Mini-Series Recap For Podcasthon - Stage 4 Of The Fascist Takeover And The Ice Gestapo

Authoritarian creep rarely announces itself; it moves in stages that feel like common sense until the rules change around us. We take a hard look at how scapegoats expand—from queer communities to immigrants to leftists—while real power consolidates behind corporate shields and obedient institutions. This isn’t a history lecture; it’s a map of how economic choices, media narratives, and policing tactics combine to normalize extraordinary powers that will not stop at the border.

We share the story behind the creative project that frames this season and use's music and Myth as an entry point to interrogate policy. From Reagan-era tax cuts to today’s corporate tax rates, we trace how shrinking obligations at the top shift the burden onto workers, weaken unions, and starve public goods. That scarcity primes people to accept propaganda, and media deregulation gave it a megaphone. When money becomes speech and corporations are treated as people, the loudest voices drown out evidence, making it easier to sell fear and harder to defend rights.

Then we follow the consequences on the ground: ICE raids, detention buildouts, and the chilling claim that protestors can be tagged as “domestic terrorists.” The 14th Amendment guarantees due process to persons, not only citizens; when agencies ignore that, they pave a path for broader suppression of dissent. We connect these dots to election-season power plays, warning signs of voter intimidation, and the historical pattern that teaches us that failed coups are followed by successful coup's. The core message is sober but not fatalistic: solidarity works. Rebuild labor power, demand media standards, tax wealth fairly, and defend civil liberties for everyone.

If this resonates, share it with a friend, subscribe for future episodes, and leave a review with one concrete action you plan to take. Your voice helps others find the show and strengthens the community we need to push back.

Transcript

Intro

Speaker 0:01

Greetings, greetings, greetings. This is uh a podcast of Peasant's Voice with artist and activist Justin John Sheck. I'm Justin John Sheck. And today the episode is entitled Stage 4 of the Fascist Takeover and the Ice Gestapo. So, um let me explain. Oh, first, uh, this episode is uh for charity. It's uh on podcasting, which is a gathering of uh podcasters who uh we choose a charity and we make an episode and we try to help a little bit. Pay it forward, uh, which is what I'm doing. Now I've been gone for a little while. I'm bipolar and schizo-effective, and sometimes I just can't handle this stuff emotionally, and I can't talk about it. Plus, when I'm manic, I'm uh aggressive, angry, uh, very uh one-sided. I forget my uh my goal, which is to unite the working class against the ruling class. Now, um how does that work? Well, let's start with uh a covering of uh a recovering of stage three of fascism, which is expand the scapegoat. I've already discussed last season uh this podcast started because of Trump's election. Part of a uh larger uh part part of a larger project that I created for for you all. It's called the Blue Collar Diaries, it's five concept albums, a film, a peasant's voice, the divided states of the poor working class, which I'm uh releasing on uh well hopefully I get to release it. It's it's it's it's doing the film festival cycle right now, so we'll see if it gets picked up. Otherwise, I'll just put it on YouTube. But um what am I getting at? The uh the song I'm gonna play from the the final concept album entitled Fascist Addict. I wrote it in uh early uh wrote and recorded it, uh play all the instruments, so on and so forth. Uh early 2025, released it August 2025, July 4th. I released this song in real time,

Stage Three: Expanding The Scapegoat

Speaker 2:35

and it's a uh collection of monologues from uh presidential speeches of the past Truman, Eisenhower, Roosevelt, Kennedy that helped tell the story. And um I'm gonna play the song for you to get us started. Now there won't be much uh many songs today. I did that in the final episode of the season last uh uh what it was three months ago. I took a little break. Sorry I do that to y'all, but uh like I said, I'm nuts. So um I just can't articulate my point. You know, it's all stream of consciousness, embarrassing bullshit, aggressive towards the wrong people. So, um in this episode we're gonna discuss we're gonna discuss uh the fascist takeover, but first, stage three, expanding the scapegoat from uh the immigrants to the leftist. Antifa, also terrorist, domestic terrorist organization. Yeah, people that don't like fascism are obviously gonna be demonized uh by this uh fascist president. Uh without further ado, in real time.

