How Trump Brought Nazis Into Republican Politics

[Articulate_and_Analytical]

How Trump Brought Nazis Into Republican Politics

Trump has activated and energized open white supremacists, who for the first time in decades have been given a president who reflects their values closely enough to inspire open defense. If you peruse Nazi propaganda sites, they contain defenses of Trump on such matters like the Russia scandal, and — when excised of references to Jews — read pretty much the same as the polemics found in normal conservative publications like the Federalist, Breitbart, and so on.

Where Nazis were once treated by both parties as an unambiguous source of pure evil, now they inhabit a gray area on the fringe of the Republican coalition. His now-infamous description of “Unite the Right” Nazi protesters as “very fine people” was not a flub or a one-off. Trump would never come out and praise Hitler, but he will stoke their race-war dreams. They are marginal members of the coalition, to be handled delicately.

Many Trump critics have reacted to this development with pure hysteria, which is a perfectly understandable response, given the history. We should be careful not to overstate the situation. The United States is not headed into world war and industrialized murder factories. But Trump has changed the orientation of the political landscape in ways that include creating a new opening for the far right.

He is calling armed men into the streets. There are pickup trucks bearing Trump fans itching for blood. One of his delusional idolaters brought a rifle to Kenosha and blundered into a bloodbath. The question now is, having come this far in four years of Trump, what would lie ahead if we have four more?

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/art...kenosha-charlottesville-very-fine-people.html

 

[Schlank]

Where Nazis were once treated by both parties as an unambiguous source of pure evil, now they inhabit a gray area on the fringe of the Republican coalition. His now-infamous description of “Unite the Right” Nazi protesters as “very fine people” was not a flub or a one-off. Trump would never come out and praise Hitler, but he will stoke their race-war dreams. They are marginal members of the coalition, to be handled delicately.

Many Trump critics have reacted to this development with pure hysteria, which is a perfectly understandable response, given the history. We should be careful not to overstate the situation. The United States is not headed into world war and industrialized murder factories. But Trump has changed the orientation of the political landscape in ways that include creating a new opening for the far right.

He is calling armed men into the streets. There are pickup trucks bearing Trump fans itching for blood. One of his delusional idolaters brought a rifle to Kenosha and blundered into a bloodbath. The question now is, having come this far in four years of Trump, what would lie ahead if we have four more?

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/art...kenosha-charlottesville-very-fine-people.html

Civil war brewing inside Proud Boys as top leader says he’s done pretending he isn’t a Nazi

The far-right Proud Boys gang has long denied that it is a white nationalist organization and has instead claimed that it only exists to defend “Western Civilization.”

However, Newsweek reports that some members of the group are ready to openly embrace being a racist organization and are dropping any pretenses of wanting support of non-white people.

The civil war within the Proud Boys started when Kyle Chapman, the founder of the Proud Boys’ so-called “tactical defense arm,” sent out a message to supporters that he no longer wanted to pretend that he wasn’t a white nationalist.

“Due to the recent failure of Proud Boy Chairman Enrique Tarrio to conduct himself with honor and courage on the battlefield, it has been decided that I Kyle Chapman reassume my post as President of Proud Boys effective immediately,” Chapman wrote. “We will no longer cuck to the left by appointing token negroes as our leaders. We will no longer allow homosexuals or other ‘undesirables’ into our ranks. We will confront the Zionist criminals who wish to destroy our civilization.”



https://www.rawstory.com/2020/11/ci...ader-says-hes-done-pretending-he-isnt-a-nazi/

 

[Schlank]

There is no question that the Republican Party has mutated into the new American Nazi Party. They need to be resisted in every way. While there still are a couple of traditional right wing conservatives in the party, the vast majority of their representatives have been cowered into the new anti-American democracy party.

 

[CornusKousa]

There is no question that the Republican Party has mutated into the new American Nazi Party.

You're fucking nuts.

