Let's Call Trumpism what it is - American Fascism.

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by Modus Ponens, Nov 13, 2020.

  1. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Very interesting OP. I would have liked more examples & references, but I understand this was a necessary trade-off in order for you to cover such an expanse of history in a reasonably short introductory post.

    The paragraph I quoted, above, is one in which that trade-off was not justifiable. You've pointed to the 1960's civil rights movement as being the catalyst that brought, "Fascist," Christians back into politics, to develop power within the Republican Party. But that was almost 50 years ago. I think you owe it to your thesis to do a little more with its growth/development over those crucial years (from the perspective of today's citizens, who lived through, at least, a good portion of those years) than to merely say they have, "gradually consolidated," to slowly transform the GOP. This is especially the case because you contend that in the 1980s, under Reagan, it was a Liberal Right Republican Party, 20 or more years after the civil rights movement began, and well after the zenith of that movement. This begs the question, "Wha-HOPpen'd?" to change things so precipitously from 1988 to 2000 (since you cite G.W. Bush as part of this rise of Fascist tendencies in the GOP's voters) and what has accelerated it, since?

    I would guess, for example, that 9/11(2001) would play a significant role in citizens' desire for a strong leader. I have heard interesting examples, elsewhere, of how that event caused our society to put much more emphasis on masculine strength, & to devalue traditionally feminine attributes.

    Also, particularly with your OP's focus on racist tendencies, not discussing the impact of the Obama years on the movement towards the Fascist Right seems a glaring oversight. But don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to debate against you (at least for the moment); my aim is only to encourage you to flesh-out the period in question.

    In conclusion, I'm not saying that you could not make the case for the slow growth of this malignancy, once initiated in a backlash to the liberalization of society seen in the 60s & 70s. However-- and, full disclosure, I was a supporter of Reagan, w/o realizing this-- there is ample evidence of a strong Racist element in Ronald Reagan, including where he chose to kick off his run for the GOP nomination (I recommend PBS's FRONTLINE episode on Reagan). Further, it's hard not to see circumventing the expressed will of Congress to both, essentially sell arms to Iran & then use the proceeds to, again, without Congress's approval, funnel the proceeds to the Nicaraguan Contra Rebels, through more weapons, interfering with another country's internal affairs, simply on his own say-so-- but I know, he didn't, "recall--" as a bit Authoritarian in nature, no?
     
    Last edited: Nov 15, 2020
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  2. DEFinning

    DEFinning Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I will preface my commentary by saying the brunt of it should be taken (any specific criticisms notwithstanding) as a request for more clarification, as was my very recently preceding reply to Modus Ponens. I am always willing to consider facts & other perspectives and, when warranted, modify or even completely alter my view. Your answers to my forthcoming points will help me gauge the validity of your arguments, which so diverge from those of Modus. I did find a sufficient amount of your post interesting enough, I'll note, to take the trouble to make these requests.

    Is this not called either an oligarchy, or a kleptocracy, depending on the particulars? That is, merely having a system to enforce the Fascist Party's rule is not unique to fascism. The Communist Party of Russia/the Soviet Union, etc., certainly was very systemic, as is the very differently-run Chinese Communist Party of today. It would seem you have left out of your post the criteria that DISTINGUISH fascist systems from those similarly-purposed systems of other autocratic/oligarchic regimes (designed to ensure citizen-compliance).

    At the very least, this section needs a lot more explanation. The way you put it-- which I take to be more of an oratory mode of speaking, than an accurate conveying of your meaning-- the word democracy, itself had some transformative power. But, in lieu of changes in the system-- and you only cite 1, or we could perhaps count each half & say 2-- this is an absurd contention. What is critically lacking here is your explaining the CONNECTION between specific changes to make our system more Democratic (which is how I'm reading your argument's intent) and the results of it becoming, simultaneously, more easily CORRUPTIBLE.

    Also, let's make sure we have the same understanding of the terms we're using. In a fully democratic system, every decision would be put to a popular vote. Clearly, in this type of system, it would be much more difficult, not easier, for a cabal of wealthy individuals to corrupt the process, because there would be so many more to bribe, & potentially so many more times one would need assemble a majority of graft-corrupted voters.

