Oct 22, 2017
Dr. Lars Maischak is the guest on this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show. He is a lecturer of history at Fresno State University. Several months ago, Maischak exercised his rights of free speech and said via the social media platform Twitter that "to save American democracy, Trump must hang. The sooner and the higher, the better.." After making those comments Maischak was targeted by a coordinated and systematic campaign of harassment--which included death threats--by right-wing activists and their trolls. Lars was then put on leave from Fresno State University and has now been removed from the classroom.
During this week's episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Lars and Chauncey discuss fascism and Donald Trump's election as well as the explosive relationship between race, class, and white identity politics. Lars also shares his thoughts on free speech, academic freedom, and how today's right-wing hate machine is working to silent dissent in the academy and other areas of American life. Lars also explains why he took to Twitter to express his disgust about Donald Trump's administration and what it was like to be harassed by the right-wing smear machine.
In this week's episode, Chauncey DeVega explains the real threat posed by former general and now Chief of Staff John Kelly's defense of Donald Trump's mean and cruel comments to war widow Myeshia Johnson. Chauncey also states clearly and plainly how Kelly's and Trump's lies and comments about Myeshia Johnson, her family, and Representative Frederica Wilson are just one more example of casual racism and sexism against black women in today's America. During this week's podcast Chauncey also offers his thoughts on the great new films The Florida Project and Mudbound.
History does indeed repeat itself, not because people forget it, or fail to learn from it, but because people who insist on repeating it take notes, and seek to perfect the work of malice and destruction. The refinement of the Big Lie, with modern technology both in social-media, and traditional forms of info-tainment and entertainment make escaping this unceasing deluge of propaganda by word of mouth, casual absorption or outright assault on the senses nearly impossible. You can't go a day without a nauseating dose of it. This was before Trump was ever a thought as president, this has been the shock-doctrine on a loop 24/7 since Far-right hate media became a thing, it's only risen in volume and reach since the advent of the proliferation of social media into nearly every individual's hands. We aren't able to avoid the consequences of this, because the maze we are in isn't designed by us, it's designed by those who have crafted a no-win situation so that they always end up more wealthy, powerful and beyond the reach of the law they use so skillfully to their advantage and our disadvantage. This is exactly what it looks like, we are experiencing Nazi Germany 2.0 only instead of being saved by our friends we are the long-hated enemy the world has barely tolerated on pain of death. We are so screwed, we haven't woken up to the realization just how screwed we are, ethnic cleansing was always a goal of the right-wing, and their wish list of undesirables they'd like to kill or displace is exhaustive, given the state of affairs we currently find ourselves in, we would be lucky if the saner nations don't just destroy us from afar for their own safety and security lest our deplorables spill out of this fetid sewer and contaminate their own disastrous debacles they are faced with.