By Douglas J. Hagmann
The video above is a but a “snapshot in time,” albeit an important one. It clearly shows Tlaib’s deeply visceral reaction to two simple questions asked to her by investigative journalist Ben Bergquam: “Will you denounce Hamas? Why do you support terrorists?” Instead of answering either question, she accused Mr. Bergquam of “dehumanizing Palestinians.” By her response, she equated all Palestinians with Hamas terrorists – making no distinction between the Hamas terrorists and the Palestinian people. As an aside, perhaps Ms. Tlaib should enroll in a remedial history course. She would then know that until 1948, Jews born in the area she refers to as “Palestine” were listed on all official documents – birth certificates, passports, etc. as “Palestinians.” Perhaps it would surprise her to learn that she was also referring to Jews born before 1948 as being dehumanized in her terse response to Mr. Bergquam.
Rashaida Tlaib, however, represents a much greater danger to our nation and people. I believe that it is vital to all Americans and our nation to fully understand the reason for her response, as having that understanding further illustrates the depth of anti-American, pro-jihad penetration that exists within our own government. Stated differently and more simply, Rashida Tlaib should be considered an enemy of America embedded within our government.
If that depiction of Tlaib appears hyperbolic, consider the findings from research conducted by the organization Canary Mission, a group that “documents individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses and beyond. Canary Mission investigates hatred across the entire political spectrum, including the far right, far left and anti-Israel activists.” According to Canary Mission:
Canary Mission
- Rashida Tlaib has extensive fundraising ties to Hamas supporters. She employed no less than three Hamas-linked activists to fundraise for her 2018 election campaign, one of whom spent 8 months in prison for his alleged connections to Hamas.
- Tlaib additionally used a pro-terror Facebook page, PAC-USA, to raise funds for her 2018 Congressional campaign. Tlaib gave the founder of PAC-USA the position of Chairman of the Finance Committee for Rashida Tlaib for Congress. He used it to promote 12 fundraisers in 8 states, entirely with her support.
- In 2015, Tlaib co-founded the Detroit-based, anti-American, anti-Israel and pro-terror hate group, Black4Palestine. A co-founder used the group to conduct activism with members of the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).
Tlaib is also a member of the “Squad,” an informal group of 8 far-left Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives known for their anti-Israel public statements. More importantly, Rashida Tlaib is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the largest U.S. Marxist organization.
Speaking of the swamp and enemies within, watch Adam Schiff’s telling non-response to Ben Bergquam as well:
A deeper understanding of the threat we face from within is mandatory, as is a deep cleaning of the swamp that exists in America.
My latest 1,500-word article on how the Democratic Party has morphed into one that espouses socialism was published last week in The Epoch Times. In addition to the Internet, it ran on page 1 of the Epoch Times’ Thursday October 11 national edition. An introduction and link to the full article are below. The substance of the article will be discussed during my weekly appearance on The Hagmann Report, Monday October 15 from 9-10 PM EDT.
Democrats Embrace Socialism in Battle to Win Midterm Elections
October 11, 2018
With less than a month to go before the 2018 midterm elections, the Democratic Party is attempting to make the most of its opposition to President Donald Trump as its best chance for electoral victory.
Most of the party’s candidates for all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and the one-third of the Senate that’s in play are supporters of the anti-Trump “resistance.” A growing number of those candidates favor policies that are in sync with far-left radical groups such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the largest socialist membership organization in the United States.
In the past two years, grassroots opposition to Trump at the party’s base of activists has pushed Democrat officeholders steadily to the far left end of the political spectrum, with a concomitant embrace of socialist policies. Many Democratic Party candidates competing in local and state races also are increasingly running to the extreme left this year.
Multi-Tiered
To achieve their electoral goals, the Democrats are employing a multi-tiered approach. In conservative states that voted for Trump in 2016, the party has nominated candidates who project moderate images but who, in most cases, default to socialist positions. In reliably “blue” states such as Massachusetts and New York, Democratic candidates are openly proclaiming a commitment to socialism.