    It is understood that the natural preference of would-be bribers is to have more power concentrated in fewer hands (hence, fewer people needing to be controlled through the corrupting funds). Do you not see it that way? Because, if so, it would seem, on the surface, that greater democracy would be a deterrent to bribery, & more concentration of power/fewer people in control/less citizen involvement, would facilitate corruption. I am not saying that is how it must necessarily always work out; I'm stressing the need for your analysis to go into much more depth on this point because, despite your perhaps understanding, in your own mind, how what you're saying all ties together, without your sketching in
    the crucial details, this critical part of your argument, on its face, seems to contradict common sense.
    A word of advice: any time you're quoting Hitler & expecting it to be taken by your readers as proof of something's veracity, your argument is in trouble. For all your study of fascism, are you not familiar with Adolf's theory on lying to the public: the bigger, the better? So I think you need to use other sources here, if you want any discriminating reader to give this point of yours any credence.

    Again, I raise this point not to say that you are wrong, necessarily, but only to bring up the obvious counter-argument, which your reply glosses over, if not completely ignores. If a vastly popular & charismatic leader is not an essential part of a successful fascist regime, the most effective way for you make that point is not by repeatedly stressing it as a fact, or by backing up your assertions with allusions to a book by Mussolini, but by giving examples of strong-systemed, fascist regimes that were able to rule effectively, WITHOUT MAGNETIC LEADERS. If you are unable to come up with any, then perhaps you should rethink your own position.
     
    Last edited: Nov 15, 2020
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  3. garyd

    garyd Well-Known Member

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    Oh BS the fact that you don't like some one doesn't mean you get to jail them. But thanks for proving you're just another anti free speech Democrat who firmly believes in form over substance as law. Please note Trump never even asked that Hillary be investigated let alone charged. Mean while you and yours have been trying to jail Trump since day one.
     
    Last edited: Nov 15, 2020
  4. Eleuthera

    Eleuthera Well-Known Member Donor

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    If one is into dictionary definitions, and many are not at all into them, we've had fascism in this country long before Trump ascended to the throne.
     
  5. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I what ways is Trumpism more noxius and dangerous than the Islamist ?
     
  6. Reasonablerob

    Reasonablerob Well-Known Member

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    Surely Trumpism is the antithesis of fascism? It is the genuine voice of the people who have been ignored, scorned and belittled challenging the elites who wish to perpetuate their oligarchy?
     
  7. Giftedone

    Giftedone Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I am not defending anything - so you are confused. The claim that Blue and the left Media do not engage in demonization be it of Trump or in other areas - is simply not true.

    Trump is way over the top - to the point where he is almost a parody of a typical Politician .. and this is not something I defend.

    I don't claim - "well they do it too so it is OK" and that is the difference.

    Your issue - is that you have yet to take the log out of your own eye.
     
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  8. Modus Ponens

    Modus Ponens Well-Known Member

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    My response to you grew large enough that I had to break it up. We can start here:

    The Neocons were both warmongers and adherents of Executive supremacy. On both those counts, they were preparing ground for the formal rise of Fascism to power in the United States. And it has been recognized, no later than James Madison in the Federalist papers, the clear connection between the aggrandizement of the Executive and the War Party. So no, it's not "irrelevant." Trump's utterly incoherent foreign policy stems directly from the contradictory impulses of Fascism's xenophobia; it wants the world to go away, but at the same time it wants to assert its superiority over other countries. It is mostly just a fluke, that the United States did not land in a major-state war during Trump's term. He has provoked the Iranians, the Chinese, and the North Koreans. It is known that his aides in the WH have had to countermand his orders, lest they trigger a war (and those people can't be conflated with the "deep state" bogeyman). Of all this, of course, you are likely completely ignorant, because your ideological blinders have completely prevented you from seeing Trump for what he is.

    Here is a (spectacular) case-in-point of your ignorance. The Tea Party was a hybrid: rabidly ideological Constitutionalists who at the same time were the prime agents of the descent of the GOP into Factionalism, which made the GOP especially vulnerable to the rise of a Fascist Demagogue. The Tea Party was destroyed by Trump, fittingly enough since they helped prepare the way for him!! That the Democrats had anything to do with it, is pure fantasy.

