By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) May 22, 2024; see all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. Note: all poll numbers and poll margins are rounded to nearest whole numbers unless otherwise indicated

SILVER SPRING—While votes are still being counted and, after detailed research, I fully expect my current sixth-place tally to shift into at least fifth out of ten overall candidates in the Maryland Democratic U.S. Senate primary (and I will be writing more about why I am proud my bare-bones campaign was able to outperform likely half the other candidates soon, once all votes are counted), there is absolutely no question as to who is the clear, resounding winner in this race: and that is Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks.

She “Veni vidi vici”-ed this primary like a black female Julius Caesar.

As in sports and war, there is doubt about who will triumph in political contests.  Whoever is up at halftime or in the middle of battle is not guaranteed to win.  What matters in the end is hanging tough, competing, and how you finish, how many points you put up when the clock has stopped, where you are when the fighting, battle, and war ends. And in this undercovered-by-the-media Democratic primary, with no statewide official or celebrity running, when few people paid much attention until close to the end, it is now clear to me from the admittedly limited polling data and the crystal-clear election results that when people did start paying attention, they went bigtime for Angela and she won over so many undecided voters rapidly towards the end of the race, far more than any other candidate.  And thus, her double-digit victory announced to doubters (including myself,), Maryland, and America that, yes, she can win.

In this race, I always intended to compete seriously, and that I did, standing on stage with Angela and debating her five times.  During the debates (“forums”), in our discussions before and after these events, and at two events in which I was not participating as a candidate, she was always respectful and polite in her personal interactions to me, even when we had a disagreement, even though I never broke out past 1% in the polling.  She even surprised me with an unexpected hug at one point.

I’ve seen this woman up close and in person, sat next to her and even shared a mic that we had to keep passing back-and-forth between us while debating, heard her answers and opinions, witnessed her quiet fierceness exhibiting her composed passion for the issues, for justice, for Maryland, for people.  I’ve seen her improve over time as a candidate as well, and all I can say is, she finished strong, closed out like a pro, and I am proud to have lost to such a worthy competitor.  Now I see much of what her biggest champions—our governor, Wes Moore; our U.S. Senator, Chris Van Hollen; and my U.S. Representative, Jamie Raskin—have seen when they endorsed her well before the race had ended.

Angela is a lifelong Marylander who has been leading where she was and been active politically since her days on the student government in her high school.  By now, she has dedicated nearly three decades to public service in Prince George’s County Maryland, first in 1997 as the first Assistant State’s Attorney tasked specifically with dealing with domestic violence, then as the first woman elected to be Prince Goerge’s County State’s Attorney 2010, then in 2018 as the first woman elected to be Prince George’s County Executive and the first black woman to be elected as a county executive anywhere in Maryland.  And if you are a person with even an ounce of wisdom, you know that black women on average face more discrimination, have less support, are underrepresented in leadership, and have to work far harder than white men, white women, and even black men to get where they are professionally and politically.  And she has the chance to become only the third elected and fourth overall African-American woman U.S. Senator (after Carol Moseley Braun, now-Vice President Kamala Harris—a longtime supporter of Angela’s, whom Angela considers a “quintessential big sister”—and the appointed Laphonza Butler).

At this point, I can say that Angela Alsobrooks has earned our respect and our support, and I say that as a former competitor and as someone with nearly two-and-half decades of experience engaging in national-level and international-level political, public policy, and geopolitical issues. Another thing I am going to say is don’t underestimate black women who organize: Angela is a Delta Sigma Theta Sorority (founded at nearby Howard University in Washington) sister and, as we are talking about the state outside of the South with the largest African-American population, we can expect her sorority sisters in Maryland—and also at Howard, in Washington, and across the nation—to be a potent force working on the ground and online to helping to propel Angela into the U.S. Senate.  She has deep roots in the state’s second-most-populous county and the support of the vast majority of the major statewide Democratic politicians known and loved by the Marylanders they represent and govern.  She has shown she can generate passion, defy expectations, and finish dominatingly yet with grace and dignity in hotly a contested race under a national spotlight.

I had my concerns during the race, but Angela Alsobrooks has shown me and many others in Maryland she is a force of nature to be reckoned with, a formidable candidate able to overcome stiff competition, an even-keeled, thoughtful, deliberative candidate and public servant who is capable yet humble, a fighter yet respectful, compassionate yet a prosecutor, one who can help lead our nation on the U.S. Senate floor as we fight for truth in an age of disinformation and preserving our democracy against the extremism of insurrectionist Trump’s MAGA fascism.

Even though Larry Hogan is a decent man, was a popular two-term governor here in Maryland, and may oppose Trump, insurrectionism, and fascism, he will still be voting far, far too often with Trump’s disgusting cultists who form the core of House and, yes, Senate Republicans, whose ranks Hogan seeks to bolster.  Angela will protect a woman’s right to choose and voting rights, she will vote for more funding for the people of Maryland not to cut the budgets of much needed-programs, and she will encourage economic development while holding crooked CEOs accountable and pushing for profits to be shared with workers not just CEOs.

The choice is clear: to replace Ben Cardin, we need Angela Alsobrooks, not Larry Hogan, not any Republican, but we need Angela Alsbrooks not just because she is a Democrat but because she really is great for all of the reasons I have outlined above.  Don’t just vote against Hogan, vote for Angela Alsobrooks.

I’m all in for Angela.  Are you?  You should be.

Now is the time to get behind Angela!

© 2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

Yes, I am using my own news website to promote my candidacy and ideas I am putting forth as a candidate for U.S. Senate for Maryland and I won’t apologize for it!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) March 26, 2024; *UPDATE April 8: Afro News finally posted coverage of the March 21 eleven days later on April 1; Brian was quoted more than Alsobrooks; see related articles: March 19 Frydenborg Holds His Own Against Alsobrooks in Baltimore Maryland U.S. Senate Democratic Primary Debate, but Will It Matter & Why Won’t Local Media Cover this Race Properly?, March 6 Maryland U.S. Democratic Primary Debate Raises Questions on Frontrunners’ & Party’s Readiness to Take on Hogan. Can Frydenborg Emerge As Third Option?, and March 2 Petty Feuding Between Trone and Alsobrooks Does Not Honor Ben Cardin’s Legacy. Vote for Me Instead! and see all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. Correction appended: this article earlier misstated the length of Sen. Mikulski’s Senate term.

SILVER SPRING—To paraphrase what I wrote recently after my second Maryland U.S. Senate Democratic primary debate, if a debate happens but is not covered by the media, did it really happen as far as voters are concerned?

I am afraid the answer is no.

A Candidate Failed by this Maryland Primary Process

I write now as a candidate perhaps cheated by history in gross fashion, but in a way we may never know fully or be able to quantify to what degree.  To start, I would like reiterate the facts of the only credible independent poll to come out in 2024 at the time it was released, the mid-February Emerson College/The Hill/DC News Now poll:

For the Maryland Democratic U.S. Senate primary:

• Undecided 37%
• U.S. Representative David Trone 32%
• Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks 17%
• and all other candidates combined (including me) totaling 14%.

For the general election:

• Trone tied with Hogan at 42% with 16% undecided
• Alsobrooks down 37% to Hogan’s 44% and 19% undecided

Those general election numbers are clearly a horrific result for Democrats in a blue state race for a seat held for 17 years by Democrat Ben Cardin and held for by Democrat Barbara Mikulski for the thirty years prior to that.

But since that poll, in the first two debates of 2024 (see my writeups of both and also video here; there was only one exclusionary debate beforehand in early December in which I was not allowed to participate), one other candidate besides the two frontrunners—Trone and Alsobrooks—and only one other candidate was quoted by major press outlets after those debates, by The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun after the first and by The Baltimore Sun after the second (quoted twice, as much as the only other person quoted, Alsobrooks; Trone did not attend): me, Brian Frydenborg.  Quickly setting myself apart from the rest of the second-tier candidates in terms of substance and quotability, and with an online presence with more social media followers for my Twitter account than the campaign accounts of Trone and Alsobrooks combined while I was ramping up my campaign, it would seem I could be considered the third candidate in the Democratic primary.

Now, of course, that is open to debate, but think of it this way: media coverage for unknown candidates and for undecided voters is often the decisive factor, as most voters don’t go to rallies or events but read the news to learn about candidates or go to the candidates’ websites after seeing them covered in the news.

I will herein now present an alternative history as food for thought, and then look at what actually has just happened.

What Could Have Been…

Just a few days after that second debate on March 16 and riding a surge of being the only other candidate given serious attention by the mainstream press after Trone and Alsobrooks, The Washington Post/University of Maryland released a poll on March 20 that showed both Democratic frontrunners losing by 12 points or higher to Hogan.  But it also showed Brian Frydenborg in clear third place in the Democratic primary, significantly ahead of all the other second-tier candidates even as he was not that close to either Alsobrooks or Trone and with still many undecided voters.  Separating himself from that pack, Brian was contacted by several major outlets, including The Washington Post, quoting Brian not just on the state of the race and his concerns with both Democratic frontrunners but also on some of his own positions and experience.

The very next day, the third debate—a bipartisan one—in which Brian participated was held in Baltimore and covered by all the local Baltimore television stations as well as multiple newspapers.  Neither Trone nor Hogan attended, but Brian’s performance not only stood out for his energy and passion, but his specific command of details and history, in contrast to Alsobrooks, whose performance was fine and with good responses, but was far less energetic and detailed.  Brian often got more audibly engaged positive responses from the audience than Angela did, and while some of the rest of the Democratic candidates might have drawn some laughter with humor and antics, none compared to either Frydenborg or Alsobrooks in terms of giving substantive, direct, and knowledgeable answers to the questions asked.  It was the two of them and everyone else far behind, but the relatively unknown candidate Frydenborg not only held his own against the county executive frontrunner, but exceeded her performance.  His passionate framing of the failings of the two-frontrunners’ campaigns, the Democratic Party organizations and allies in Maryland, and the media with its general lack of coverage in producing a situation where Democrats are losing badly Republican opponent in the race to succeed Ben Cardin in the U.S. Senate.  In contrast, Alsobrooks gave relatively normal answers and projected unreassuring confidence for a potential matchup against Hogan for someone who was down 14 points to him in a blue state.

The media writeups and television coverage of the event—all the local Baltimore stations and papers with some of that coverage spreading—all of sudden introduced a new candidate more forcefully to primary voters besides just a few quotes in a few articles, a candidate who was articulate, passionate, and able to discuss the issues in detail while also giving voice to their anxieties about the state of the race and of potentially losing Cardin’s Senate seat to Republicans.  Thus, profiles in papers and television interviews followed, and while the next poll out still showed Brian significantly behind Trone and Alsobrooks, he had still risen even further and was clearly the only other candidate making waves, clearly establishing himself as the third candidate in the Democratic primary, with a snowball effect of more donations and more media coverage reinforcing each other that ensured his voice was heard and having an effect and keeping his trajectory in the polls an upward one in the weeks to follow.

The Sad Reality Failing Democrats, All Maryland Voters, and the Nation

I said that this was an alternate history.  Now for what really happened.

To reiterate—because this is so important—The Emerson/Hill poll had shown that the collective support of all the second-tier candidates (14%) was just 3 points behind Alsobrooks in second place (17%), with more voters than even those supporting first-place Trone (32%) saying they were undecided (37%).

In the fictional history, the next poll included the second-tier candidates: this was the only responsible choice given how much collective support the second-tier candidates had that was so close to the level of support of the number-two candidate in Alsobrooks—the 3-point gap within the 3-point margin of error—and given how the largest bloc of voters in the poll was not supporting any candidate but was undecided.  In such a context, any respectable pollster not including the second-tier candidates would be ridiculously irresponsible, but in the real world, that is what was done: the Post/UMD poll was actually released on March 20, as happened in the alternate history, but it excluded all of us second-tier candidates, including myself—the only candidate from that second tier and besides Alsobrooks or Trone tier to be quoted by the Washington Post or Baltimore Sun from the past two debates, as I have pointed out before.  And given all that, relative to all the other second-tier candidates, for me there was an excellent chance that I would have risen more than any of them and surpassed all of them to legitimately claim third place then and there in this Democratic primary race.  But with not being included at all, it is not possible to know this and not possible for voters to have an accurate, full picture of a potentially volatile contest.  So no bounce recorded and no media exposure as a result of such a poll just before my third debate, which could have even partly framed the debate itself.

To make matters even worse, while in my alternate history there was still ample media coverage of the third debate to allow my forceful and stand-out performance to reach the voting public even if I was inexcusably excluded in that latest poll, there was no media coverage in real life: no local sites, no local TV stations, no newspapers, period, (*April 8 update) until, that is, Afro News finally published coverage on April 1, eleven days after the debate; still, better late then never and I was quoted more than Alsobrooks!

“We’ve got to be real about what is coming at us,” said U.S. Senate Candidate Brian Frydenborg (D), during the forum at New Psalmist Baptist Church. “Hogan 50–Alsobrooks 36,  Hogan 49–Trone 37, that is not where we need to be as Democrats. What that means is that despite the best of intentions and two quality frontrunners, we are failing.”

For a debate less than two months before the primary and less than six weeks before early voting, this is just an absolute collective disgrace on the part of the local media (*April 8 update) apart from Afro News, and it still should have published its account much earlier.

If you’re disappointed by now, here’s another harsh dose of reality: while the event was organized by the League of Women Voters of Baltimore City (LWVBC), the host for the event was Baltimore’s New Psalmist Baptist Church and they were in charge of the recording and streaming of the event.  Before the debate, I asked about the status and quality of the recordings.  I was directed to a Pete French, who assured me that the Church recorded all their services and that they were professional quality (I mentioned that previous “official” recordings had sorely missed the mark in quality).  He made it clear that an audio, not a video, recording would be made (strange, why not record video, what are we hiding from voters here?) and that no decision had yet been made on whether that recording would be released.  I pressed him on this, noting how it would really be a disservice to the public to not share the recording.  He declined to explain why they were going about this in such a secretive way and clearly did not feel he had any obligation to offer any further explanation, making it clear he would not say anything further of substance at this point on this issue.  I must admit I had a bad feeling about whether or not this recording would be released given his polite yet clearly dismissive attitude; also, days earlier, I had asked if the organizers might offer any rides from the main Baltimore-Penn Station connecting to DC since the Church was on the outskirts of the city and I was coming from DC—about an hour away by public transit from Baltimore-Penn Station, and was told no; when I introduced myself to Farmer, he asked me with an amused and perhaps condescending tone if I was the candidate who has asked for a ride (an Uber had been suggested, which would have been prohibitively expensive, but I eventually learned that Baltimore had a subway and was able to take that out).  After this exchange before the debate during the introductions while we were on stage, it was announced that the debate would be live-streamed.  I asked one of the staffers for that link to be provided so I could share with all my followers online, and she said she would get that for me.  It never came.  After repeated inquiries after Thursday’s debate, I learned on Sunday from the Facebook account of LWVBC that the New Psalmist Baptist Church—specifically Pete Farmer—had decided not to release the audio to the public.

Even with the oddness of our exchange I had in-person with Farmer, I was still flabbergasted and deeply offended by this decision, sure for myself, but even more so for the people of Maryland.

They may be a church, but who in the hell did they think they were keeping this debate from the larger voting public?  This furthermore went against what the LVWBC website had stated, that “The event will be recorded and made available online”:

To be honest, though, this triple whammy—a major polling firm making an exclusionary and totally inexcusable decision to not include second-tier candidates despite the results of the previous poll as characterized earlier, literally zero media coverage of the debate (until this piece you are reading now by yours truly *April 8 update: and until Afro News‘s artile eleven days later)), and then the New Psalmist Baptist Church recording the event but then the person in charge of the decision on whether to release the recoding deciding against its release despite my personal entreaties to have them released made directly to him in person—is par for the course for this Maryland Democratic U.S. Senate primary this election cycle.

Fortunately, there is one available unofficial partial video taken by one candidate’s staffer by mobile phone of the debate that is missing most of the opening statements but has the rest (you can hear me speak at 12:36, 28.24, 43:43, 1:01:07, 1:18:11, 1:33:30).  You can clearly see that my alternative history description from above is accurate: the only difference from above is that there was no news media coverage (April 8 update: until Afro News eleven days after the event).  And the debate was well attended, so there is still a chance for it to have some impact, though because of what I outlined above, that impact will surely be minimal unless somehow my coverage here makes a difference and that video gets a lot of views.

Time for Democrats to Panic and Adjust and Why I am the Solution (Even if You Support David or Angela)

The Problems with Candidates Trone and Alsobrooks

It is mistakes and attitudes like the above that, if nothing changes, make Republican Larry Hogan the favorite to win in November.  Yes, here we have two candidate frontrunners and their campaigns running their campaigns in such a problematic way that Hogan is beating them badly and either most or close to most voters don’t even have an opinion on them: 46% when it came to Trone and 58% compared to Alsobrooks, while Hogan had a 64% favorable rating.  And when he left office in Maryland in January 2023 not that long ago as one of the nation’s most popular governors for years, a final poll had him with a 77% approval rating, including 81% with Democrats (even matching their approval of Biden), higher than with Republicans (68%).  And this was a Republican governor in a heavily-Democratic state!  Additionally, his approval was 81% with African-American voters to 76% for white voters.

So here we are heading into a general election with two far-lesser-known frontrunners running far behind the far-more-well-known Larry Hogan: David Trone 12 points behind—49%-37%–and Angela Alsobrooks down 14 points—50%-36%.  “Don’t worry, once voters get to know them in the general election, they’ll be fine, plus, we have the abortion issue!” is not just an extremely naïve, hubristic, non-sequitur response, it is incredibly risky and a losing mentality.  We have no idea if any of that ground will be made up (I would suspect some would be but hardly think it’s a given that enough of it will be, and though I think Alsobrooks just picking up the endorsement of rockstar Rep. Jamie Raskin—our modern Daniel Webster in the House—will big a serious boost in her fight with Trone it may not be enough to get her past Trone, only time will tell), let alone whether the gap will get worse for either candidate.  And abortion rights are not really particularly at stake in Maryland with a 102-39 Maryland House of Delegates Democratic majority, a 34-13 Democratic majority in the Maryland Senate, and with Democratic Governor Wes Moore running the state, not in the way they are at risk in purple swing and Republican-controlled red states with local leaders or extremist right-wing courts trying to impose sweeping restrictions on women’s bodily and reproductive autonomy.  But that or some other version of “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine” is the dangerous mentality I am hearing from the frontrunners and their supporters.

This should be even more worrying when one consider that certain key parts of the base will be less than enthusiastic about supporting an old white guy who was a billionaire retail alcohol mogul for decades before entering Congress just five years ago or a former county prosecutor with what especially some on the left would view as a controversial record in that role.  And neither have the stature or big-time political experience Ben Cardin had in 2006 or Larry Hogan has today.  These and other weaknesses are being ignored or denied, and not testing the candidates on these grounds before Larry Hogan would challenge them on in a contest that would involve many Republicans and independents, not just Democrats, is a plan for failure and losing.  As I noted in my concluding speech, Obama was a much better candidate having faced off against Clinton in 2008 before he went up against McCain.  We need a third person in this race to toughen or hone these Trone and Alsobrooks into being much more competitive against Hogan or consider an alternative.  I can play both roles better than anyone else among the second-tier Democratic candidates in this race.

Trone may have way more money than Alsobrooks, but she had raised just under $5 million before last quarter’s reporting date at the end of 2023, no small amount.  I can promise you that if I had $5 million, this would be a very different race with a very different feel.

The Problems with the Maryland Democratic Party and its Affiliates

As I have noted before, the Maryland Democrats’ plan has failed thus far and needs to change dramatically.  If I was involved in the Maryland State Democratic Party, my plan would have been and for the rest of the primary is now simple:

1. Encourage every organization sponsoring any primary debate or candidate forum to reach out to all other Democratic Party organizations in the state to cross-promote and cross-post about all these event on their pages and social media.
2. I would also ensure all local papers, local news sites, and local television stations would be listing all these events well-ahead of time and prominently as a matter of public interest.
3. I would engage national- level outlets, especially The Washington Post, in addition to C-SPAN to engage in much more coverage.
4. I would have the state party interview each and every Democratic candidate and post video on our site, YouTube, and social media, as well as transcripts.
5. I would have the state party during these final weeks organize two to three more debates in the final less-than-two months of the primary.  The questions would not just be about issues but also the candidates’ possible weaknesses and their strategies to win against Hogan.  I would include all candidates for at least the first one or two debates, pay to commission an independent and respectable non-partisan poll or two from a major pollster, and have some sort of polling cutoff based on non-partisan polling available (right now, just two polls) for the final debate or two.  I would find a way to get these televised live on public access television, perhaps C-SPAN, and definitely streamed online live and posted online after.  They would not be amateur, cell-phone quality, or inaudible or unintelligible as has been the case thus far.
6. I would have the state party provide assistance to any involved or sponsoring organization to further all these ends.

The insanity here is that all six of these are no-brainers and should have been happening on some level partly since late in 2023.  There is no excuse for the lack of coordination, cross-promotion, and not properly recording all these debates/forums and not properly making them publicly available on the internet, period.

The Problems with the Media

And as a journalist, I for damn sure wouldn’t depend on outreach to know about these events and cover them.  I would prioritize coverage of these events, make sure they are listed in an “upcoming events” section within the politics section with links to the event pages, and sure as hell not let a situation occur like what happened with the last debate when it was not covered at all.  Lost pets, fraternity hazing, and traffic accidents are not more important.  If outlets are short-staffed, bring on some interns if necessary to cover, but have someone there covering no matter what for every single primary debate (plenty of college kids can at least sit and take notes).  There should be alerts in the days before on the news organizations’ homepage, and this should be especially prominently featured on the homepage up top on the day of the event.

All this is so absolutely basic that it shouldn’t need to be said, anything less is gross negligence.  But this is not happening and so it very much needs to be said, and this is just damn pathetic.  This needs to go for all the main local papers and The Washington Post, all the local-interest sites, and all the local television stations.  There is no excuse for anything less.  And, as I noted before, if you’re a newspaper associated with a poll, you sure don’t exclude second tier-candidates under current conditions for the reasons outlined earlier.

