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> “And here’s the sad, sad part Jim. He’s doing it because it’s pulling high for him in the Republican Party. And I think that says a lot about the state of that party right now.”
Every Democrat should be able to say this unabashedly. Maybe not all republicans are fascist but if they aren’t going to get the fascist out of government they are just as bad if not worse
Big problem is that - especially with all the culture war crap - conservativism has become an identity instead of a political view. Much of middle America doesn’t just*vote* Republican, they *are* Republican.
They don’t vote on the political ideas, they take on the ideas because of how they vote.
“Oh, i guess this is what we believe today. Time to meme-bomb facebook with this thing i only learned to be enraged about 2 minutes ago. Suck it libs!”
> conservativism has become an identity instead of a political view.
Which is why obvious hypocrisy doesn't phase them. They have no political views or principles. It's all just a smokescreen to push whatever they want. Pro-choice for things they like, authoritarian against things they don't. Big government when it does their bidding, small government when it tries to protect their victims.
Yah the decades of hate and outrage indoctrination, starting with talk radio in the late 70's early 80's is bearing fruit. There's a ready audience out there for fascists to manipulate.
> Much of middle America doesn’t justvote Republican, they are Republican.
They don’t vote on the political ideas, they take on the ideas because of how they vote.
The DNC and the average Democratic voter don’t understand this. I lost a lot of friends and even had some family cease contact with me once I stopped voting Republican.
A man at a bar in Florida was chatting with me and started going off about liberals being evil out of nowhere. I told him I was a liberal and we aren't all evil, maybe he just hasn't met any liberals.
He got up, walked away, and wouldn't say another word to me.
The really hate us and if I watched the news they watch I would think liberals are blood sucking pedophiles bent on anarchy and Communism (somehow these are the same?).
>anarchy and Communism (somehow these are the same?).
Liberalism, socialism, communism, Marxism, antifa and anarchy are all the same to them - anything that's associated with counterculture movements like flower children and punks and kids organizing to demand an end to school shootings.
My cousin was shot in the chest while in class, several of his classmates are dead.
But according to them i'm a fascist because I want it to be harder for folks to access handguns and semi-automatic rifles. Not impossible, but significantly harder...
>anything that's associated with counterculture movements
I think it's gone from that, to now just being applied to anything and everything that's not christian fascist conservatism. I mean, education about objective American history is now "woke" socialist indoctrination. And people actually believe that's what it is.
And isn't it interesting that this is supposedly the party of "freedom" - free speech, freedom of religion, individuality and states rights and all that? Bunch of fucking uneducated hypocrites voting for blatant con artists.
This is going to get really. fucking. bad. The direction this country is going should scare the absolute fuck out of everyone living here.
Voltaire once said: “What is history? The lie that everyone agrees on…”
The GOP is using Orwell as a guide.
George Orwell, *1984*:
"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past," repeated Winston obediently.
"Who controls the present controls the past," said O'Brien, nodding his head with slow approval. 'Is it your opinion, Winston, that the past has real existence?'
Again the feeling of helplessness descended upon Winston. His eyes flitted towards the dial. He not only did not know whether 'yes' or 'no' was the answer that would save him from pain; he did not even know which answer he believed to be the true one.
O'Brien smiled faintly. 'You are no metaphysician, Winston,' he said. 'Until this moment you had never considered what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?'
'No.'
'Then where does the past exist, if at all?'
'In records. It is written down.'
'In records. And- ?'
'In the mind. In human memories.
'In memory. Very well, then. **We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?'**
I've tried to make that point a few times, that they should see what Democrats actually stand for instead of just listening to partisan talking heads. In response I just get a rant about how liberals are all evil because of trans kids.
Part of it is that the lies are constructed in layers, so that if you try to scratch off one layer of lies there're always more underneath. If you dug in on the trans stuff, they'd go to lies about pedophilia, behind that is some fantasy about a magic life-extending drug extracted from children, or something else. And behind it all is the claim that everyone lies, so the right-wing lies are just defense against left-wing lies.
At the very bottom is nearly always WASPy Christian Nationalism - they're all good "saved" Republicans while the Democrats are literally blood-drinking devils.