A prominent example of a Democrat candidate running in a “red” state is occurring in Texas. U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, frequently described as Kennedyesque, is challenging the Republican incumbent, Sen. Ted Cruz. Cruz currently leads O’Rourke by six points, according to the latest Real Clear Politics average of polling data.
According to the Texas Observer, O’Rourke had high praise for socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), calling him the “absolute champion” of single-payer health care in the United States, and his presidential campaign “transformational [and] the catalyst for the conversation this country has needed to have for a long time.”
The article continues at The Epoch Times – Click here to read it for free.
By Peter Barry Chowka
Although Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsements of far-left socialist Democratic Party candidates in Tuesday’s (August 7th) primary elections had mixed results, the 28-year-old darling of the Democratic Socialists of America and the mainstream media is still plotting her strategy for the critically important November Congressional elections that are now less than three months away.
The strategy of Ocasio-Cortez and her comrades is to keep the pressure on the Democratic Party to continue its hard left turn towards socialism – which is really Marxism, as my new article online today at The Epoch Times concludes.
The article’s title is The Democratic Socialists of America Are Coming: Do They Represent America’s Future? It’s my fifth article since July 12th published at The Epoch Times.
The article includes some exclusive quotes from Diana West, the distinguished author of American Betrayal and other books and a nationally syndicated columnist. Diana West has been a guest on The Hagmann Report program, most recently on July 31st (click here for video). I received an email from Ms. West with her replies to several questions I had asked her shortly before my weekly appearance on The Hagmann Report on Monday, August 6th and I read portions of her comments on the program, including these lines.
Diana West: “It’s quite clear to me that DSA is communist and Marxist both — and ‘progressive’ and Alinskyite and Fabian as well — in the sense that all of these groups and factions seek to remake America according to the same socialist, centrally planned, varyingly totalitarian vision, all of them creating the kind of tyranny that our Founding Fathers would have had to declare independence from all over again.
“While differences in tactics or presentation may absorb these Marx-influenced groups themselves, even pit them against each, such differences amount to little as far as anti-communists should be concerned. All of these groups pay homage to Marx; thus, they all pose existential threats to liberty, religion, tradition, free markets.”
To read my entire 1,100 word article without charge at The Epoch Times, The Democratic Socialists of America Are Coming: Do They Represent America’s Future? please click here.
Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran reporter and analyst of news on national politics, media, and popular culture. During the past year, he has been a frequent contributor to American Thinker. His articles are now appearing in The Epoch Times. Every Monday at 9 PM ET, Peter offers political and media analysis live on The Hagmann Report.Follow Peter on Twitter at @pchowka.
By Peter Barry Chowka
UPDATED: On July 25th (online) and 26th (in print), The Epoch Times published my fourth feature article in two weeks. The title, “The Democratic Party in 2018: At War With Itself?,” indicates the content.
The article is a detailed examination of how the Democratic Party has recently taken a sharp and shocking turn towards the socialist (Marxist) hard left.
Which is not to suggest that the Democratic Party has in recent decades, not been a party of the left. But there is a qualitative difference between the party of John F. Kennedy, Henry (Scoop) Jackson, Walter Mondale – and even Bill Clinton – and its standard bearers today. All four of these well-known and powerful politicians from the 1960s through the 1990s were considered to be among the leading liberals and moderates of their times. But they were more traditional classical liberals who governed or legislated from the center-left of the political spectrum.
Since the ascent to total power of Barack Hussein Obama and his thousands of acolytes in 2008, a long decade ago now, the inexorable march towards socialism (which is a mask for Marxism and communism) has picked up considerable speed.
In 2018, a critical mass has finally been achieved as the Democratic Party is now embracing candidates who openly proclaim that they are socialists first and Democrats second.
The latest figure to grab the golden ring of the Party’s approval is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Her surprising victory over ten-term incumbent Rep. Joseph Crowley in a June Democratic primary election for Congress in New York, with the aid of the mainstream media, instantly catapulted this 28-year-old newbie politician wannabe into the national spotlight.