Conclusion: Candidates, the Party, and Media: Help Me Help You Do Your Jobs

In the end, the top candidates’ jobs are to put themselves in a position that make it the most likely they will defeat their opponents.  In the end, the Democratic Party and its allied organizations’ jobs are to promote events as much as possible so as to generate real public and media interest and ensure voters can make informed decisions over months of a competitive primary process that for much of its duration is open and gives all comers a real chance to connect and get their message out to voters and the press, along with making sure the process forges candidates into stronger versions of themselves better equipped to take on a formidable general election candidate if there is such a candidate and, boy, there sure is this time around, clearly much more than was anticipated.  Andin the end, the press’s job is to cover all this in substantive ways and to also raise awareness and so that voters can stay informed and not just take candidates’ and the Party’s words without scrutiny and context.

With the polling where it is and factoring all of the above into the equation, it is obvious none of this is happening now.  And I don’t see signs of any adjustments or self-awareness that adjustments need to be made.   And either they change what they are doing and how they are doing it or Larry Hogan’s odds of winning Ben Cardin’s seat for Republicans will be high, far too high for my liking at a time when having more Democrats to stand up to Trump’s MAGA insurrectionist fascism is essential because the survival of democracy in America itself and the whole post-World War II U.S.-led international order are at stake, under assault from an unholy alliance between Trump and Putin.  So no, we cannot afford to have even one of the best possible Republicans in Larry Hogan—in votes, the GOP equivalent of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), breaking often with his party on key issues—to replace Ben Cardin, we need a Democrat.

At the last three debates, I was the only candidate who talked about the frontrunners’ (increasingly) poor polling against Hogan and the major crisis for Democrats in both Maryland and the U.S. Senate this represents.  None of the moderators so much as asked anything even remotely related to clear and present dangers this reality presents for Democrats’ prospects in a deep blue state.  So I see only one solution to correct course: make me the third person in this Maryland Democratic U.S. Senate primary race so I can light a fire under the ass of all the major actors involved to either forge the frontrunners into being more Hogan-ready than their current 12-14 point disastrous deficits or to present a third alternative if they are unable or unwilling to adjust.

Whichever role I end up playing, me being that clear third person in this Democratic U.S. Senate race in Maryland seems to be the only way to maximize our changes to keep Ben Cardin’s seat blue.  The current course and status quo of the press coverage along with the Democratic candidates and Democratic establishment here in Maryland are failing and making it far too likely that Hogan and Republicans will win.  I am the only Democratic candidate willing to admit this, let alone call for action to address it and be a leader by acting accordingly.  I therefore deserve to at least be the third candidate in this race and be part of the discussion from now until May 14, not for my sake, but for all our sakes and for the sake of a Democratic victory in November.

But I need your help to make this happen.  Even if you support Rep. David Trone or County Executive Alsobrooks, they are not currently on a path to beating Hogan or even close, they need help and need someone to push them to be better.  And like it or not, there is no other candidate that can do that in this race at this time besides me.  So please support me, spread the word, and donate to my campaign for the sake of the party and keeping Ben Cardin’s seat blue to better fight against Trumpist MAGA insurrectionist fascism in Washington, the most important fight that must take precedence before all others.  Hogan is a nice guy, not a fascist nor an insurrectionist, but he will still vote too many times with those who are, and that is why we must defeat him, and that is why I’ve got to be the third person in this race.

See related articles Frydenborg Holds His Own Against Alsobrooks in Baltimore Maryland U.S. Senate Democratic Primary Debate, but Will It Matter & Why Won’t Local Media Cover this Race Properly?, Maryland U.S. Democratic Primary Debate Raises Questions on Frontrunners’ & Party’s Readiness to Take on Hogan. Can Frydenborg Emerge As Third Option? and Petty Feuding Between Trone and Alsobrooks Does Not Honor Ben Cardin’s Legacy. Vote for Me Instead! And see all of Brian’s Maryland U.S. Senate race coverage here as well as Brian’s official campaign website.

© 2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

SILVER SPRING, WASHINGTON, and AMTRAK—Insurrectionist Donald Trump is going to win at least three out of four states—perhaps all four—in the early contests of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and even South Carolina, where Nikki Haley, emerging-top-rival of Trump, was governor there for years.  But her past leadership in her home state cannot save her candidacy, nor can a potential victory in New Hampshire.  Much like some looked to DeSantis as some savior who would deliver them from Trump and is now flopping on the shore like a fish left out by a receding tide, the hype around Haley will end in the same way every Republican challenger’s attempt to take on Trump has: abject failure without it being even close.

Two main facts are obvious in this Republican race, apart from the most obvious other two, being that Trump holds the Republican Party in his thrall like take-your-pick-of-a-deranged-cult-leader and, secondly, that criticizing the Dear Leader is not a path to victory.  The other, if lesser obvious truths, are that anyone even perceived as a moderate by this fascist mob is not going to win the nomination and that Trump 2.0 or 3.0 will also not win so long as the original model is still functional and can riff on his greatest hits.  In the first of the last two points, I am, of course, referencing Nikki Haley, who can only be called a moderate in the most relative of senses and still either panders to or embraces enough of the insidious nature of Trumpism to still be fairly viewed as extremist in her own right, if only less so than the Dear Leader and his would be successors aping and flailing wildly in various remixes of their inspiration’s horrific hits.

The wheels are in motion as of today in another gear, and, as of the last Selzer poll—as in Ann Selzer, consistently the best in the business—the fate seems to be sealed given the trajectory of moving parts and their positions, save for a freak fluke possibility of a collective series of polling failures that would make 2016 look near-flawless.  We should expect no tectonic shifts other than the spasms of the two former governors Haley and DeSantis as they fight their desperate, losing battles to become president (and who knows what Ramaswamy will do but since his actions carry even far less weight, unless they land him the vice presidential nod, so I will refrain from using “tectonic” to describe anything he does).  They may try to reinvent themselves several times in the coming weeks and months, hoping to throw something against the wall that will actually stick, if they even last that long.  Republicans and conservatives who are actually decent, principled people—the Kinzinger-Cheney-Kristol-Kasich-George Conway (certainly not Kellyanne)-“wing” (if it can even be called that? More like feathers) of what was once the Republican Party will throw all their weight behind Haley, a last good-faith but sad attempt to put off the near-inevitable, and, unless something severely impacts the health or state-of-being-alive of Trump, they will fail.

Why am I so certain of this?  It’s time to read the tea leaves, starting with Selzer’s excellent brew.

Trump comes in strong at 48% of likely caucus-goers (down from 51% in the previous poll in this series), followed by Haley far below at 20% (but bouncing up from 16% and surpassing DeSantis), followed by DeSantis at 16% (falling to third from 19%), in turn followed by Ramaswamy at 8% (up from 5%); nobody else was above 1%.  While this would seem to suggest that Haley has dethroned DeSantis, there is further underlying data that would put such an assumption on, as Selzer herself put it, “shaky ground.”

As it turns out, Haley has an enormous enthusiasm gap with Trump but also a pretty bad one with DeSantis.  Especially considering how caucuses are far longer and more taxing (indeed: annoying, inappropriate, and even obscene) affairs, and given how enthusiasm has generally been a factor leading to gross undemocratic overrepresentation for candidates with the most enthusiastic supporters compared to just people voting in primaries in far simpler processes (hello, Bernie Sanders!) even without historically awful weather being a problem, the record cold for any Iowa caucus tonight could really present a problem for a candidate trailing behind significantly in enthusiasm (we are talking as cold as a wind chill of -45F).

And the numbers for Haley on enthusiasm are horrific for such a scenario, as the extremely/very enthusiastic breakdown is as follows: Trump supporters 49%/39%; DeSantis people 23%/39%; Haley folks 9%/30%.  Other metrics show the precariousness of her second-place spot.  For one, her favorability among likely “caucusgoers” is also an issue: she comes in fourth at 48% favorable, behind Trump (69%), DeSantis (58%), and Ramaswamy (52%), while she had the worst favorable among the four, too (Trump: 29%, DeSantis and Ramaswamy at 36%, Haley far behind at 46%).  She also lags similarly as a second choice, with 20% picking DeSantis for second, 18% Ramaswamy, and just 14% Haley (Trump was lower at 12% but that that makes sense since he has so many more supporters than the other three, more than them combined).  And while only 18% of Trump supporters were willing to change their mind, Haley was two-points behind DeSantis (35%) at 37%.  While some of these statistics are admittedly close and within the margin of error, the overall picture is rather dire for Haley: apart from being a first choice, she lags behind not only Trump but also both DeSantis and Ramaswamy in all of these categories (the only exception being Trump’s lower second choice, with a twenty-eight point lead over Haley, the next closest first choice and so many fewer people able to pick him as a first choice).

So for me, the most likely scenario is a Trump blowout that exceeds his polling numbers (think of a significant chunk of Haley supporters not braving the cold and diluting the field to increase support for other candidates compared to if her folks did show up) and a meek DeSantis second-place finish.  It’s possible for her to still beat DeSantis but not Trump, while, conversely but also less likely though still possible, Ramaswamy could stun her and sneak up from behind or come close to her if she has a particularly bad night.  I wouldn’t bet on him overtaking her but Ramaswamy could be something of an x-factor: he and Trump and DeSantis are all far more like each other than they are anything like Haley.  And while it’s theoretically possible for each to take support from each other, I don’t think DeSantis would gain from either of them but could lose caucusgoers to either.  Think of it this way: if you want something like Trump but with some sense of novelty, say, being much being younger and nonwhite (with Ramaswamy’s racist platform he gives racists an excuse to say they aren’t “racist” by supporting him, something Haley does, too, but in much more subtle and somewhat less awful ways).  Thus, Ramaswamy probably has a better chance to take support from DeSantis than the other way around and he is more similar to Trump.  Yet especially after Trump’s attack against Ramaswamy and the latter’s obsequious reply, I still can see some of Trump’s and Ramaswamy’s supporters switching from one to the other for various reasons, and wouldn’t be surprised to see either do a little lower or a little better at the expense of the other.

If DeSantis has a better than expected night, it could be in part because undecideds break towards him.  And therein is the other x-factor: I don’t know how the undecideds could vote in a way that could switch the polls significantly away from the first-choice percentages we have in this polls (as I don’t know, not can’t imagine). Even factoring this all in, I still say Trump is going to win by a lot, Haley is most likely to come in third, with DeSantis coming in second (those two likely to be somewhat close or perhaps even closer than somewhat close) and Ramaswamy fourth.  I don’t see Ramaswamy overcoming DeSantis no matter where Haley is.  And the best DeSantis can hope for out of the first four contests are two distant second-places and two distant-thirds.  In other words, he’s done even before the voting starts. Haley has a real shot to win New Hampshire but very, very little chance to win her own state, and won’t even place in Nevada (more on that in a bit).

No matter how you look at it, it truly does seem a struggle for Miss Congeniality, a struggle for dominance among the irrelevant, though perhaps it will impact the veepstakes since Trump often thinks in the crude and simple terms of pure who-beat-who. The only real hiccup for him in Iowa would be if some rural voters are in areas where earlier blizzard snows have not been cleared have trouble making it to caucus sites, but I imagine Iowa authorities doing everything they can to clear them, given how this is essentially Iowa’s World Cup and just about the only time Iowa is ever in the limelight.  I wouldn’t even be surprised if enthusiastic Trump supporters organize shoveling missions or private plows, if it came to that.

The media will focus on the horserace aspect and so will Trump, but given the small number of delegates at stake, it’s quite possible Haley, DeSantis, and Ramaswamy all tie or essentially tie in the final delegates they will be awarded here, far behind Trump.  If Haley comes in second but has the same or only one or a few more delegates than DeSantis or even Ramaswamy, that could lead to many shrugging her off as a candidate as they think down the long-road and how she couldn’t get a significant delegate edge over her closest rivals, with Trump looking down from on high with a big fat delegate lead.  The best result for Haley would be a strong second with a strong gap over DeSantis and a significant delegate lead over everyone but Trump, but that seems to me to be wishful (if hardly impossible) thinking for her based on everything I have discussed above.

Looking ahead, New Hampshire is, simply put, not Ron DeSantis or Vivek Ramaswamy Country. So even if they do relatively “well” in Iowa, I don’t expect that to translate into any significant momentum for them in the next contest.  And given that and Trump’s overwhelming popularity among likely Nevada caucusgoers, and that Trump will have at least one big win under his belt by Nevada, he will blow out all his competition there and that will provide momentum for him heading into South Carolina.  And in a tremendous oversight by Haley and her campaign staff, she is not on the eligible for Nevada’s caucuses.  See, Nevada state legislators, copying what the smart Democrats of Iowa did, scrapped the caucus as a way of awarding delegates to candidates.  Nevada’s Democrats pushed for a more democratic and fair primary, and all primaries are run by state governments while caucuses are run by state parties.  The Nevada Republican Party resisted this move and decided to stick with its caucuses, making its caucus the only way to win delegates.  Haley opted to go with the primary, meaning she cannot win any delegates in the binding-for-delegates caucuses and will be a nonfactor there.  This, in turn, means she will sail into South Carolina having been unable to win any delegates in Nevada.  And, again, keep in mind, Iowa has nearly twice as many delegates at stake (40) to New Hampshire’s 22, and while both Iowa’s and South Carolina’s Republican voters have some similarities to each other and very little in common with New Hampshire voters, and with Nevada being kind of a weirdo state in a way that is different from New Hampshire being a weirdo state (neither meant in an offensive way, dear readers from both states!), the point is, while there will be a lot of talk about “momentum,” it is very difficult to see how Haley would get any real “momentum” that would impact things in South Carolina decisively, let along Nevada or in most Super Tuesday states, even if she won New Hampshire, while it is hardly absurd to think that a strong Trump performance in Iowa would not transfer over to a state like South Carolina that shares some of its traits.

Trump will enter Super Tuesday without any real competitor in terms of wins, delegates, or standings in the polls, and that’s doesn’t leave anyone a path to overtaking Trump that doesn’t involve a major health issue that hits Trump.  If he’s still the Trump we know by the convention, he will be the nominee for his fascist personality cult that we still quaintly refer to as the “Republican Party.”

If you appreciate this, do please be sure to check out my podcast on the same and then some

© 2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

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Thirteenth episode on the on the train wreck of insanity and depravity that is the 2024 Republican presidential nomination contest: focusing on the Iowa caucuses and the other early contests: the New Hampshire primary, the Nevada caucuses, and the South Carolina primary as well as how the rest of the race will unfold and why incumbent President Joe Biden will beat Trump.

Notes (more to come):

Title Screen photo credits: ABC/The Hill

The Republican 2024 presidential nomination primary/caucus calendar, per New York Times

All 2024 Republican presidential race polling, national and state, per FiveThirtyEight

On the details of Ron DeSantis’s catastrophic failure on COVID-19, with Florida having the 10^th highest per capita death rate after some very early advantages, see this Guardian article, this BMJ article about the DeSantis Administration lying about COVID statistics, this Washington Post article covering DeSantis’s debate with Gov. Gavin Newson of California

On Ramaswamy’s extremism: See this New Yorker article

On Haley’s history of problems with the Civil War and slavery, see this Washington Post article and this from WHYY/PBS/NPR

All the numbers behind the Selzer poll

On Ann Selzer’s legendary status as a pollster, see FiveThirtyEight

Des Moines Register writeup of the Selzer poll with Selzer’s commentary

On the weather in Iowa for this caucus, see the New York Times

Myself and the late legend Christopher Hitchens savaging the caucuses

When I said Jewish community, I was referring the one in then-Palestine, known as the Yishuv

A primary without a competing caucus in Nevada would be more representative, but since Trump is the leader of a cult there, Republicans might boycott the primary en masse, so it might not be more representative under these conditions, it will depend on If there is decent turnout.

My discussion with Rula Jebreal

On Biden’s frustrations with Netanyahu, see Barak Ravid in Axios and oh so many others and my discussion with Noga Tarnopolsky

My article on Trump, insurrection, and Gen. U.S. Grant

© 2023-2024 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Consider donating if you appreciate this content. Also see Brian’s deep-dive on the 2014 Israel-Hamas war.

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Podcast episode page with extended notes coming soon Eleventh episode on the Trumpist January 6, 2021, attempted coup at the U.S. Capitol, the ongoing Trump insurrection, and their threats to our democracy with Staff Sgt. (U.S. Army Ret.) and former U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell (follow him on Twitter) and buy his new book: American Shield: The Immigrant Sergeant Who Defended Democracy (Barnes & Noble and Amazon); Warning: adult language throughout

January 6 was about more than a day: it was a months-long, premediated process before that day and that coup attempt is still ongoing in plain sight with the same ringleaders, one of whom is the leading candidate to be the nominee for President of the United States for the Republican Party. People were dies an many were injured—Staff Sgt. Gonell being one of the latter—and it could have been far worse: our democracy has survived but is damaged and wounded and still under threat, its survival not guaranteed. Gonell was there, that day, risking his life and holding the line against a mob of violent, rabid, supposedly “pro-police” Trump insurrectionists, hell bent on disrupting and stopping the peaceful transfer of power this country had experienced uninterrupted from 1797 until 2021, when that tradition was shattered by Trump and his supporters. Gonnell and I talk about that day, the insurrection overall, and his immigrant experience that brought him to love this country and put his life on the line in Iraq and on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol.

PLEASE like, share, and subscribe if you enjoy this episode!

Notes:

See Staff Sgt. Gonell’s moving testimony to the January 6 Committee:

His answering a key question from then Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) during the hearing: “‘I’m Still Recovering From Those Hugs And Kisses”:

See him on MSNBC slamming Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) for minimizing January 6

And see him on CNN condemning those who are insurrectionists deniers:

Also see most of my work on the insurrection here

Specifically, see my Podcast with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Voting Implementation Manager Gabriel Sterling, and Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs talk of the Trumpian threat to democracy and life less than a week before the January 6, 2021 coup attempt

Also see my take on how the worst strains in U.S. history united to spawn January 6 (Jerusalem Post)

And also these three articles: explaining how obvious it is Trump is guilty of insurrection even before the impeachment trial

how the impeachment trial made it even more obvious

how all four of Trump’s criminal cases are deeply related and reinforce each other

and how our politics must be defined by pro-Constitution/rule of law,/democracy and anti-insurrection/Trump on one hand and traitors and treason on the other, à la Gen. U.S. Grant.

Also see my presentations of the two most relevant indictments against Trump from federal Special Counsel Jack Smith and Fulton Country, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis.

On the 140 officers who were injured by the insurrectionists (Washington Post)

Donate here to help injured capitol police & their families affected by January 6

BONUS: the Trump/eagle incident Gonell referenced…

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

© 2023 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

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By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content, Threads @bfchugginalong) August 14, 2023, with a minor update regarding other possible cases August 15 and a bit of additional context and an inclusion on August 16 of an annotated version of the indictment from The New York Times; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. Also, Brian is running for U.S. Senate for Maryland and you can learn about his campaign here.

SILVER SPRING—History is being made, and it is fitting that the largest conspiracy to overthrow elections and the Constitution since Reconstruction in the defeated rebel South in the 1860s-1870s is, in part, being brought by an African-American elected official in the State of Georgia where over a century ago where much of the terrorist white supremacist violence of the era was directed against black freed former slaves and their white Republican allies, back when the Republican Party was antiracist and anti-insurrection.  That violence was one of the four terrible strains—along with Nixon’s Southern Strategy to win over Southern racists into the Republican Party, the Reagan Revolution’s nihilistic anti-government extremism, and the Gingrich Revolution’s extreme partisanship—that untied in Trump’s Capitol Insurrection, as I noted shortly after that infamous January 6 for The Jerusalem Post.

Fulton County DA Willis is following in the footsteps of federal Special Counsel Jack Smith’s second indictment, her indictment—which you can read in full above or download here—the fourth indictment overall after the aforementioned Smith indictment, his other indictment on Trump’s classified documents, and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s indictment against Trump for paying off pornstar Stormy Daniels regarding his affair with her and conspiring to cover up efforts to hush tabloids regarding the story of that affair, breaking FEC federal and state election law in conspiring to hide embarrassing information just before the 2016 presidential election primarily in order to further Trump’s presidential campaign ambitions .  In my discussion of that second Jack Smith indictment, I went into my own discussions of the whole January 6 ongoing horror (Trump still is pursuing this and has not let anything go, nor conceded anything). The New York Times has provided, as with the other indictments, a helpful annotated version of the indictment.

Former FBI counterintelligence agent and Yale professor Asha Rangappa was early in pointing out how even that Alvin Bragg’s case was strong and tied to the other election cases, despite the absurd claims of others: this, too, was about cheating and gaining an advantage in an election through corrupt and illegal means.  You can trace a criminal thread in much the same spirit to the two January 6 indictments, now, just far worse attempts to cheat in an election by breaking the law.  But even the documents case is also related: it is an astonishing example of the president refusing to relinquish the power of his office, breaking the law and jeopardizing national security in the process.

And OH, the obstruction!!!!

Beyond that, this case sets up similar RICO prosecutions in other states where this criminal conspiracy operated… If the January 6 Committee hearings provided a roadmap for Jack Smith and Fani Willis, this RICO case in much the same way provides a road map for other states that were also the targets of the Trump-led criminals conspiracy and insurrection to twist the outcome of a free and fair election and overthrow our system of government and the Constitution.

Bravo District Attorney Fani Willis, District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and Special Counsel Jack Smith.  May justice be done.  I will be commenting more on this in the near future…

© 2023 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) August 1, 2023; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. Also, Brian is running for U.S. Senate for Maryland and you can learn about his campaign here.

SILVER SPRING—Today, Special Counsel Jack Smith released his federal indictment on four criminal counts (Conspiracy to Defraud the United States, Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding, Obstruction of and Attempt to Obstruct an Official Proceeding, and Conspiracy Against Rights) against Donald Trump.