Speaker 1 3:57

Oh my god, as we stand here at this moment. His story will give to me that we find the governor...

Speaker 8:24

There are a bulldog in the Middle East. And there's something strange uh also going on about this uh returning the Jews to their homeland and cutting Palestine in half. And then uh I mean Palestine wasn't on the side of the Germans. Anyway. Uh the song covers

Project Roots And Music As Protest

Speaker 8:45

uh uh unfortunately when I wrote it I uh I I I wanted to, but I didn't um fit in slavery and uh racism and uh towards the black community that is ongoing and has been continuing for over 200 years. And um that leads me to a point about ICE This uh illegal, inept, untrained, radical takeover of uh so far blue states, but they'll be everywhere. I live in Missouri, they're coming to Missouri. It's like 700 uh ice trucks sitting in uh a lot here outside of Kansas City. They're trying to get

ICE Expansion And Constitutional Rights

Speaker 9:56

a uh detention center. You know, a uh put into the uh detention center. What is it let's call it what it is, right? It's uh concentration camp. And uh I'll define that why that is later, but I first I want to talk about the 14th Amendment. Now the 14th Amendment doesn't only guarantee the rights of the citizen, there's two sections to it. Two the rights of the citizen and the rights of the person. It was originally created for freed slaves who weren't citizens and could receive due process. Anyone who steps in this country over put puts two feet on uh on our land, this land is guaranteed the right to due process according to the 14th Amendment Amendment. There's no rights of the person not just the citizen, the person shall be infringed. So this is completely unconstitutional, illegal, evil, disgusting, and it's stage uh it's part of stage one and two of uh fascism. Uh you know, first it was the trans it was the homosexuals they expanded uh to the trans community. Anything to divide and conquer, anything to divide up the people. Because these ideas are embraced only by people that listen to propaganda. The uh this Christian nationalist movement, this evangelical prayer, this theocratic dictatorship, fascist dictatorship, this oligarchy. It's been in process for the past 60, 70 years. When Reagan came into office, uh the top marginal tax rate of the wealthy, the corporation, was 75%. So corporation was paying 45%, uh multimillionaires were paying 75%. That means in today's dollars, if you make $10 million, your $10 million in one dollar is uh 75 cents of that uh goes to the government. And this is what created the 50s and 60s after Roosevelt uh introduced this uh high tax rate on those who uh he was aware was a reason for the Gilded Age and the Great Depression, and you know, 1939 the slogan of the Republican Party. I would have been a Republican. The slogan of the Republican Party during the presidential election was uh wage labor labor is one step away from slave labor. Right? Um the unionization of America, which Reagan destroyed the Ronnie the Union busting Reagan, he was called by the union leaders. Now the unions can get corrupted too. All institutions could be corrupted, but they were our only fighting chance. This is uh you don't get the whole pie and let me and my poor and poor middle class, working class, rich working class, brothers and sisters fight over the crumbs. Okay. In all bands, chiefdoms, tribes, there was this connection people loving one another, people working together. 150,000 years of human evolution thrived working together. People working together. And then the uh, you know, feudalism kicks in, kings, lords, peasants. Now, the peasants, the lords and kings thought it was a good idea not to overwork the peasants, so they didn't revolt, so they made sure they only worked 152 days a year. More than half a year off. We formed uh capitalism, democracies, and capitalism to get rid of that system. And what happened? We haven't seen this kind of wealth discrepancy since the Great Pharaohs, as I say in my film. Uh A Peasant's Voice. The divided states of the poor working class. This is just this has been an act. Let me tell you how Reagan did it. First, he introduced trickle-down economics, give everything to the wealthy, and it'll trickle back down. Give everything to the corporation and it'll trickle back down. Now, if

