Here's what it really means for the Republican Party to embrace fascism

[dutch508]

Star Member UCmeNdc (8,370 posts)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100215469698

Here's what it really means for the Republican Party to embrace fascism

"Hesitancy to call the GOP 'fascist' is justified in many minds because so many GOP elites aver that they are simply giving lip-service to MAGA and don't really believe in it."

I like how Editorial Board member Lindsay Beyerstein put it. In her latest piece, she located one of the key features of fascism that even Alan Wolfe overlooks: tautology. "If Republicans can be said to believe anything, it's that Republicans, and only Republicans, deserve to rule. They are locked in a circular thought-pattern that begins and ends with Democratic illegitimacy. Democrats don't deserve power, so when they win they must have cheated, and hence Democratic power is illegitimate, and so on."

Put another way, the Republicans are good because they are good while the Democrats are bad because they are bad. You are right! It doesn't make any sense! But consider this—it's not supposed to make sense. Or, to the extent that it does make sense, it makes sense only if you are part of the in-group, which grows increasingly hostile to the out-group due to the out-group's intolerable insistence that the in-group make sense.

https://www.rawstory.com/gop-fascism-2653121302/

   'rawstory'

Captain Zero (3,183 posts)

1. You lose me at in group/out group

Whose the in group?
Magats. Old Repubs. Dems.
Whose the out group?
Magats. Old Repubs. Dems.

Thanks.

 

Star Member sarchasm (469 posts)

7. Consider this ...

“We're talking about titanic, reality-bending lies in which 2 + 2 = 5 if that's what needs to be said in the amoral pursuit of power. Importantly, the lies became, for the Republicans, The Truth such that speaking truthfully puts you on the other side of the GOP, thus deepening a totalizing worldview in which everyone in the out-group is the enemy. It does not matter if GOP elites don't mean it. They are participating in GOP fascism.”

Bernardo de La Paz (37,313 posts)

13. Since the article CENTERS on Republiqons, from their PoV they are the in-group, Captain Zero

Republicans, RepubliQons, GQP, MAGA, tRumpanzees, ... they all think they are "in". That's the POINT of the article. They don't think they are fascist because they think they are right. Even the go-along ordinary Republicans.

Star Member JoanofArgh (13,753 posts)

2. This has been going on for a while now.

Even pre-Trump. When Gingrich introduced his Contract for America it was enthusiastically adopted by far right parties like Le Pen’s National Front in France and Berlusconi in Italy. I don’t think Americans are aware how far right and fascist the GOP has been for a while now because it’s all they know.

I can remember during Obama’s 2nd term a lot of discussion about whether our democracy would survive due to the GOP only being interested in obstructing everything. They showed no interest in passing legislation at all. A political scientist wrote an article at Politico saying our democracy will only last another 20 years if it continues.

It’s all coming to a head now with Trump.

Cosmocat (13,537 posts)

11. It goes back well before him

I have read and heard enough to know it goes back even further, but Reagen was a BIG piece of it, because he effectively mainstreamed right wing hate by putting a smiley happy face to it.

It just is that each deevolution is more and more toxic, at least during my adult years.

Reagan mainstreaming and prettying up right wing bull shit to the point where it was normalized.

Nwet and company starting the process of embracing bombastic rhetoric, and starting the move toward completely abandoning bi-partisan governance.

W followed Reagan's model of putting a smiley face to it, but 9-11 was the next deevolution, because they abandoned all the poll tested "talking points" and adherence to "core messaging" to taking the easier route of fear mongering and bullying the country into the mindset that either are you are R and love the country or you are D and in league with terrorists.

Leading to them spending 8 years of BHO's presidency just getting up in the morning and whatever the first piece of bad news was going on screeds about how it was BHO's fault.

All of which had left the party so rudderless, with no foundational philosophy and so far deep into grievance politics that when 45 came down the escalator I told people he was no joke, and embodied what the party was becoming.

FBaggins (21,750 posts)

3. Doesn't make the argument well

At least... not the quoted paragraphs.

If that’s the definition of fascism... DU has a bunch of fascists.

Fortunately... it isn’t.

 

Star Member DFW (42,675 posts)

4. From a BBC article:

"The distinguished Italian historian of Fascism Emilio Gentile has written that Mussolini raised his political ideology to the status of a religious cult."

Just like the Republican God Squad. Plus ça change.............

 

[enslaved1]

FBaggins (21,750 posts)

3. Doesn't make the argument well

At least... not the quoted paragraphs.

If that’s the definition of fascism... DU has a bunch of fascists.

Fortunately... it isn’t.

Post a dissenting opinion then.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Post a dissenting opinion then.

Yep, that nugget you grabbed is perfect:

FBaggins (21,750 posts)

3. Doesn't make the argument well

At least... not the quoted paragraphs.

If that’s the definition of fascism... DU has a bunch of fascists.

Like the race card, liberals and the Democrat party call everyone else racist and fascist to hide the fact that they are the party and home of racism and fascism.

Speak a dissenting political point of view on a college campus, that person must be banned and not allowed.  Even this behavior is creeping into woke corporations in this crazy world.

The Democrat Party, as every intelligent child and adult should know, founded the KKK and Jim Crow.

[ADsOutburst]

Fascist is another term the left has muddled, mangled, and manipulated beyond recognition.

The democrats have fanatical elements within their ranks who actually think that "the only truth is power" and that there is no objective reality. These sentiments are very reminiscent of past tyrants, but somehow, this fact has eluded this author/DU.

[old dog 2]

I'm sure these ignorant fools are totally unaware of the 1990 Louisiana Senate race.  Neo-nazi, white supremacist, anti-Semite, KKK Grand Wizard David Duke was unopposed in the GOP primary.  The state and national Republican party endorsed his democrat opponent. 

Today, the entire democrat party gives a pass to the fascist, anti-Semite congressional Jihad Squad.

If I were a Jew, I would move to Israel in a heartbeat. I can't convert ... could never give up bacon cheeseburgers, Italian sausage, crabcakes, shrimp creole &ct.

[DLR Pyro]

I've been noticing that most threads at the DUmp since king dementia and his whore VP took the White House by ballot box coup have been non stop cheese and whine parties about the what the GOP needs to do to survive, or how they are fascists, or how orange man is still bad and needs to be locked up for life, but I don't see (m)any singing the praises of having an senile puppet who is controlled by rabid socialists.