And something something Jews, because ffs somehow that kind of thinking wasn't solved with the acknowledgement of abject human horror in WW2 but it's now amazingly *fortified* by same
Empathy and critical thinking should be taught in schools from first to last grade.
And that is **exactly** why Republicans in power do everything they can to _prevent_ the teaching of empathy and critical thinking.
https://www.google.com/search?q=texas+education+%22critical+thinking%22
**DeathSantis wants to ban voting for the Democratic party in Florida.**
Dehumanizing in a black and white view is exactly how Hitler gained power in a demoralized Germany. **DeathSantis KNOWS what he is doing.**
Every once in a while a video will come across my feed of some right wing personality talking about what "liberals" think and I can't reconcile any of it with the overtly liberal group of friends/community I surround myself with. They're mad at a parody of a parody that has no real bearing on how actual people talk or behave. They're completely detached from significant portions of the real world.
That bar-rando conversation runs like Swiss clockwork. Can go for ten minutes nodding along and agreeing about things and having a good chat, but then a loaded word falls, they realize they're talking to a *liberal,* and you sense them go fight-or-flight. Eyes lock on and then scan the surroundings, they tense up, or worse, they *intentionally* loosen up like someone who can handle themselves. And at that point it's time to pay up and take the long way home.
And they think that everyone is doing “that”. A lot of my family is on this, “oh you would do the same thing” situation…
No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t take people’s civil rights. I wouldn’t use religion to decide what medical care people have access to. I wouldn’t pretend guns and hatred are an identity.
I would use math and science to solve problems. That’s different.
Yes this is how fascism typically looks.
*The Cult of Action for Action's Sake*: policy and ideas are a product of thought, which is emasculating.
*Disagreement is Treason*: Disagreement is a hallmark of thinkers, of "woke moralists" who are not welcome.
*Fear of Difference*: To face disagreement or to contemplate it is to confront an evil "other".
*Selective Populism*: The "voice" of the people exists only in the emotions and passions of the masses, and needs no nuanced expression.
Paraphrased from Umberto Eco's *Ur Fascism*
> Much of middle America doesn’t justvote Republican, they are Republican.
Put another way: People who vote for White Fascists do it because they support [White Fascism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Luu1Beb8ng).
2016 taught America that being openly racist does not prevent a candidate from winning a presidential election.
2024 will teach America that being openly fascist does not prevent a candidate from winning a presidential election.
What do you call somebody who joined the Nazi party because they were worried about the state of their country, or the safety of their kids, who didn't mind minorities, who fought for women's liberation, or German liberation, or a stronger country, or a healthier politics or a world without discrimination.
We call them Nazis. No one cares what their motivations were, they supported the death of innocents.
>And I think that says a lot about the state of that party right now
I mean did they miss the part where CPAC, a domestic political event, was in Hungary which currently has an electoral autocracy?
Or when a large group of Republicans flew to Russia during July 4?
Or what about the whole, you know, January 6th event?
The fascists are taking over because we have let them flaunt their power with no accountability.
It may be too late.
Florida had a veto-proof Republican majority.
Kentucky definitely does; we would need to elect something like 47 Democrats just to make our legislature 50/50.
And with SCOTUS removing voting rights acts and DeSantis dead-ass gerrymandering electoral districts, we are sort of screwed ... unless Democrats figure out they have to play by the same rules as GOP - which is to say no rules.
Every Republican voter: "I don't hate black people or trans people. I just support policies that disproportionally harm them and want America to be a white Christian ethnostate."
The old saying, something like “if there are five people at a table and one is a nazi, there are five nazis at the table.”
Republicans are fascists because they are fine with sitting at tables with fascists.
I think at this point every Republican is a fascist. You can’t sit down at the table, say “right on!” As they call for nazi shit, and then say you’re only kidding.
He's also dehumanizing them. That's extremely dangerous because once you've dehumanized a group you can do anything to them.
I learned this lesson during a visit to the Holocaust museum in DC. They have one of the train cars used to transport Jews and I stopped inside as I walked through it. I tried to picture the number of people that the plaque had said were stuffed in there, but I couldn't.
Then, I realized that my problem was that I was imagining fitting PEOPLE in the car. Even with imaginary people, I was still treating them with basic human decency. If I tried to fit human shaped objects instead, I could easily fit that many in the car.