Taxes, Reaganomics, And Union Power

Speaker 14:40

you were in a banned tribe or chiefdom and somebody introduced this idea, well, I'll go hunting the for the deer, but even if you get it, I get 99% of it, and you fight over the crumbs. You'd be exiled. It'd be insane. In nation states, it works. It's just an accepted philosophy in the this brainwashed world. And uh, you know, Marx wasn't perfect, but he had a good point. Anyway, uh, I'm not a Marxist, but I read what he you know, I studied every everything I could get my hands on. So, um The reality is that this is unnatural. This is not human. Okay, the pharaohs, the kings, the oligarchy is the persistent dragon in every myth we've ever heard. Everyone's always like the dragon's really insist. No, it's a myth. It's truths about human nature. So what is the dragon? The corporation. All these Republican presidents since Reagan have appointed right-wing judges who are totally beholden to the business class, because the right wing throughout history politically has always been beholden to the business class. Now, the Republican Party wasn't in the right, it wasn't right wing until the desegregation of America. The South just couldn't handle it emotionally, and they never voted for a Democrat again, you know. Roosevelt got like 80% of the the vote. Uh Truman got 80% of the votes. Because uh the working class was united. Didn't matter if you were right or left. The only the only people on the left, the the people representing the business class, what's now not left, the Democratic Party, that that right that was the right wing. It represented the business class. So they came up with a plan, the Heritage Foundation. Okay. The Heritage Foundation came up with a plan. Reagan's the Heritage Foundation wrote Project 2025. They've written the the plan for every Republican-dominated uh Congress, you know, Senate, uh, the House, uh, you know, whatever, and the presidency. Whenever they all get in power, they give tax cuts to the wealthy. So Reagan started down from 75% to about 55%. Uh corporations down from 45 to 35. Corporation's the dragon in the myth that burns your villages and demands gold to appease it. And virgins, as we see in the Epstein file. Literally, people raping kids, little babies. And ritualistic uh practices and killings, and this is just the definition of the dragon. Okay, these corporate whores and the corporate uh class. How do you give 0.1% of the population 80% of this last tax cut? And then we all fight over 20%. That's what's left over. And then those corporations are supposed to reward us, right? When inflation hits, they're supposed to absorb it. We gave you the tax cut, so prices will be lower. Well, that didn't work, so why do you what is so why do you continue doing it for 70 years? Lowering it, lowering it, lowering it. Now corporations pay 15%. Do you pay 15% tax? And most of them pay zero. Elon Musk has been given tens, hundreds of billions of dollars. He's such a genius. Nah, he's just a corporate socialist. Give me 100 billion dollars and my business will thrive. I guarantee it. For my small business. Give me 100 billion in tax cuts. Uh, trillions in tax cuts over the last 70 years. Reagan also undid, he introduced trickle introduced tripodon economics. He ended the FCC regulations that that uh watchdog that made sure there was no propaganda in the media. He ended it so he could flood the site guys with uh propagandists. This is part of the Heritage Foundation's plan. It's written in the literature. Okay, so then all of a sudden uh Rush Limbaugh gets his start. Bill O'Reilly gets his start, all these guys on the AM radio. Sean Hannity gets his start on the AM radio. And then Fox News is born. It's the most watched news organization. You can't call it news if the FCC's regulating. But you can call it news if there's no FCC regulation. And the and the and the and the quote in the mainstream media is complicit. It's all cut the commercial bitch about for something stupid about five for five minutes, ten minutes, and then cut the commercial and they're corporate corporate media. These corporations are the dragons that divide us, burn our villages, steal our gold and our virgins. If you pease them with gold and virgins, they still do they still burn your villages. They have everything. They have trillions offshore in tax havens. I guarantee we're $32 trillion in debt because 0.1% of the population doesn't pay their fair share. They take the whole pie and leave us to fight over the crumbs. Those those black people have too many of your crumbs. Those gay people have too many of your crumbs, those immigrants have too many of your crumbs. Who's the guy with the whole pie? Who's the monster with the whole pie? The dragon, the corporation, the corporate class. Okay. And you need a righteous knight to defeat this. Is Trump a righteous knight? He surprises them. Let them raise prices. Because inflation's here. We gotta raise price. We gotta raise prices. Profit six quarter, profit six quarter. We gotta have profits. Profits over people. There's no morality to it. 90% of the jobs are created by small businesses. Well, then why don't we give 10% of the businesses everything? Oh my god. Say it out loud, and then you do the opposite, and then you're rewarded by being re-elected. Reagan. He's so ridiculous. Oh my god. Everyone since then has followed the playbook up until Project 2025. And what do you do on the AM radio? What do you do with this new propaganda? You divide and conquer. The left is evil. They want your children to be gay and transgender. Because that'll get them more votes. How would they get you more votes? It's the stupidest, stupidest thing I've ever heard. But if it's all you hear, if you're only you know So the So the Supreme Court, the right the right wingers on the Supreme Court, the business class, uh behold my Monsters that were all appointed by all these up until Trump