You can read the full indictment here below:

Helpfully, The New York Times has offered an annotated version of the indictment. But, as I noted shortly after Trump’s Capitol Insurrection, he was obviously responsible and guilty at the time and even more so after the expertly-laid-out case made during his second impeachment trial. This was even further more so after the excellent presentation of the January 6 Committee. A year after the insurrection, which was just a part of his still ongoing campaign to undermine and overturn the results of the election he lost, I noted that that Trump’s efforts combined some of the worst strains in American history: 1.) the racist, violent attempts during the Civil War and Reconstruction to destroy American democracy, 2.) Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” relying on courting racists, moving the Republican Party away form its antislavery emancipationist roots fighting for the rights of black Americans, 3.) the Reagan Revolution’s antigovernment nihilism, and 4.) the Gingrich Revolution’s extreme partisanship. The Trump movement was, as I noted, fascist before January 6, but became even more fascist as it has embraced and condoned violence since then. I recently noted how Orwell shows us the best way to combat such fascism: “a power of facing unpleasant facts” and publicly speaking truth to power. One thing is for sure: our politics has been and must be divided first and foremost between those protecting our democracy, our republic, the rule of law, and the Constitution on the Patriot side, and those supporting Trump and his fascist authoritarian lawlessness on the Traitor side, as I paraphrased Gen. U.S. Grant before. And while the U.S. system held on through a first Trump term, I am not confident it would hold on through a second.

Jack Smith and justice are marching on, Trump firmly in their sights, as that menace to democracy should be.

© 2023 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion.

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

(Russian/Русский перевод; Если вы состоите в российской армии и хотите сдаться Украине, звоните по этим номерам: +38 066 580 34 98 или +38 093 119 29 84; инструкции по сдаче здесь)

By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, Threads @bfchugginalong, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack with exclusive informal content) July 10, 2023; see related February 17, 2017 two-part article: Welcome to the Era of Rising Democratic Fascism Part I: Defining Democracy, Fascism, and Democratic Fascism Usefully, and Spin vs. Lies and Trump, the Global Democratic Fascist Movement, Putin’s War on the West, and a Choice for Liberals: Welcome to the Era of Rising Democratic Fascism Part II; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023, but I still need your help, please keep sharing my work and consider also donating! Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request at its discretion. Also, Brian is running for U.S. Senate for Maryland and you can learn about his campaign here.

SILVER SPRING—I am giving myself the privilege of reading Orwell in Spain, the Penguin Classics edition of Homage to Catalonia by Eric Blair of the immortal pseudonym George Orwell and one of the original antifascists, bookended by a number of relevant letters written by Orwell and those in his circles and with context from editor Peter Davison throughout.  The volume also includes occasional files from archives of the Soviets, who were targeting Orwell, his wife, and his other comrades for a future show-trial just as Orwell and his wife slipped out of Spain; some of his comrades were not so fortunate as he by far.

Orwell went to Spain in late 1936 in the spirit of pitching in for the fight against fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) on behalf of the Spanish Republic, supported by numerous liberal and leftist volunteers from around the world and ostensibly supported by dictator Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union against General Francisco Franco’s fascists, in turn supported by Hitler’s Nazi Germany.  For his efforts, Orwell took a bullet through the neck but survived that and many other hardships, acquitting himself well in having genuinely sacrificed for a cause worthy of such sacrifice, but one that was undermined in part by Spain’s supposed ally, the Soviet Union, whose agents in Spain often focused on settling scores within the international leftist/socialist/communist movement and who turned on many of their supposed allies to engage in purges and trials based on lies and gaslighting.  This would be a main reason that the Republic would fall completely to Franco’s fascist Nationalists in 1939, shortly before the beginning of World War II.

Hitchens on Orwell, Ringing with Urgent Relevance for the Present

As usual, the late legend and one of the few humans who could rightly be described to be at least a partial heir to Orwell, Christopher Hitchens, provides an introduction to Orwell in Spain that is as mind-blowing as it is well-written and pithy (the introduction was also published around the same time as Orwell in Spain as an essay in The Los Angeles Times).  Hitchens’ essay on his hero Orwell’s experiences in Spain includes some points that hit all too close to home in the here-and-now:

The history of the May events in Barcelona in 1937 was certainly buried for years under a slag heap of slander and falsification.  Orwell, indeed, derived his terrifying notion of the memory-hole and the rewritten past, in Nineteen Eighty-four, from exactly this single instance of the abolished memory.  ‘This kind of thing is frightening to me,’ he wrote about Catalonia, ‘because it often gives me the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world’:

But in our very immediate past, documents have surfaced to show that his vulgar, empirical, personal, commonsensical deposition was verifiable after all.  The recent opening of communist records in Moscow and of closely held Franco-era documentation in Madrid and Salamanca has provided a posthumous vindication.

The narrative core of Homage to Catalonia, it might be argued, is a series of events that occurred in and around the Barcelona telephone exchange in early May 1937.  Orwell was a witness to these events, by the relative accident of his having signed up with the militia of the anti-Stalinist POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista) upon arriving in Spain.  Allowing as he did for the bias that this lent to his firsthand observations, he nonetheless became convinced that he had been the spectator of a full-blown Stalinist putsch, complete with rigged evidence, false allegations and an ulterior hand directed by Moscow.  The outright and evidently concerted fabrications that immediately followed in the press, which convinced or neutralized so many ‘progressive intellectuals,’ only persuaded him the more that he had watched a lie being gestated and then born.

Hitchens continues later in his introduction:

…‘History to the Defeated’ is the underlying subject and text of this collection of pages and fragments.  Like several others in the ‘midnight of the century,’ the glacial period that reached its nadir in the Hitler-Stalin Pact, Orwell wrote gloomily but defiantly for the bottom drawer.  He belongs in the lonely 1930s tradition of Victor Serge and Boris Souvarine and David Rousset — speaking truth to power but without a real audience or a living jury.  It is almost tragic that, picking through the rubble of that epoch, one cannot admire him and Auden simultaneously.  ‘All I have is a voice,’ wrote Auden in ‘September 1, 1939,’ ‘To undo the folded lie,/The romantic lie in the brain … And the lie of Authority.’  All Orwell had was a voice, and to him, too, the blatant lies of authority were one thing and the ‘folded’ lies that clever people tell themselves were another.  The tacit or overt collusion between the two was the ultimate foe.

Let’s let that sink in: it is not the generally bad-faith “blatant lies of authority” that is “the ultimate foe,” but the “tacit or overt collusion between” those “blatant lies of authority” and that authority on one side with the “’folded’ lies that clever people tell themselves” and those clever people on the other.  As a consistent antifascist, Hitchens himself often energetically dedicated himself to taking on such “clever people:” intellectuals and leaders who should know and act better but in their actions still give aid and comfort to the “blatant lies of authority,” often unintentionally making good faith yet terrible arguments as “useful idiots” (to borrow the phrase attributed to Lenin, perhaps falsely) but other times lying deliberately (hello Ted Cruz).  Thus, Hitchens happily took on fellow leftist intelligentsia members and activists like George Galloway, Julian Assange, and Noam Chomsky (almost?) as fiercely as he critiqued Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomeini, and Kim Jong-il.

Fighting the Rewriting of History from 1937 to 2023

For the Stalinists and their apologists Orwell stood up against (and, indeed, for the fascists of that era as well), the fastidious, near-robotic repetition of baseless lies and disinformation over and over and over again served to give reality to such “alternative facts,” to borrow former Trumpist mouthpiece Kellyanne Conway’s Trumpian phrase.  And, of course, it is altogether fitting to quote that disgraced woman—her own daughter and now former husband even very publicly more honorably refused to support Trump’s lies and hers—because what is terrifying my soul even as I write part of this is that the Trumpist movement—now one of the two largest political factions in the United States of American in 2023—is very much successfully engaging in that tactic Orwell dedicated much of his writing to combatting, a tactic used by the people Orwell spent much of life fighting.

A stark example is the recent Ohio Republican Jim Jordan-led U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the so-called “Durham Report”  and the related investigation of Trump’s Justice Department-appointed Special Counsel John Durham’s pathetic, embarrassing, and failed attempt to find proof that the U.S. government’s investigation into Trump’s Russia ties and 2016 election interference was a baseless, politically-motivated witch hunt; this in and of itself is gaslighting and “hypocrisy” in the extreme, as the opposite is true, a truth I spent years of research and writing on in detail.  Short of ending in appalling violence, is there anything more politically Stalinist than an investigation ordered in bad-faith and/or extreme delusion to smear and undermine a good-faith investigation into topics most deserving of investigation, that then twists the results of the failed counter investigation to continue to make claims wholly unsubstantiated by reality??  In this vein, Republicans even spitefully, shamelessly, and wholly inappropriately censured—censured!—Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) the same day as the Durham hearing for his work against Trump on impeachment and his efforts to get answers on Trump-Russia, a ridiculous act of distraction from their embarrassing failure of a Durham hearing and in spirit also a pure act of abusive political retaliation: only five members of the House were censured in all the twentieth century and Schiff is only the third member of the House of Representatives this century and only the twenty-fifth member of the House in all of U.S. history to be censured, an act that is for generally serious offenses, including violence or incitement to violence, sexual misconduct, financial misconduct, and—at the time of the Civil War (1861-1865)—supporting the rebel “Confederacy.”

To go back to Durham and his probe, former Special Counsel Durham seems to be at least a partly honorable fool.  On the one hand, Durham seems to incorrectly accept as articles of faith that the Crossfire Hurricane and the Mueller probes were baseless political hit jobs (the first in his deluded mind concocted by the Clintons) and that there is nothing to Trump-Russia to the degree that he is unaware of many of the facts and much of the evidence and context surrounding team Trump’s deeply troubling ties to Russia, his perspective warped enough to believe in the nonsense and/or gaslighting his higher-ups—including then Attorney General Bill Barr—and others fed him and that he fed himself: during the Judiciary Committee hearing, I heard him tell Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) that he did not think Barr’s infamous memo had “blatantly mischaracterized” the Mueller report, which it clearly and obviously very much did, even according to Special Counsel Robert Mueller himself.  On the other hand, Durham more or less carried out an investigation that at least mostly adhered to rules and the law within the confines of his warped worldview even as that worldview was biased, selective, and inaccurate when it came to the issues between Trump and Russia, and that is why his results were so limited along with the reality that the evidence he sought didn’t exist because the investigation’s premises were false.

Both those who put Durham in place as Special Counsel and the rest of the Trump faithful were hoping as much as possible over the course of the four years of the Durham probe of to undermine investigations into Trump, playing politics with legitimate, serious investigations. Durham’s disappointing results—0 for 2 on prosecutions that went to trial, defeated twice by unanimous juries that returned “not guilty” verdicts and one plea deal with no trial for an FBI employee doctoring an e-mail who was determined by the presiding judge not to have acted with any political bias (confirming the previous findings of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s far more credible report) and who only received a year of probation—speak volumes about Durham’s probe’s credibility despite the spin of his “report” and show just how baseless was his effort to show that the Biden Administration Department of Justice was weaponized as a tool of political persecution.  In the end, it was Durham’s and Barr’s own conduct that actually revealed it was the Trump Administration Department of Justice that fell into being weaponized, yet Jordan, Trump, and many other Republicans and “useful idiots” insist on persisting in gaslighting or making unsubstantiated arguments with their original unsubstantiated claims even after Durham’s probe failed to prove them (ironically, it seems the probe did find enough evidence of possible financial criminal wrongdoing involving Trump that the Durham probe was forced to launch a criminal investigation into that, which, unsurprisingly, we have heard very little about…).

And herein is one of the more horrific aspects of this Jordan’s show-hearing that should be giving us all trouble sleeping at night: some of the Republicans on Jordan’s committee, most notably the vile Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), are furious at Durham not for the degree to which he was inaccurate, ignorant, or possibly dishonest but for the degree to which he did not go into full Stalinist show-trial mode because he did not run wild with lies and falsehoods but, rather, still operated within some level of orbit of reality.

To be clear, this hearing is not a Stalinist show-trial, and does not carry the consequences of them.  But they do share, on the part of today’s Republicans and their accomplices on one hand and the those of the Stalinists and their accomplices of yesteryear on the other, absolute contempt for truth and justice and an absolute commitment to pursuing the party line relentlessly.  And both Orwell’s and Hitchens’s words rang loudly in my mind throughout my viewing of the hearing as I digested it in terror, far more profoundly for having recently read certain pages of Orwell in Spain.

The gaslighting is also strong with the claim that Trump is being persecuted unfairly and Hunter Biden might get off with a “sweetheart deal” should a submitted plea deal between Hunter and the government be approved, which was reported the day before the Durham hearing and Schiff censure.  Again, the opposite is true: people in a position similar to Hunter Biden when it comes to gun possession while being an addict are rarely criminally charged or see jail time, as are first-time offenders in terms of the tax violations he had committed and has since paid off his debts in relation to, including back taxes and penalties.  If anything, his treatment has been harsher because he is Joe Biden’s son and the government is going out of its way to avoid any credible suggestion that the son of the sitting president is being treated lightly while the former president, Trump, is not; and, if anything, Trump has been treated with an extraordinarily light touch, given the nature and severity of his crimes and the more than two-years’ worth of blatant obstruction of justice committed by Trump to further his crimes.  The gaslighting only becomes even more ludicrous when Trump’s defenders claims there is a “two-tiered” system of justice, with the Trumps of the world being the victims, a deeply “insulting” claim coming from many white Republicans who have been loath to acknowledge the very real systemic racial disparities in the American criminal justice system—let alone do anything about them—but now whine for “justice” (i.e., impunity and immunity) for Trump.

The gaslighting is also front-and-center when Trump’s insanely ridiculous classified documents case for which he has been indicted by Special Counsel Jack Smith is claimed to be equivalent or close to the Biden classified documents case or Hillary Clinton’s (conspicuously omitting Pence’s case, which is pretty similar to Biden’s), all the other cases including Clinton’s case were dramatically different especially regarding intent and when the Biden/Pence examples only turned up a comparatively small number of documents which were promptly returned and both of them agreed rapidly to have their respective locations searched, bearing no resemblance to Trump’s obstructionist and gaslighting conduct and the severity of the material at issue.

And those are merely a few current examples…

Orwell and His “Power of Facing”: A Ghostbuster to the Gaslighting Ghosts of Nazism and Stalinism Rearing their Ghastly Heads Today

We fought a world war some eight decades ago against a totalitarian fascism that I have previously noted gaslit reality to the point of being at war with reality itself, and we triumphed some four-and-a-half decades later against a Soviet totalitarian communism that similarly gaslit reality and also, like the Nazis it defended its homeland against in the earlier world war, used disinformation as a preferred weapon of choice in its losing ideological struggle against the capitalist democratic West.

After the West’s victories in World War II and the Cold War, how depressing is it, then, that, in 2023 the West finds itself embroiled both internally and externally with major forces practicing and embodying much of the same spirit of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany when it comes to waging new wars on reality, with its biggest centers of gravity in Putin’s fascist Russia—resurrecting the Soviet war on reality as the successor state to the Soviet Union—and in the Trumpist fascist movement and its media and political allies within the West (if you doubt the appropriateness of the label fascist for Trump or Putin, read my two-parter [part I and part II] and realize that was written well before the violence of January 6, 2021 or the massively increased levels of violence and war crimes Russia has been perpetrating in Ukraine since February 24, 2022).  While the Chinese Communist Party helms a Chinese state that is increasingly totalitarian under the leadership of Xi Jinping and also embraces a war on reality, it is not nearly as aggressive with this tactic on the international stage as Russia, thus, China’s current relative restraint means its threat to the West is, for now at least, far less potent than that of both Russia and Trump as it is Russia that routinely engages in electoral and political interference in the West and Trump’s brand of fascism and its like-minded allies are a clear and present danger within the U.S. and elsewhere in the West, with fascists having real chances of gaining political power—even the U.S. presidency once again, though I do not believe they will succeed in this coming American election in 2024.  Other countries, such as France and Italy, are far more vulnerable, and some, like Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and Israel, are veering hard in that direction.  Indeed, while I have been warning of this possibility since just after Trump’s inauguration in 2017 and even earlier in 2016, it brings little comfort to see the modern versions of fascism and their accompanying wars on reality staring us down directly in the face while also staring deeply into the past at horrors that we had vanquished twice in living memory, drawing power from their zombie-Frankenstein cousins from the Cold War and World War II.

Orwell would truly be rolling over in his grave were he aware of what was happening today, after so much blood and toil and sacrifice in the twentieth century to defeat fascist and communist regimes, to transcend their lies and assault against reality, and yet, he could take comfort in his words standing the test of time, not only validating his prescient view of past evils, but that his words could still be so useful and relevant today.  Yes, this is bittersweet, for we should have transcended those phantoms from past eras, but at least we have in Orwell the perfect guide to fighting these nefarious forces, that honesty, reality, truth, persistence, and simple eloquence can confront the enemy and defeat their lies, sometimes even without the forces of arms.  Orwell did risk life and limb (and was even shot) in Spain against Franco’s fascists (and Soviet agents), but it was in his writing that he made his largest contributions in the fight for freedom against fascism and communism.  Like Orwell and like his admirer and perhaps his heir Hitchens, we can and must be unflinching in the face of the gaslighting of Trump and Putin and their allies who constantly assert “that two and two are five” and that things that happened “never happened” (from the January 6 U.S. Capitol Insurrection—team Trump claiming “it was Antifa”—to the Russian military torturing and executing civilians in Ukraine—Putin saying, ludicrously, that: “The Russian army does not strike at civilian facilities. There is no need for that.”).  Though Orwell had “the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world,” he never gave up and never ceased articulating the truth through his brave and, it seems, timeless writing.

As Hitchens wrote in his magisterial and pithy Why Orwell Matters:

‘I knew,’ said Orwell in 1946 about his early youth, ‘that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts.’  Not the ability to face them, you notice, but ‘a power of facing’.  It’s oddly well put.  A commissar who realizes that his five-year plan is off-target and that the people detest him or laugh at him may be said, in a base manner, to be confronting an unpleasant fact.  So, for that matter, may a priest with ‘doubts’.  The reaction of such people to unpleasant facts is rarely self-critical; they do not have the ‘power of facing’.  Their confrontation with the fact takes the form of an evasion; the reaction to the unpleasant discovery is a redoubling of efforts to overcome the obvious.  The ‘unpleasant facts’ that Orwell faced were usually the ones that put his own position or preference to the test.

In the spirit of Orwell and (even if to a somewhat lesser degree) Hitchens, we must wield a similar “power of facing” in the face of the fascisms of Trump, Putin, and their lesser emulators.  In particular, the “clever people” and “progressive intellectuals” that Hitchens and Orwell single out who “tell themselves” Auden’s “’folded’ lies” that, when in “tacit or overt collusion” with “the blatant lies of authority,” become “the ultimate foe.”

Prominent “useful idiot” fools on such matters include Noam Chomsky, Elon Musk, Seymour Hersh, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Briahna Joy Grey, Aaron Maté, Max Blumenthal, Michael Tracey, Caitlin Johnstone, Katie Halper, RFK Jr., Russell Brand, John Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs, Joe Rogan, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Jill Stein, Tulsi Gabbard, Cornell West, Jordan Peterson, George Galloway, Scott Ritter, even Peter Hitchens (Christopher’s own rather less impressive brother) and others who fancy themselves public figures displaying freethinking but who ultimately do little more on these matters than to give aid and comfort to fascism and even colonialism and imperialism in the name of supposed “pacificism” or “free speech.”  Those people and their ilk make their arguments in ways that usually show they have little understanding of peace or the U.S. Constitution.  In particular, they often keep parroting debunked Kremlin talking points about Western “escalation” and NATO expansion, which I have debunked myself repeatedly.  Or they will conflate moderation of disinformation on private platforms with unconstitutional “censorship.”  Orwell has the best of possible responses to the first group, the so-called “pacifists,” here in his perfect essay from 1942 “Pacifism and the War” in which he noted that “Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist.” Orwell therein further elucidated his views:

What I object to is the intellectual cowardice of people who are objectively and to some extent emotionally pro-Fascist, but who don’t care to say so and take refuge behind the formula ‘I am just as anti-fascist as anyone, but—’.  The result of this is that so-called peace propaganda is just as dishonest and intellectually disgusting as war propaganda.  Like war propaganda, it concentrates on putting forward a ‘case’, obscuring the opponent’s point of view and avoiding awkward questions.

He added: “My case against all of them is that they write mentally dishonest propaganda and degrade literary criticism to mutual arse-licking” and that “It is just because I do take the function of the intelligentsia seriously that I don’t like the sneers, libels, parrot phrased and financially profitable back-scratching which flourish in our English literary world, and perhaps in yours also.”  Better descriptions of that crowd’s heirs in the present cannot be written, and, as before in Orwell’s day, many of those in this crowd today are often caught “back-scratching” and “arse-licking” each other in echo chambers.  To listen to them, rather than blatant Russian imperialism and colonialism, the greater evils are supposedly the Western exercise of power in daring to aid a Ukraine that, they will stress, has been dominated by and even been part of Russia for centuries (as if that should matter when Ukrainians themselves have earned their freedom and independence, recognized by formal treaty repeatedly by Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union) and, even more so, in asserting either that there is, in fact, a moral dimension to supporting Ukraine or a false equivalence in equating Russia’s exercise and practice of its power in comparison with the America’s and the West’s: whether knowingly or unknowingly, these supposed and self-proclaimed “anti-imperialists” engage in behavior that dismisses, excuses, deflects from, or even advances Russian imperialism and its supporting false narratives. 

There can be but one course of action against today’s “intellectual” descendants of Orwell’s critics and enemies among the intelligentsia, and it must be that we especially utilize our “power of facing” to face them because they are usually the ones weakening the front against today’s fascists without claiming to actually be “for” those fascists, they are the ones who might persuade those with less moral discernment who would never think of consciously siding with fascists and who would be susceptible to low-hanging fruit of arguments relying on “free speech” and “peace” that objectively advance bad-faith disinformation and war against those fighting for their actual freedom.  And perhaps, with relentless opposition to their nonsense, some may even realize their folly and find their own “power of facing” directed back at themselves even though this may “put …[their] own position or preference to the test.”

Hitchens opens his introduction to Orwell in Spain with following two magnificent paragraphs:

The grandeur of George Orwell, in our store of moral and intellectual memory, is to be found partly in his very lack of grandeur.  He is remembered, with different and varying degrees of distinctness, as the man who confronted three of the great crises of the twentieth century and got all three of them, so to speak, ‘right’.  He was right, earlier than most, about imperialism, viewing it as an unjust and unjustifiable form of rule, and also as a cause of war.  He was right, early and often, about the menace presented by Fascism and National Socialism, not just to the peace of the world but to the very idea of civilization.  And he was right about Stalinism, about the great and the small temptations that it offered to certain kinds of intellectual, and about the monstrous consequences that would ensue from that nightmarish sleep of reason.