 

[RobDownSouth]

How Trump Brought Nazis Into Republican Politics

Trump has activated and energized open white supremacists, who for the first time in decades have been given a president who reflects their values closely enough to inspire open defense. If you peruse Nazi propaganda sites, they contain defenses of Trump on such matters like the Russia scandal, and — when excised of references to Jews — read pretty much the same as the polemics found in normal conservative publications like the Federalist, Breitbart, and so on.

Where Nazis were once treated by both parties as an unambiguous source of pure evil, now they inhabit a gray area on the fringe of the Republican coalition. His now-infamous description of “Unite the Right” Nazi protesters as “very fine people” was not a flub or a one-off. Trump would never come out and praise Hitler, but he will stoke their race-war dreams. They are marginal members of the coalition, to be handled delicately.

Many Trump critics have reacted to this development with pure hysteria, which is a perfectly understandable response, given the history. We should be careful not to overstate the situation. The United States is not headed into world war and industrialized murder factories. But Trump has changed the orientation of the political landscape in ways that include creating a new opening for the far right.

He is calling armed men into the streets. There are pickup trucks bearing Trump fans itching for blood. One of his delusional idolaters brought a rifle to Kenosha and blundered into a bloodbath. The question now is, having come this far in four years of Trump, what would lie ahead if we have four more?

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/art...kenosha-charlottesville-very-fine-people.html

Yup...and more and more of 'em are "coming out of the Nazi closet" and fully embracing their white identity politics publlicly.
https://i.imgur.com/z7mO1G2.png

 

[Schlank]

Once upon a time the Republican Party was the party of Ike Eisenhower and Barry Goldwater. But the Republican Party has drifted far off from the values Eisenhower and Goldwater. I doubt either of those men would recognize the Republican Party of today.

Fair trade, balanced budgets, character, family values, standing up to foreign adversaries like Russia—the Republican Party of 2021 is against all that now. Eisenhower would recoil in disgust from the Republican Party of 2021.

And folks like Eisenhower and Goldwater would be rejected by Republicans like Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lindsay Graham as "too liberal". Eisenhower could never run as a Republican today.

The Republican Party is a white party —even if this will eventually be a losing proposition as the nation’s demographics continue to shift. Ronald Reagan achieved a landslide victory in 1980 by bagging 56 percent of white voters; 28 years later, John McCain lost with 55 percent of white voters. Being the "whites only party" is stupid, but it seems that racism is the main thing holding the party together at this point. If you take that away, what do they have left?

Trump began his foray in American politics by championing the racist birther conspiracy theory. Then Trump doubled down on racism when he called for a ban on Muslim travelers to the United States.

Other leaders of the Republican Party could have (and should have) declared that the GOP did not support such bigotry and staked out a moral position, but they didn't. They embraced Trump's racist racist travel ban instead.

Racism, xenophobia and fascist tendencies are nothing new in the GOP, however, for decades, the party leaders were very subtle about their racism and authoritarianism.

But Trump made it impossible to deny what the party is. There is no subtlety with Trump. Trump refers to neo-Nazis and racists as "very fine people" and refers to peaceful black protesters as "sons of bitches".

 

[LLCox]

Never trust a repubican't.

 

[allison22]

“They can do QAnon, or they can do college-educated voters. They cannot do both.”

Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney.

Yet most Republicans appear more comfortable losing college educated voters than they are telling QAnon or the Proud Boys to fuck off.

The Republican Party is morphing into a quasi-authoritarian party—one that’s becoming more willing to undermine democratic norms to maintain power. Its long-term evolution toward any-means-necessary militance is likely to only intensify as the nation’s growing racial and religious diversity, which triggers so many in the party’s base, unspools through the 2020s.

And as the Republicans lose the swing states and college educated voters, they're going to become much more vigorous in their courting of QAnon and the Proud Boys and the neo-Nazis. They're going to embrace extremism much more tightly as they drive responsible adults out of the Republican Party.

 

[YDB95]

But the Republican Party has drifted far off from the values Eisenhower and Goldwater.

There is no such thing as "the values of Eisenhower and Goldwater". They didn't like one another and they had very, very different views of what their party should stand for.

 

[CornusKousa]

There is no such thing as "the values of Eisenhower and Goldwater". They didn't like one another and they had very, very different views of what their party should stand for.