And the rest, as they say, is now history – which is being made right before our eyes.
Due to copyright restrictions, my entire article for The Epoch Times cannot be republished here. However, following the introductory paragraphs of the article, below, there is a link to the complete article, which can be read online for free.
The Democratic Party in 2018: At War With Itself?
By Peter Barry Chowka © 2000-2018 by The Epoch Times
The current rise of an active socialist base in the Democratic Party has led some observers to describe what’s taking place as an intraparty civil war.
The Democrats began to move decidedly to the left a decade ago with Barack Obama’s election to the presidency. Between 2009 and 2017, President Obama governed further to the left than any previous president since Franklin Roosevelt.
There was little opposition from fellow Democrats.
The strong showing in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was another indication that a substantial part of the party—generally referred to as the base—had turned hard left.
More recently, the move to political center stage of Congressional candidate socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and her embrace by many leaders of the party including Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez, appear to presage an even more important role for socialism in the party’s future. . .
The complete article at The Epoch Times may be read by accessing this link.
Peter Barry Chowka
In recent years, the Democratic Party has veered farther to the left, steadily distancing itself from its more mainstream liberal roots. The party of Presidents Harry S. Truman and, more recently, Bill Clinton is no more.
In the era of President Donald Trump, the base of the Democratic Party and many of its elected officials have embraced the Resistance to the 45th president as their primary guiding principle – and along with it, radical policy positions that until recently were considered anathema by both party regulars and most of the electorate.
From all appearances, the Democratic Party is now tacking even more to the radical left – apparently emboldened by the reinvigorated Occupy Movement that is advocating the abolition of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).
Also playing a prominent role in pushing the Democrats farther to the left is the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
The DSA, which has active chapters in 47 states and the District of Columbia, is enjoying a surge in membership which now exceeds 45,000. The organization is an enthusiastic backer of Occupy ICE and other far-left direct actions. The Louisville DSA, for example, facilitated the harassment of Sen. Mitch McConnell and his wife at a restaurant and in a subsequent tweet advocated more of the same (“Mitch does not deserve a meal in peace”).
My new article on this subject in The Epoch Times, “Occupy ICE at Center of Democrat Agenda,” can be read in full free of charge here.
Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran reporter and analyst of news on national politics, media, and popular culture. During the past year, he has been a frequent contributor to American Thinker. His articles are now appearing in The Epoch Times. Every Monday at 9 PM ET, Peter offers political and media analysis live on The Hagmann Report.Follow Peter on Twitter at @pchowka.
By Peter Barry Chowka
EXCLUSIVE. Never before in the history of the United States has open socialism/Marxism been on the march to this degree and poised to amass such significant electoral power.
The recent victory of hardcore socialist candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the New York Democrat Congressional Primary, the sudden ascendancy of scores of openly socialist candidates running for office (and increasingly being elected with more of their comrades being given favorable odds to win in the fall), and the accelerating drift of the Democrat Party towards full bore socialism and Marxism is a cause for deep concern. It must be taken seriously.
A previous example of an authoritarian fascist regime getting its start due to the results of democratic elections is the rise of dictator Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in Germany in the early 1930s. By 1932 the Nazis were the largest political party in Germany’s Reichstag (Parliament) which gave them the power to compel the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor in January 1933. That opened the door to his amassing complete control not only of Germany but of much of Western Europe and governing for over a decade as a ruthless psychopathic dictator. The results over the next 12 ½ years – World War II in Europe and the Holocaust – are well-known. (Actually, maybe not as well-known as one might think. Recent surveys have shown that a significant number of Millennials are as dumb as rocks and don’t know anything about the Holocaust, World War II, or many other important milestone in history.)