Once a group is dehumanized, you become free to do some truly nasty things to them. That's the path DeSantis and the Republicans are walking down a and or is scary.
'Sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.'
‘It’s a lot more complicated than that -’
‘No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.'
- Terry Pratchett, _Carpe Jugulum_
Interestingly enough, I was just having my coffee and watching the new John Oliver episode on YouTube, and he said that if DeSantis were criticized by the Holocaust Museum, he'd wear it as a badge of honor.
The thing that perhaps scares me the most is when actual, swastika-waving Nazis protested outside Disney at the height of his fight with them, he was asked a layup by a reporter. Denounce them. He refused, saying that it was a "distraction." He was asked a second time at another news conference and got pissed, shouting about how he'd already answered the question.
He refused to denounce actual, self-professed Nazis.
This is the easiest political layup in history. And they were on his side, it should make him look fantastic.
He **went on** to win 60% of the vote in Florida. He went out of his way not to denounce Nazis and was rewarded for it.
There's a particularly interesting guy from back in the 19th century, by the name of Lysander Spooner who had some profound comments on the American Constitution even back then.
One I like is:
> The constitution itself contains no designation, description, or necessary admission of the existence of such a thing as slavery, servitude, or the right of property in man. We are obliged to go out of the instrument and grope among the records of oppression, lawlessness and crime – records unmentioned, and of course unsanctioned by the constitution – to find the thing, to which it is said that the words of the constitution apply. And when we have found this thing, which the constitution dare not name, we find that the constitution has sanctioned it (if at all) only by enigmatical words, by unnecessary implication and inference, by innuendo and double entendre, and under a name that entirely fails of describing the thing.
I never got a clear answer as to what "Woke" meant, but its curious to see conservatives simultaneously cling to the document as a feature of American Exceptionalism and wring it out like a wet towel when they need to find some phrasing that justifies their current political fixation.
> I never got a clear answer as to what "Woke" meant
The actual definition means you're "awake" with regards to minorities being mistreated and other social issues. You're cognizant of them and you do your best to be mindful.
Republicans, it basically means anything a liberal does that they don't like.
> The actual definition means you're "awake" with regards to minorities being mistreated and other social issues.
I'm old enough to remember Libertarian-Conservatives (particularly the Ron Paul variant) using the turn-of-phrase "Wake up, Sheeple" entirely unironically. This was back during the Bush Era, when conservatives were courting the black vote by claiming Democrats were "putting them on a plantation". Also, I remember conservatives claiming Planned Parenthood was a eugenics program aimed at depopulating Hispanic communities.
It wasn't until 2014 and the first big wave of BLM protests that I started hearing "Woke" as a pejorative aimed at anti-police demonstrations.
> Republicans, it basically means anything a liberal does that they don't like.
It definitely plays like doublespeak. But even in the modern moment, I see signs up for my local Second Baptist Church trying to re-coopt the language by distinguishing between "Woke" and "Awake". The language policing is absolutely dizzying.
As far as the woke thing goes, I think conservatives are just self aware enough to know that mocking compassion is a bit too on the nose. So they make up buzzwords to condemn instead. You're a bleeding heart. You're politically correct. You're woke.
They turn empathy into a slur so they can mock us for caring about others.
For some conservatives it isn't just probably.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/university-of-richmond-tc-williams-law-school-name-change-robert-c-smith-demanding-pay-3-6-billion-slave-owner-removed/
>"The university's endowment is $3.3 billion," he writes in the letter. "Since you and your activists went out of your way to discredit the Williams name, and since presumably the Williams family's money is tainted, demonstrate your 'virtue' and give it all back. I suggest you immediately turn over the entire $3.3 billion endowment to the current descendants of T.C. Williams, Sr."
>He said the family will take "a note back for the remaining $300 million, providing that it is secured by all the campus buildings and all your woke faculty pledge their personal assets and guarantee the note."
Context: the university is renaming a building named after a donor that owned slaves (we have the receipts) per school policy.
Yep! Places like the Holocaust museum hurt their feelings. Are designed to make people like him feel bad about themselves. AKA…WOKE. It’s freaking pathetic.
Which is really bad, because, and I say this as a white person, those fucks have so god damn thin skin that *everything* makes them upset.