For once I couldn't agree more.

 

[RobDownSouth]

There is no such thing as "the values of Eisenhower and Goldwater". They didn't like one another and they had very, very different views of what their party should stand for.

Before the Reagan Realignment of 1980, there used to be three distinct factions in the Republican party: the Cro-Magnon Goldwater/LeMay faction ("Bomb 'em back to the Stone Age"), the centrist Eisenhower faction ("Lets pretend segregation doesn't exist and maybe it will go away") and the Rockefeller faction (aka "limousine liberals").

Reagan simplified the parties by welcome Southern conservative racists into the Republican big tent, Radicalizing the evangelicals and purging all left and centrist thought.

Interestingly, evangelicals didn't give a shit about abortion initially. Roe v. Wade went unnoticed in 1973. What radicalized them was Carter's insistence in 1978 (Bob Jones University) that religious schools admit minorities if they wanted to continue to receive federal subsidies. THAT was a hill to die on, and their consultants found abortion to be a handy trojan horse to maintain their movement.

 

[bhurry]

Before the Reagan Realignment of 1980, there used to be three distinct factions in the Republican party: the Cro-Magnon Goldwater/LeMay faction ("Bomb 'em back to the Stone Age"), the centrist Eisenhower faction ("Lets pretend segregation doesn't exist and maybe it will go away") and the Rockefeller faction (aka "limousine liberals").

Reagan simplified the parties by welcome Southern conservative racists into the Republican big tent, Radicalizing the evangelicals and purging all left and centrist thought.

Interestingly, evangelicals didn't give a shit about abortion initially. Roe v. Wade went unnoticed in 1973. What radicalized them was Carter's insistence in 1978 (Bob Jones University) that religious schools admit minorities if they wanted to continue to receive federal subsidies. THAT was a hill to die on, and their consultants found abortion to be a handy trojan horse to maintain their movement.

think you play with yourself a little to much.

 

[Spandex_Girl]

So, has the Republican Party given up on democracy? Have they gone and embraced fascism?

Yeah, I know it's an incendiary question, and some people will get all butt-hurt for me merely asking, but it's a serious question and one that we needs to be answered. Knowing the answer is of great importance to our national security.

And it's looking very much like the answer is YES, the Republicans have gone full-fascist.

Even after the assault on the U.S. Capitol, eight Senate Republicans and 138 Republican members of the House of Representatives still voted to overturn a free and fair presidential election. It is just the latest example of a party that is well to the right of most conservative parties in the democratic world.

That alone wouldn’t make the Republican party fascist. The word itself is hard to characterize. As one of Adolf Hitler’s biographers has put it, “trying to define ‘fascism’ is like trying to nail jelly to the wall.”


While no two fascist movements are entirely alike, during fascism’s heyday in the 1920s and 30s, they shared several common themes. All of those themes are present in today’s Republican Party.

1. Fascists are anti-democratic

All fascist movements took part in elections with one goal in mind: to destroy democracy and create a one-party state.

That’s happening today in Poland, in Hungary, in Turkey.

Here in America, it is the idea that only Republicans can legitimately win at the ballot box. While this goes to the heart of the attempt to overturn November’s presidential election, the claim isn’t new.

The Republicans told us that Barack Obama’s election wins weren't legitimate. They said Obama wasn't born in this country and thus couldn't be a legitimate president. Some of them are still spreading their birther conspiracy theories to claim Obama's either years in officee weren't legitimate.

If the elections aren’t legitimate, neither are the presidencies. They're trying to use the same strategy to undermine Joe Biden.

More than that, Republicans believe only they deserve to win. As far back as 1984, Ronald Reagan declared the GOP is “America’s party.”

Such thinking leads in one direction. If Republicans are “America’s party” then Democrats are the “anti-America party.” From there it’s a small step to believing that only Republicans can legitimately win at the ballot box, that Democrats only win by cheating. If saving the country from such a party means resorting to strategies like voter suppression — or violence — so be it.

Never mind that this turns the American experiment in self-government on its head. If democracy means anything, it means your side sometimes loses.

