Re: July 17, 2026 (fwd)

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

The book praises Francisco Franco and Benito Mussolini for repressing
socialists and communists in their countries during their reigns in the
1920s and 1930s.  Obviously, these were dictators.

I was trying to find where the original reference to this book was and I
think it was
https://www.thenerdreich.com/why-trump-keeps-talking-about-communism-the-unhumans-playbook/ .
This article doesn't mention this, but it seems like the term "communist"
can only be meaningful to old people like us.  👴 Young
people probably don't understand the term or what it might be referring
to, especially given the state of education in the U.S. at the moment.

 > From: Noelle <noelle>
 > Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2026 10:18:45 -0700 (PDT)
 >
 >  > From: Heather Cox Richardson from Letters from an American  <
 >  > Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2026 06:14:02 +0000
 >  > 
 >  > View this post on the web at 
 >  > https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-17-2026
 >  > 
 >  > As Gil Duran of The Nerd Reich recalled today, two years ago, far-right 
 >  > influencer Jack Posobiec and co-author Joshua Lisec wrote a bestselling book 
 >  > called Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to 
 >  > Crush Them). Trump ally and media guru Stephen Bannon wrote the 
 >  > introduction. Donald Trump Jr. blurbed the book, saying that it provided a 
 >  > playbook to deploy “immediately to save the West.” Then–Ohio senator 
 >  > J.D. Vance also blurbed the book, saying: “In the past, communists marched 
 >  > in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through HR, college 
 >  > campuses, and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people. In 
 >  > Unhumans, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what 
 >  > to do to fight back.”
 >  > Posobiec is a loyalist who worked to keep Trump in office after voters 
 >  > elected Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. He is known for courting controversy by 
 >  > promoting what Maya Oppenheim of the The Independent in 2018 called “
 >  > wholly erroneous and debunked conspiracy theories,” including the infamous 
 >  > 2016 “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory that Democrats were operating a child 
 >  > sex ring in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant.
 >  > In Unhumans, Posobiec and Lisec argue that the United States is under siege 
 >  > by “the left,” which in their view means anyone from communists to “
 >  > progressives.” “For the purposes of this book, we will call them the 
 >  > unhumans,” the authors write, because they “oppose everything that makes 
 >  > up humanity. As they are opposed to humanity itself, they place themselves 
 >  > outside of the category completely, in an entirely new misery-driven 
 >  > subdivision, the unhuman.”
 >  > Lisec explained to Nathan J. Robinson of Current Affairs that the reason 
 >  > they called the book “Unhumans” “is because it’s a verb, to unhuman 
 >  > someone…. To ‘unhuman’ someone means to deprive someone of their 
 >  > rights to life, liberty and property.” The authors insisted that “
 >  > communists” were trying to “unhuman” those they consider good 
 >  > Americans, and that “we can’t tolerate an ideology like that” and so 
 >  > must do it to them first.
 >  > Ignoring the fascist revolutions that gave rise to World War II, the authors 
 >  > tie together left-wing revolutions from the late Roman Republic to the 
 >  > French Revolution of 1789 to the Russian and Chinese revolutions to the 
 >  > present and claim that all political positions designed to regulate business,
 >  > provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, or protect civil 
 >  > rights reflect that same left-wing radicalism. In their telling, Spain’s 
 >  > fascist dictator Francisco Franco, who said, “Wherever I am, there will be 
 >  > no communism,” is a hero.
 >  > Franco ordered illegal detentions, torture, and mass killings in the name of 
 >  > social cleansing. As Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times noted in 2024, 
 >  > the right wing has often championed Franco, but “it’s extremely unusual 
 >  > for a candidate for vice president of the United States to openly align 
 >  > himself with autocratic terror.”
 >  > The embrace of authoritarianism in Unhumans reflects the modern version of 
 >  > an ideology shaped after World War II by those determined to get rid of the 
 >  > modern state. Although the great majority of both Republicans and Democrats 
 >  > embraced such a government, right-wing reactionaries insisted it was a 
 >  > slippery slope to socialism. Defending business regulation, social welfare, 
 >  > infrastructure investment, and civil rights cost tax dollars and so, they 
 >  > said, redistributed wealth.
 >  > Over the years, reactionaries insisted that Americans who believed in such a 
 >  > system were un-American takers sucking dry the country’s makers. 
 >  > Increasingly, they demonized Black Americans or people of color and women as 
 >  > lazy and looking for government handouts, breaking laws with impunity, 
 >  > corrupting the country with their godless ways, and winning elections only 
 >  > by cheating.
 >  > And yet voters continued to elect lawmakers who supported the modern 
 >  > government. This infuriated the far right, but even establishment 
 >  > Republicans recognized that voters liked Social Security and cancer research,
 >  > clean air and reproductive rights. While they turned out voters by railing 
 >  > against the “Liberals” who supported regulations and the welfare state, 
 >  > they made sure not to cut into those programs deeply enough to cause a 
 >  > backlash.
 >  > Trump has unmasked that facade. He has put the far right in power, where 
 >  > they are destroying the modern American state. Right-wing officials have 
 >  > undermined the world trade system that underpins American prosperity, 
 >  > empowered economic monopolists by slashing regulations and public lands, 
 >  > decimated reproductive rights and healthcare, cut social safety programs 
 >  > like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid, slashed 
 >  > medical and scientific research, and dismantled the post–World War II 
 >  > rules-based international order that has maintained global stability for 
 >  > seventy-five years.
 >  > But the right-wing push to get rid of the modern state is deeply unpopular. 
 >  > And so Trump and his loyalists are embracing the idea that his opponents are 
 >  > in league with a historic throughline of left-wing revolutionaries.