    This is all pure fantasy. What has actually happened is that White Supremacy was the tacit, implicit consensus of both national parties, from Reconstruction to the end of WWII. After the War (and to no small degree, because of the War), the Democrats began their shift from economic Progressivism of the New Deal, to the Social Progressivism of Civil Rights. It began with Truman's integration of the military, and the revolt of the "Dixiecrats." As the Civil Rights Revolution unfolded midcentury, the racist white populists who were the core of the Democratic party started to abandon the party. The South remained Solid, it just flipped from the Democrats to the the Republicans. This shift was not at all lost on Black Americans, who for their part likewise flipped from being a Republican voting-bloc to being a Democrat one. The Civil Rights era triggered a Culture War in the United States, and it led to the rise of an explicit White-Identity politics of the GOP. Racial grievance has from that time consumed the Republican party - and as all politics is downstream from Culture, it has set the GOP on course for Faction and Fascism. Already by the late 1970's Republicans were talking about the need to suppress the vote, in order to be able to win elections. And since then the party became progressively more and more anti-democratic, culminating finally in the outright takeover of the party by a racist, Fascist Demagogue. The Tea Party was, like Sarah Palin, nothing but another stepping-stone on the road to the rise of American Fascism. "Syndicalism" is nothing but a High-Church intellectualization of American Fascism.


    The Democrats are undergoing their own internal ideological evolution, one also driven by Identity-politics. The fact is that every society recognizes that there are views and opinions which are fundamentally disreputable and socially proscribed. Every society has informal and formal means of calling out those opinions and views. The only thing different with "Cancel Culture" is that we are in the midst of a culture-wide renegotiation of where the lines are. Thus our values are in a state of disequilibrium at the moment; but I think we will arrive at a new consensus in the next generation or two. Liberals have a tendency to win the Culture Wars.


    I get it, today's populist cri de coeur will defensively, aggressively deny that it is motivated by racism. It's all about the "Swamp." All I have to say is that this is self-delusion to the Nth degree. The Neoliberals have been playing Lucy to the populists' Charlie Brown for generations, and you still don't get it! You elevated a race-baiting Demagogue who not only didn't drain the Swamp, he was a force-multiplier for it! Yet nothing that he actually does can break the spell he has over his Cult. You have to give him credit, he's one of the greatest Con-men in American history.


    The Reaganite Republican party is the prime agent in the corruption of American democracy.
     
    Last edited: Nov 15, 2020
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  9. Modus Ponens

    Modus Ponens Well-Known Member

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    Second part.

    No, the definition of Fascism that I've sketched is sufficiently detailed to identify the phenomenon. You are asserting a historically-grounded definition which is narrower in scope (mainly associating it with an economic program) in order to deflect the accusation that the Trump regime is Fascist or that the Republican party is Fascist. You're doing this because you are attached to the theoretical idea of a Fascism as a form of political economy, an idea which I reject. We can say that theme of autarky belongs to Fascism, belongs to the rhetoric of Fascism/of xenophobic national glorification, but that's as far as it goes. It is no necessary condition of real existing Fascism. I have had conversations with other Fascists who make a similar move; it's (transparently) intellectually dishonest, but it does have the virtue at least of revealing your bad conscience.

    Yes. The fundamental Modern ideological divide is between Liberalism and Authoritarianism. All societies have a significant Authoritarian constituency, because like Liberalism, Authoritarianism is popular. Authoritarianism manifests in countries that are relatively Liberal as well as ones that are dictatorships. When the Authoritarianism is broadly secular, it is Fascism. As a matter of fact I don't see a significant difference between the political Authoritarianism of Communism, and that of Fascism. Inasmuch as both Fascism and Communism tend towards the Total State, the result for the civil liberties of individuals is the same. Different Fascist states may be more or less economically efficient (efficient for who is a question that remains outstanding). There is, unfortunately, no contradiction between Authoritarianism being popular, and individual liberties being trampled on. Man is an animal that will often choose servility over the risks of liberty.

    When the Authoritarianism is grounded in a religious tradition, that is not Fascism but Theocracy. For obvious reasons Theocracy is not very prevalent in our world today; it is basically confined to the Middle East.

