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Paul Jay is interviewed on Parallax Views with J.G. Michael on a wide range of topics including his political formation, pro wrestling, the Soviet Union and Russia Gate, U.S./China rivalry, hyper-capitalism, climate change, and what to do now. Yea, it's a lot.

Paul Jay is interviewed on Parallax Views with J.G. Michael on a wide range of topics including his political formation, pro wrestling, the Soviet Union and Russia Gate, U.S./China rivalry, hyper-capitalism, climate change, and what to do now. Yea, it's a lot.

A Detroit community demands a new Amazon warehouse meet job and environmental guarantees; Amazon workers in Alabama fighting to unionize. Community activists and union organizers Tonya Myers and Frank Hammer on theAnalysis.news

A Detroit community demands a new Amazon warehouse meet job and environmental guarantees; Amazon workers in Alabama fighting to unionize. Community activists and union organizers Tonya Myers and Frank Hammer on theAnalysis.news

A Detroit community demands a new Amazon warehouse meet job and environmental guarantees; Amazon workers in Alabama fighting to unionize. Community activists and union organizers Tonya Myers and Frank Hammer on theAnalysis.news

By omitting crucial information about the recent presidential election in Ecuador, such as how the leftist front-runner Andrés Arauz has had to overcome countless obstacles in order to participate, the US media once again contribute to the effort to undermine a free and fair election, says media analyst and Ecuador specialist Joe Emersberger.

By omitting crucial information about the recent presidential election in Ecuador, such as how the leftist front-runner Andrés Arauz has had to overcome countless obstacles in order to participate, the US media once again contribute to the effort to undermine a free and fair election, says media analyst and Ecuador specialist Joe Emersberger.

Transcript

Greg Wilpert

Welcome to theAnalysis.news, I'm your guest host, Greg Wilpert.

On Sunday, February 7th, Equador held a presidential election in which leftist candidate Andrés Arauz led the election result with 33 percent of the vote, Arauz is the standard-bearer of the Citizens' Revolution movement that former leftist President Rafael Correa launched in 2007. Arauz's nearest challenger was the conservative banker and one of Ecuador's wealthiest individuals, Guillermo Lasso, who won about 20 percent of the vote, and surprisingly, the third candidate was Yaku Pérez of the Pachakutik indigenous party, which also nearly got 20 percent of the vote.

Now it looks like there will be a runoff election between Arauz and Lasso on April 11th. I say that it looks that way because there have been several concerted efforts, including from international actors, to derail the runoff election in order to prevent Arauz from winning the presidency in April. Joining me now to discuss the situation in Ecuador is Joe Emersberger. Joe writes regularly on Latin America, particularly on Ecuador and Venezuela, for a wide variety of outlets such as Counterpuncher, FAIR, and ZNet, among others.

Thanks for joining me today, Joe.

Joe Emersberger

Thanks, I appreciate you having me.

Greg Wilpert

So I should add that we both have a bit of a history with regard to Ecuador. I lived there for nearly five years from 2014 to 2018 while I was working first for Telesur English and then for The Real News Network, and you have a family background in Ecuador, even though you're Canadian, both your wife and your mom are Ecuadorian, right?

Joe Emersberger

Yes. I've been back and forth from Ecuador all my life since I was a little boy.

Greg Wilpert

So I want to start with this article that you recently published for the media watch group FAIR, where you pointed out many of the distortions in the U.S. media with regard to Ecuador. So let's start with how they – that is the U.S. media – have tended to characterize the presidencies of Rafael Correa and his successor, the current president in Lenín Moreno. That is first. How would you say are the two usually depicted and what is wrong with their depiction?

Joe Emersberger

OK, well, Correa, I should say, was depicted basically as authoritarian, and he especially got rapped for having a poor record on press freedom because he had a very contentious relationship with the press, that's certainly true, but he was depicted as basically clamping down on press freedom, and that Ecuador was a very dangerous or difficult place to be critical of Correa's government, which was a total falsehood. Mind you, there are things that you could criticize about Correa's government along that lines, which is the fact the libels part of the criminal code, things like that.

Like any country, there are definitely things you could criticize, but I would say just the press that Correa got was very bad. Private media was constantly against him and he answered back through the public media, and there was basically an ongoing battle going on. What happened when Moreno won the presidency in 2017,

By omitting crucial information about the recent presidential election in Ecuador, such as how the leftist front-runner Andrés Arauz has had to overcome countless obstacles in order to participate, the US media once again contribute to the effort to undermine a free and fair election, says media analyst and Ecuador specialist Joe Emersberger.

Paul Street argues that it's wrong to call January 6th an "insurrection"; this wasn't a grassroots rank and file populist uprising by the people, it was instigated from the top down and part of a larger organized fascist effort.

Paul Street argues that it's wrong to call January 6th an "insurrection"; this wasn't a grassroots rank and file populist uprising by the people, it was instigated from the top down and part of a larger organized fascist effort.

Paul Jay

Hi, welcome to theAnalysis.news. I'm Paul Jay. Please don't forget there's a donate button at the top of the webpage.

Is Trumpism fascism? There's been quite a bit of debate about this over the last four years, coming to a head after the events of January 6th. Was the riot on Capitol Hill, the last act of an attempt by Trump's forces to organize a military coup? Watch and read my piece titled Trump's Treason and McConnells Mayhem, where I lay out the argument that there was such an attempted military coup as delusional and unsuccessful as it was, but are the forces behind this coup attempt and the Stop the Steal campaign fascist? Is that the right use of the word? What about the millions of people that continue to believe the elections were stolen? Franklin Roosevelt said that fascism is when one section of corporate capital seizes control of the state.

If so, is the cancerous growth of the power of finance over the economy and government – a process known as financialization – the systemic basis upon which there is a malignant tumor? Whose face for now is Trump's. Of course, both major parties are primarily the parties of finance, but does that make them more or less an equal threat to the people? There are some on the left who don't take the Trump malignancy as a serious threat. Some say that because the economic policies of the corporate Democrats helped till the soil for the rise of Trump and certainly they did, there's really no difference between the two, or some argue the Democrats' foreign policy is even more dangerous than Trump's, and those working within the Democratic Party are by definition selling out, or the Democrats are more deceptive and thus more dangerous.

They are all essentially saying it's wrong to use the word fascism when talking about Trumpism. My guest has been going through the various arguments and in several articles tried to provide some answers. Paul Street is an independent progressive policy researcher, an award-winning journalist, historian, author, and speaker based in Iowa City, Iowa, and Chicago. He's the author of nine books to date.

His most recent books are They Rule: The 1% vs. Democracy and Hollow Resistance: Obama, Trump and the Politics of Appeasement. Paul writes regularly for Counterpunch. Thanks for joining me, Paul.

Paul Street

Thanks for having me on Paul.

Paul Jay

So let's start with January 6th and what happened. Some people are calling this an insurrection. Some people are using the word it should be described more as an attempted fascist coup. What's your thinking on?

Paul Street

Well insurrection I think is misleading. It implies a kind of grassroots rank and file populist uprising by the people, when in reality this was instigated from the top down. This is consistent with what even Trump insiders like Michael Cohen and others from within the administration and within the Trump circle have been warning us about for quite some time, which was that Trump would not leave peacefully. He would not accept a peaceful transition of power if he lost the election. He said it himself. He said it himself.

In fact Trump, even in 2016, wouldn't guarantee that he would honor the outcome of an election, that didn't go his way. He said the only way he can lose if it was rigged. Well, if it was rigged, that means it's illegitimate. If it was illegitimate,