That simple fact ought to be clear to every American. Yet it, and the attempted insurrection by Trump's supporters, did not stop Congressional Republican diehards from voting to reject the electoral votes of several states for no reason other than the fact that they didn’t like the outcome of the presidential race.

2. Fascists attract followers with the “big lie”

For Mussolini the big lie was the “mutilated victory” after World War I, a stain that would be wiped out by establishing an Italian empire in the Mediterranean.

For Adolf Hitler the big lie was the “stab-in-the-back,” that the “November criminals” caused Germany’s defeat in the same war, a stain that would be wiped out by getting rid of the Weimar Republic.

For Trump one big lie isn’t enough. He has two of them.

Trump’s first big lie was what he called “American carnage,” a fantasy America overrun by crime, drugs and illegal immigrants.

Whether the crisis is real or not is beside the point. The national rebirth, the liberation will be achieved by one man: the party’s leader. HE, AND HE ALONE restore the nation to greatness. Or, as Trump declared: “I alone can fix it.”

Trump’s second big lie is that he won a landslide in the 2020 election — a victory that a new batch of “November criminals” has conspired to deny him and his followers. That was the message of his “Save America” rally on Wednesday, which immediately preceded the attack on Congress.

However, this comparison involves more than individuals. Neither Mussolini nor Hitler could have come to power without the help of established conservative politicians. Both men were tolerated because they brought with them large numbers of voters for whom these older parties had lost any appeal. Once in office, these politicians reasoned, the fascist leader wouldn’t know what to do. He would be their prisoner. Meantime, they could draw from his well of new voters to hold onto power. As one right-wing leader said of Hitler: “We are hiring him.”

The bargain made by Italian conservatives and then German conservatives was clear: They chose the fascist option. They knew what they were doing, and they did it anyway.

That same reasoning led Republicans like Mitch McConnell to back Trump’s bid for the White House. The idea was that the “adults in the room” would keep him in line.

Yeah, but they didn’t.

And they're still not keeping him in line.

To be fair, some Republicans have stood up to Trump’s subversion of democracy. Unsurprisingly, however, their numbers grow the further away they are from the center of national power. While local elections officials bravely carried out their responsibilities, while state officials refused to “find” votes that would tip the results in Trump’s favor, some Congressional Republicans also refused to go along with this blatant power grab.

Yet, these examples at the federal level have been few and some are “profiles in courage” only for the most opportunistic of reasons in the Republican civil war that is sure to come.

3. Fascists celebrate violence

Mussolini was handed power in Italy thanks to the violence and general chaos brought on by his paramilitary Blackshirts. Hitler’s stormtroopers used the same tactics in Germany.

The Proud Boys, along with other right-wing groups pledged to back Trump, have not yet become the equivalent of Hitler's stormtroopers, but these appeals to violence are dangerous. Republicans have done nothing, practically speaking, to stand up to them, even as the level of violence around Trump rallies escalated.

Even more disturbing, local and state law enforcement authorities seldom have taken action against right-wing criminals....even in the case of the invasion of Michigan’s statehouse last year. Escalating provocations went unchecked. The contrast between that and the treatment meted out to often peaceful demonstrators is too obvious to ignore, and was crystallized by the ineffectual preparation for and response to the armed assault on the U.S. Capitol.

 

[Jesus_Ateo]

After World War II, the Nazis who helped Hitler rise to power and murder millions of people, including at least 6 million Jews, were put on trial to send a warning to the world. Not all of them faced a judicial process, but enough were not protected by their high status, official offices, or claims of “innocence” and “patriotism.” Power through violence was the only language they spoke—not justice, not freedom—and they were held accountable. These criminals faced a tribunal at Nürnberg (Nuremberg) so momentous that the disgraced word “Nazi” is forever attached to those who participated in and enabled their horrific crimes.

After the war, Germany banned Nazi flags and neo-Nazis. In fact, the only way that Nazi paraphernalia got into Germany was through smuggling from other countries such as the United States, like from Nazi propagandist Gerhard Lauck in Nebraska, the man called the “Farm Belt Führer” who served four years in a German prison for distributing banned pro-Nazi materials throughout Europe.