    Liberalism is not only threatened by the Fascist ideology, it is also threatened by the political economy of oligarchy (it's no coincidence that the most common economic form under Fascism, is oligarchy). U.S. Liberalism today is compromised by an economic system which is effectively oligarchic. That has served as the entree to Fascism; the triumph of Neoliberalism in the economy/the fall of mid-twentieth century Welfare-State Capitalism - both of which are traceable to the "Reagan Revolution" - set the stage for galloping inequality and all the destabilizing effects that political scientists have remarked that this has for society, particularly free societies. The astounding stupidity of America's Authoritarian constituency here, has been a marvel to behold; for the past two generations Conservatives (Authoritarians) of modest economic means have repeatedly voted for the party that has pushed the Neoliberal programme the hardest, the GOP. The Democrats have followed along with this programme, basically because their white working class voters abandoned them and they had to do this to survive as a national party. The crying irony of it all being of course that the Authoritarians have been repeatedly voting against their own basic economic interest, contributing directly to their own socioeconomic immiseration - again, only to go back and keep voting for the Oligarchs! The stupidity of this is incredible - and yet, understandable, in terms of White Supremacy. Steve Bannon is correct when he observes that "politics is downstream from Culture."

    Anyway, the result has been that Conservative Populists (Authoritarians) have finally revolted and staged a takeover of the GOP, for the benefit of a racist Demagogue. A Demagogue who is nothing but an empty suit and Grifter Supreme, an aspirant to the Oligarchic class and who has governed as one. Still the hens cheer for the fox that they have elected. In the end, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

    It's hard to predict where the Authoritarian constituency will go, not after they have been so powerfully roused. There is an opportunity here for a much more talented demagogue to rise to take Trump's place. The only one I see that could come close to having Trump's emotional connection with The Base (never a more apt term) is Tucker Carlson. We shall see...


    To speak of today's Democrats (Good Grief, led by Joe Biden) as "violent mobsters" is simply unhinged. Even intelligent Authoritarians have whipped themselves up in to this kind of hysteria. I guess all it is, is a projection of themselves onto the party they hate.


    I'm not sure what you're talking about, when it comes to a "list." I will say that every single person that is associated in the Trump regime, every lackey of that regime in government, deserves the internal exile of being shunned utterly. They are all Quislings, betrayers of our Liberal society, and they ought never find work in government again ever, and I have no problem with every restaurant owner throwing them out of the establishment, every social media company banning them for life.


    The point is not that Trump could with any effectiveness assert the power that he claimed. His incompetence on that score is well-established. The point is that he claimed such power, unabashedly, repeatedly. Taken in the context of everything else he says and does, it signals clearly that he aspires to be a tyrant. The fact that his lemmings - both his voters and the national party that he has put into his pocket - offered not a whisper of objection or rhetorical pushback to such wild claims, demonstrate the live threat such rhetoric poses to liberty in the United States. Fascists routinely wave off one outrage from this Demagogue after another, claiming that it's "just words." I don't know whether such claims are more naive or more cynical. Words are deeds - for everyone, but especially for the Head of State, ******mit.

    Fascists are congenitally empathy-challenged, you never grasp how other people might be viewing the world. Perhaps if Obama in similar circumstances was making such wildly expansive (and Unconstitutional!) claims of his authority; perhaps if Obama at the same time asserted that he "took no responsibility" for the unfolding national calamity. Cripes, I can only imagine how you people would have gone nuclear...


    How can you be so blind? Trump has demonized immigrants - even legal immigrants! That's not Fascist? Trump has indulged xenophobia twice against the Chinese - first with his "trade war," then again with this rhetoric of the "Wuhan virus." That's not Fascist? Trump's gratuitously punitive policies against Iran are also traceable to his xenophobia, his racism. He has coddled up to other dictators - that's not Fascist? He has attempted the political prosecutions of his political enemies - that's not Fascist? He has demonized the press - that's not Fascist? He has governed less as a United States President and more as the Tribune of his own ethnic group, sponsoring himself as the political champion of White-Identity against nonwhite citizens! That's not Fascist?! I could go on, but the point is that you have no objection to any of this, so it actually surprises me that you just don't admit Trump's Fascism and your full-throated support of it. Instead you are resisting my (accurate) assessment of the phenomenon. I guess like previous Fascists in history, you are politically astute enough to not want to have your agenda called out for what it is...