Media Deregulation And Propaganda

Speaker 22:05

guaranteed that just told us corporations are people and you can speak with money. So corporations can speak with money. They're people that can speak with money. It's just made up out of thin air to appease a ruling class, and everybody just accepts it. Not everybody. But you know, it's accepted, it's just understood. Well, if they're a person, why are they paying a 15% tax rate? And getting giant tax cuts monstrously larger than ours. Why aren't they paying 35% like the rest of us? The working class. Because they've shifted the burden of sustaining society onto the working class. So these are the new scapegoat. Trans, gay. Leftists come later after the immigrant who's got too many of your crumbs. Oh my god. They don't even have any crumbs, they work and pay taxes. Insane. Um then you then you create a gestapo that not only is gonna take them out, but expand the scapegoats and the leftists. Twenty-two people in Minneapolis were just arrested, 22 activists who were protesting. Their free speech was taken, as I describe, and in real time. No justice for the immigrant man, and free speech is on the line. It's it's how fascism works. It's not prophetic, it's just historical facts about how fascism works. It's stage three of fascism. Easy to make the other, all these others, divide us up into little groups, divide us, fighting amongst ourselves, so that we don't fight them. Unite and fight them, and have them pay a fair share, and then we'll have the 50s and 60s uh wonder where college was basically free. It was free. You know. In the 1980s, when Reagan came in, a part-time job over the summer would pay your entire year of education. But they have to keep shifting the burden. They have to keep you pay, you pay, you pay, you pay, you pay, you pay, you pay. We'll just thrive. And bombard you with uh that's why I don't do advertisements. Actors and uh actors and uh musicians and artists and you know athletes that tell you buy this crappy corporate bullshit that'll give you diabetes. And uh, because I drink it too, and then you'll be like me. They use they use I studied marketing, they use the techniques. Cover quickly, so I don't want to bombard you. It's grabbing a hold of power, nationalizing the elections. Steve Bannon says IC is gonna surround the polls so that they can't nationalize, they can just you know, kidnap. A bunch of people who look like they'd vote Democrat. They've uh scanned the faces of the activists in Minneapolis, and they put it in a database. You know, no, congrats one of the ICE members that was being recorded, uh, came up to her, scanned her face. She said, Why are you scanning? What are you doing? Why are you taking a picture of me? And he said, Oh, I just scanned your face. Uh, congratulations, you're now a domestic terrorist. Oh my god, that's that's terrifying, right? But the buffoon said it. Because they're stupid, they're stupid monsters. Ice is full of Proud Boys and just check out the advertisements. It's all uh Nazi shit. Uh great replacement theory shit. Get the worst

Corporations As The Modern Dragon

Speaker 26:20

of the worst, do your bidding. And now they're grabbing hold of power. If it fails now, they'll find the the levers of power that got in the way so that they can uh steal the presidential election. Watch, they're gonna win. They're gonna win this congressional uh election, and then they're gonna win the presidency because what happens after failed coups, January 6th, is successful coups throughout history. They learn the levers of power, the buffoons loot learn the levers of power that got in the way. And they remove them with yes men mostly. People uh that got in the way last time are replaced by people that'll do the fascist bidding for a slice of their pie while the rest of us fight over crumbs. Just watch. It's coming. So I'm gonna take you out with a song. The hegemonic right, another song from Fascist Addict, and uh hopefully it helps explain where we're at and where we're headed.