The situation in the United States of America almost 90 years after the rise of Nazism in Germany is obviously unique. It is a totally different world now. Nevertheless, some potential parallels might be observed. The Nazis (National Socialists) began their rise as a thuggish group of outliers, criminals, and losers in the wake of Germany’s catastrophic loss of World War I in 1918. With economic and political conditions deteriorating during the 15 years that followed that war, the Nazis gradually enlarged their base of support and managed to elect a significant number of Nazi Party members to office by promising pie-in-the-sky government relief for the German people. They matched these Utopian appeals with street violence, dividing the country, and targeting certain groups, like Jews, for undeserved blame, marginalization, physical attacks, and, ultimately, extermination in death camps.
Does some of that sound at all similar to what’s going on today? In these times, Trump supporters, Christians, and anyone wearing a MAGA hat has been made an open target for shaming or worse – as violence especially in urban areas continues to tick upwards.
Right now, in dozens of major cities around the country, mobs of losers – masked Antifa thugs, Communists, Marxists, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and other riffraff – have taken over by force of numbers whole areas of central cities and declared them “Temporarily Autonomous Zones” that will be “occupied” by the camping mobs until their demands are met. The first demand of these “Occupy” groups, which is now supported by at least 36% of Democrats (and 45% of “liberals”) nationwide, is the end of ICE – the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency that tracks down, arrests, and deports criminal illegal aliens as well as investigates and enforces federal laws against drug smuggling, money laundering, and child trafficking.
In most of the affected cities, under the control of far left wing Democrat (aka Socialist) mayors, the illegal Occupy ICE tent encampments are being left undisturbed as the Democrats in charge express their support for the Occupy movement and facilitate its continuance. The occupants, meanwhile, are claiming that they are staying permanently in their encampments until their insane demands are fully met.
The Occupy ICE movement’s demands are not stopping with shutting down ICE. Other demands being openly advocated now include No Prisons, No Borders, No Trump, and presumably No Police. “We do not negotiate with fascists [police],” screams a militant tweet on July 11 from OccupyICEpdx [Portland]. Every communiqué put out by the Occupy groups ends with ¡Chinga la migra! – Spanish for “F-ck the migra.” Migra is the insulting word that illegal aliens and their dumb ass supporters use to describe U.S. customs and border enforcement officials. A statement from Occupy ICE Portland on July 7 posted on social media announced that the Occupy ICE movement is no longer eschewing violence as a method of achieving its goals.
Increasingly, individuals (usually white people associated with the Trump administration) are being targeted for harassment and even violently attacked (the attempted assassination of Rep. Steve Scalise and other Republican members of the House during a baseball practice in June 2017 is an example). A tweet by the DSA in Louisville on July 8 commented favorably on the latest harassment of the #1 Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, and his wife when they were eating dinner in a Louisville restaurant: “We’re so proud of the people of our city. Mitch does not deserve a meal in peace, and it’s clear that a grassroots movement is building across Louisville to make that a reality.” This is the organization that soon-to-be Rep. Ocasio-Cortez is a proud member of.
To date, apparently none of the high-profile instances of harassment of Trump administration officials or Republican office holders (McConnell, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kirstjen Nielsen, et al) has resulted in any arrests. The harassers appear to have total immunity from arrest and from being held accountable for their threatening actions.
This is perfectly in sync with the agenda of the insurrectionists who are running wild – and exerting a greater influence on Democrat pols. The move to completely decriminalize entering the country illegally is being matched by serious campaigns to do the same with U.S. lawbreakers, by closing prisons, restoring full rights, like the right to vote, to violent felons, ordering police to no longer arrest people for “minor” crimes (in an effort to reduce the numbers of “people of color” caught up in the criminal justice system), and otherwise fostering a jungle-like law free descent into the equivalent of Marxist Venezuela 2.0.
The gradual escalation of political and ideological disagreements to physical violence is a troubling trend, but it seems to be flying under the radar of the media, who may report some incidents but then either ignore the societal implications or give wink-wink tacit approval to the anti-social Social Justice Warrior (SJW) “direct actions.” Meanwhile, Marxist socialists and their fellow travelers increasingly approve of such obnoxious and even violent tactics.