    Trump was no "liberal Republican." He reversed the Mexico City policy, he issued executive orders removing recognition & protections for transgender people in military service; Hell, he even fought to deny immigrants serving in the military to be granted U.S. citizenship! That sound like a "liberal Republican" to you! Family separations at the border, conducted with such malign neglect that hundreds of those separations are permanent(!) - that sound like a "liberal Republican" to you?!

    His foreign policy towards Iran has been based on twin prejudices: First the desire to spite Obama, second the desire to gratuitously inflict harm on the Iranian people. Well, there is also the third motive of cozying up to the Saudi regime, something he and his family has clear financial motive for doing. In that connection of course there is his craven refusal to call the Saudi regime to account for the Kashoggi assassination - Yeah, that sounds like a real liberal Republican! Sounds so "neutral"!

    I could go on (and on). The point here is that you actually don't care about the truth at all here. It's enough for you to gaslight and say that exact opposite of the truth, whenever it serves your political purposes. The Big Lie is how you Fascists roll.



    Whether or not the Republicans have succeeded in establishing a Unitary Executive, the point is that they have certainly tried and that is all that suffices to establish their Authoritarian bona fides.


    Every Liberal should have misgivings about the way that Executive orders have expanded to become quasi-legislative actions. It is not good for Liberalism for the Executive to be so powerful. There can always come a time - like these last 4 years - when an unscrupulous Chief Executive can come along and engage in massive abuse of the prerogative. And Yeah, I have a problem with things like the appropriation of funds for the military, in order to build a wall on the Southern border, when a border-wall has already been rejected by the Legislature. That kind of action is every bit as Unconstitutional as open defiance of the Supreme Court. Things like DACA are a special case. When the Congress is under a legislative blockade, because opponents of the President don't want to go down on record for opposing things that the President favors - and that are popular, like making provision for these illegal immigrants - then unilateral action by the President has some justification.


    Shutdowns should never be seen as any sort of legitimate maneuver in budget negotiations. No surprise that it has always been the GOP (whether from the Legislative or the Executive side) that has engaged in this sort of Constitutional brinkmanship. The line-item veto was shot down, among other reasons, because it would give too much power to an Executive that had already become pre-eminent over the other two branches. It's not difficult to imagine how an unscrupulous Executive could leverage the line-item veto to make Congress suborn itself to him. As an Authoritarian, you have no problem with this. As a Liberal, I do.

    Again, spoken like an Authoritarian. The Unitary Executive pertains to the national government, not to the governments of the several states. A president needs to assert extraordinary authority to compel the states, when it comes to prerogatives that are not derived from the Constitution. The first step towards this is simply the Executive's fiat-assertion that it can dominate the several states. Trump is as we know on record for making that assertion. Not that that bothers you, because you're no Liberal.
     
    Last edited: Nov 15, 2020
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  10. Modus Ponens

    Modus Ponens Well-Known Member

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    Third part.

    Here we may have a rare point of concord. Our military budget is bloated, and for the sake of the national fisc we need to slash it, immediately, by at least 50%.


    The national reckoning with the legacy of White Supremacy was going to happen in the United States, eventually. It was inevitable, and it appears that the time has come. It's a profound test of our traditions of Civic Liberalism, I admit. It's causing many people to give up on Liberalism altogether, and to opt for Fascist Authoritarianism, instead. Trump being removed from the stage does not change that. I think the arc of history will bend in the Liberals' direction, but we shall see. Probably the greatest danger we face is defeat in war while we are in the midst of this internal struggle. Just like in the case of Ancient Athens during the Peloponnesian War , such a defeat could bring down the democracy.


    Sorry, there you're talking about a national myth ('myth' in the sense of a cornerstone cultural belief). Belief in democracy is not ab "academic conceit" if it's what children are brought up with.