He brought off this triple achievement, furthermore, in his lowly capacity as an impoverished freelance journalist and amateur novelist.  He had no resources beyond his own, he enjoyed the backing of no party or organization or big newspaper, let alone any department of state.  Much of his energy was dissipated in the simple struggle to get published, or in the banal effort to meet a quotidian schedule of bills and deadlines.  He had no university education, no credential nor area of expertise. He had no capital. Yet his unexciting pen-name, drawn from a rather placid English river, is known to millions as a synonym for prescience and integrity, and the adjective ‘Orwellian’ is understood widely and – this has its significance – ambivalently.  To describe a situation as ‘Orwellian’ is to announce dystopia: the triumph of force and sadism and demagogy over humanism.  To call a person ‘Orwellian’ is to summon the latent ability of an individual to resist such triumphs, or at least to see through them and call them by their right names.

We don’t have to take a bullet in the neck like Orwell did in Spain in 1937, but the least we can do is call out the lies, disinformation, and misinformation religiously in the cause of reality, as Orwell seems to have pretty much always done and Hitchens mostly did (even when Hitch Hitch erred—most notably on Iraq—he usually did so for principled and admirable reasons).  We can, sadly, fall into either of the definitions Hitchens enumerates for “Orwellian,” but we must strive to be his latter definition and we can do so by calling out the imperialism, fascism, and Stalinism of today as Orwell did for the versions in his lifetime.  We can also be sure that Orwell’s stances on Trump, Putin, and their movements and allies would not be doubt were he alive today.

Herein, then, has not been any kind of comprehensive catalogue of Trumpist and Putinist attempts to rewrite history—those of you following these stories are all too familiar with too many of those examples—but a clarion call to honor the spirit of those two writers departed from us, whose careers were mostly dedicated to opposition to lies but fidelity to the truth should inspires us even if we, too, feel frightened like Orwell because we have “the feeling that the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.”  Orwell consistently and unflinchingly spoke truth to power with “a power of facing unpleasant facts” and so must we.

Brian’s Ukraine analysis has been praised by: Mykhailo Podolyak, a top advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; the Ukraine Territorial Defense Forces; Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, U.S. Army (Ret.), former commanding general, U.S. Army Europe; Scott Shane, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist formerly of The New York Times & Baltimore Sun (and featured in HBO’s The Wire, playing himself); Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), one of the only Republicans to stand up to Trump and member of the January 6th Committee; and Orwell Prize-winning journalist Jenni Russell, among others.

See all Brian’s Ukraine coverage here

© 2023 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here).

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By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook) April 13, 2023

SILVER SPRING—After disgraced former President Donald Trump’s first (and hardly rushed) indictment, this one at the hands of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (I posted the full indictment here, read for yourself), there have been and are many—oh, so many—takes being offered on television, in print, and on social media.

A few are pretty solid.

But many takes—oh, so many—are hyperbolically dramatic, breathlessly stupid, and/or wildly inaccurate.  Most of the worst takes are coming from the right: wild, irresponsible, and nonsensical accusations of political persecution and miscarriages of justice (some are comparing to the tale of the persecution of, wait for it… Jesus) or literally painting the picture with the exact opposite of what is true.

But there is some criticism that is more measured and nuanced, even partly coming from figures or outlets on the mainstream left or conservatives who have consistently opposed Trump, that “the Democrats” are bungling the timing and/or order of Trump’s prosecutions and this indictment may undermine the other cases arrayed against him, that this case is problematic and “the least significant” and “weakest” of the potential charges and prosecutions should not even be pursued (from The Washington Post Editorial Board!), that prosecutions should be withheld because of how Trump’s cultists might react (Bill Maher), that if this indictment is successful it will fool the left into prematurely thinking Trumpism has been defeated, that this opens a Pandora’s box and sets bad precedents as to how other former presidents and officials could be treated down the road.

Yet many these criticisms are incredibly dangerous and seriously undermine the rule of law and democracy in general, empowering illiberal fascist tendencies in our country that are already out of control and that mean that any major election could be our last free and fair election.

Unreasonable from the Right

The first type of commentary, coming from the right, is exceedingly easy to toss aside.

Firstly, pretty much that entire crowd was saying the same stuff before the indictment was unsealed; they had no ability before that to definitively assess the quality of evidence and charges and most are clearly making their mind up (or lying) based on personal partisan political allegiances, not the law or the facts of the case of which they are in large part ignorant, but there are already indications the evidence will be strong:  two people very close to Trump at the time of his crimes  in question—Trump personal “fixer” lawyer Michael Cohen (who blocked me years ago on Twitter when he was still on Trump’s side in response to my investigative pieces on his shady history operating in Trump’s orbit) and Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg—have already been convicted in directly related successful prosecutions, with Cohen even robustly cooperating with Bragg’s office in its current case against Trump.  Furthermore, key figures deep inside Trumpworld besides Cohen, including Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks, have been providing the testimony on which the Manhattan grand jury proceeded with its recommendations and Bragg decided to prosecute.

Secondly, events in question were late in the game in the 2016 presidential campaign but with extramarital affairs that happened years before the 2016 election (all the way back in 2006 and 2007!): that means there is a an overwhelming logical burden that would take extraordinary evidence to overcome to prove that paying off pornstar Stormy Daniels and with whom Donald Trump had an extramarital affair and taking other methods to quash another story about Playboy Playmate of the Year Karen McDougal with whom Trump also had an extramarital affair was not in large part done to prevent new stories of negative media coverage of Trump circulating in the months, days, and weeks before the incredibly close 2016 presidential election, one which Trump only narrowly won and with decisive outside interference from Putin’s Kremlin (which I have explained in detail before), so any idea that keeping these stories secret and using illegal accounting methods to keep this from having to be reported to federal election oversight authorities is patently absurd, full stop: there is no rational way to view any payments or efforts to bury these stories in 2016 a decade or nearly a decade after their occurrence not in large part as substantive efforts to aid the Trump presidential campaign to defeat Hillary Clinton.  Keeping such truthful scandalous stories about a candidate from appearing while voters are making up their minds and actually voting during early and absentee voting—regardless of any other reasons involved—is a massive boost to any campaign in any similar position, including Trump’s, and thus it is impossible to argue that the crimes of misreporting and concealing these financial moves are not directly related to clear violations of federal election law.

Think of it this way: imagine any candidate running for office engaging in illegal financial reporting to hide paying someone with whom that candidate has had an extramarital affair a decade ago and that this payment came at the height of that candidate’s political campaign, then consider the idea that the candidate would have done so at that time only for either or some combination of personal financial gain or to prevent personal damage to the candidate’s family to the exclusion of any political considerations… that second thought is simply nonsensical.  An attempt to argue it was not designed at least in part to benefit the candidate politically is an impossible sell, then, given that even the most inexperienced consultants or students of politics would be well-aware of the political benefits of such an act and would have to know engaging in such behavior would bring about considerable political benefits to any American political campaign.  Unlike other cases, here the intent-as-a-basis-for-arguing-innocence argument falls short in the realm of believability (as oppose to, say, considering Hillary Clinton’s e-mail/server woes under the Espionage Act).  And, all things being equal, again, the 2016 election was so razor-thin-close that any significant alteration of its equation against Trump would have seen Clinton triumphant; thus, it is far from unreasonable to argue that one or more of these stories about Trump’s extramarital affairs breaking late in the 2016 election cycle could have swung the election to his opponent and thus spared the nation the insanity of Trump’s four years as president.

Less Hysterical, Still Wrong

The other type of commentary generally critiques the strategy or risks of the indictment, but these arguments are also logically well into absurdist territory.

We have one case now unfolding from the Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat, and another that has yet to drop an indictment from Fulton County, Georgia, from its elected Democratic District Attorney Fani Willis, one concerning efforts to overturn Georgia’s election results.  A third investigation into Trump personally for his crimes related to Trump’s (ongoing!) insurrection campaign, his willful theft of classified materials, and his obstruction of justice in relation to returning them and to the relevant investigations is being handled by an apolitical Department of Justice appointee, Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has experience prosecuting war criminals at The Hague.  A fourth $250 million civil case is targeting the Trump Organization, Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and Eric Trump, one conducted by elected Democratic New York State Attorney General Laetitia James (and for which even just today, Trump had to sit for some seven hours of deposition).  There is also a civil rape case in New York involving Trump that is set to go to trial and a related defamation case, both brought by his accuser E. Jean Carroll.

While three of the four government officials leading the government cases are elected as Democrats and the fourth is appointed by the Democratic Biden Administration’s appointed and U.S.-Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, it is horribly misleading to portray their investigations somehow as being carried out by or at the behest of Democratic Party, including the Democratic National Committee (DNC), elected Democratic legislators in Congress, or any political wing of the Democratic Party, let alone liberal media or political organizations.  These are four separate investigations being carried out by two top local law enforcement officials (from Manhattan, a borough of New York City, and Fulton County in Georgia), one top state official for New York State, and one federal Special Counsel appointed by the U.S. Attorney General, and they are making their own separate decisions.  While there may be some areas where there is overlap between the Manhattan and New York State probes into Trump Organization finances and between the Fulton County and Special Counsel probes as far as Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, the idea that they are coordinating between themselves or with Democratic Party organizations for political framing or advantage as to what, how, when, and if they will prosecute is not only entirely speculative and wholly without evidence, it goes contrary to how these things have worked over recent decades in the American justice system.  While, as noted, there are certain overlapping areas of focus where different government prosecutorial offices might exchange notes or potential conflicts, anything beyond that, especially the idea that these prosecutors are working with Democratic Party leaders in Congress, with the White House, with state legislatures, with left-leaning or leftist media outlets and figures, or with national, state, or local Democratic Party organizations at all, let alone in concert for some sort of political strategy for the coming elections, goes contrary to how these investigations have operated by and large for decades.

(As an aside, let’s contrast this against zealous Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s 1990s investigations of the Clintons when they were in the White House.  It is because of Starr the that special counsel regulations were crafted to replace the independent counsel statute to avoid overreaching politicized witch-hunts like Starr’s, which proved none of the original alleged crimes for which it had begun but did uncover a salacious extramarital affair between then-President Bill Clinton and then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky, catching Clinton perjuring himself to cover up the affair, for which Clinton was impeached, a far lesser matter than the two Trump impeachments, in which some Republicans who were in office for Clinton’s impeachment had voted as representatives to impeach in 1998 or as senators to remove Clinton in 1999 but, tellingly, declined to vote to remove Trump from office as senators during his two far more serious Senate impeachment trials in 2020 and 2021; to add to the extreme irony, Starr himself was part of Trump’s defense team during his first Senate trial in 2020, further cementing who he really was to the public before he died in late 2022).

As opposed to Starr, we have nothing at all to suggest anything other than that Alvin Bragg simply finished his investigation and preparation first and, therefore, filed his indictment first: anyone suggesting otherwise, the burden of proof is on them and no proof has emerged.

So when people suggest that “the Democrats” are not putting their best foot forward by going with these charges first, they are grossly mischaracterizing how these things work in this country.  This is not some coordinated political campaign, and language suggesting that is deeply corrosive to the public’s trust in our institutions of justice, indeed, this destruction of faith in institutions is a lesser side of the coin that Republicans are explicitly screaming and that is one of the key hallmarks of its Trumpism as well as being a disturbing rising trend on the Bernie Sanders-left.  Just assuming bad faith and corruption without strong evidence to support that supposition—in such an unwarranted manner from the beginning before the processes even plays out—is dangerous, and can culminate in even far worse than what we saw on January 6 with the failed insurrection-coup attempt.

What people on the left and other principled Trump critics need to understand, then, is that when they criticize “the Democrats” for supposedly overplaying a political hand in reference to these separate investigations, they are adding fuel to the same fire of cynicism about our institutions that fuels Trumpism’s fascist populism.  The other officials will file their indictments if and when they are ready, but each case will rise of fall based on its own evidence and its own merits, regardless to what any of the other cases lead.  One or more cases may ultimately inform one or more of the others, but they are still their own cases and suggesting otherwise is detrimental to “the rule of law and not of men.”

And the issues surrounding Trump’s first indictment are “serious.”  Especially considering that all this is related to essentially cheating in the 2016 election, no one should view these charges as “weak” or “minor;” as I argued above, the political dimension is not “alleged” or a supposition: it is central to the financial crimes committed just before the 2016 election to suppress decade-old infidelities with a pornstar and a Playmate in a way that substantially politically benefitted the campaign of a candidate in Trump whose most loyal voters were Evangelical Christians (even more so than for George W. Bush, who was himself an Evangelical).

Republicans know this, so does Trump, and they are worried regardless of their gaslighting claiming the opposite.  Why else would drama-queen (this is objective, as he seems to have as his default tone “yell”) Trump devotee and powerful Republican Jim Jordan, preposterously the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, be trying to run unconstitutional interference from Congress already on Bragg’s case, for which Bragg has just sued Jordan, making it clear his Manhattan District Attorney’s office will not tolerate such brazen challenges to the rule of law (see the detailed 50-page filing submitted by Bragg: he brought receipts!)?  If it is no big deal, why not let a free airing of the evidence in the case prove Trump’s innocence, as a failure to convict would surely help Trump?  The answer is fear that the case may actually turn out to be strong.

As to the order of the charges, why not begin with the earliest of Trump’s crimes?  Yale professor, lawyer, and former FBI counterintelligence agent Asha Rangappa adroitly points out that Trump’s crimes for which he has been indicted by the Manhattan DA are the first in a series of major crimes all related to skewing or overturning the outcomes of his elections, followed by accepting Russian malign assistance during the campaign, by his attempts to get Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky to damage Joe Biden politically with a false pretense of an “investigation” in exchange for military aid that had already been approved by Congress (including the Javelin anti-tank missiles that have been so crucial for Ukraine in defeating Russia’s current military onslaught), and the whole series of efforts to overturn the 2020 election through actions such as attempting to pressure Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” Trump votes (see my interview with Sec. Raffensperger conducted just a few days before that “perfect phone call”) and fostering a violent coup-insurrection attempt against Congress, the peaceful transfer of power, and our constitutional order.  In pointing out the linked nature of these offenses and cases, Professor Rangappa obliterates both the argument against the timing of Bragg’s indictment and the idea that the crimes laid out by the indictment are minor, exaggerated, or not worth pursuing.

Rangappa also did an excellent job putting out the structure and merit of Bragg’s case in visual form, whether involving federal election violations or not:

In terms of thinking we should not pursue justice and uphold the law against a man who is wholly unrepentant, still pursuing his crimes, and is obviously still a clear and present danger to our democracy (as in, not behaving at all the way Richard Nixon did after he resigned), well, there is a word for using the threat of violence to affect a political outcome in this way, and that word is terrorism.

When it comes to the idea that choosing to prosecute Trump is opening a Pandora’s Box, I do not take this lightly at all and I have done my own detailed research on how political witch-hunt prosecutions in the ancient Roman Republic (including threatened against Julius Caesar himself) helped to launch a spiral of extreme partisanship that destroyed the Republic’s democracy and brought about the autocratic Roman Empire.  But it is not the choosing to prosecute Trump that is the problem: it is that Trump, unlike any predecessor, has committed such criminal activity outside the bounds of misguided policy and very much about his own personal self-centered conduct, that he is so unrepentant and continues to advertise he will further his crimes, that he makes not prosecuting him worse than prosecuting him as far as the consequences for our nation.

And the idea that Republicans might politically persecute Democrats mainly because of what Bragg and other prosecutors do now is farcical: since Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign, Republicans have been abusing their power in pursuit of political witch-hunts for decades regardless of what investigations or prosecutions are being pursued now against Trump and are obviously already ready to abuse their power with enough numbers on their side in the way people strangely consider hypothetical or dependent on the Trump prosecutions…

Republicans Are the Actual Witch-Hunters

And let’s be honest and more detailed about the track record here:

• Republicans tried going after Bill Clinton for nearly purely partisan political reasons while he was in office and, again, found nothing related to the serious allegations against him.
• They “investigated” Hillary Clinton more intensely than Watergate for “Benghazi” (but really about her e-mails and server), but the nine Republican-driven/led investigations concerning her role in Benghazi were unable to uncover any serious wrongdoing by or fault with Clinton on Benghazi, while James Comey’s FBI correctly determined that Clinton’s issues around her e-mails and server did not warrant a criminal prosecution, however much Comey erred in other ways.
• Trump’s partisan attorney general, Bill Barr—as part of his interference and smearing of the Mueller probe and other legitimate probes into Trump—authorized another partisan in eventual Special Counsel John Durham to investigate the investigators of Trump, an investigation endlessly hyped by right-wing Trumpist media but that failed miserably: of three cases Durham brought, two went to trail with indictments accusing the defendants of lying to the FBI—one filed against Igor Danchenko, a source for the Steele dossier, and another filed against Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer who had been working for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign—both embarrassingly ending in unanimous acquittals by the juries and not convictions.  A third case resulted in a plea deal for an FBI lawyer at the time of the matters in question in which the lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, pleaded guilty to altering a single email related to the FISA court actions towards the Trump campaign staffer Carter Page (whose incredible sketchiness I have previously outlined); the federal judge overseeing the plea deal agreed with an earlier Justice Department Inspector General conclusion there was no political bias behind the actions of Clinesmith and believed Clinesmith’s assertion that he believed at the time that the information he inserted into the email was accurate and that he did not know it was erroneous, with the judge only sentencing Clinesmith to probation and no prison time.  Thus, over three cases involving one judge sentencing and two juries, the claims of a “deep state” bias against Trump and Republicans turned out to be nonexistent, yet Durham’s whimper of a probe lasted for close to four years and cost taxpayers $6.5 million by at least late December 2022; if there was such a conspiracy, Durham would have found it with that much time and effort and he most certainly did not.
• In contrast, Special Counsel Robert Mueller found a lot of damning evidence of collusion and achieved successful convictions or plea deals against thirty-four individuals and three companies with sentences including prison time for multiple targets of these cases; a referred case ended in an additional guilty plea deal for a thirty-fifth individual.
• Trump eventually pardoned three of the more high-profile individuals against whom Mueller earned convictions—Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort—as well as two less- prominent individuals Mueller had convicted—George Papadopoulos and Alex van der Zwaan—a clear assault on the rule of law in encouraging others to commit crimes on Trump’s behalf in exchange for presidential pardons.
• It needs to also be noted here also that throughout his time as would-be president, candidate, and would-be president again, Trump has repeatedly threatened or tried to use the government to persecute his political enemies beyond his and his people’s efforts to pressure Zelensky to “investigate” Biden, leading to Trump’s first impeachment.  Even now, he is atrociously calling for Alvin Bragg to be prosecuted for daring to indict him and is calling to “defund” the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice alongside other Republican allies of his.

Conclusion: Do Better, Media

One recent New York Times article proclaimed in its headline “Biden Has the Oval Office. But Trump Has Center Stage,” seemingly blithely unaware of its own leading role in creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of any kind of news coverage environment resembling its own proclamation.  Much of the mainstream press seems blithely unaware of the damage these narratives they are parroting may inflict (as it is wont to do), while Trump and his allies know how damaging these narratives can be and seek to inflict that damage to further their ends, regardless of the costs to our democracy.

The simple facts are these: before the indictment was unsealed, there was far too much mindless speculation about what would or would not be in it when we would clearly eventually know once it was unsealed and, before that, time could have been far-better spent on other topics; now, with the indictment released, there is far too much mindless speculation about the quality of the case and the evidence that has yet to be presented to the jury.  No one would sanely ask the jury to make a decision before seeing the full presentation of the prosecution and the defense, so no one should ask audiences to that now, just as they should not have speculated ad nauseum about an indictment before it became unsealed.  The press can and must do better, and it can start by not giving any more than just a little bit of airtime to these ludicrous and dangerous “hot takes,” if only to swat them down rather than to give them credence.  Then again, the press is already back to covering Trump’s plane on tarmacs and his motorcade, and, for much of 2022, the press was speculating about the 2024 presidential race, so expectations should not be high.

In the end, Bragg’s case may not be the strongest of all the cases arrayed against Trump, but that is not terribly important and Bragg has yet to fully play his hand.  When it does finally get presented, the evidence may very well still be damning and more than enough to erase any “reasonable doubt” as to the illegality of Trump’s financial shenanigans surrounding his hush money payments and their clear link to Trump’s political efforts to attain the presidency in 2016, and commentary that is prematurely dismissive of these realities or of the case’s potential should not be aired or taken seriously by anyone.  If somehow the case fails, that will not because of anything Trump partisans can know yet before the trial and presentation of evidence takes place, and that should be noted any time such partisan blind utterances are spewed.  Ultimately, given what we know so far and the arguments and context I have endorsed herein, when the wheels of justice are finally done turning in this case, it will likely not be a good result for Trump.

What is certain besides the premature nature of the bad arguments criticized herein is that interfering with and attacking valid legal proceedings undermine our democracy, the rule of law, and the principle of equality before the law, all consequences Trump and his Republican Party overall sadly find more than acceptable as part of their pursuit of power and furthering of their illiberal, fascist agenda.

© 2023 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), and be sure to check out Brian’s new podcast!

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By Brian E. Frydenborg (Twitter @bfry1981, LinkedIn, Facebook) January 6, 2023; see related articles from July 11, 2021, Media Keeps Portraying Democrats and Biden as a Mess, Ignoring Data Proving that Could Not Be Further from Truth and November 15, 2021, A BIG F**KING DEAL: Biden’s Infrastructure Bill in Historical Perspective. Real Context News produces commissioned content for clients upon request.

SILVER SPRING—It is time to acknowledge the historic greatness of the Biden Administration for what it is, and the performance the Democrats under Biden in the 2022 midterm elections is one of several strong examples of this greatness.

With the final seat of Congress decided by the Great State of Georgia after the December runoff victory of Rev. Raphael Warnock, who beat a walking public service announcement for football-related traumatic brain injury in the form of Herschel Walker (and far more emphatically than in November, by a percentage margin over three times greater), we can truly take stock of the historic overperformance of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party under his leadership.

Of course, a lot of this was about individual candidates.  And Biden has had an excellent partner in Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in the Senate (he doesn’t get enough credit) and has had an incredible ally in the House with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, certainly one of the best—one of the most effective and accomplished—speakers in U.S. history, perhaps the best.