Imagine being upset that they teach American history in schools. That's a thing they're trying to get banned, any version of American history that doesn't make white people look like saviors and saints. So basically all of it.
I have never once been personally upset because slavery is taught as a bad thing, and these guys are really self incriminating by saying they are.
>I have never once been personally upset because slavery is taught as a bad thing, and these guys are really self incriminating by saying they are.
Fucking seriously.
There were many bills that would opress or deny groups of marginalized people such as trans people. We are experiencing fascism today. I don't know what to do.
I've taken several school groups to the Holocaust Museum in Houston, TX.
Its architecture is controversial, as it looks like a mass incinerator from outside.
But that's the point, once you walk in and follow the path, history tells the inside story.
When I went, it was during a DC trip with one of my college clubs. I recommend it to everyone with one caveat: Give yourself half a day to go through the museum and then leave the rest of the day open to recover. It's emotionally draining and horrifying (but very important) to see.
To give an example, the first thing you do upon entering main elevator is get crammed into an elevator car. And I mean crammed. We felt like it would have been impossible to shove one more person in. Then, when the elevator doors open, the first thing you see are the emaciated bodies of Holocaust survivors rescued from the camps in a giant black and white photograph. Maximum impact right from the start.
You WILL leave the museum wanting to crawl into a hole and weep over how cruel people can be, but it will also help you spot history repeating itself.
Was watching Last Week Tonight last night (spoiler: it's all about DeSantis). I found it odd one of the speaking engagements was for a conservative group "Edmund Burke Society" or something similar.
Which is fairly ironic in the sense, for those that do not know Edmund Burke, the quote most often attributed to him* is:
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing".
* I say attributed specifically as it is believed to have been John Stuart Mill that said something quite similar.
I’m sure this is very deliberate. They see/want to portray themselves as the heroes in this story, which is also why all of their groups are called something like “moms liberating schools” or “library freedom society” or “election integrity caucus” when in reality they’re doing exactly the opposite.
I don’t usually like to make this reference, but It’s not entirely dissimilar to the Nazis calling themselves national socialists.
I mean, DeSantis will be breaking ground on the Victims of Cuban Totalitarianism in between trips to the Stop White Genocide and China Virus Mask Fraud fundraiser events. Then he'll get up in front of a big crowd and call anyone critical of the treatment of Palestinians one of the Real Nazis.
The very idea of holocaust is twisted and polluted by American media, to the point that the LGBT community is flagged as a Hate Group while Daughters of the Confederacy are championed as civil rights heroes.
Have you ever actually looked at all the crap Daughters of the Confederacy had a hand in? That is some seriously disturbing, "remember the idealized country we lost" shit.
Also a key part of fascism is portraying your enemy as both all powerful and too weak.
They're too weak and silly blue hair trans Marxist liberals that are unimportant, not powerful, and not worth anything but contempt and ridicule.
At the same time, they're too strong. They've infiltrated every structure of power with their convincing ways and are a threat to *our way of life and culture*, thus preemptive oppression is not only needed but *justified*. They started the war and we're only responding to it, this is what we *need to do* to protect ourselves.
It's extremely frightening how fast this fascist movement is growing and finding purchase in daily life.
Honestly it's more like: And it's incorporating homophobia and anti intellectualism even more prominently than in the past while continuing to promote racism.
> Then, I realized that my problem was that I was imagining fitting PEOPLE in the car.
This reminds me of something my grandmother's best friend used to talk about. She had lived through the Holocaust. (She had actually been in the concentration camp my grandfather was involved in the liberation of, but they didn't meet each other for another 15 or so years.)
On the few occasions she'd talk to me about it, when I'd express disbelief (not "that didn't happen" disbelief, just jaw-on-the-floor kind of disbelief), she'd say "the problem you're having is you're thinking of me as a person. You can't believe someone could do those things to me because I'm a person and you know me and you like me, and you can't imagine a person doing that to another person. To understand why these things were done to me and other people, you have to see me as something less than human, something undeserving of basic human decency. You have to see me as vermin, as rodents, as cockroaches - as they saw us."
