1930's and '40's? This calls for someone who understands the reactionary mind. Who better than The Reactionary Mind author Corey Robin? In 2002 Corey wrote a paper, Remembrance of Empires Past: 9/11 and the End of the Cold War for a conference at NYU, "Cold War Triumphalism." He starts out talking about three of the most prominent contemporary reactionary minds, William F. Buckley, Irving Kristol, and Norman Podhoretz. Buckley and Kristol told him in interviews that the problem with the triumph of "free" markets was not that it promoted instability or dissolved tradition; "it was that it did not provide the passion and élan, the gravitas and authority, that the exercise of American power truly required, at home and abroad. Simply put, the free market was too bloodless a notion upon which to found a national order, much less a global empire.

Kristol confessed to a deep yearning for an American empire: “What’s the point of being the greatest, most powerful nation in the world and not having an imperial role? It’s unheard of in human history. The most powerful nation always had an imperial role.” But, he continued, previous empires were not “capitalist democracies with a strong emphasis on economic growth and economic prosperity.” Because of its commitment to the free market, the United States lacked the fortitude and vision to wield imperial power. “It’s too bad,” Kristol lamented. “I think it would be natural for the United States... to play a far more dominant role in world affairs. Not what we’re doing now but to command and to give orders as to what is be done. People need that. There are many parts of the world-- Africa in particular-- where an authority willing to use troops can make a very good difference, a healthy difference.” But with public discussion moderated by accountants-- “There’s the Republican party tying itself into knots. Over what? Prescriptions for elderly people? Who gives a damn? I think it’s disgusting that... presidential politics of the most important country in the world should resolve around prescriptions for elderly people. Future historians will find this very hard to believe. It’s not Athens. It’s not Rome. It’s not anything.” Kristol thought it unlikely that the United States would take its rightful place as the successor to empires past.

Though Kristol and Buckley do not represent the entire conservative movement, much less elites as a whole, their anxious meditations about the tensions between imperial politics and market ideology speak to a genuine problem that America’s leaders have been wrestling with since the end of the Cold War – a problem, these leaders hope, resolved by the events of September 11. The collapse of communism left the United States defending the most powerful empire in history with an ideology-- the free market-- resolutely hostile to all forms of politics. According to its visionaries, the free market is a harmonious, virtually self-reproducing order, promising an international civil society of voluntary exchange and non-coercive rule, requiring little more from the state than the occasional enforcement of laws and contracts. Reconciling this free-wheeling vision with the reality of imperial over-reach-– the United States today has a military presence in more countries than at any time since the Second World War-- has proven to be an inordinately difficult task for America’s leaders. Not only does the idea of a global free market fit uneasily with the coercive exercise of imperial power, but it also fails to provide the home population of that empire with a compelling reason for participating either in its defense or in the reproduction of its civic life. Perhaps for that reason, the lead item of American intellectual complaint throughout the 1990s has been that the United States is insufficiently civic-minded or martial, that its leaders and citizens are too distracted by glittery prosperity and showy affluence to take care of its inherited institutions, common concerns, and world-wide defense.

It's very much worth reading Robin's whole book, or at least this entire paper, which you can find here.

"Unprecedented Ecological Catastrophe" On The Danube... Although We Could Possibly Still Avoid One In Nevada

See all that red stuff? It can kill you... fast or slow

Hungary seems so very far away, and after all only four people are dead in this flooding, not nearly as bad as the thousands who died in Pakistan on CNN. And look, the Danube is only Europe's second-longest river. Now the Volga... that's a river! But it does flow through a bunch of countries, even if most Americans couldn't find them on a map if their lives depended on it: Germany (where it starts), Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Ukraine and Romania (where it empties into the Black Sea).

You might not want to eat too much of that yummy Black Sea turbot, or even the mackerel or mullet. That's because this week a toxic red sludge that burst out of a Hungarian aluminum factory's reservoir flooded into the Danube, killing fish, threatening an ecological disaster and heading towards the Black Sea (and the six other countries between Hungary and the Black Sea). The chemical spill was the biggest ever in Hungary and pumped at least 35 million cubic feet of toxic, carcinogenic sludge (arsenic, cadmium and lead) into the river. Every single fish in a Danube tributary, the Marcal, has died.

As Danube nations such as Serbia and Bulgaria brace for contamination, Hungary is still struggling to deal with the devastation of the initial spill that flooded the villages of Devecsar, Kolontar, and Somlovasarhely in northwest Hungary. Emergency response teams, including the Hungarian armed forces, began to evacuate residents within hours of the spill, and staved off the contamination of a fourth village by treating and removing the sludge. Despite that good work, authorities say up to 7,000 people in these and four other villages have been directly affected. And leaders are struggling to measure the spill's human and environmental cost. "Nothing like this has happened in Hungary before," Tamas Toldi, mayor of Devecsar, told Time. "Right now the most important thing is to save people from the [flood]."

Toldi admitted that even those people who have been saved and evacuated face an uncertain future. Authorities reported on Oct. 6 that up to 2,000 acres of farmland and 8.6 acres of populated areas have been poisoned. "The [chemical] sludge has gone into houses and has destroyed and corroded everything," he says. "It's also going into the soil and we don't know how we'll produce healthy food in our fields."

Sounds disastrous, doesn't it? And it is... but the Hungarians and the regional authorities in central and eastern Europe are, by all reports, handling it extremely well. They're mobilizing whatever resources they can to battle the effects of the catastrophe, and I've been hearing on the radio that the deadly pH level is being dealt with efficiently-- hundreds of tons of alkaline-neutralizing plaster and acetic acid being dumped into the river system-- and is steadily declining. Reports are that the pH is now below 10 and expected to fall to 8, where it won't be as damaging. But Europeans can work together; they know social cooperation is how man moves forward.

Here, on the other hand...

We have a whole grab bag of freaks and loons who have taken over the poor old Republican Party with the latest and greatest ideas of the (early) 17th century. Joe Miller wants to abolish the EPA. Most of the extremists in what can generally be referred to as the "DeMint Caucus," or which will be the DeMint Caucus if enough of them get elected-- Pat Toomey, Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Ron Johnson, Christine O'Donnell, Ken Buck, Ken Buck, Joe Miller-- are convinced that government is a force for evil; not a force to protect society in general, but one that hampers the ability of the strongest and most aggressive to reach their full potential. It's a dark, Hobbesian view of the world, and most of them got it either directly or secondhand from Ayn Rand's cultish followers and her bitter, albeit silly and sophomoric, opus Atlas Shrugged.

How bad are they in the cooperation department? Yesterday Bill Raggio, the Nevada state Senate Republican Minority Leader, explained why he endorsed Harry Reid over his party's own nominee, Sharron Angle. Listen carefully. He knows her well, and this isn't something he did lightly. It will cost him. But what he says portends ill for America should Angle and the freaks like her wind up in public office:

"Only one of these candidates has sought my endorsement, Senator Harry Reid. I haven't heard from Sharron Angle or talked with her since long before she decided to run against me for State Senate two years ago. After losing to me in a primary, during which she ran a very negative campaign and distorted my record, referred to me as a liar and a RINO, I never heard one word from her, or a concession, or an offer of support. Instead, she lent aid and comfort to an effort to recall me as State Senator.

"Those are personal issues which I was willing to put behind me.

"What is difficult to overlook is her record of being totally ineffective as a four-term assemblywoman, her inability or unwillingness to work with others, even within her own party, and her extreme positions on issues such as Medicare, Social Security, education, veterans affairs and many others.