Still, in our presidential system, midterm election performance has always been one of the major measures of how presidents are judged during their term and throughout American history: no matter what happens, it is always to a large extent a metric tied to the president’s performance and leadership as leader of his party (with only the exception of John Tyler simply not having a party by his only midterm in 1842-1843 after he inherited the presidency upon the death of Whig President William Henry Harrison, whose people did not vet Tyler enough to realize he was, well, not really a Whig).  Of course, the degree to which a midterm should reflect and does in the popular consciousness and amongst pundits and scholars can and does wax and wane due to a variety of factors and circumstances at the time, but it is there, an inescapable part of the equation of evaluating presidents.

I have already discussed in detail how legislatively and in terms of party unity in Congress, the Biden Administration in its first two years and the Democratic Party under Biden in the 117^th Congress are the most impressive since LBJ in the 1960s and, well, ever in U.S. history, respectively (in terms of party unity with the possible only exception of one Federalist Senate at the dawn of our republic).  And I have further explained how these very accomplishments are even more impressive in that they came in an era of far more division (the most divided in modern American history and with the smallest governing majorities), but here, after these midterms, we have even more hard data that places Biden’s and his party’s midterm election performance in proper historical perspective, confirming this performance is among the highest in American history, especially in the modern era.

How do I know this?  I have literally (to use a Bidenism) put together data on every president’s first midterm since the dawn of the republic, available in a full set of Excel spreadsheets I created, but I will cut and paste images of some of that data here, images you can zoom in on by clicking on them.  You can see the full data in a close-up image by clicking on images or on the link in this paragraph for the Excel version.  And if I may toot my own horn, I am pretty sure this is by far the most comprehensive presentation of data in table form of American presidents’ first midterm performances you can find anywhere (if you find a more detailed presentation do please let me know; it took me way longer that I had hoped to put this together).

Here, first, are all the first midterms for presidents from 1914 onward, as the House had the same number of seats—435—since then and also as 1914 was first midterm when every regular U.S. Senate election was determined by popular vote (as opposed to being selected by the state legislatures) with the implementation of the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution; we shall call these midterms the midterm elections of the “modern era.”  Elections from this era, then, will be the most useful for comparison as the losses and gain are all from a House of the same size and the Senate’s size did not change very much, with all its races actually decided by popular elections.

This dataset includes presidents who came to power after a death (Truman in 1945 after FDR died), assassination (Teddy Roosevelt, or TR, in 1901 after McKinley was killed), or resignation (Ford after Nixon’s 1974 resignation) and had their first midterm without being elected; if applicable, in addition to the midterms for their first partial terms, I have also included when applicable their first midterms after being actually elected president as well as after their inherited midterms (Roosevelt in 1906 after 1902, Truman in 1950 after 1946; Ford never won a presidential election as he was defeated by Carter in 1976), as comparisons can be difficult and a midterm after inheriting the presidency and a midterm after actually being elected are not exactly apples and oranges (inherited term data is in italics in the tables).

This data is even more telling if we arrange these modern-era presidents in a ranking based on seats won or lost in Congress, starting with the House.

Among modern presidencies spanning more than a century, Joe Biden is tied for 5^th in terms of the best absolute performance for his party in the House of Representatives (a loss of 9 seats): only 4 modern presidents over 4 midterms—FDR and his Democrats gaining 9 seats in 1934, George W. Bush and his Republicans gaining 8 seats in 2002, JFK and his Democrats losing 4 in 1962, and George H. W. Bush and his Republicans losing 8 in 1990—did better.

It is also quite telling that in the entirety of the modern era, only 2 presidents have actually gained seats at all in the House during their first midterms: presidents almost always have their party lose seats.

Biden ties with Calvin Coolidge’s and his Republicans’ performance from 1926, only losing 9 seats (though in Biden’s case, this meant Democrats lost control of the House, while Coolidge kept control of the House for his Republicans, so I put ol’ Calvin above Joe on the tie order).  This puts Biden over 13 other presidents and 14 first midterms (per my explanation above, Truman gets 2 in our accounting) in terms their first post-elected and/or post-inherited midterms.

But not all elections are equal, and I account for some extraordinary circumstances in the notes section.  In this spirit, if we consider the conditions of each election, Biden’s specific ranking is unique and far more impressive: FDR got to have his first midterm not far from the nadir of the Great Depression; George W. Bush was riding a high-level of unity and support after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and during the early phase of the war in Afghanistan; Kennedy had literally just days earlier resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis, averting nuclear war and ending a major standoff with the Soviet Union, saving the world (partnering with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev) from destruction; and George H. W. Bush had his midterm while he was presiding over a Cold War victory (Germany was reunified just a month before the election) and during the Gulf War, Bush’s handling of which enjoyed widespread support.

But while each of those four presidents enjoyed considerable winds at their backs, Biden in 2022 had been dealing with decades-high inflation, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the worst levels of partisanship since the Civil War and Reconstruction that are tied to an ongoing Trumpist insurrection seeking to destroy American democracy.

In other words, while those “scoring” “better” by having their parties fare better in the House than Biden saw massive levels of broad, historic support in the face of various domestic and geopolitical consensus moments—with history on their side in historic ways—Biden had the wind blowing in his face and was able still to perform as well as he did and close enough to those with far better circumstances.  In that light, Biden and his Democrats’ performance is perhaps the most remarkable performance considering the difficulties they faced and those other four presidents and their parties did not.

The biggest winner in the modern era was FDR in 1934 with a gain of 9 seats and the biggest loser Warren Harding in 1922 losing a massive 77 seats!

Biden’s modern House first midterm ranking: 5^th (4 presidents and midterms ahead, 13 presidents and 14 midterms behind, tied with 1) out of 19 presidents and 20 first midterms

Let’s also look at the Senate-side of things.

In the Senate, too, Biden is also 5^th in the modern era, tied with Richard Nixon with a gain of 1 seat each, ahead of 12 other presidents over 13 relevant midterms (Truman, again, is counted twice).  With the exception of Reagan, who oversaw Senate Republicans hold steady, the rest of those presidents all had their parties lose seats.  Only 5 other presidents also gained seats:  FDR and his Democrats (+9), JFK and his Democrats (+4), Woodrow Wilson and his Democrats (+3), and George W. Bush and Donald Trump each with their Republicans (+2; not in line with House results for Trump as he and his Republicans lost 42 House seats that same year in 2018, as the Senate can easily be out of sync with the House, especially considering all 435 House seats are up for election every two years while only a third of Senate seats are at stake in any given election).  Keeping in mind the challenging circumstances in which Biden is governing, remember also that 3 of the 5 “scoring” ahead of Biden faced very favorable circumstances, as discussed, also leading to relatively quite strong House results for them, as discussed.  Thus, Biden and Democrats’ performance Senate-side is also quite remarkable.  In fact, their performance in 2022 is the first time since 1934 a president’s party successfully defended every Senate seat up for election that they held before the election, a real history-making series of victories, indeed.

The champ is FDR with +9 seats in 1934, the biggest loser Truman with -11 in 1946 (sorry, Harry).

Biden’s modern Senate first midterm ranking: 5^th (5 presidents ahead, 12 presidents and 13 midterms behind, tied with 1) out of 19 presidents and 20 first midterms

If you want to get really meta, you can go all the way back to George Washington’s first midterm.

Which I did.

Here we are using “premodern” to refer to all midterms from Washington’s first in 1790/1791 and up through the last elections in the early twentieth century (1910) before all Senate midterm elections were conducted as popular votes, à la the Seventeenth Amendment.

And if we rank everyone from 1790 to 2022, first with the House?

Here, Biden still stands out, tied for 10^th with premodern John Quincy Adams in addition to the modern Coolidge.  Included among those surpassing him are some of greats from a much earlier period in American history where there was, relatively speaking, a lot more unity during particular midterm years: Jefferson comes in 1^st well into his “Jeffersonian Revolution of 1800”, with James Monroe and James Madison tied for 2^nd (all with their Democratic-Republican Party and the era of the latter two ending up being so unified their time in part was referred to as the “Era of Good Feelings” and was essentially one-party ruling with an overwhelming majority).  You also have giants like Teddy Roosevelt and his Republicans in 1902 after his first midterm (5^th place) after he took over after the assassination of William McKinley, and you have our first two presidents—George Washington in 1790 and John Adams in 1798 with their Federalists—tied for 6^th.

Only 12 presidents and 12 first midterms rank higher than Biden out of 45 individuals to hold the office (yes, Biden is the 46^th president, but Grover Cleveland was both the 22^nd and 24^th president since he singularly won non-consecutive terms—and let’s hope Trump does not repeat this feat—so there are only 45 people in question, and less because of exclusions and deaths, which I will discuss below), but of those 12, 1 is Teddy Roosevelt and he ranks above Biden with his non-elected, inherited midterm after McKinley’s assassination but below him with his first midterm after he was actually elected to the presidency, so take that that for what you will.  Biden ranks ahead of 25 other presidents and 26 midterms.  Except, since we have Teddy Roosevelt as 2 “others” here, 1 election ahead and 1 election behind, I suppose we could say Biden is loosely-tied as a president with Teddy and more closely tied with Coolidge and Quincy Adams—tied with 3 presidents and 2 two midterms—with only 11 presidents ahead of Biden (subtracting TR) and 12 midterms ahead of Biden’s (keeping 1 of TR’s) and 24 presidents and 26 midterms behind Biden (since he beat both of Truman’s midterms and we are including the other TR midterm).

And for some real perspective?  Even Lincoln, our greatest president, lost 23 seats (and his party’s majority in the House, but it would govern through a plurality coalition) in his first midterm in 1862-1863 during the Civil War.

The all-time winner is Thomas Jefferson gaining 35 House seats for his Democratic-Republicans in 1802 and Benjamin Harrison losing the most—a whopping 93 Republican seats—in 1890.

Biden’s all-time House first midterm ranking: 10^th (11 presidents and 12 midterms ahead, 24 presidents and 26 midterms below, 2-way tie with 1 more “tie”: tied with 3 presidents and 2 midterms) out of 39 eligible presidents and 41 eligible first midterms (see the discussion of which 6 presidents were removed from consideration in the final section)

Now, for the full Senate history:

These should not be weighted as heavily as House results because most of the premodern Senators were chosen by state legislatures and not the people directly, but, still, as the state legislators were mostly chosen by the people, it still involves some degree of (indirect) popular selection and is something of a representative choice.  The Senate also has much smaller margins and swings, so the results are all a lot closer and therefore harder to differentiate and chance plays a much wider role in variations.  So, out of our four major measures, we can confidently say that this one has the least value. 

In any case, Biden still comes out pretty well, with some of the same crowd that has outperformed him—along with some others—coming in ahead, and some surprising ties, while still being ahead of most of the competition in the end.

Biden comes in at 7^th but in a five-way tie; they all come in with a gain of 1 Senate seat (behind a five-way tie for 6^th with 2+ Senate-seat gains).  His fellow 7^th-placers are George Washington from 1790, Andrew Jackson in 1830, Abraham Lincoln in 1862, and Richard Nixon in 1970 (wow to all of that).  12 midterms from 11 presidents are ahead of Biden (including both of Teddy Roosevelt’s) and 24 midterms behind him from 23 presidents (including both of Truman’s terms).

Same champ and biggest loser from the modern era, but factoring out the modern era, among the premoderns McKinley fares the best at +8 in 1898 (but then he was assassinated, so, small consolation for his fans) and William Taft the worst in 1910 at -9 (trimming a lot of fat, relatively; sorry, I couldn’t resist).

Biden’s all-time Senate first midterm ranking: 10^th (11 presidents and 12 midterms ahead, 23 presidents and 24 midterms below, 5-way tie with 5) out of 39 eligible presidents and 41 eligible midterms

There you have all the data (remember, available in a full Excel file), with quirks and nuances explained by a key and accompanying notes in the file and the images.

I’d say that the House results are much more meaningful because, again, they reflect the mood of the whole nation and have always been chosen directly by the people, while Senate elections only reflect one-third of the country and were not always popularly elected.  And, again, perhaps the most important context to consider is that most of the people doing better than Biden in these rankings had history and some big unifying advantages on their side right at the time of the elections or at the very least did not usually have terribly divisive issues plaguing the country, while Biden had some major issues dividing the nation much more intensely during his first midterm as a time, again, of historic division.  That does not mean there were not crises those other leaders faced, but some crises—the Great Depression and WWII, for example, or 9/11 and the early days in Afghanistan, or the Gulf War or the Cuban Missile Crisis—unify the nation while others—slavery in the mid-1800s or inflation and COVID-19 for Biden—divide the nation.  This, for the most part, places Biden in his own special category, objectively speaking, especially in the modern era.

This historic 2022 midterms performance is, of course, tied to the historic legislative accomplishments of the Biden Administration, the historic and (near-?)unprecedented party discipline of the Democrats of the 117^th Congress, and the historic and unprecedented support Biden and that Congress offered Ukraine on the front line of the war for democracy and freedom against fascism and tyranny.

Contrast Biden and his Democrats with the current House Republicans, who are more than flirting with fascism (I do not use that term lightly and took some pains to define it) and showing the most dysfunction of an incoming House majority or plurality party since the 1850s, still unable to elect a House Speaker after an incredible fourteen ballots (last few of these ballots happening on the second anniversary of Trump’s Capitol insurrection in the very chamber assaulted by Trump’s insurrectionists!), much to the embarrassment of invertebrate Kevin McCarthy.

Yes, this whole first midterm thing is just one metric of several major metrics by which a president can be evaluated, some of which are qualitative and hard to measure, and, yes, even this one can be tricky to really properly measure, but the data is still clear: Biden and his Democrats stood out in league with some very good company ahead of most presidents and most of their parties, and were able to do so facing national divisions those outperforming him did not.  History has already been written here, and credit is due where credit is due.

The media should more and more be explaining all this to voters, avoiding false equivalence, and properly contrasting the options for voters, which it is, simply put, not very good at (as I have noted repeatedly before).  Yet voters need to realize these stark truths as they consider their choices in the crucial elections ahead, as the survival of both our very democracy and Western democracy itself may depend on that realization.

On My Imperfect Ranking System, Its Methodology and Data

Compared to just the modern presidents’ midterms, ranking the comprehensive set is trickier.  Again, quick summary of the combined House data: 11 ahead of Biden + 1 Biden himself + 2 tied +1 “tied” (TR) +24 behind Biden + 3 excluded + 3 who died before any midterms and you account for all 45 presidents (11+1+2+1+24+3+3=45) with 44 midterms, 2 midterms being considered each for TR and Truman, just so you see from where I got my numbers.  Depending on what you want to count, you have options your own options.

Out of 45 presidents, 3 were dead before their first midterm would have happened.  In terms of the number of midterms, there were 44 first midterms (including 2 each by my parameters for Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman, as they are the only 2 presidents to inherit a presidency, have a first midterm not after being elected, and then actually win a presidential election and have another midterm, the first after being elected), but 3 of these midterms and presidents were excluded from the rankings to make a total 6 ineligible presidents, all in the premodern era: William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor died (in 1841 and 1850, respectively) before any midterm could happen and James Garfield was assassinated in 1881 before any midterm for him; as for the 1842-3 midterms of William Harrison’s successor John Tyler, Tyler had no party affiliation and this cannot be evaluated; during Reconstruction (1863-1877), Andrew Johnson and his Democrats in 1866-7 and Ulysses Grant and his Republicans in 1870-1 are excluded from rankings for very specific reason, explained in the next paragraph.

During the Civil War and after (an era known as Reconstruction), most of the Southern proslavery states that had attempted to secede were not seated for some time in the Congress, but were readmitted during a period of varying degrees of U.S. military government operating in those states in the face of white supremacist terrorist insurgencies that would eventually succeed and establish Jim Crow apartheid (let’s just be honest here) until the Civil Rights reforms of the 1960s.  Therefore, the Reconstruction results of Johnson and Grant’s first midterms are not included in the rankings due to the complications of military government during major insurgencies and states being readmitted under such conditions.

Even pulling three midterm results out, there are other complications. When you include the premodern data, these rankings are a lot more complicated considering both the House and the Senate grew dramatically in size in the premodern period.  Some examples from the House of this and how tough it is to properly rank in this era and rank against presidents in much later periods within the premodern era and after it: Washington gained three House seats in 1790/1 at a time when the entire House was just 67 seats and is ranked below both FDR in 1934 (3^rd, +9) and George W. Bush in 2002 (4^th, +8) at a time when the House had 435 members to Washington’s 67 or Adams’s 106 (who with his 1798/9 +3 is tied with Washington even with significantly more House seats).

So, in the end, that means 39 of 45 different individuals who were president are considered across 41 ranked out of 44 first midterms, allowing for the flukes and deviations.  No system would be perfect and, without getting into advanced weighting and statistics (for example, calculating what a 3-seat gain for Washington in a House with 67 seats would be proportionally adjusted for a modern 435-seat House), I challenge anyone to come up with a better yet-relatively-simple system and welcome anyone who will answer that challenge.

A lot of the data initially came from Wikipedia gateways but with easily verifiable official records from Congress just a link away and with often easy-(but sometimes not-so-easy)to-access data confirming and/or clarifying what was presented in Wikipedia.  You can check my numbers against whatever you are able to find, but I did spend a lot of time reviewing and confirming the data and am highly confident in the numbers I posted, which you are free to double-check for yourselves.

And, since a lot of this involved rankings, I used numerals for single and double-digits and for rankings to stay consistent for your eyes.

Finally, if you would like the premodern data separately, well, here’s that too:

And don’t forget: all that data is available in my multiple-spreadsheet Excel file! See related articles from July 11, 2021, Media Keeps Portraying Democrats and Biden as a Mess, Ignoring Data Proving that Could Not Be Further from Truth and November 15, 2021 A BIG F**KING DEAL: Biden’s Infrastructure Bill in Historical Perspective

© 2023 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), and be sure to check out Brian’s new podcast!

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here; because of YOU, Real Context News surpassed one million content views on January 1, 2023.

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(Russian/Русский перевод) By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) March 13, 2022; excerpted and slightly adapted from his article The Beginning of the End of Putin? Why the Russian Army May (and Should) Revolt published by Small Wars Journal March 8, which was featured on March 9 by Real Clear Defense, The National Endowment for Democracy’s (NED) Democracy Digest, and SOF News; see related RCN articles excerpted and slightly adapted from that piece:

• March 9: A Look at Putin’s Disgraceful, Heartless, Barbaric Treatment of Russian Soldiers and Their Families
• March 11: On Casualties Counts in Russia’s War on Ukraine
• March 19: Time for the Russian Army and Russian People to Revolt and Overthrow Putin
• September 16: I Saw This War Could Be Putin’s Undoing All the Way Back in Early March

Also see Brian’s preceding February 21 Small Wars Journal piece The Utter Banality of Putin’s Kabuki Campaign in Ukraine, featured by SOF News on February 26; see related RCN articles excerpted and slightly adapted from that piece:

• February 21: Why Is Putin Doing All This Now?
• February 25: How to Lose Nations and Alienate People, by Vladimir Putin
• March 1: Putin’s NATO Narrative Is Bullshit
• March 16: Putin’s Zombie Russian/Slavic Ethnonationalism Is Utterly Banal

WASHINGTON and SILVER SPRING—The focus of my last excerpted article was to show how disgustingly careless, even cruel, the Russian military has been with the lives of its soldiers, how abusive and deceitful they have been to these fighting men of Russia and their families.  And the point of this is to acknowledge that, by such unforgivable conduct towards Russia’s own soldiers and their families, Putin and his cronies may have finally sowed the bittersweet seeds of their own demise.  This was one thing with the hundreds of concealed deaths over eight years with “volunteer” deployments into rebel-held portions of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions (known together as the Donbas) in Ukraine’s east (discussed in more detail earlier); it is already an entirely different phenomenon with thousands of deaths less than two weeks into Putin’s exponential escalation in the whole of Ukraine.

Even allowing for the possibility that some of the images and video coming out of Ukraine are not authentic, there is still (as I have noted recently) a lot of real footage of dead Russian soldiers and destroyed Russian vehicles, evidence of Putin’s lies to his own people and his lack of competence in managing and leading Russia’s army, evidence that increasingly destroys his credibility not only with his own people but his own soldiers and their officers.

The dead collectively are something that is very hard for Kremlin spinmasters and apologists in Russia and around the world to explain away, an undeniable public monument to Putin’s astounding failure.  The truth is enormous, visible even from afar, and death on the scale that the Russian Army is experiencing just across a border where many Russians have friends and family cannot be hidden by Putin from his people forever: Russia is not North Korea, its people not North Koreans.

As more and more Russians take in parts of the horrific picture, they will realize how totally they have been gaslit, how pathetically their army has performed under the leadership of a man so desperate to project strength that he literally rides around shirtless on a horse to pose for photos for public consumption.

The key psychological component here is that the foundation of Putin’s regime rests on the idea of restoring Russian strength.  So when the Russian people realize how totally degraded the Russian Armed Forces are after two decades of Putin’s leadership, only able to beat up on Georgia and Syria and utterly humiliated by its first real challenge under Putin’s Potemkin regime in a war with far smaller and far weaker Ukraine—which Russia has always regarded as a little brother, a former vassal of Russia in recent centuries—and understand that thousands of their boys have been needlessly slaughtered in a needless war as Russia hits its economic nadir and apex of isolation under well-deserved historic sanctions, there is going to be massive public outrage.

For Putin’s whole bargain with his people was “Give me your fledgling democracy to discard and I will raise you up and deliver you from the pit of Boris Yeltsin’s humiliated Russia,” yet Russia finds itself now—after only a matter of days into Putin’s absurd war—precisely where Putin promised to move it away from: the weak laughingstock status of the Yeltsin years, not respected, just tolerated because of its nuclear weapons and natural resources.

As more and more Russians realize this, Russians overall will realize that the bargain it struck with Putin repeatedly over the years is null and void, that they owe him no allegiance or support since the little man delivered (after some stability) mainly illusions and repression: the weakness of the Russian military, state, and international standing has now been exposed in a matter of mere days to the whole world as the Ukrainian people kick the Russian Army’s ass, the U.S.-led international order roars into action to show how defenseless the main institutions of Russian daily and economic life are rendered if America and its allies will them to be so, and the world overall isolates Russia as a pariah as no top-tier state has ever been isolated before. 