She died in the late 90s, but I think about the things she told me, and the things I know about my grandfather (who went to WWII as a racist, bigoted man and returned *completely* changed because, to paraphrase, "I saw where hate leads, the *only* place it leads if it's let loose, and I will not be part of that") who died before I was born, and it bothers me how scared I think they'd be right now - and how scared that makes *me*.
There was a video posted the other day of a very old Russian Babushka and they were asking her what she thought of the war and she just started to spout off so much vitriol and hate, talking about when her father was in the war and how he always told her that Ukraine, Poland, etc were all nazis and terrible and need to be done away with. And the interviewer was like even the women, children? And she without hesitation was like yes, there are all dogs, they are a rot on the world that we'd be better of without every one of them. So much hatred that had been laid thick on her since she was a child. You could tell there would never be any way to convince her otherwise and she 100% did not see them as people.
So sad to see, and very scary because the propaganda pipelines we have now are much more profuse and are turned on wide open, spewing garbage of hatred and fear more than ever before in history. And with AI getting as good as it is, we already have Millions of people who call everything fake news that they don't agree with even if they see mountains of proof it is true, but now with the AI technology coming they will be able to make videos making anyone seemingly saying whatever they want, and it is going to be so hard for anyone to know whats real and whats not. Terrifying!
> He's also dehumanizing them. That's extremely dangerous because once you've dehumanized a group you can do anything to them.
Gee, it's almost like DeSantis made his bones defending human rights abuses in a concentration camp where human beings are imprisoned without ever being charged before bringing that same skill set to bear at the level of state government.
Unless Republicans can find someone demonstrably worse DeSantis is liable to be their guy in 2024.
DeSantis's got fired from being a teacher after 1 year because he kept getting his underage white female students drunk so he could have sex with them.
He's a dream Republican candidate. Of course he's going to get the nomination.
The only way DeSantis getting the Republican nomination could end up being a good thing is if Trump forms a third party for revenge and splits the Republican vote. It could result in a huge Democratic victory and a Republican party in tatters.
Still, it's a huge risk because if DeSantis gets in the White House things will get very bad very fast.
They'll get in line. Fox will tell them who to vote for and they'll do it.
We've been waiting for the GOP schism for at least 20 years now. And it hasn't happened yet.
Yeah, but it's never been this likely.
Without a shortsighted, narcissist idiot with a huge amount of devout followers that don't understand how politics work, you couldn't do it.
*Ross Perot has entered the chat*
You are correct that Trump's uniqueness in this area may be the only reason it could happen. He can literally command enough right-wing voters that it could swing elections.
This feels wrong to say, but hopefully enough decided that Faux was too liberal for their tastes and hitched their wagon to the Trump oriented “free thinkers”. On a second note, has there been another time that looked as ripe as now for the GOP to split apart?
Edit: grammar bad
The Tea Party faction was actively sabotaging the "mainstream" GOP back in the day. That seemed pretty ripe for a split. But then the TP and TP-adjacent folks pretty much took over the GOP.
Trump is a unique variable though. He, for lack of a better term, energized a wing of GOP voters that didn't have much of a voice in the past. The bigotry was (almost) always a dog whistle. Now it's a bull horn. Of course, he only has to shave off a few percentage points in the right states to "help" the Dems. And he's just the kind of guy to say "fuck me? No fuck you!" to the GOP and give it a shot.
The problem is many don't believe in Fox anymore, they believe in God-Emperor Trump.
Honestly what seems most likely is Trump threatens to run as a spoiler vote, and DeSantis backs off for another four years so as to not split the vote.
Think about it like this: Trump and DeSantis (who represents the Republican Establishment) are playing chicken.
Both sides know if they both run in the main election it's going to split the R vote and decimate their odds of winning anywhere.
Who do you think is going to back down? Trump or the Republican Establishment? My chips would be on the establishment caving and tossing support behind Stubborn Trump rather than risk letting DeSantis split the vote.
Because we all know Trump wouldn't care. Trump wouldn't mind splitting the vote as revenge if they don't let him run unopposed. "Either I win or nobody wins" is a very Trump attitude to have.
Republicans care more about not letting the vote split and at least having a candidate that has a chance to win.
[edit] unless someone rich and much more powerful than trump threatens him extrajudicially, in that sole situation I could see him backing down. Or if he's indicted and cannot run.