I know this because I teach a course on White Supremacy at Smith College that focuses on anti-Semitism, anti-Black racism, and the many intersecting components of white supremacist ideology. After more than 30 years of organizing and teaching about fascism as a Black feminist activist and academic, I know the destructive influence of these noxious ideas, and I teach young people how to interpret and resist them.

Global contempt for the word “Nazi” is a lesson for us today in the United States after the attempted criminal coup at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Anyone identified as sympathetic, supportive, or financing these seditious acts that attempted to deny the peaceful transfer of power in our country should be treated with the same public condemnation that the Nazis received after World War II. This includes Nazified people in Congress, in the media, in universities, in regular jobs, and throughout society because fascism is not the fevered dream of one delusional man. Trump is a white supremacist; that he is also a deranged narcissist is really incidental.

The Republicans are a morally bankrupt political party that supported a deranged president who brought this fragile, evolving democracy to the brink of extinction simply because they can’t stand the glacially slow and righteous empowerment of people of color and any limits on their power to amass an immoral amount of wealth. To paraphrase noted Black educator Vincent Harding, we are citizens of a country that has yet to be realized.

The Republican brand as a legitimate political party will be forever associated with far-right ideologies, including neo-Nazis and neo-Confederates. These so-called “respectable” leaders coddled and stoked a white supremacist insurrection by Trump for the past four years. Their transactional opportunism enabled Confederate flags to be defiantly paraded in the U.S. Capitol, a shame not even achieved during the Civil War. They proved they don’t want to share a pluralistic democracy with other political parties and interests.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/0..._2QYNr8gnR49QdHVa3BMYxoZRDaLzS2cAJ35bMk_yvlAk

 

[Schlank]

The Republican brand as a legitimate political party will be forever associated with far-right ideologies, including neo-Nazis and neo-Confederates. These so-called “respectable” leaders coddled and stoked a white supremacist insurrection by Trump for the past four years. Their transactional opportunism enabled Confederate flags to be defiantly paraded in the U.S. Capitol, a shame not even achieved during the Civil War. They proved they don’t want to share a pluralistic democracy with other political parties and interests.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/0..._2QYNr8gnR49QdHVa3BMYxoZRDaLzS2cAJ35bMk_yvlAk

I'll be honest, the Republican Party was headed in this direction long before Trump came onto the political scene.

After Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act into law, the Republican Party almost immediately decided to base all future election strategies on getting white supremacists and scared white men (and women) to vote Republican. The white racist vote became the key demographic that the Republican Party was interested in.

From there, it just got worse.

Republicans gave up on the African-American vote and the Latino vote a long time ago. They've been trying to win elections by exclusively focusing on angry and/or scared white people. And with the angry/scared white people voting block getting smaller and smaller every year, they've realized that they can no longer win elections without voter intimidation, voter suppression, and electoral fraud.

And when even THAT isn't enough, they incite right-wing extremists to storm government buildings to kill elected government officials and overthrow the official election results.

 

[allison22]

I'll be honest, the Republican Party was headed in this direction long before Trump came onto the political scene.

After Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act into law, the Republican Party almost immediately decided to base all future election strategies on getting white supremacists and scared white men (and women) to vote Republican. The white racist vote became the key demographic that the Republican Party was interested in.

From there, it just got worse.

Republicans gave up on the African-American vote and the Latino vote a long time ago. They've been trying to win elections by exclusively focusing on angry and/or scared white people. And with the angry/scared white people voting block getting smaller and smaller every year, they've realized that they can no longer win elections without voter intimidation, voter suppression, and electoral fraud.

And when even THAT isn't enough, they incite right-wing extremists to storm government buildings to kill elected government officials and overthrow the official election results.

And when the violent overthrow of the election fails, they tell us we need to gloss over the armed insurrection, rush to forgiveness and "unify" with the Republicans so we can start to "heal".

 

[JackLuis]

Republicans are the Cancer in our Body Politic. The need to be excised from the country.