    It's true, Fascism has not arisen in America because of Trump. The roots of American Fascism are traceable to the changes in the Republican party that have followed from the changes in the national culture occasioned by the Civil Rights era that began in the 1950's and 1960's. Instead the Trump phenomenon crystallized the rise of American Fascism.

    Of course, every ideology has its High-Church, intellectual adherents, and it's Low-Church, demotic adherents. Trying to claim that Mussolini's particular formula for Fascism is what Fascism "really" is, is simply textbook genetic fallacy. Fascism - and Liberalism - instead has to be evaluated as it really exists. Liberalism for its part is beset with certain internal contradictions that put into question its long-term viability (something the Founders in their time already understood). And Fascism has to be understood as an ideological mongrel, incorporating elements as diverse as Modern populism and pre-Modern Patriarchy. Still it's clear to me that there is a through-line lineage from Fascism to pre-Modern Authoritarianism, and Fascism is an ideology that is primarily anthropological and political, rather than derivable from any given system of political economy.

    Seriously you could be a spokesman for the Chinese Communist Party. This reads like straight CCP anti-Western boilerplate. Needless to say, you won't prevail in your vision for America, without it coming first to political violence.
     
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  11. freedom8

    freedom8 Well-Known Member

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    Please read again: I wrote as dangerous and noxious...
    All fanatics are dangerous, whatever their affiliation. Trumpism has become a cult that reminds me of mccarthysm.
     
  12. Modus Ponens

    Modus Ponens Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, you can stop right there. I am not going to have a conversation with a Birther.
     
  13. pitbull

    pitbull Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Trump doesn't like the Germans.
    Anyway, during his 2nd term you'll have to sing: "Donald. Donald uber alles, uber alles in the world!"
     
  14. pitbull

    pitbull Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Trump doesn't like the Germans.
    Anyway, during his 2nd term you'll have to sing: "Donald. Donald uber alles, uber alles in the world!"
     
  15. PARTIZAN1

    PARTIZAN1 Well-Known Member

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    He liked and stilll loves Deutch Bank Trump as long as they do not divulged his financial secrets. he hates Merle because she stands up to AH's and various dirt bags.
     
  16. Modus Ponens

    Modus Ponens Well-Known Member

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    No, Fascism, as I've been claiming, is a popular phenomenon, a product of the mass-politics of the post-Revolutionary age (i.e., the industrialized state, emerging after the American and French Revolutions). Fascist leaders leverage the anger, fear, and resentment of the people to install themselves in power, in the name of helping the people, but the real agenda is to entrench their own power - at the direct expense of any who would oppose them. Trump is indeed a Fascist by this reckoning.
     
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  17. mitchscove

    mitchscove Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You can stop right there. I'm not going to debate with an Islamic Fascist or any other flavor of fascist.
    https://milnenews.com/2020/11/14/an...-couple-because-they-support-president-trump/
    Didn't mention Obama's place of birth. Like fascists of the Islamic variety, Obama had no tolerance for people who disagreed with him, aka infidels. The only thing worse than an infidel to fascists is an apostate like Trump, who was a Democrat and major donor to Democrats before leaving the cult for the Republican Party.
     
  18. pitbull

    pitbull Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yes, Ms. Merkel is a very strong woman. She's not afraid of dictators and wannabe dictators like Trump. Trump can't cope with that. He can't cope with anything except playing Golf. I'll never understand how a crappy idiot like Trump could become president. :(

    The last days of his presidency prove this. Donald Trump is the worst POTUS of all time!
     
  19. pitbull

    pitbull Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yes, Ms. Merkel is a very strong woman. She's not afraid of dictators and wannabe dictators like Trump. Trump can't cope with that. He can't cope with anything except playing Golf. I'll never understand how a crappy idiot like Trump could become president. :(

    The last days of his presidency prove this. Donald Trump is the worst POTUS of all time!
     
  20. Patricio Da Silva

    Patricio Da Silva Well-Known Member Donor

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    The essence of your claim, given you have distributed the weight of culpability evenly, is that repubs and dems demonize their opponents.

    Well, in my view, there is tremendous disparity on on that count, whereupon Trump, by far, demonized his opposition far more egregiously than any president in history, as my quote of him supports it. Any criticism (being conflated with 'demonizing') of Trump must be removed from that accusation because such characterizations are accurate, and provable.