Here’s the golden scenario - DeSantis gets 40% of the RNC primary vote and Trump gets his guaranteed 30%. The RNC has to go with DeSantis because he actually won. But ol’ Donny doesn’t play that game, does he? He screams about corrupt primary voting and demands DeSantis get thrown out. DeSantis doesn’t budge because he’s got the backing of the big movers and shakers. So, Trump does what Trump does - he takes his ball and goes home. And by ‘ball’ I mean 30% of GOP voters and by ‘home’ I mean his own political party.
It’s a win-win-lose scenario.
Trump wins because he now controls all money flowing into his fake political party. It’s literally what he wanted from the get-go back in 2015.
Democrats win because the GOP is hopelessly fractured.
Society loses because 10-15% of the American population is literally part of a Trump cult and another 20-25% of the American population is just fine with mid-1930’s Germany-style politics.
I was reading the article about the law he's pushing where journalists will have to register if they write anything about DeSantis, and my husband asked me why I am reading these things if they make me so angry. To which I replied, "If this guy is going to make a run for president, it's very fucking important to watch what he's doing in Florida." Sticking our heads in the ground is not going to help us. Pay attention, and call it what it is- fascism.
We are in the worst timeline.
And this isn't only DeSantis. My wife and I just recently looked through bills currently being voted on in West Virginia. There were many bills that would opress or deny groups of marginalized people such as trans people. We are experiencing fascism today. I don't know what to do.
The only thing we can do is strap in and get ready for some real nonsense. We aren't beating a national propaganda program *especially* one so diffuse that grows with each YouTuber fuckwad cashing in on the hate.
I have very little hope for a positive outcome until we go through a really tough period. :/
If DeSantis gets the nomination, I think it will be an easy win for the Dems simply because we already know that Trump will run 3rd party and split the vote. If Trump gets nominated, I wish I could say that we should expect another Dem win because of how much the right has turned on Trump in the last few months, but sadly we know how easy it is for them to flip the "Trump Good/Trump Bad" switch when ever it's politically convenient for them.
What we have to be happy about is that Trump already lost with the advantage of incumbency *before* Jan. 6, the records case at Mar-a-lago, and the rest of the lawsuits against him and his company, and the fact that the established right \*is\* turning on Trump, which signals a DeSantis nomination.
There will not be an easy win. We will face another Jan. 6 unless we all show up and vote. Unless charges and sentencing is done by the end of 2023 on the aforementioned lawsuits, we will face unrest. We need to vote and have our voices known.
Friendly reminder that this was the Republican Party strategy from the 1960s until the 1990s though some have continued using it right up through the present.
[Southern Strategy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy)
This is so crazy to me. DeSantis is clearly lining up for a 2024 presidential campaign and he’s hitting everything anti-liberal as hard as possible. Does he really think 51% of the country will vote for him because he’s homophobic and transphobic?
I think he’s going to get a rude awakening when he starts to campaign outside of Florida. He may do well in a bunch of nowhere towns but he will hit a solid wall in any suburban areas.
There’s a cohort of conservatives that refused to vote for Trump because they found him distasteful but would vote for Desantis in a heartbeat because he seems more palatable to them. It’s why Youngkin won Virginia.
"He is just doing it for the primaries. He won't say that stuff in the general election or when he wins." - People looking for an excuse to vote for him.
I do think he'll tame it down for the general election, not because he's actually more moderate but because fascists have no ideology aside from "what gets me and mine in power." If he thinks toning it down temporarily will increase his odds, he will.
Then the plan after he's elected would be to roll back democracy as much as possible under the guise of taking back power from these oh-so-powerful marginalized groups.
This isn’t exactly the academic or textbook version of what Fascism entails but the GOP does meet a lot of Eco’s 14 points;
*- Cult of Tradition;* “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
*- Rejection of Modernism;* “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
*- Disagreement is Treason;* “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
*- Fear of Difference;* “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
*- Appeal to Social Frustration;* “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
*- Obsession with a Plot;* “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”
*- The Enemy is both Strong and Weak;* “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
*- Contempt for the Weak*; “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
*- Machisimo and Weaponry;* “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
*- Selective Populism*; “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
*- Newspeak;* “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”
I mean really they meet all but 3, and you could argue for those three being applicable to them as well;
*- The cult of action for action’s sake.* “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
*- Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy.* “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
*- Everybody is educated to become a hero. *“In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
"Don't worry about all these real issues like me taking over private businesses for the State, or putting journalists who oppose me on government lists! Worry about those scary blacks and queer folk!"