This growing rag tag “movement” of native born collectivist dirt bags, layabouts, and slobs, and illegal aliens, almost all of of them surviving on some form of government assistance, would not be so troubling if its sick agendas were not being adopted by a cadre of slightly more presentable socialist politician wannabes (members of the DSA) who have cleaned up their act and are running for office and winning. Ocasio-Cortez is a case in point. An article in The Hill on July 11thdepicted most Democrats in Congress as already enthusiastically slobbering over and sucking up to Ocasio-Cortez while they look forward to her imminent arrival in D.C. – the “New Democratic Star.” One of her soon-to-be House colleagues, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) commented: “She’s going to be a rock star and a huge progressive force the first day she arrives.” The picture of these Democrat-Socialists fawning over this piece of – fill in the blank here – is absolutely nauseating.
Meanwhile, a crowd of leading Democrats, many of them Presidential wannabes – including Senators Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Elizabeth Warren – are advocating No ICE. A Democrat member of the House of Representatives has introduced legislation to close down ICE. The proposed law is steadily gaining support among his colleagues.
With the almost universal approval of the mainstream media propping up their radical movements, the socialists/communists are fanning out like a bunch of plague infested rats and infecting the body politic nationwide with their toxic, highly communicable brain eating disease. The DSA Heart of Iowa, for example, in a tweet on July 9th, crowed that:
Socialism will win on the coasts.
Socialism will win in the Midwest.
Socialism will win in the south.
Socialism will win in cities.
Socialism will win in small towns.
Socialism will win in rural America.
SOCIALISM WILL WIN.
In fact, socialists have reasons to celebrate recent victories in local elections in Montgomery County, Maryland (right next door to Washington, D.C.), Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. The Nation magazine, which has been advocating socialism and going easy on communism for 153 years, recently bragged “Socialism is on a Winning Streak.” Many references and examples were cited.
The commies (that name should suffice to describe this disparate group of seditious Fifth Column anti-American Marxists who are multiplying like cockroaches), emboldened with a new bravado, are predicting more of the same.
On July 9, NBC News (not whacko MSNBC), prominently featured an article by an elected socialist in Chicago, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, titled “Democrats ignore the left at their peril. Midwesterners aren’t scared of socialism — they’re hungry for it. Some members of the Democratic establishment argue that bold, left-wing platforms can’t win elections. They’re wrong.”
NBC News — once the home of iconic mainstream news anchors Chet Huntley and David Brinkley — is now serving as a mouthpiece to promote socialism!
The questions for all of us include: Where do we go from here? A further and faster descent into the communist morass? On the verge of full-blown insurrection or Civil War 2.0? God only knows.
Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran reporter and analyst of news on national politics, media, and popular culture. During the past year, he has been a frequent contributor to American Thinker. Every Monday at 9 PM ET, Peter offers political and media analysis live on The Hagmann Report. Follow Peter on Twitter at @pchowka.
By Peter Barry Chowka
Is this woman – an avowed socialist – fit to be in the Congress or in the Oval Office?
The biggest political story of the week arising from last Tuesday’s primary elections was the David and Goliath take down of entrenched Swamp Dweller Rep. Joe Crowley (D-NY) by someone who was initially given no chance. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, who last November was working as a bartender, not only beat Crowley, who outspent her by 10 to 1 – she trounced him by a 15 point margin. The New York Times, her hometown paper of record, had devoted exactly two mentions to her campaign in news stories prior to her surprise election victory.
Crowley wasn’t just anybody. He was a 10-term Congressman and an old political hand. He was thought to be a leading contender for the top Democrat leadership role in the House, and maybe the next Speaker, if Rep. Nancy Pelosi winds up being deposed by her caucus either before or after the November elections. Ocasio-Cortez’s win was immediately compared to the 2014 triumph of another unknown, Dave Brat, a Tea Party candidate and a professor at Randolph-Macon College who took down House Republican leader Eric Cantor in an 11 point landslide primary win. That election surprise may have signaled a tectonic out-with-the-old-type shift in the makeup of the Republican Party that, two years later, came under the control of the now iconic outsider Donald J. Trump.