    That is the more salient point I'm making.
     
  21. Patricio Da Silva

    Patricio Da Silva Well-Known Member Donor

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    Opinions by those in the peanut gallery is not fascism.

    Fascism comes from the man at the top. It means the dissolution of the rule of law or rendering it to a sham.

    You don't like the fact that many dems believe Trump needs to be held accountable. That's not 'trying' to do anything but the venting of anger at the man many believe has authoritarian qualities.

    Trump told the audience that 'if I were president, you'd be in jail' in his debate with Hillary. Now THAT is fascism. Apparently genuine fascism doesn't bother you at all, only that which exists in your imagination, does.

    But no one is suggesting holding trump accountable be done without a trial, due process, etc. That's democracy in action.

    Obviously, you do not understand what fascism is.
     
    Last edited: Nov 15, 2020
    clennan likes this.
  22. dairyair

    dairyair Well-Known Member

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    Did you read your post before hitting Post Reply??
     
  23. Modus Ponens

    Modus Ponens Well-Known Member

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    Thanks for your thoughtful post. I think that there's enough prima facie evidence that latter 20th century Conservative Populism was governed by racial animus, and that even before that the Republicans as a party were susceptible to Authoritarian Demagogues, like Joe McCarthy. The racism and Authoritarian tendencies of the party were signaled early on by Spiro Agnew, for example, and the whole Nixonian trope of "Law and Order" neatly packaged both racial animus and the privileging of social order before all other values. The birth of Movement Conservatism, with the ushering into the party en masse of White Evangelicals (legacy-Democrats who, since the end of Prohibition and the Scopes Trial, had largely removed themselves from politics) in response to the Civil Rights era, is another key marker. Paul Weyrich, arch-conservative Christian and Republican activist, was calling for the restriction of the franchise (meaning, discouraging minority voters) even before Reagan was elected. Reagan, as you pointed out, engaged in dog-whistling appeals to racist conservatives, and engaged in Culture War rhetoric against the Welfare State (with his "Welfare Queens" defamation). Lee Atwater notoriously infused appeals to racial animus into the 1988 presidential campaign, and by all accounts engaged in the kind of political dirty tricks (in his scheme to destroy the Hart campaign) that hearkened directly back to Nixon's tactics for subverting political fair play, tactics characteristic of states governed by Strongmen. By the 1990's the Republican party had grown a new, powerfully effective media-arm in A.M. radio, which was driven by racial animus and which employed Culture War to get downscale Republicans to vote against their interests by supporting candidates who advocated Neoliberal economic policies.

    All that is more or less anecdotal, but I believe that if you dig further into the history the same story can be told in ever-more granular detail. In the end 50 years is not all that long a time period, and in such a time frame it's not an easy task to transform a regular political party into the kind of party-before-country Faction that the Founders always feared would emerge; so it's possible to point to many public statements, political turning-points, and policies along the way in leading to this transformation.


    Really, by the accession of Gingrich to control of the Congress in 1994, the foundation had already been laid for American Fascism. Much of what happened subsequently was only the working-out of the political and cultural logic that Conservatives subscribed to. Obama for his part was clearly the most proximate cause for the crystallization of the American Fascist movement, with Trump; Obama and Trump probably accelerated the trend, but it was already there.
     
    Last edited: Nov 15, 2020
  24. dairyair

    dairyair Well-Known Member

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    Brownshirts belong to the gov't. At present, the closest groups are Proud Boys, Boogaloos, patriot prayers, etc.
    thought crimes, again, done be gov't.
    tRUMP tried to bribe a foreign gov't. That is obvious. He used his office for personal political gain. Impeached presidents don't deserve a 2nd term. Sad so many voters didn't agree.
     
  25. Borat

    Borat Banned

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    Wrong, they belong to a party

    The Sturmabteilung (SA; German pronunciation: [ˈʃtʊɐ̯mʔapˌtaɪlʊŋ] ([​IMG]listen)), literally "Storm Detachment", was the Nazi Party's original paramilitary wing.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung

    Antifa and BLM are the Democrat party's violent fascist paramilitary wing.
     

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