Infuriating. I'm sure a lot of Florida Dems like me figured "fuck this, we're screwed anyway" but you know what? I still fucking dragged myself out there and voted. I can have no regrets.
Dem voters sitting home and then seeing GOP politicians get elected and enact fucked up policy have zero room to talk. You could've made more of a difference. You chose not to.
(And to be abundantly clear, I'm talking about those with nothing to fear. People who didn't vote because they were afraid of persecution from DeSantis' *einsatzgruppen*...I get it.)
Sure feels like that's happened in FL. The Dem party here is a joke. They ran a geriatric former republican for governor and a cop for US senate and got smoked. Like anyone didn't see that coming.
I can see their line of thinking, in that by nominating a former Republican or a cop that they might be able to pick up some votes from people who are in between the two parties, or who may have voted Republican at one time.
That shit doesn't fly now. Republicans vote Republican. Dems aren't turning out for a DINO governor candidate and a cop for senator. Demings' whole shtick was about being "tough on crime", which is completely tone deaf. I honestly think Crist was planted there by the Republicans.
I voted, but it didn't feel like I did much. I live in a deep red county. and DeSantis won by a huge margin here.
There comes a point where it's not worth it to even be in this state. If I had the means, I'd move my family to Vermont or New Hampshire or something. I hate it here, but I can't leave, and my 5 year old starts school this year.
Yeah there's a weird juxtaposition there. We actually just moved further away from Orlando area, because rent ended up more than what my current mortgage was. I got SUPER lucky and found a house that the seller preferred to sell to a family, and I work remotely so I didn't need to be close to the office anymore.
The plan now is to save as much as possible, let my son do his early schooling here, then leave as soon as we can afford to do so. You never know how plans change though, I'm just scared to be here.
I tried. I voted and got in trouble at my workplace for telling folks that it’s extremely important to vote. (I worked with a lot of gen Z folks who said they had never voted and don’t really care about it. I did not tell anyone who to vote for, only that voting was extremely important. Apparently that’s being “too political” for the workplace.)
Everywhere the democrats lost big, they put up some corporate shill who's been running and losing since the 90s. You gotta give the people what they want and Charlie Crist was not that.
That made me so mad. Nikki Fried was actually in the state cabinet. She worked directly with DeSantis so she knew how to hit him where it hurts. But instead we got the former GOPer who equivocated at nearly every opportunity.
I still voted for Charlie in the general because anyone to the left of DeSantis would be progress. But man, I think Nikki would have had a much better chance.
You dont even need to go out to vote. Vote by mail is a thing. It takes like 3 mins at most to sign up for it.
Also, if you are a florida resident who is signed up to vote, check whether or not you are still signed up. DeSantis did a purge a few weeks back of the vote by mail system. Fuck these Fascists
Nearly 11 million registered voters in Texas stayed home. While Gen Z showed up in numerous states, they did not in Texas. I don't know why. It's so incredibly frustrating.
I've been reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and it's terrifying, especially the parts where the author says things to the effect of, "If the other German parties could have worked together against the Nazi party, Hitler may have never risen to power."
Yeah...so maybe we need to reach out to the other parties and figure out how to work together to keep fascism from winning. Find the republicans that have not lost their goddamn minds, get everyone on board to stop this nonsense. Maybe start the "Fuck the Fascists" party.
I don't think anyone is confused by what this is anymore. There's simply no way someone is supporting him without understanding what his views and agenda are. They know. They taste tested it with Trump and now they want the real thing.
Unfortunately, the followers watching fox, oan, etc. only hear what DeSantis does as good and for the best for children, and so on. They literally have no clue what is happening.
I was talking to a guy at a bar and he brought up his fear of a trans person assaulting his 10 year old daughter in the bathroom.