This last point bears some spelling out: Germany, Japan, and Italy had each other and numerous vassals during World War II.  Today, Russia could only muster the support of four other pariahs—Belarus (essentially its puppet), Syria (its mass-murdering client-state), the Stalinist/Maoist relic of North Korea, and basket-case Eritrea in a historic 141-5 vote at the United Nations condemning Putin’s invasion of Ukraine (China, Russia’s supposed new “best friend,” wanted no part in the historical record of being seen to be emphatically on Russia’s side here, settling for a cowardly pathetic abstention, a choice shared by 34 others).

According to a major CNN poll conducted shortly before Putin launched his full Ukraine war, when asked “Would it be right for Russia to use military force to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO,” half of Russians said “Yes,” one-quarter “No,” one-quarter “Don’t know;” if the war was framed as one “to ‘reunite Russia and Ukraine,’” that support dropped to only 36% “Yes,” “No” rising to a plurality of 43%, with 21% as “Don’t know.”

It is remarkable that the numbers for war are not higher when one considers the insane media atmosphere inside Russia and how it trickles down throughout public life in Russia.  It is a constant Orwellian bombardment of an alternate universe, one where Russia is a perpetual victim fighting against the whole world.  Ukrainians with relatives and friends in Russia (as well as the pro-Russian separatist parts of Ukraine’s Donbas and a very Russian Crimea controlled by Russia since that region’s 2014 invasion and annexation) are even having inane conversations with these brainwashed relatives and friends, those relatives and friends telling the dismayed Ukrainians laughable fictions about the reality of the war.  So strong is the pull of Kremlin propaganda that these wayward friends and relatives believe fantasy over their own blood as they dare to lecture on the invasion to those actually living through the bombs and shells of the invasion.  Much like America’s Trumpist Capitol insurrectionists in the U.S. believe in an alternate reality bellowed out by Fox News and its ilk, so, too, does Putin’s base in Russia (and the few Ukrainian regions with high-proportions of Putin-loyalists) loyally and enthusiastically consume Russian state-run television networks’ non-stop barrage of the world according to Putin (and it is no coincidence that the American rightist and Kremlin media ecospheres have tremendous overlap, as I have noted in detail before).

As a result, most Russians actually get their news from state-run media, so most Russians, then, simply do not have an accurate understanding of what is currently happening in Ukraine and believe as fact many absolute falsehoods while rejecting actual facts.  Because of the relentless propaganda, lies, and straight-up gaslighting that is the media and government apparatchik public landscape in Russia, they think that this has been a limited humanitarian peacekeeping operation mostly in the Donbas area of Ukraine with few Russian casualties. 

But there are others in Russia who see past the propaganda and disinformation.  And the brittle reality of the Kremlin’s fake news operations can come crashing down like a house of cards in the face of hard realities, none more likely to cause this than thousands of dead Russian soldiers and their enraged families.

See all Brian’s Ukraine coverage here

© 2022 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see my eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), and be sure to check out Brian’s new podcast!

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg, January 6, 2022 (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981)

SILVER SPRING—In part before (especially in the run-up to and weeks after the 2020 U.S. presidential election) but undeniably now, American politics is divided between two major factions: pro-democracy, pro-Constitution led by Democrats and anti-Democracy, anti-Constitution led by Republicans; it has been this way since the January 6, 2021 insurrection.  It is a divide between the first faction that stands for preserving democracy and the rule of law while acting to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” and the second that is against democracy and the rule of law and seeks to destroy our longstanding constitutional order.

There are many other differences—just to name one more recent development, Trump mainstreamed white supremacy: some people will hate this term applied here but even in its most genially presented forms, Trumpism most definitely stands for exclusivist white ethno-nationalism, i.e., the primacy of Americans embodying “traditional” (code: white, suburban, and rural) American values while working to avoid the “diluting” and “replacement” of those people and values with hordes (“caravans”) of (brown) migrants while also working to minimize the political representation through voter suppression of “urban” “non-traditional” communities (code: black and other non-white minorities)—but the January 6^th fault line transcends, should in weight and principle and occasionally does in practice, the more typical right-left divides between liberal and conservative, statist and libertarian, mandates and choice, vaccines and pseudoscience, diversity and homogeneity, social justice and racism, welcoming and nativist, young and old, urban and rural, religious and atheist, gun-controllers and gun-owners.

The historically and morally horrific Trump Capitol January 6 terrorist insurrection should actually be something that unites nearly all Americans in disgust, a clear understanding of who is to blame, and the need to purge them from public political life and see them prosecuted, yet instead, is sadly in many ways a political Rorschach test.  Rather than the insurrection responsible for the first non-peaceful transfer of power in U.S. history since 1797 (Washington to Adams), and the first non-peaceful one between different parties since 1801 (Adams’s Federalists to Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans), for far too many millions of radicalized Americans, it has become just another partisan political issue in which fidelity and fealty to their adopted faction trump reality and morality, muddling what should be crystal clear beyond any doubt for any rational person.  But clarity is what is needed, not this partisan delusion and gaslighting. 

Patriots and Traitors à la General U.S. Grant

One of the primary defenders of the country and the Constitution during the worst domestic crisis in the history of the United States—Ulysses S. Grant, Lincoln’s right-hand man in winning the Civil War against traitorous insurrectionists rebels in another era—wrote just after the beginning of that Civil War on April 21, 1861:

We are now in the midst of trying times when every one must be for or against his country, and show his colors too, by his every act…

Whatever may have been my political opinions before, I have but one sentiment now.  That is, we have a Government, and laws and a flag, and they must all be sustained.  There are but two parties now, traitors and patriots and I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter, and I trust, the stronger party….I would never stultify my opinion for the sake of a little security.

I have argued in detail how exceedingly simple what happened on January 6 was and the role of Donald Trump in it, on how his culpability and how close his coup attempt came to being far worse was revealed especially by his second impeachment trial.  Now, it is clear that former President and General Grant’s dichotomy is the fundamental, basic divide that matters before any other and has been so since January 6, 2021: Patriots—regardless of their “normal” politics (thank you, Never Trump Republicans!)—and Traitors redefining our current understanding of putting party over country.

On the Patriot side against Trump and his insurrection are people like Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), stripped of her leadership role in the Republican party for standing up to Trump’s insurrection, and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, who stood at her side in Congress today as the terrible assault on our democracy was commemorated; Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), a veteran now disowned by some in his family for standing up to Trump’s insurrection, sadly retiring; Georgia’s Secretary of State, Republican Brad Raffensperger, who spurned Trump’s mafia-like pressure to overturn Georgia’s election results and faces death threats and a formidable primary challenger as a result; former Republican President George W. Bush; former Republican Speakers of the House John Boehner and Paul Ryan; the recently departed Colin Powell, a former top general and secretary of state; former Republican Governor of California, none other than the Terminator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who likened the January 6 insurrection to the Nazi’s deadly 1938 Kristallnacht, when anti-Jewish violence erupted throughout the Nazi Reich, including Schwarzenegger’s Austria; the entire body of Democrats in Congress and top Biden-Harris Administration officials; all Americans who know and are unafraid to acknowledge that Trump tried to overturn a legitimate election and destroy the Constitutional order through intimidation and violence; and, certainly not least among these, those security officers who died or were injured or traumatized defending the U.S. Capitol from the first organized mass attack since 1814, when the British military burned the Capitol, the White House, and other targets in Washington.

On the Traitor side: Donald Trump and his top advisors who stood by him during and after January 6; the vast majority of Republicans in Congress, especially those (on the Senate-side, especially Texan Ted Cruz and Missourian Josh Hawley; in the House, 139 out of 211 Republicans, virtually two-thirds) who, even in the hours immediately after the insurrection, voted to overturn a legitimate presidential election based on lies and lust for power or, at best, out of fear for what the mob and/or other pitchforker types would do to them and their families; new candidates seeking to replace state and local election officials; the extremist activists and protesters siding with the insurrectionists; and their domestic allies in the right-wing media—including most of Fox News and talk radio—and social media worlds (Russians aiding and abetting are not traitors, they are the anti-Americans we know and expect).

Insurrection Not Over, Just in a Different Phase

Among the most dangerous of the classes outlined above are the Congressional Republicans and the state and local Republican lawmakers, officials, and candidates who, based on the totally false ideas that the election was stolen from Trump, are seeking new powers to empower partisan election officials that could steal the election for Trump or to replace those who, even as Republicans, put country before Party and acted to respect the legitimate votes checked and audited repeatedly.  Simply put, next time around, Brad Raffensperger may be gone and partisan state legislatures may disregard the will of the voters and certify sets of electors based not on actual votes but partisan lies and machinations.

As James Madison—who, as president in 1814, had to flee the British troops who would end up burning his White House and the Capitol—wrote in 1788 in Federalist “No. 51,” arguing for the then-newly proposed Constitution, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”  Here, he was arguing particularly of the virtues of the divided, separated-of-power natures of the proposed government.

And it was these checks and balances—secretaries of state over state legislatures, election auditors over partisan advocates, courts over campaign lawyers, Democrats over Republicans, the Constitution over election-loser Trump, good-faith presentation of facts and context over propaganda and disinformation, police against insurrectionists, Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) over Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney (then the number-three Republican in the GOP House leadership) over McCarthy and Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) (then-and-still the number-one-and-two House Republicans, respectively), the Legislative Branch over the sitting President, elements of Trump’s own executive branch over himself and his own White House, and (at least at the final moments of the final hours) then-Vice President Pence over then-President Trump—that saved the nation and the Constitution throughout the term of Trump and from insurrection incited by that renegade outgoing president.

Yet, as many have correctly sounded the alarm, the majority of sitting Republican officeholders are working to change rules and to combine with enough victorious candidates or appointee replacements of their ilk to negate that ambition counteracting ambition within their own party that saved our republic in 2020-2021, to demolish the checks and balances that held the line against lies and insurrection and for the Constitution and the rule of law.  The Cheneys and Raffenspergers within the GOP are being put on notice or pushed out—most of the Republican senators who stood up regularly to Trump retired or, in the case of John McCain, died; in the House, of the measly ten Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for the insurrection, two have already announced retirement, four are already facing serious Trump-endorsed primary challengers, and four others are laying as low as they can.

As a result, the terrifying reality is that we may very well (perhaps even likely??) not have enough Patriots to stop one or more crucial swing states from being stolen by partisan state and local election officials in 2024, even in the House and Senate races in 2022.  As opposed to the hastily assembled forces of the January 6 coup attempt (and apart from the related-but-more-general “slow-moving coup” Trump and the Republican Party have tried enacting against the rule of law I have warned about for years), we are now, then, seeing another blatant “slow moving coup” attempt moving forward years before it might come to completion.  Upon closer look, one could even argue Trump’s original insurrection is still ongoing.

Benjamin Franklin, exiting the hall of the 1787 Constitutional Convention after it voted in favor of our Constitution, is supposed to have replied to an inquirer as to what we were getting: “A republic, if you can keep it.”  More than any time since the Civil War, today, we have reason to worry we may not.  This is not idle speculation: most Republican/Republican-leaning citizens believe Donald Trump’s Big Lies about the election and the Republican Party and its base are still in Trump’s pocket, the Big Lies becoming clear litmus tests for most of those who want to win Republican primaries or want to have a future in what is still even now, clearly, Trump’s party.  “While some courageous men and women in the Republican Party are standing against it, trying to uphold the principle of that party,” noted President Biden today, “too many others are transforming that party into something else. They seem no longer to want to be the party, the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, Reagan, the Bushes.”  “Some” is, pathetically, generous, and we must recognize the dire, immediate, and growing threat the Traitor faction presents to us and our republic and how it has hijacked the Republican Party as an overall whole beyond any ability or effort to restore sanity to that Party anytime soon.

Necessary First Steps to Save the Republic

One of the best ways to maximize our chances of keeping this republic is to firmly remember and vehemently proclaim our current Patriot and Traitor divide, framing everything in our politics first and foremost through this prism, with anyone hemming and hawing and not firmly in the pro-democracy, pro-Constitution Patriot side correctly identified as de facto aiding and abetting and giving cover and comfort to the anti-democracy, anti-Constitution Traitor side.  The other key ingredients are to fight gaslighting lies about what really happened on January 6 and to hold those responsible—including, obviously, President Trump, his top advisors, and members of both the House and Senate who worked with them to put in motion the terrible events of one year ago to this day—accountable.  As President Biden himself said today in his most forceful remarks on the continuing efforts related to Trump’s January 6 Capitol insurrection, “This isn’t about being bogged down in the past.  This is about making sure the past isn’t buried.  That’s the only way forward.  That’s what great nations do.  They don’t bury the truth.  They face up to it. It sounds like hyperbole, but that’s the truth.  They face up to it.”

Echoing Grant’s sentiment, there can be no middle ground here (as with, say, Republican Virginia Governor-Elect Glenn Youngkin); we either stand with the Patriots against the Traitors and keep our republic, or we do not and we do not deserve it.  But one thing is certain: in terms of politics, since January 6, 2021, all Americans and all candidates for political office being evaluated up-and-down all ballots from president to county dog catcher are, first and foremost, either Patriots or Traitors; this is the defining shift in American politics post-insurrection and the most important frame for anything political in this current dangerous era.

© 2021 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see my eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), and be sure to check out Brian’s new podcast!

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

A Real Context News Special Report also available as a PDF file

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) June 7, 2021; updated June 15, 2021, to take into account the June 14 NATO summit in Brussels; cited by NATO LibGuide on Cyber Defence; condensed rewrite for Small Wars Journal September 24 also cited by NATO LibGuide on Cyber Defence and featured by Real Clear Defense; see Brian’s related review of one of the most important books on national security to come out in years, Nicole Perlroth’s groundbreaking This is How They Tell Me the World Ends; see his related articles: December 24, 2020, The History of Russia’s Cyberwarfare Against NATO Shows It Is Time to Add to NATO’s Article 5; February 17, 2017, Trump, the Global Democratic Fascist Movement, Putin’s War on the West, and a Choice for Liberals: Welcome to the Era of Rising Democratic Fascism Part II; and December 7, 2016, The (First) Russo-American Cyberwar: How Obama Lost & Putin Won, Ensuring a Trump Victory

SILVER SPRING—Alliances between nations must adapt to retain power over time, and in no area has warfare evolved more in recent years than in cyberwarfare.  Article 5 of NATO’s founding 1949 North Atlantic Treaty mandates that if an “armed attack” is carried out against a member state, all member states (currently thirty, including the most powerful Western nations) “shall” consider that attack and any armed attack on even just one member state “an attack against them all” and “will assist” it, up to and “including the use of armed force.”  As the centerpiece for over seventy years of the West’sPax Americana, global military power, system of alliances and collective defense, and ability to project combined strength anywhere on the planet, NATO must adapt to the present by adding cyberwarfare—including information warfare—to Article 5.

Cyberwarfare As Modern Warfare

An obvious point in favor of including cyberwarfare in Article 5 is that, by far, the most effective, damaging, and destabilizing attacks against NATO countries since 9/11 have been cyberattacks, most carried out by Russia.  The term “information warfare” (“a new face of war,” quoting a RAND Corporation report) refers to a key element of this cyberwarfare and includes the word warfare to indicate these are hardly benign, normal influence operations and are, indeed, the types of operations that have always been part of any serious conventional war in modern times.  Even in the nineteenth-century, von Clausewitz wrote that “War is…an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.”

The ever-evolving concept of warfare in our digital age, then, does not have to include shots being fired from guns, and it is naïve to not consider cyberwarfare as simply another form of war in the twenty-first century that uses force in the digital realm to achieve results in some of the same spirit as traditional armies: attack, defense, deception, sabotage, destruction, and to pressure actors to change behavior.  Clausewitz most famously wrote that “war is merely the continuation of policy [or politics] by other means” and would have well understood cyberwarfare (sometimes just termed cyberwar) to be war and well within that “other means” category.

The two countries that have led in cyberwarfare are Russia and China, the first (and weaker, but bolder) being NATO’s (and America’s) clearest top state enemy (even if unofficially but clearly in a de facto sense), the second (and stronger, more reserved) being America’s clearest top state rival in a holistic sense, as China has engaged and led in much non-weaponized hacking and espionage (admittedly common among major powers), but has not, say, brazenly released stolen information or disinformation in a way timed to significantly interfere with NATO member states’ elections (as Russia has).  And though China has its own sophisticated influence operations, Russia undisputedly has led by far in acts more hostile than espionage (uniquely so among major powers) since its watershed 2007 Estonia cybercampaign (such campaigns might better be termed cyberassaults than cyberattacks, the latter a broader, far more common term which can even apply to a single high school student’s cyberattacks against his own school district).

Russia officially views NATO as a “threat,” and since that 2007 Estonia cybercampaign, has become far more aggressive and threatening towards NATO, often playing with internal NATO nationalisms and blanketing NATO nations in cyberattacks, including election interference and bolstering of secessionist campaigns, with notable cybercampaigns being carried out against over twenty NATO member states (leaving aside its campaigns waged against non-NATO states). 

Furthermore, de facto, non-declared wars are the most common type of war in the modern era even if the term “war” is not specifically used.  America, for example, has a long history of undeclared war going all the way back to the Articles of Confederation and the early days of the Washington Administration involving conflict with Native Americans and also the John Adams Administration’s 1798-1800 Quasi-War, then popularly termed “The Undeclared War with France.”  Furthermore, as one scholar notes, “the legal state of war is possible without actual fighting.”

Taking all this into account, then, it is hardly unreasonable to consider Russia and NATO in a state of undeclared cyberwarfare and, therefore, a state of undeclared war.  One of NATO’s flagship publications, NATO Review, even published analysis in 2017 acknowledging that Russia was waging “non-kinetic political war on the West.”

In fact, as I have argued for some time, a truly deep look would expose Putin and his Kremlin conducting a clear de facto war to destroy NATO, the West, the EU, and Western democracy; to fracture trans-Atlantic and European unity and even the unity of individual Western nations; and to foment, fund, and favor the rise of far-right ethno-nationalists and secessionists friendly to Russia and hostile to the U.S. and NATO in NATO countries and elsewhere, all while savaging those in the center and mainstream left not preferred by Putin.  The parties Putin helps usually have much in common with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s banally nationalist United Russia party, which has struck up mixes of formal and informal alliances with several significant European political parties in major NATO states. 

Though there have been military moves by Russia in Ukraine and Georgia—two NATO aspirants—the main weapons in its undeclared war on NATO are not tanks, bombs, or jets; rather, they are bots, trolls, and fake news.

The Nature of Russian Cyberwarfare Confronting NATO 

Through hacking, disinformation, propaganda, and other cyber-methods, Russian campaigns that advance this war have been able to affect political outcomes in numerous NATO countries to suit (or, at least, more suit) Putin’s agenda.  These efforts are coordinated through powerful branches of the Russian government and close Putin allies in and out of the Kremlin, often using thousands of fake accounts to artificially bolster the reach of their lies, which, in turn, are augmented within the target countries by native agents and allies (with unwitting true believers long being dubbed “useful idiots”).  In many NATO countries—including the U.S.—Putin is even popular with far-rightists, no doubt in part because of Russia’s robust information cyberwarfare.

Reigning as the supreme disruptor on social media, Russia spews a “firehose of falsehoods” that has been massively effective, distorting and gaslighting the public discourse so that Russia’s preferred narratives are wildly amplified beyond their natural organic reaches, influencing many millions, thus helping to create an atmosphere where disinformation is sometimes consumed even more than actual news and doubt about even basic truths becomes widespread.

Domestic media outlets can be crucial instruments to this end of Russia’s, not only enthusiastic right-wing media outlets, but also far-left media outlets and figures (Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi being two of the most prominent examples); as long as the Russian narratives further their narratives—usually attacking more mainstream and/or moderate parties and figures—these more extreme domestic outlets are often happy to unquestioningly parrot the Russian-projected “information,” and whether it is illegally hacked or not even vetted matters little to them.  The distortions, lies, and unsubstantiated claims then become such a large part of the conversation that mainstream media latches onto this disinformation—sometimes echoing it, other times critiquing it yet still amplifying it—and the Russian narrative itself then becomes mainstream, as I have previously explained in detail.

And once Putin’s favorites are in office in part because of Russian disinformation, they in turn further spout Russian disinformation from the highest levels of the government and even copy Russian tactics (as former FBI counterintelligence agent Asha Rangappa illustrates with the U.S. case).  They also pursue policies favorable to the Kremlin (e.g., weakening anti-Russian sanctions or creating geopolitical power vacuums for Russia to fill) and obstruct investigations into Russia’s cybercampaigns, making it all but impossible to effectively fight back.  Terrifyingly, both America’s 2019 Mueller report and the British Parliament’s Intelligence & Security Committee’s exceptional Russia report released last year note damning examples of obstruction in their respective governments.

With such additional feedback loops, Russian cyberwarfare is thus a gift that keeps on giving, with domestic news outlets and coopted politicians doing Russia’s dirty work for and alongside it.

The Big One: Targeting America

The revelations of Russia’s devastatingly far-reaching months-long government and corporate espionage hacking, known as the SolarWinds attack, and the Russian cyberattack against the third-party-run e-mail system of America’s main international aid agency, USAID (a multipronged attack that used access to that system to hit some 150 government agencies, think tanks, non-profits, and human rights groups that have been critical of Putin and Russia)—both carried out by the S.V.R., Russia’s equivalent of the C.I.A. and one of the main successor agencies of the notorious Soviet K.G.B.—highlight recently exposed Russian cyberwarfare against the U.S., NATO’s largest pillar.

The same can be said for a recent significant attack on major U.S. cybersecurity firm FireEye, almost certainly also carried out by the Russian government, and for two recent ransomware attacks—one on the Colonial Pipeline and one on meat plants of JBS, the largest fuel pipeline and meat producer in America, respectively (in the latter, plants in Canada and Australia were also hit).  These ransomware cyberattacks were carried out by DarkSide and REvil, respectively, two criminal hacking groups thought to be based in Russia or former Soviet-dominated states and that are widely understood to have tacit approval and protection from the Kremlin (to put some perspective in an aside here, it should be noted that after al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks—the only time NATO ever invoked Article 5—Afghanistan’s Taliban regime was overthrown by the U.S. because it gave harbor to al-Qaeda and did not hold the terrorist group to account, refusing to comply with American demands to shut down its camps, hand over its leaders, and arrest the rest of its members).