Mitch, Ted, and Josh need to be run out of Congress and the rest of the GQP Neo-fascists and dim bulbs left in the dust of a new conservative party.

 

[WillJ8787]

So, has the Republican Party given up on democracy? Have they gone and embraced fascism?

Yeah, I know it's an incendiary question, and some people will get all butt-hurt for me merely asking, but it's a serious question and one that we needs to be answered. Knowing the answer is of great importance to our national security.

And it's looking very much like the answer is YES, the Republicans have gone full-fascist.

Even after the assault on the U.S. Capitol, eight Senate Republicans and 138 Republican members of the House of Representatives still voted to overturn a free and fair presidential election. It is just the latest example of a party that is well to the right of most conservative parties in the democratic world.

That alone wouldn’t make the Republican party fascist. The word itself is hard to characterize. As one of Adolf Hitler’s biographers has put it, “trying to define ‘fascism’ is like trying to nail jelly to the wall.”


While no two fascist movements are entirely alike, during fascism’s heyday in the 1920s and 30s, they shared several common themes. All of those themes are present in today’s Republican Party.

1. Fascists are anti-democratic

All fascist movements took part in elections with one goal in mind: to destroy democracy and create a one-party state.

That’s happening today in Poland, in Hungary, in Turkey.

Here in America, it is the idea that only Republicans can legitimately win at the ballot box. While this goes to the heart of the attempt to overturn November’s presidential election, the claim isn’t new.

The Republicans told us that Barack Obama’s election wins weren't legitimate. They said Obama wasn't born in this country and thus couldn't be a legitimate president. Some of them are still spreading their birther conspiracy theories to claim Obama's either years in officee weren't legitimate.

If the elections aren’t legitimate, neither are the presidencies. They're trying to use the same strategy to undermine Joe Biden.

More than that, Republicans believe only they deserve to win. As far back as 1984, Ronald Reagan declared the GOP is “America’s party.”

Such thinking leads in one direction. If Republicans are “America’s party” then Democrats are the “anti-America party.” From there it’s a small step to believing that only Republicans can legitimately win at the ballot box, that Democrats only win by cheating. If saving the country from such a party means resorting to strategies like voter suppression — or violence — so be it.

Never mind that this turns the American experiment in self-government on its head. If democracy means anything, it means your side sometimes loses.

That simple fact ought to be clear to every American. Yet it, and the attempted insurrection by Trump's supporters, did not stop Congressional Republican diehards from voting to reject the electoral votes of several states for no reason other than the fact that they didn’t like the outcome of the presidential race.

2. Fascists attract followers with the “big lie”

For Mussolini the big lie was the “mutilated victory” after World War I, a stain that would be wiped out by establishing an Italian empire in the Mediterranean.

For Adolf Hitler the big lie was the “stab-in-the-back,” that the “November criminals” caused Germany’s defeat in the same war, a stain that would be wiped out by getting rid of the Weimar Republic.

For Trump one big lie isn’t enough. He has two of them.

Trump’s first big lie was what he called “American carnage,” a fantasy America overrun by crime, drugs and illegal immigrants.

Whether the crisis is real or not is beside the point. The national rebirth, the liberation will be achieved by one man: the party’s leader. HE, AND HE ALONE restore the nation to greatness. Or, as Trump declared: “I alone can fix it.”

Trump’s second big lie is that he won a landslide in the 2020 election — a victory that a new batch of “November criminals” has conspired to deny him and his followers. That was the message of his “Save America” rally on Wednesday, which immediately preceded the attack on Congress.

However, this comparison involves more than individuals. Neither Mussolini nor Hitler could have come to power without the help of established conservative politicians. Both men were tolerated because they brought with them large numbers of voters for whom these older parties had lost any appeal. Once in office, these politicians reasoned, the fascist leader wouldn’t know what to do. He would be their prisoner. Meantime, they could draw from his well of new voters to hold onto power. As one right-wing leader said of Hitler: “We are hiring him.”

The bargain made by Italian conservatives and then German conservatives was clear: They chose the fascist option. They knew what they were doing, and they did it anyway.