The left and the media are greeting Ocasio-Cortez’s win, “the most shocking upset of a rollicking political season,” as a kind of second coming – that is, of Bernie Sanders. Vermont Sen. Sanders enthusiastically endorsed his fellow socialist Ocasio-Cortez, who had worked on his 2016 presidential campaign. For her part, Ocasio-Cortez had warm praise for her mentor Sanders. Republicans who are cheering this win because they think it presages trouble because the Democrats are lurching too far to the left should remember that Sanders, who ran as a Democrat but is really a hard core socialist, did extremely well and might even have beaten Hillary Clinton if the primaries hadn’t been rigged by the DNC.
Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, favors universal single payer health care (aka socialized medicine), tuition free for all four year college at state schools, the elimination of ICE, and the impeachment of Donald J. Trump. Her unconventional decision to eschew campaigning in the final days and fly to Texas to demonstrate in solidarity with illegal immigrants – at the time seen as an unwise move – is now being assessed as a brilliant political stroke. In a comparison that is not too far afield, like Donald J. Trump she acts impulsively and speaks her mind and so far the constituents in her Congressional district in Queens, N.Y. (70% of them are “people of color”) seem to approve.
Ocasio-Cortez is assured of making it to the House in November as her district is as safe for Democrats as possible. Once there, where will she go politically? I predict further on to the left. What has she got to lose? Plenty of other ambitious high profile Democrats are heading in the same direction. A majority of her party has no problems with socialism and the promise of a handout for all has often been a winning strategy for Democrats (ask Barack Obama), who in recent years have remade themselves into Democrat Socialists. Remember the Newsweek cover at the time of Obama’s first inauguration? “We Are All Socialists Now.”
And what about Ocasio-Cortez’s future ambitions? In estimating this aspect, she reminds me of President Obama. He exuded hipness, he was considered by many voters to be attractive and articulate, he came out of nowhere when America seemed to crave something new – and he was the right color for the country’s emerging demographic shift that is slowly and inexorably transforming to minority-majority.
The thought of aiming for the very top job has apparently not escaped soon-to-be Rep. Ocasio-Cortez. On Thursday, basking in the glow of her daughter’s impressive victory, the newly minted pol’s 55-year old mother, Blanca Ocasio-Cortez, told the New York Post, “Her aspiration is to be the president.”
A friend of mine who is an astute observer of American politics with a sense of realpolitik, and who despises socialism because of what it did to her country in the last century, offered these observations about Ocasio-Cortez:
She is looking like a total construct. Groomed and primed in secret, and prepared for this political world. See how much she smiles, see how happy and young and healthy she looks. If you vote for her, you will also feel young and happy and healthy and smiley. That is the strategy and it will work, because socialism is a multi-generational strategy, and the advancing phalanx of socialist voters is FOUR generations deep.
Let’s hope that my friend is wrong. But at this point, can anyone be sure?
Addenda: On June 29, Yahoo News published a 4,000 word article titled “The Democratic Socialists of America show their muscle in New York congressional upset.” It has detailed information about the background of the DSA and its plans to support Democrat party candidates this fall who can prove their commitment to socialism as part of the DSA’s ongoing agenda to transform the United States into a completely Socialist country like Sweden, Venezuela, or Cuba.
Another important part of the Ocasio-Cortez New York primary victory story is contained in the ZeroHedge article “’Girl From The Bronx’ Ocasio-Cortez Called Out In Fact Check; Actually Grew Up In Wealthy Enclave,” also published on June 29.
Peter Barry Chowka is a veteran reporter and analyst of news on national politics, media, and popular culture. He is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. Peter is scheduled to make his next video Skype appearance on The Hagmann Report on Thursday, July 5, 2018 between 8-9 PM EDT. Follow Peter on Twitter at @pchowka.