Much like Russia farms out parts of its aggressive foreign policy to Russian oligarchs, the Russian mafia, and Russian mercenaries in playing a sordid, cynical game of “deniability,” (something I have noted many times before), so too does it work similarly with hackers outside the Russian government.

Prior to the recent discovery of the activities outlined above, Russian cyberwarfare efforts against the U.S. have included clearly and repeatedly promoting unrest and division, pushing both disinformation about the coronavirus and illegitimate conspiracy theories of coordinated massive fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.  Before the election, the Russians’ cyberwarfare effort was all-in on attacking the main political rival (Joe Biden) of their preferred top candidate (Donald Trump).

Of course, division and brainwashing in America have hardly been created by Russia, but it is and has been obvious that these efforts are hardly in vain: multiple credible surveys and any casual examination of social media show that vast swaths of the American public—even many in senior leadership—are buying into this disinformation, believing nonsense about both coronavirus (including millions doubting coronavirus vaccines) and the 2020 presidential election.  All this undermines effective public health measures (literally helping kill Americans) and confidence in the very foundations of our electoral democracy.  In addition, all this Russian content and its fallout obviously does not stay confined to America: international populations’ opinions of America and its political system along with their own views on coronavirus and vaccines are being affected, too.

In the words of journalist George Packer, “antisocial media has us all in its grip.”

The new Biden Administration, then, has its greatest initial challenge—the coronavirus—made even worse by this Russian cyberwarfare even while it will face an unprecedented (excepting Lincoln) crisis of legitimacy in the eyes of millions of misinformed (and disinformed) Americans.

Cyberwarfare a Larger Threat Now to NATO than Terrorism

Russian cyberwarfare focused on election interference in the U.S. in 2016—what I called back in December of that year the First Russo-American Cyberwar—has already caused damage to America, its democracy, and its reputation that is hard to exaggerate, with effects not only still being felt by the U.S. but guaranteed to still be felt for some time.  In contrast, physical terrorist attacks in NATO countries since 9/11, while tragic, have still had comparatively limited effects.  Even Russia’s own 2018 Novichok chemical weapon attack on British soil against Russian military intelligence officer turned spy for the UK Sergei Skripal in Salisbury had more symbolic an effect than anything else, dwarfed by the damage from Russian efforts to tip the 2016 Brexit vote in the direction of Leave or the effect of Russia’s campaign to amplify Scottish secessionism (now increasingly likely and sooner rather than later, an outcome that would obviously fracture and devastate a UK already severely weakened by Brexit). 

As I explained in my analysis of the aforementioned excellent British parliamentary committee report on Russia, Britain’s own official self-reflection made it clear that the solid response (and solid effort to bring in allies to take part in this response) to the Salisbury attack needs to be replicated when it comes to other Russian hostile actions, the clear implication being to include Russia’s cyberwarfare, especially political interference.

The same idea can be applied to NATO as a whole, which does have a Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence located in Tallinn, Estonia.  Yet even today, one-sixth of NATO—Canada, Luxembourg, Albania, Iceland, and North Macedonia—are not members of this Centre, though, encouragingly, the first two are in the process of joining, new members have recently been added, and non-NATO states Austria, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland are “Contributing Participants,” a status available to those outside of NATO; other non-NATO states Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Ireland also intending to join in that capacity.  There are also plans for a new military cyberdefense command center to be fully operational in 2023 at the main NATO military base in Belgium.

Overall, NATO considers “cyber defence…part of NATO’s core task of collective defence” and has since 2014, when the Alliance first explicitly laid out the theoretical possibility of invoking Article 5 in response to a cyberattack (though only “on a case-by-case basis”).  Since then, NATO has “pledge[d] to ensure the Alliance keeps pace with the fast evolving cyber threat landscape and that our nations will be capable of defending themselves in cyberspace as in the air, on land and at sea,” repeatedly reiterating the possibility of Article 5 being invoked in response to a cyberattack, including just this past September.

Update June 15: A communique issued by NATO from its Brussels summit on June 14, 2021, is heralded by some, including the White House, as a “new” cyberdefense policy but actually reiterates already vague and repeatedly articulated positions discussed above, namely, that NATO states “reaffirm that a decision as to when a cyber attack would lead to the invocation of Article 5 would be taken by the North Atlantic Council on a case-by-case basis,” hence, nothing much really new in actual policy and note the use of “reaffirm.”

Falling Short 

Official working papers, conferences, interviews, statements, and raising possibilities on the subject are one thing, but a concrete, clear policy is another, and NATO has nothing of the sort.

The vague idea seems to be that if a cyberattack was “serious” enough, Article 5 would be invoked, but there is no definition of what this threshold would be, and, frankly, this idea seems rather myopic: death by a thousand cuts is still death and has the same effect as decapitation, so tolerating many smaller attacks and sending a clear signal that there will not be a collective Article 5 response to them is simply bad policy.

Consider, too, that Russia would never be able to get away with flying over NATO skies and dropping leaflets of hostile disinformation by the millions onto NATO populations.  It could never get away with doing so once or once in a while, let alone consistently and during sensitive times of pivotal political decisions or unrest in the targeted countries, and yet this is exactly the cyber-equivalent of what Russia is getting away with against NATO’s most significant member states and many of its smaller ones, too.  And while Russia sending in Spetsnaz special forces to steal sensitive information from U.S. bases in Alaska or use physical weapons to sabotage or destroy government computer systems in Lithuania would be viewed automatically as an Article 5-triggering act of war, the same results over and over again from several years of unrelenting cyberwarfare are not, even though this has done more damage to NATO than any Soviet Army did throughout the decades-long Cold War.  This is, in part, because of NATO: the USSR and then Russia did not dare use armed force to attack any NATO state for fear of that explicitly guaranteed Article 5 collective response (even when NATO-member Turkey shot down a Russian military jet over Syria in 2015).

Yet when it comes to cyberwarfare, NATO is practically inviting Russia to attack and get away with it, with the Alliance quite consistently demonstrating its inability and unwillingness under its current framework to respond collectively to Russian cyberaggression.  As noted in the aforementioned UK Russia report, “Russia is not overly concerned about individual reprisal” against its aggressive acts, most certainly including its cyberattacks, with even the U.S. clearly inspiring no fear.

Language can often be tricky, and terms like “war” should never be thrown about lightly.  But with the advent of the internet and the realities of the modern world, NATO cannot become complacent with preventing traditional warfare while failing to adapt to cyberwarfare.  Pretending cyberwarfare is not war and allowing cyberwarfare in real-world practice to be kept out of NATO’s Article 5—leaving individual members states flailing independently and ineffectively against a determined, capable, and organized de facto enemy content to stand down its conventional forces against NATO while unleashing its cyberunits upon it with impunity—has not discouraged Russian cyberwarfare against NATO, it has encouraged it.  Article 5 makes no exception for smaller armed attacks, and any serious collective cybersecurity defense should make no exception for smaller cyberattacks.

An Urgent Need for Drastic Reform

Throughout New York Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth’s recent book This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends—the indispensable, terrifying, definitive account of the development of cyberwarfare and the mess in which we currently find ourselves: a true must-read for anyone hoping to understand how grave is the danger we are facing at this very moment—a constant theme is that we need paradigm shifts in the way we approach cybersecurity, whether the private sector, government, or individual citizens collectively.  You can tell she was having trouble sleeping while researching and writing her book, and we should be, too.

At several points in her book, Perlroth notes that the U.S. in the past rebuffed attempts to discuss some sort of international cyberwarfare convention or treaty, feeling it was the undisputed champion in the cyberarms race and not wanting to give up that advantage.  That ship has long sailed, and just in the last few years a number of rival and hostile governments have greatly managed to shrink, maybe even close, that gap, and with Western countries far more wired than their main rivals and enemies, they are far more vulnerable—with far more to lose—to cyberwarfare.

As FBI Director Christopher Wray recently lamented, the threat cyberwarfare poses to the West has “a lot of parallels” to the threat of terrorism after 9/11.  Echoing Wray, former CIA director and secretary of defense for President Barack Obama, Leon Panetta, warned in a recent interview conducted by Perlroth that he fears we will not do what needs to be done before a “Cyber Pearl Harbor” may cripple us.

Perlroth warns at the end of her book’s epilogue that “many will say” that “these…critical assignments of our time” to deter and defend ourselves from cyberwarfare “are impossible, but we have summoned the best of our scientific community, government, industry, and everyday people to overcome existential challenges before.  Why can’t we do it again?…We don’t have to wait until the Big One to get going.”

How to Revise Article 5 and the NATO Treaty Overall

Considering that the West’s main advantage over Russia is that people like the West a lot more than Russia—manifesting itself in close diplomatic, military, and economic ties about which Russia can only fantasize—the easiest way for the West to face and counter this dire and worsening cyberthreat from Russia is by leveraging its alliances, and, more than anything else, this means involving NATO and involving it in a big way. 

U.S. President Joe Biden himself penned a recent Washington Post op-ed in advance of his upcoming trip to Europe for a NATO summit and to confront Putin face-to-face, writing: “In Brussels, at the NATO summit, I will affirm the United States’ unwavering commitment to Article 5 and to ensuring our alliance is strong in the face of every challenge, including threats like cyberattacks on our critical infrastructure.” 

He can do that by proposing to strengthen Article 5 itself.

With Russia’s rampant cyberwarfare only intensifying and its clear pattern as a bad-faith hostile actor, a paradigm shift in the international system for deterring cyberattacks is absolutely necessary.  Since NATO is the premier defensive alliance of the West, formalizing cyberwarfare’s relationship to Article 5 is a necessary leap forward on this much-needed path and the only way forward for NATO to maintain credible collective defense as the twenty-first century progresses. 

To this end, “or cyberattack” must be added after each instance of the words “armed attack” in Article 5 (e.g., “The Parties agree that an armed attack or cyberattack against one or more of them…” [emphasis added]).

As other Treaty articles have (sometimes subsequently) modified the scope of Article 5, I propose the following definitions of cyberattack are added in a new Article 15:

This crucial definition of cyberattack allows more traditional espionage to stay out of discussions of cyberwarfare for collective defensive purposes while making clear the singular degree of the SolarWinds operation or anything like it will not get such a pass.  It also means there will finally be a way to effectively counter and deter the massive weaponized disinformation campaigns conducted by Russia while also protecting citizens, including journalists and cybersecurity staff, who are on the front lines of this war.

While the Alliance is free to decide how it wants to respond when using Article 5, in many of the situations, appropriate coordinated cyberattacks coming from all of NATO’s member states would be the most conceivable and likely response except for far more serious cyberattacks.

Conclusion: Expanding Article 5 Is Necessary and Overdue

The early twenty-first century’s second decade has been something of a Wild West, with Russia emerging as the biggest beneficiary in terms of cyberwarfare as defined above.  While China has also benefitted in terms of massive espionage and acquisition of Western intellectual property, it is Russia that has used the lawlessness of the cyber domain from a collective security standpoint to engage in the most egregious acts (most recently and most notably with the unprecedented SolarWinds) and ransomware attacks), acts that could easily be defined as hostile acts of war.

The time for lawlessness is over, and, with no statute of limitations on cyberattacks and the just-proposed framework not precluded by the current NATO treaty, NATO would be in its full rights (and is overdue) to invoke Article 5 against Russia now for its cyberwarfare so that Russia’s cyberwarfare will cause Russia far more pain than any damage it inflicts.

This has not been the case, but it must be.

Revising NATO’s Article 5 as suggested herein (leaving aside invocation) will not only clarify the rules for NATO enemies and rivals, but also for the members of a NATO Alliance itself that is in desperate need of clarity and strength on this issue.  It will also make NATO once again an alliance that instills fear in the minds of Russian leaders (as it did with Stalin and subsequent Soviet leadership) who would engage in reckless acts of aggression against NATO or its states, even if “just” through cyberwarfare.

Member states recognizing that they are in a state of war—cyberwar, but still war—with Russia and unambiguously making cyberwarfare a key plank of the Alliance’s main collective defense mechanism is essential, then, to keeping NATO the force for deterring aggression it has been for many decades.

Projecting such strength, both on paper and in practice, will serve as a real-world check against further Russian cyberattacks when inaction and lack of clarity has not, enhancing the security of every NATO member state and perhaps even eventually forcing Russia to a point where productive engagement, not adventuristic brinksmanship, is its chosen priority.

© 2021 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

See Brian’s related review of one of the most important books on national security to come out in years, Nicole Perlroth’s groundbreaking This is How They Tell Me the World Ends; Also see my related article on the UK Parliament’s singularly excellent Russia report and my discussion as a member of a panel with author and Senior International Correspondent for The Guardian, Luke Harding, on Russia’s bad behavior

Also see my eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), and be sure to check out Brian’s new podcast!

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) May 14, 2021; also published by The Times of Israel Blogs May 30, 2021; see my relevant Twitter thread and follow-up article Wading into Israel and Palestine Quicksand, Biden Offers a Diplomacy 101 Class for All

SILVER SPRING—The more you become familiar with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the more banal you realize it truly is.  One tribe with an extreme emotional attachment to a special religious site will become enraged and violent when another tribe with more control over that site and a competing extreme emotional attachment says or does something involving that site; then, a mob is ready to riot, with a countermob ready to riot back and various extremist government security forces and terrorist extremist actors ready to capitalize to further their maximalist positions.

Whether cavemen fighting over a sacred stone 20,000 years ago or Jews and Arabs fighting over the Western Wall/al-Aqsa Mosque/Dome of the rock compound in the Old City of Jerusalem, little changes: particular plots of land or certain building are weaponized and control of and access to them become tools of conflict between different competing ethnic/religious groups.  “Taking back” what is “ours” justifies all sorts of horrors, from suicide bombing and ethnic cleansing to war and genocide.  Without religion involved, there is still plenty to fight about in petty, repetitive ways, but research demonstrates that the viciousness of such conflict gets worse when religion is involved.

This is the utterly unoriginal politics of much of the world, which even explain many of the animating forces behind Trump’s recent Capitol insurrection in America, as I noted for The Jerusalem Report.  Even within specific conflicts, chapters can also be especially repetitive, and that is certainly the case here between Israel and the Palestinians: the current round of rapidly escalating violence began in ways remarkably similar to how the Second Intifada began in terms of the involvement of heavy-handed Israeli actions at al-Aqsa while also resembling in other key ways the outbreak of the 2014 round of violence even as it also thematically touches core issues that sparked conflicts going all the way back to the First Intifada and the major wars dating back to Israel’s founding.  The same holy sites, the same arguments over whose land it was, is, and will be—weaponizations of history for the present and future—the same arguments over occupation and settlements, equality and dignity, discrimination and freedom, security and sovereignty are always there with few variations and mostly played on the same tired notes.

So in important ways, there is nothing new here: the same unresolved issues, the same powers that be not even trying to advance or resolve them or even making them worse, the same systemic negative feedback loop producing the same outrage, fear, grievance, hatred, dehumanization, and violence that certain leaders on both sides keep capitalizing on to justify their extremist, exclusivist ideologies and policies.

And yet, we do have something terrifyingly new in this round of violence.

During this latest of the cycle, some Arab citizens of Israel—many considering themselves primarily Palestinians, some considering themselves primarily Israeli, some having nuanced, mixed views of their identities—have been both attacking Jews and been attacked by gangs and mobs of Jews as mixed communities in Israel are seeing an explosion of intercommunal violence.  In my own time in Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, I found these Arab citizens of Israel to have the most nuanced and least predictable views on the conflict.  Yet of Israeli Jews and Palestinians without Israeli citizenship (including the many Palestinians I met in Jordan), the vast majority were almost entirely one-sided in their views.

Throughout the other conflicts and wars of the past, Arab citizens of Israel have simply stayed out of the fights between Israel and Palestinians and/or Arab states.  Though discriminated against in many ways, Palestinians living in Israel’s internationally recognized pre-1967 borders have vastly more freedoms, rights, and opportunities than Palestinians in de-facto annexed East Jerusalem and especially the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (very few of those in East Jerusalem and none of the Gazans/West Bankers are Israeli citizens or can vote in Israeli national elections; those in the West Bank are subject to a military occupation and Israeli military law at any time Israel chooses to exercise it, and those in Gaza are also subject to intense Israeli restrictions in the something of a giant open-air prison Gaza has been for years).

As in the U.S. with the Black Lives Matter movement, an extraordinary coronavirus year fostered increased social media consumption and allowed for way too much time to stew with unpleasant thoughts, contributing to a tinderbox-like readiness to engage in street activism and releasing pent up rage, so that many who normally would not get involved in protests have become protesters, with protests becoming more violent.  Add to the equation that this is all after a rough month of reflection and fasting during the holy Islamic month of Ramadan in the time of COVID-19, after over a year during the era of peak social media activism during COVID-19 lockdowns (the pandemic medically and economically hitting discriminated populations harder all over the world, in this case Israeli Arabs), after years of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and conservative Israelis failing to address inequality and discrimination against Israeli Arabs while catering to Jewish right-wing extremists in continuing with discriminatory policies and racist rhetoric in Israel (the Israelis in power being perpetual sore winners and crowing loudly over symbolic wins like Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital).

So now these Israeli Arabs have seen their sense of identity drift more towards Palestinian and seen a hostility within them grow towards their right-wing Jewish antagonists.  In the face of sustained extremism and discrimination from Jewish extremist politicians and citizens, they are now responding in kind.  In the past, there has been violence between Palestinians and groups of Israeli settlers living in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and, earlier, Gaza; the run-up to the war in 2014 (which I analyzed in detail at the time) involved the kidnapping and murder by Palestinian terrorists three Israeli teens–Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrah—and the kidnapping and murder by Jewish terrorists of a Palestinian teen from East Jerusalem, Mohammed Abu Khdeir.  But now, there is the worst intercommunal violence inside Israel proper in decades.  Much like some groups of Jews and Arabs began fighting each other in British Mandate Palestine in 1947 in the beginning of civil war, the current violence between Jews and Arab Israelis has senior Israeli officials and others in Israel worried about the prospect of a new civil war.

In a polarized society, when one side or faction becomes too extreme, over time it can often help generate an increase in extremism in other groups.  As an example, most factions in Syria’s current civil war have become radicalized competing with, or fighting against, the brutality of both terrorist ISIS and dictator Bashar al-Assad’s mass-murdering regime, which helped bring out the worst in other factions over time, as I discussed years ago.  After years of the radicalization of the right in the United States, elements of the left are also becoming more extreme (though still not coming close to the insanity of Republicans), as I have also discussed.  So this is hardly unique to Israel, but as Israel lurches rightward and many of its Jews become radicalized, it was only a matter of time before portions of Israel’s Arabs started down a similar path (anyone wanting to understand these dynamics should watch the singular Israeli/HBO miniseries “Our Boys,” about the aforementioned four murders of teens that led to the 2014 Gaza war).

The Israeli historian Benny Morris, in his exceptionally fair history of the “Zionist-Arab Conflict” titled Righteous Victims, includes as his epigram famous lines from W. H. Auden’s famous “September 1, 1939” World War II poem:

I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn,

That to whom evil is done

Do evil in return.

If anything, this epigram is all too fitting, for the world and for the tragedy unfolding in Israel and Palestine today.

© 2021 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s follow-up article Wading into Israel and Palestine Quicksand, Biden Offers a Diplomacy 101 Class for All and Twitter thread on the Natanz attack and his eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), and be sure to check out my podcast interview with Georgia election officials Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling, both cited in Trump’s second Senate trial!

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) April 15, 2021; see my relevant Twitter thread on the Natanz attack

Minor spoilers for Clone Wars, some moderate spoilers for the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Rogue One, and Original Trilogy

SILVER SPRING—They may not center on massive battles, lightsaber duels, or major developments for the most well-known Star Wars characters, but “Heroes on Both Sides” and “Pursuit of Peace,” episodes 10 and 11 in the Third Season of Clone Wars, bear some remarkable similarities to situation the world is still trying to understand surrounding the mysterious attack against Iran’s premier nuclear research and development facility at Natanz.

Real-World Background

On early Sunday local time, the power system within the secretive, isolated, and secure nuclear facility at Natanz in Iran was “completely destroyed” in an explosion both Israeli and American intelligence officials have confirmed Israel is at least partly (perhaps and probably mostly) behind, in what may not or may yet be determined to be a cyberattack.

Iran is asserting what it sees as its right to pursue nuclear technology, and Israel is pursuing what it sees as its right of self-defense against what it sees as an existential threat: a nuclear-weapons-armed Iran. 

Iran has claimed that its intentions are purely for civilian nuclear power, an explanation Israeli dismisses as a lie, and Iran has long been hostile to Israel, with the two having engaged in proxy conflict against each other among Palestinians and, currently, in Syria and Lebanon, which both border Israel (it should also be mentioned here that it is the worse kept secret in the Middle East that Israel is the only nuclear weapons power of all the countries in that region).  Even if Iran is lying about its nuclear intentions and fully plans to develop nuclear weapons, it is entirely possible that it wants them for purely defensive and deterrent reasons (every nuclear power since after Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 has refrained from offensive use, or any use in war, for that matter, and Iran’s enemies have openly debated military campaigns against it), yet Israel’s people and military have been targets of Iranian-sponsored terrorism in the past.

Still, this concern about Iran’s nuclear intentions and ambitions is one shared by most world powers, to the degree that Iran and the five permanent-veto-wielding members of the United Nations (UN) Security Council—the U.S., the UK, France, Russia, and China—as well as Germany and the European Union (EU) all signed an agreement to severely limit nuclear activity on the part of Iran in exchange for partial relief of sanctions on Iran for much of Iran’s rogue activity involving military buildups, terrorism, and interference in the affairs of other countries in the Middle East.

Israel’s political leadership under long-serving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a right-wing hawk with much in common with former U.S. President Donald Trump’s leadership style (which I noted in detail several times) was bitterly opposed to this deal, seeking to undermine anything that could benefit Iran without a total dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program.  Furthermore, Israel has in the past put the kibosh on hostile regional powers’ nuclear ambitions with airstrikes against then-under-construction nuclear reactors in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1981 (ironically with Iran’s help) and Bashar al-Assad’s Syria in 2007.  To thwart Iran’s project, Israel has carried out a series of operations—including sabotage, assassinations, and cyberattacks—against Iran’s nuclear program and nuclear personnel, Sunday’s only being the latest.  And it has long sought, and failed, to push the U.S. into militarily attacking Iran and, especially, its nuclear program.

