I’ve had a bit of a political journey over the last five years. I have the cringe-inducing memory of telling an anarchist that “I’d vote for an anarchist for president”, to actually having enough understanding to know that I’ll be a bit embarrassed by that for the rest of my life. There’s a problem I’ve noticed, and I’m pretty sure it’s not just “a me problem” – it’s far to easy to assume that my journey of understanding mirrors that of other people who’ve lived through the same world events. I’ve debunked fossil fuel propaganda more times than I can count in the last decade, to the point where it feels as though everyone must have seen through the lies by now. I’ve learned about fascism as it has become more relevant in the world, to the point where it must be obvious to everyone what’s going on in the US right now.
And now I’m at the point where I realize that no, it really has just been me and some number of other people, who’ve gone from being some breed of liberal, with a mild curiosity about the loud folks carrying red and black flags at a protest, to being one of the weirdos who won’t shut up about fascism. The world has not accompanied me.
To be fair, a great deal of the world has accompanied me. I think a lot of the people – particularly on the right – who claim that Trump’s movement isn’t fascist are either lying, or so deep in denial that they may lack original thoughts on the matter entirely. And so, for all it has been glaringly obvious to many of us, some people will have trouble coping with Trump’s recent declaration that:
“A massive fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the constitution.”
At this point, I doubt Trump will lose much support over this. The “mask” he wore of respecting the constitution and rule of law was already paper-thin and so full of holes you could see the swastika peeking through even when the hot air wasn’t on full blast. There were so many holes I forgot the damned mask was even there. Some people may denounce this, but I think we should not trust the displays of shock from anyone who supported him and his lies up till this point. The goals of Trump and his movement have never been clearer, and as they continue their genocidal campaign against LGBTQIA people, they will probably be increasingly open in their efforts to establish fascist rule in the United States.
It may be that the GOP leadership will finally deign to rule Trump ineligible to hold the presidency, though I doubt it, but it’s been clear for a while that the world they want is the same as the world Trump wants. As I’ve said before, the GOP is a white supremacist, Christian fascist party, and they will not stop unless they are forced to.
… the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the constitution.
Arguably, the Trump Chumps did vote for an anarchist for president.
Heh
I’d say they voted for an “anarcho”-capitalist. We’re always saying that the ancaps’ approach would lead to feudalism, and just look!
I think the phrase “Trump and his movement” is a bit of a misnomer. Trump is currently the nominal head of American fascism but it’s an accident of history. Trump isn’t leading them in any sense of the word. Trump doesn’t really have an ideology at all, he just does what is in his advantage at the moment.
A large portion of the hard right and fascists lined up behind Trump because they saw a chance to advance their cause during a Trump administration. They will abandon him just as fast.
There is a big group of generally hard right types that are following Trump now but will shift their loyalty if a new king is crowned. They are not personally loyal to Trump, they want to be on the winning right wing side. There is a small group of fanboys that will follow Trump to the end but they are small.
@JM – I think you’re correct.
I did think about different language, I just doubted myself in circles. There are going to be some conservatives for whom this is their breaking point. I doubt it’ll be many, but some part of my brain was trying to be “accurate”.
I also was getting irritated with how many times I was using the words “fascist” and “fascism”. Repetition gets annoying sometimes.
Still, like I said, i think you’re correct, and I’ll try to do better on that going forward 🙂
Yes, ‘Trump and his movement’… there are a few groups in the movement.
There are the absolute hard-core supporters of Trump himself, which is a larger group than anybody would like.
There are the general whipped-up mob sorts. These people, like Trump himself, don’t really have ideologies so much as they have grievances and entitlement. Trump has mostly been keeping them aligned with him, though even he’s had them slip out of his grasp at times, such as when he started saying vaccination would be a good thing. These are the most unpredictable and fickle ones.
There are the active pro-feudal baron-wannabes. (And, honestly, there have been those forever. I still figure a good chunk of the reason the American South joined the Revolution was because the plantation owners felt they should be barons but the King wasn’t giving them those titles.) These are the people with actual plans, who mostly make sure the mob is sufficiently whipped-up and try to get them pointed in the ‘right’ direction so they can get their own people in office who will then make the decisions they actually want. These people do have an ideology and it’s pretty explicitly feudal, but fascist is a useful stepping stone to that. This is the smallest group, but historically the one with the most influence. They actually want things to work their way.
Then you’ve got the edge groups. In particular there’s a subgroup that started as the smarter members of the mob but have figured out that the influencers exist and are annoyed at them not actually following through on their promises. These are the people who feel betrayed by the system they thought was on their side, and they’ve got to the point where they’ve taken power for themselves because this whole mess has gone on multiple generations already. Here’s where your Marjorie Taylor Greene types come in: they’ve been lied to their entire lives and have no real concept of how things work, but because they speak the language of the mob better than the older influencers do, they’ve been stripping the brakes even more.
It’s a mess, and unfortunately it’s a mess that’s been building up for at least half a century. When you get right down to it, Conservative Talk Radio pretty much started because some of the people with money were annoyed that Nixon was forced to resign, and figured if they created their own parallel media to lock people in they could guarantee that the next one of ‘their guys’ wouldn’t be forced out because his supporters wouldn’t know or believe that he’d done anything wrong. The entire current situation starts at least back that far.
Both the conservative media and the mob have pretty much metastasized by this point.