That same reasoning led Republicans like Mitch McConnell to back Trump’s bid for the White House. The idea was that the “adults in the room” would keep him in line.

Yeah, but they didn’t.

And they're still not keeping him in line.

To be fair, some Republicans have stood up to Trump’s subversion of democracy. Unsurprisingly, however, their numbers grow the further away they are from the center of national power. While local elections officials bravely carried out their responsibilities, while state officials refused to “find” votes that would tip the results in Trump’s favor, some Congressional Republicans also refused to go along with this blatant power grab.

Yet, these examples at the federal level have been few and some are “profiles in courage” only for the most opportunistic of reasons in the Republican civil war that is sure to come.

3. Fascists celebrate violence

Mussolini was handed power in Italy thanks to the violence and general chaos brought on by his paramilitary Blackshirts. Hitler’s stormtroopers used the same tactics in Germany.

The Proud Boys, along with other right-wing groups pledged to back Trump, have not yet become the equivalent of Hitler's stormtroopers, but these appeals to violence are dangerous. Republicans have done nothing, practically speaking, to stand up to them, even as the level of violence around Trump rallies escalated.

Even more disturbing, local and state law enforcement authorities seldom have taken action against right-wing criminals....even in the case of the invasion of Michigan’s statehouse last year. Escalating provocations went unchecked. The contrast between that and the treatment meted out to often peaceful demonstrators is too obvious to ignore, and was crystallized by the ineffectual preparation for and response to the armed assault on the U.S. Capitol.

This should be required reading....awesome post!

 

[CornusKousa]

So, has the Republican Party given up on democracy? Have they gone and embraced fascism?

1. Fascists are anti-democratic

2. Fascists attract followers with the “big lie”


3. Fascists celebrate violence

So do/are communist.....you're conflating authoritarianism with fascism.

Not the same thing.

The part that is actual fascism is the ultre/super/hyper-nationalism where the needs/rights of the people are subordinate to those of the nation state, strictly regimented social hierarchy and rule by the elite.

This should be required reading....awesome post!

Not shocking at all.

 

[Dribble]

Look back at history...where did the 3-word chants at propaganda assemblies begin? Where are they now?

Lock her up

Stop the steal

Death to democrats

Storm the Capital

Videos exist of Trump supporters chanting these lines emphatically with gleam in their eye, led by their leader not doing anything to stop or redirect the chants

Only Fascist traitors understand and support Fascist traitors

 

[CornusKousa]

Look back at history...where did the 3-word chants at propaganda assemblies begin? Where are they now?

Lock her up

Stop the steal

Death to democrats

Storm the Capital

Videos exist of Trump supporters chanting these lines emphatically with gleam in their eye, led by their leader not doing anything to stop or redirect the chants

Only Fascist traitors understand and support Fascist traitors

Bumper sticker slogans and catchy chants are not unique to fascism.....you fucking retard.

 

[bondageanddiscipline]

A
The Republicans are a morally bankrupt political party that supported a deranged president who brought this fragile, evolving democracy to the brink of extinction simply because they can’t stand the glacially slow and righteous empowerment of people of color and any limits on their power to amass an immoral amount of wealth. To paraphrase noted Black educator Vincent Harding, we are citizens of a country that has yet to be realized.

The Republican brand as a legitimate political party will be forever associated with far-right ideologies, including neo-Nazis and neo-Confederates. These so-called “respectable” leaders coddled and stoked a white supremacist insurrection by Trump for the past four years. Their transactional opportunism enabled Confederate flags to be defiantly paraded in the U.S. Capitol, a shame not even achieved during the Civil War. They proved they don’t want to share a pluralistic democracy with other political parties and interests.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/0..._2QYNr8gnR49QdHVa3BMYxoZRDaLzS2cAJ35bMk_yvlAk

Hitler led an insurrection against the German government in 1923 and was sentenced to five years in jail, served one, and used that leniency to commit the Holocaust. Never forget that premature forgiveness before accountability is dangerous. Fascists are violent because of WHO THEY ARE, not because of WHAT WE DO -like the ordinary Germans who underestimated the Nazis and thought they were just another political party on the right. Germans who weren’t Nazis passively went about their normal affairs by denying the realities of what was happening to their Jewish neighbors, all for the sake of “unity.”