But Israel did get both the Bush and Obama Administration’s help in carrying out Operation Olympic Games’ Stuxnet cyberwarfare attack against Natanz, an attack that took out many of Iran’s centrifuges used to enrich material needed for nuclear advancements and set back Iran’s nuclear development as much as two years, and to get both American administrations to engaged in other cyberwarfare with Iran (those wanting to know about this and cyberwarfare in general should check out Nicole Perlroth’s indispensable recent book on cyberwarfare, This is How They Tell Me the World Ends).

With its nuclear program sabotaged after Stuxnet and facing increasing economic sanctions as part of intense pressure from the international community organized and led by the Obama Administration, Iran agreed to the aforementioned nuclear deal in 2015.  But after Obama’s successor Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018 (even though Iran had been in full compliance according to the most intrusive nuclear inspections in the history of such nuclear monitoring agreements, and, I would argue, foolishly withdrew, as the agreement was the only realistic, logical option), Iran has since begun activities beyond the agreement that move it closer towards (though not close to) nuclear weapons capability.  Saturday it was poised to make serious advances along this path until its Natanz facility was devastated Sunday.

Complicated Clone Wars

“OK, Brian, what the HELL does this have to do with Star Wars?” you may be asking.  By now, you’ve probably heard of, hopefully even seen, the stellar show Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the final season of which dominated streaming during our pandemic summer and, as I have noted, involves some of the best Star Wars ever made including the best movies (and far better than any of the Disney Star Wars movies); if not, get to it (especially before Bad Batch premieres on May the Fourth)!

The series takes place during the Clone War(s), which begin at the end of 2002’s Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and ends during 2005’s Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and are mainly a series of confusing battles and campaigns between the Galactic Republic and its breakaway Separatist Alliance.  The Republic is served by a religious order known as the Jedi—including Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Anakin Skywalker—whose members operate traditionally as peacekeepers and now generals, while the Separatist Alliance in Star Wars is clearly the side of “the bad guys,” led by Count Dooku, an ex-Jedi turned Sith Lord (the Sith are the ancient enemy of the Jedi).

Dooku and key Separatist military leaders are clearly evil and clearly carry out war crimes and atrocities the Republic takes pains to avoid.  While most but hardly all of the soldiers for the Separatists are droids and, thus, not usually moral actors, it is very different for the political leaders and citizens of the planets that voted to leave the Republic and form the Separatist Alliance (a.k.a. Confederacy of Independent Systems), as noted by famous Republic Senator Padmé Amidala in Clone Wars’s “Heroes on Both Sides.”

Padmé is Naboo’s now former queen from 1999’s Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and is thus one of the most famous senators of the Galactic Senate (her new role after stepping down as queen).  She is also secretly married to Anakin Skywalker as of the end of Attack of the Clones, a big no-no for a Jedi and a senator.

After a debate on the war’s politics in the Senate, Anakin suggests his secret wife Padmé teach Ashoka Tano—his padawan apprentice (and now a rising superstar in the Star Wars universe)—about politics.  Anakin keeps talking, and presents a black-and-white view of the conflict with the Separatists, with which Padmé expresses disagreement and then takes Ahsoka under her wing, take up Anakin on his earlier suggestion.

Shortly after, we hear Padmé tell Ahsoka that she has friends who are Separatists, that they are not simply evil “pawns” in Dooku’s war.  She complains that she is not able to talk or meet with them because the Senate has made any formal negotiations with the Separatists illegal for fear of legitimizing their secession and cause, noting Ashoka with her clearance as a Jedi could get Padmé to neutral Mandalore, from which they could travel to Raxus to see her old mentor and current Separatist Senator Mina Bonteri.  Up for breaking the rules to help Padmé initiate peace talks, Ahsoka travels undercover with Padmé to see Bonteri on the Separatist capital of Raxus while the Separatist Senate is in session.

In a discussion with Bonteri and Padmé, Ahsoka learns that many Separatists view the Republic (and the Jedi) as the bad guys and that far from being all mindless droids or heartless killers like General Grievous and Asajj Ventress, many Separatist are real people with families who fight—and die—to defend their families and their worlds as well as their right to separate from the Republic.  Among those who died fighting Republic forces were Mina’s husband and father to their son Lux, with whom Ahsoka has humanizing exchange: he and her mom are the first Separatists besides military officers like Grievous and Ventress Ahsoka has met, she the first Jedi he has met.

When Padmé reveals there are many Republic senators eager to explore peace, despite their sharp differences of opinion, Mina decides to introduce a motion to her Separatist Senate to begin formal peace negotiations with the Republic, a motion that easily passes, Dooku himself presiding remotely over the session.

Greedy members of the Trade Federation, Banking Clan, and Techno Union are distressed by this news, as an end to the war is bad for their business interests (in which they get to play both sides off of each other [SPOILERS: as the Sith are doing]), but Dooku assures them an attack is being planned against Coruscant, the Republic’s capital world where the Senate is located, that will derail the peace process and ensure the war will continue. 

In fact, it was even in motion before the possibility of peace talks, apparently timed to ensure a vote to allow deregulation of banks so that the Republic can obtain more funding to produce and purchase more clone troopers (the bulk of the Republic’s fighting forces) would pass after the obvious outrage and bloodlust such an attack would inspire.  The special droid units that will carry out the attack have been designed to look just like the Republic cleaning droids that service one of Coruscant’s main power generators, right by the Senate.  These droids also have been given security passes that will allow them to bypass security.  All in all, it’s a pretty sophisticated plan, utilizing information obtained from the inside and obviously planned long before we find out about it.

Shortly before the deregulation vote, when Padmé tells Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, the leader of the Republic (from her planet Naboo and a senator from there before becoming Chancellor, with Padmé’s help, at the end of The Phantom Menace), that they should give the Separatist offer to engage in peace talks a serious chance, he responds by saying “I can see why you would want so badly to believe that the Separatists. desire peace…In the past whenever we’ve reached out our hands in peace, they’ve been slapped away.  Can we believe that they’re ready to sue for peace so easily?” (such is a common refrain from many in the real world arguing against peace talks or diplomacy).

In response, Padmé confides to Palpatine that she knows the offer is genuine because she “been in contact” with her “old friend” Mina Bonteri and that Bonteri is the sponsor of the proposal.  The Chancellor takes special note of remembering it was Bonteri, (SPOILER) as he is secretly Dooku’s Sith Lord master, orchestrating the war from both sides so his power can rise and the Jedi can fall both in public opinion and from their position of power in the Republic, to be cute down and wiped out (we already see the war, from Lux’s point of view, has damaged the reputation of the Jedi for many regular Separatist citizens).

Just as voting begins in light of the new Separatist peace proposal, the Separatists droids, which have been smuggled into Coruscant and the nearby power station, change form from their cleaning droid disguises to instruments of death and destruction, killing the generator workers and then turning themselves into bombs for a “suicide bombing” (as the intro the next episode calls it) that destroys the power station, plunging that sector of the capital into chaos as the power goes off for millions (maybe even billions) of people and explosions rock the area, terrifying civilians.

Sirens wail inside the Senate as eerie red emergency lighting kicks in, and it doesn’t take long for some Senators realize (or are told?) it is a Separatist attack.  Outraged, they begin calling for revenge and to pass the bill to deregulate the banks so they can pay for more clones.  Padmé pleads with her fellow senators that the peace proposal is serious, an argument not well-received by the panicked and angry Senate.  “Obviously a tactic to lower our defenses and launch this attack,” responds Palpatine’s right-hand man.

On their way out of the main Senate chamber and still bathed in the emergency lighting, Ahsoka and Padmé are approached by Anakin in the hallway, scolding them for their unsanctioned diplomacy, but Ashoka closes out the episode by admitting that while maybe she had gone too far, “I did realize something: the politics of this war and not as black and white as I once thought they were.”

The next episode, “Pursuit of Peace,” we learn that the Senate in their anger has “overwhelmingly” passed the bill to deregulate the banks so they can move forward on new loans for more clones and an intensification of the war effort, but Padmé isn’t giving up on her pursuit of peace. 

But many of her colleagues feel differently.  A Senator (a Kaminoan, the species responsible for manufacturing the clones) proposes legislation to purchase five million more clones from the Kaminoan government and to raise the funds from the Banking Clan (now free to charge exorbitant interest that would bankrupt the Republic) to make the purchase.  When Padmé states she’d rather “stop the war, not escalate it,” the Senate erupts, many calling her a traitor and a Separatist.

The Naboo senator hardly backs down: “Whoever attacked the power grid wants us to continue the fight.  It’s a calculated attempt to destroy the peace process,” she pleads earnestly to the Senate.  Almost immediately after, a message is received and played from Count Dooku, informing the Senate that an apparent Republic attack has killed Mina Bonteri and that he is formally withdrawing the peace proposal as a result.

Padmé is crushed; the Chancellor tries to contain a smile.

Leaving the Senate chamber, her ally Senator Bail Organa (later the adoptive father of Anakin’s and Padmé daughter, Leia) approaches Padmé to let her know Republic spies found out that Dooku’s people were the ones who killed her friend, Mina, making Dooku’s message pure gaslighting (SOILERS: what many viewers will know but which probably only Dooku and Palpatine will know in the Star Wars universe is that Palpatine would have been the one to pass onto Dooku that Bonteri was responsible for the peace process on the Separatist side after Padmé confided this to Palpatine and Palpatine’s telling reaction to this information, such that Palpatine clearly instructed Dooku to silence Bonteri to derail the peace process on the Separatist side).

Aside from Senators who genuinely want to increase the war effort, Bonteri’s death—though she is a Separatist—has a chilling, intimidating effect on those in the Republic Senate who are undecided or wanting to vote against the proposed legislation.  Furthermore, Dooku has hired underworld elements to intimidate (even beat) key Senators wavering or against the bill, including Organa, and to eventually try to assassinate Padmé (and let us not forget that, in our own world, former President Trump clearly tried just a few months ago to incite a violent insurrectionist mob to intimidate Congress into overturning the results of an election he lost, members of whom wanted to assassinate Vice President Pence, Speaker Pelosi, and others).  This is a great episode where a lot of important things happen, but for our purposes we can end this review by noting Padmé, after just barely surviving an assassination attempt, ends up delivering on the Senate floor one of the best speeches of the whole series, preventing the passage of the bill that would bankrupt the Republic and escalate the war effort.  But the chance for peace has been dashed and the war will go on and on.

Real-World Debates and Another Attack on a Power System

Back to our own world.

The tactic to time an attack to derail diplomacy or undermine one or more factions, and the responses to those seeking peace that “we cannot take the other side seriously because diplomacy didn’t work last time” or that “negotiations themselves are a ploy meant to get us to let our guard down” are extremely common in real life; so is questioning the loyalty of those wanting peace, or calling them traitors who side with the enemy.

As far as the situation in the Middle East there is some important context to what very much seems to be the Israeli (or at least Israeli-led) attack on Natanz and its power station.  The day before, Iran had just introduced and announced putting into operation advanced centrifuges at Natanz.  Just a few days later would be Israel’s Independence Day.  And the week before, negotiations between the original nuclear deal signatories were beginning in Vienna.  Netanyahu has made no secret of his longstanding opposition to the Iran nuclear deal, opposition shared by most Israelis but that fails to recognize the constraints of reality.  Though it was a top priority of the Obama Administration, Netanyahu actively campaigned against it, even both challenging it in a direct address to the U.S. Congress in 2015 and claiming in 2018 to have convinced Trump to follow through on his pledged to scrap it. 

Apart from symbolically playing to a domestic audience just before Israel Independence Day and hitting Iran’s centrifuges just as Iran was celebrating their upgrades, then, there is the far more substantive timing-related goals of Netanyahu’s to derail the restart of the diplomatic process with Iran that Biden and many others hope will resurrect the nuclear deal Trump destroyed and to sabotage Iran’s program until it can be destroyed or ended.

Clearly, Netanyahu prefers confrontation and war (ideally, for him, led by the U.S.) that will rid Iran both of its nuclear program and its current regime entirely, a preference shared by his new Gulf friends in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who have been brought together through their hatred of Iran and at Trump’s encouragement; in essence, a Sunni-Shiite Cold War led by Saudi Arabia on one side and Iran on the other has merged into the longstanding hostilities between Israel and Iran and the U.S. and Iran, making for some strange yet enthusiastic bedfellows.

So, much like Dooku, Netanyahu seems to have launched an attack that hit a power station that was about more about attacking a power station.  Like the attack on Coruscant, a big part of the rationale for the attack on Natanz was derailing promising diplomatic negotiations, to destroy trust between the parties, and provoke a reaction that will make good-faith negotiations much, much harder.  As in Clone Wars with the Republic, Iran sees this as a terrorist attack.  Like the Separatists and the Republic, there are complicated factions and rivalries both on and under the surface: segments allied and in relationships with or part of the parties meeting in Vienna that are not fully on board with the negotiations and want them to fail whether or not they say so publicly, and who supported an attack and will want the other side to think those with whom they are negotiating supported the attack, too.

In fact, there is vigorous debate in both America and Iran, as we saw in the Republic and Separatist Senates, about pursuing war vs. diplomacy, with moderate and liberal camps in each emphasizing diplomacy and hardliners in both camps preferring confrontation.  To some degree, the U.S. as Israel’s closest ally is tainted by this attack regardless of whether it was for or against it or took part in it or not; at the same time, those in the Iranian diplomatic delegation know that they, too, may be painted by Iran’s response if it is deemed to go “too far.”

Still, unlike with the Separatists successfully derailing peace negotiations, it is very likely the nuclear negotiations will continue (indeed, they have already resumed with Iranian officials, as of today) and that a breakthrough will be reached eventually, as, unlike the Separatists, Iran has few friends and no massive Separatist Alliance spread throughout the galaxy, let alone a Sith Lord like Dooku to lead it; Iran, thus, is in a far weaker position than the Separatists, one only further weakened now that this attack is estimated to have set Iran’s nuclear program back around nine months, undermining its position for negotiations.

As Clone Wars teaches us, things are not “always as black and white” as we think or as straightforward as they seem, Natanz being a prime example.  As in “Heroes on Both Sides” and “Pursuit of Peace” demonstrate, conflict can often be complex and multilayered, so we should look at the Natanz attack and its motivations and surrounding issues as complex and multilayered, and avoid simplistic criticism or reductionism in most cases.  Only then can we begin to truly understand the broader strategic and tactical calculations at work in the minds of the various parties here.

Padmé, Portman, Politics, and Blowback

I would also like to note that I remember seeing this pair of episodes for the first time and realizing how perfectly these roles for Padmé would suit Natalie Portman, who played Padmé in the live-action movies (nothing against the excellent Catherine Taber, who voices her in Clone Wars).

I say this because Portman as a young Jewish, Israeli-born adult became quite a vocal defender of Israel at a time when Israel became one of the centers of world politics as the Second Intifada (the second main grassroots rebellion of Palestinians against Israeli occupation and their own ineffective leaders) raged.  And yet, in more recent years, she has not shied away from criticizing the Israeli government and Prime Minister Netanyahu for their right-wing (in her words, “racist”) policies, to the degree that she even refused to accept an the Israeli Genesis Award, often referred to as Israel’s version of the Nobel Peace Prize.  For this, an Israeli government minister said that “Natalie Portman’s actions border on anti-Semitism,” that she “played into the hands of the haters of Israel and those who aspire to destroy the State of Israel,” sounding an awful lot like Padmé’s fellow senators’ criticism of her in the “Pursuit of Peace” episode. 

The politically active and passionate Portman, then, is someone who could appreciate both sides of a conflict and would have appreciated her character’s role in these Clone Wars episodes that mirror not only the Natanz attack today but other issues that were fairly common in the past in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Portman’s own life perhaps influencing at least a little the showrunners’ interpretation of Padmé in Clone Wars.

(Minor SPOILERS next two paragraphs) It is also worth noting that, in the following season, we find Lux Bonteri has become radicalized after the death of his mother and seeks out an alliance with an extremist Mandalorian terrorist group—the Death Watch—to plot revenge against Dooku for ordering his mother to be murdered… kind of like happens so many times in war or counterterrorism operations, when collateral damage turns family and friends of the wounded and dead into violent extremists who support and/or join terrorist or insurgent movements all around the world.

In the following season, Lux has joined a rebel movement to overthrow a Separatist-controlled government on his homeworld of Onderon.  A key member of this rebel group is Saw Gerrera, who is radicalized further in this fight after the death of his sister, Steela, and would be instrumental in the future in helping the Rebel Alliance from the Original Trilogy get off its feet and, in particular, in the events that led to the Rebels discovering the secret weakness of the Empire’s first Death Star in Rogue One, a discovery that allowed Luke Skywalker to destroy the Death Star at the end of the very first Star Wars movie, Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope.  The willingness of Palpatine and Dooku to use Lux’s mother and the people of Onderon as pawns in their game would end up leading, over many years, to the Sith’s undoing.

The lesson here?  It’s always worth considering the less-anticipated potential effects of any particular action.  In our present, Iran, Israel, and the U.S. may find their actions will come to haunt them in unimaginable ways for years to come if they are not careful.

Dooku Disclaimers

I want to be clear: I am not claiming the Israelis are just like the Separatists or that Netanyahu is an evil Sith Lord (nor, for that matter, am I claiming that Iran is like the Republic in any general, overall sense).  I am in no way claiming the Jewish people or Israelis are like “the bad guys” in Star Wars, just simply noting how specific plot and thematic elements from these Clone Wars episodes fit illustratively into the current events discussed (and even in Clone Wars, we can see that most of the civilian Separatists dislike the Republic, understandably, for its very real corruption on display in these episodes more than usual and that they take their ideals and independence seriously).

Count Dooku and Chancellor Palpatine could in part certainly fit the descriptions in longstanding anti-Semitic stereotypes and conspiracy theories—shadowy, big-nosed, behind-the-scenes manipulators in dark robes practicing the occult and controlling financial interests—but that is not the at all the intent of George Lucas or the showrunner Dave Filoni, nor the producers, cast, and staff of Clone Wars, nor is that how we should read into any of this.  And yes, the Banking Clan is led by the Muun species that has big noses, but it’s a stretch to claim they are supposed to represent or denigrate Jewish people: they are aliens who look like… aliens. 

At a time of rising anti-Semitism in the United States and elsewhere, it is crucial to note that there is no serious hint at Dooku, Palpatine, or the Muuns being Jewish or that the intent of portraying the Sith Lords or Muuns in these ways is to try to equate them with or make them resemble Jews or associate their factions with the real-world Jewish state of Israel.  Anyone who really thinks this is what Star Wars is getting at simply does not understand the true spirit of Star Wars or the artists’ intent, though it’s understandable some would interpret this differently in our hyper-politicized, hyper-racialized times.  At its heart, Star Wars celebrates diversity, with waking carpets, humans of different colors and genders, and even robots coming together to fight for freedom and justice throughout the galaxy.

Yet as “Heroes on Both Sides” and “Pursuit of Peace” demonstrate, conflict can get ugly and complicated, whether in Star Wars or our current Earth, including the attack at Natanz.  I lived for over five years in the Middle East, from 2014-2019, studied abroad there briefly in 2011, studied the region from afar for many other years.  And I can tell you that, while, yes, some things are pretty black-and-white—say, ISIS is terrible—other things are a lot more complicated.  As examples:

• Iran is seen by many as a bad-guy pariah in the region, yet the current pretty awful government only came to power in the Islamic Revolution of 1979 after, and in reaction to, the U.S. and British orchestrating the overthrow of the democratically-elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in a 1953 coup that saw a far more monarchical and repressive government put in its place, and while expanding its power through supporting various Shiite Islamic militias throughout the Middle East that many view as terrorists, it is important to remember that Iran is only serious Shiite Muslim power and that Shiite Islam has been oppressed by Sunni Muslim leaders throughout the region for centuries (Sunnis are by far the largest bloc of Muslims, Shiites being the one major minority), to the degree that, without Shiite militias and Iran’s support for them in places like Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, often few if any people stick up for the rights and dignity of Shiite Muslims.
• Saudi Arabia is one of America’s oldest allies in the Middle East and supplies much of the world with oil, but has a terrible human rights record and when it comes to Islamic extremism, the Saudis are, to quote Brookings scholar William McCants from an amazing article by the amazing journalist Scott Shane, “both the arsonists and the firefighters.”
• Israel and Turkey are two other longtime regional allies of the U.S., Israel a fellow democracy and Turkey a longtime member of the de-facto-U.S.-led NATO Alliance, but both have been veering hard to the right under right-wing leaders (Turkey into dictatorship territory) and actively oppressing the region’s Palestinians and Kurds, respectively. 
• And while America promotes human rights throughout the Middle East—even saving Yazidis from Genocide in 2014 with anti-ISIS airstrikes and coordination with Kurdish forces on the ground ordered by Obama—it has often supported oppressive dictators and kings, such as Saddam Hussein when he was willing to fight Iran (until we didn’t, eventually overthrowing him in a disastrous war launched in 2003), even as it still confronts its own domestic injustices in the present. 

I could go on, but the point is, there are a lot of complicated motivations and behaviors going on, often many good and many bad acts being committed by the same leader or country, and even many of the more destabilizing and violent actors have their own very legitimate grievances while some of the actors with the best of intentions inflict incredible amounts of harm.  There is often plenty of blame to go around.  As just one example, Israel deserves a lot of the criticism directed at it, while at the same time, a lot of the criticism direct at Israel is outlandishly unfair and anti-Semitic; the context and specifics of each specific criticism need to be evaluated separately. 

This is hardly to claim that all the parties involved in this Natanz drama are morally equal or moral equivalents (far from it), but we’re not going to focus on such questions (which I have dealt with elsewhere) here; the main takeaway is that Ahsoka’s lesson from “Heroes on Both Sides” is quite applicable to our current drama.

In the end, I am simply noting the similarities in details and context between some events from two great episodes of Clone Wars and our own reality, how pondering the fictional galaxy from a long time ago and far, far away can shed light on our real world, how a Star Wars cartoon can surprisingly teach us lessons about nuclear intrigue and Middle East diplomacy in 2021 as well as about our past and even our future.

© 2021 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

Also see Brian’s Twitter thread on the Natanz attack and his eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), and be sure to check out my podcast interview with Georgia election officials Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling, both cited in Trump’s second Senate trial!

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