Republicans are no longer entitled to exist as a legitimate political party because this authoritarian backlash has been building since new Civil Rights laws were passed in 1964 and 1965 in response to white racist violence captured on TV that required the National Guard to quell. Then-President Lyndon Johnson predicted that most white people would flee the Democratic Party to join the pro-segregationist, anti-feminist, and anti-gay revanchist political movement of George Wallace, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. Every undemocratically selected Republican president since the 1960s (by an electoral college designed to be disenfranchising) has failed to repudiate this neo-fascist wing of their party.

We have watched as Republicans have locked children and infants in cages. We have watched as Republicans incited violence against journalists, Democratic candidates, Democratic governors and Democratic lawmakers.

This is not "politics as usual" and it is definitely not one of those "both sides do it" situations. This is a situation where one political party is trying to do what is best for the American People and the other party is trying to turn America into an authoritarian dictatorship where white supremacists are in charge of everything, investigative journalists can be arrested for reporting on the "wrong" stories and black people can be executed by the police without charge or trial.

 

[bodysong]

November 2, 2020

Eric Cervini said he spent the afternoon calling 911 as the (truck) caravan confronted the bus
between San Antonio and Austin.

“These Trump supporters, many of whom were armed, surrounded the bus on the interstate
and attempted to drive it off the road.”

Police “responded and did not observe any traffic violations,” the New Braunfels
city manager told the Texas Tribune.

Naomi Narvaiz, a member of the Texas GOP in San Marcos, posted a video on
Twitter showing dozens of trucks swarming the Biden bus, honking and slowing
traffic with their hazard lights flashing.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/02/trump-caravan-biden-bus/

"In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong,” Trump said in a tweet.

 

[CornusKousa]

November 2, 2020

Eric Cervini said he spent the afternoon calling 911 as the (truck) caravan confronted the bus
between San Antonio and Austin.

“These Trump supporters, many of whom were armed, surrounded the bus on the interstate
and attempted to drive it off the road.”

Police “responded and did not observe any traffic violations,” the New Braunfels
city manager told the Texas Tribune.

Naomi Narvaiz, a member of the Texas GOP in San Marcos, posted a video on
Twitter showing dozens of trucks swarming the Biden bus, honking and slowing
traffic with their hazard lights flashing.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/02/trump-caravan-biden-bus/

"In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong,” Trump said in a tweet.

"Progressives" can block roads, destroy peoples cars, drag them out of their cars and beat/kill them.

I'm not seeing a problem with some mostly peaceful protesting by patriotic citizens

 

[bondageanddiscipline]

November 2, 2020

Eric Cervini said he spent the afternoon calling 911 as the (truck) caravan confronted the bus
between San Antonio and Austin.

“These Trump supporters, many of whom were armed, surrounded the bus on the interstate
and attempted to drive it off the road.”

Police “responded and did not observe any traffic violations,” the New Braunfels
city manager told the Texas Tribune.

Naomi Narvaiz, a member of the Texas GOP in San Marcos, posted a video on
Twitter showing dozens of trucks swarming the Biden bus, honking and slowing
traffic with their hazard lights flashing.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/02/trump-caravan-biden-bus/

"In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong,” Trump said in a tweet.

"When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak...as being spit on by the rest of the world."


-Donald Trump 1990, in an interview with Playboy Magazine

Here we have Donald Trump declaring that the Chinese government allowing students to peacefully protest against the government was "blowing it", but killing hundreds of unarmed protesters was a sign of strength.

This was back in 1990. This is years before Trump ran against Hillary Clinton in a presidential election, saying that he doesn't believe in Freedom of Speech or Freedom of Assembly, but he does believe in the government's right to use lethal force to oppress dissent and kill college students who dare to protest.

Trump was telling us back in 1990 that he idolizes authoritarian dictators and that he hates Western democracy, but the Republicans nominated Trump as their candidate anyway.