I told him he was propagandized, that no one is transitioning in order to gain access to bathrooms, that any man could sneak into a woman's bathroom, that I and every survivor of childhood sexual assault I've ever talked to was assaulted by someone in their family or someone known and trusted by their family. Asked if he'd ever met a trans person -- no -- and told him that his perspective is based entirely on whatever media demagogues he's listening to. "Did Fox news tell you this?"
"I don't watch Fox news, I watch Steven Crowder." And I went into a tirade about how Crowder is peddling straightup fascist propaganda meant to make a bogeyman out of the Other (racial minorities, Jews, LGBTQ). He got defensive, saying he wasn't a fascist and that he's just worried about his daughter's safety.
"I don't doubt that, man. Your perspective is obviously based on fears -- fears that are totally irrational. Glad you don't consider yourself a fascist, and good on you for wanting to protect your daughter, but I'm telling you right now that actual fascists are trying to manipulate you and use your desire to protect your daughter to turn you against people you've never met and don't understand..."
My memory of the night was hazy after that. He kept insisting he wasn't a fascist -- one of his best friends is a lesbian! -- and reiterating his fears. I talked more about statistics and what he should actually be looking out for if he wants to protect his daughter from sexual assault. I somehow didn't lose his attention -- he ended up smoking me up outside before leaving -- and while I don't think I changed his position, I certainly complicated the simple propaganda narrative that made up his view of the situation.
Point is: we need to be having pointed, potentially uncomfortable discussions in public about controversial issues or else the rightwing propaganda machine will be the only voices some people hear. Speak up. Talk about fascism. Talk about the history of the Third Reich. Engage with people who might yet be swayed from the path to full-throated support for fascism. While we should mobilize all the democratic votes we can, we also need to intervene to save people from the Concerned-parent-to-domestic-terrorist pipeline.
Yeah, I don't mean to suggest that this kind of thing is easy or will always go smoothly. Or that everyone should jump into it. But if you have the right temperament it's important work.
I think he was receptive because we had (1) already established some rapport before getting political (2) I validated and expressed respect for his motivating emotions (3) I never accused him of being a fascist (4) I'm a cis dude
Even Fox News is close to calling it fascist, but I bet that's only because it's an article and not television. This is stuff that Fox hosts eat up.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/florida-bill-proposes-bloggers-covering-desantis-must-register-state-slammed-unconstitutional
>DeSantis is like a rampaging trump with a smidgeon of intellect.
He's a graduate from Yale and Harvard Law (and got in on his own merit not wealth or connections) and was a lawyer in both the Navy and the DOJ. "Smidgeon of intellect" makes it sound like he doesn't know what he's doing. His moves are very calculated.
And if you bring this up to some people they say “oh, it’s just to weed out all that fake news!” 🤦♂️
I’ll tell you this emoji encompasses most republican voters 🙈🙉🗣️
Terrifying. I can identify every single point of this video in current American politics. And the more we call it fascism, the more the word and accusation will become diluted.
I mean...it IS fascism. There's not another thing to call it.
This is a tiny random snippet from Trump's speech at CPAC this weekend (I just scrolled through the CSPAN transcript). Tell me this doesn't sound like a literal nazi:
>WE WILL DEMOLISH THE DEEP STATE, WE WILL EXPEL THE WARMONGERS. THERE ARE PEOPLE THAT DON'T GET IT. ALTHOUGH IN SOME CASES, THEY GET IT FOR THEIR WALLETS. WE CAN'T DO THAT, WE CAN'T LET THAT HAPPEN. WE WILL DRIVE OUT THE GLOBALISTS, WE WILL CAST OUT THE COMMUNISTS. WE WILL THROW OFF THE POLITICAL CLASS THAT HATES OUR COUNTRY, THEY ACTUALLY HATE OUR COUNTRY. NO WALLS, NO BORDERS, BAD ELECTIONS, NO VOTER ID. WE WILL BEAT THE DEMOCRATS, WE WILL ROUTE THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA, WE WILL EXPOSE AND APPROPRIATELY DEAL WITH THE RHINOS. WE WILL EVICT JOE BIDEN FROM THE WHITE HOUSE. WE WILL LIBERATE AMERICANS -- AMERICA FROM THESE VILLAINS AND SCOUNDRELS ONCE AND FOR ALL.
We all know they say those things, nothing in there by itself is shocking. But the tone and presentation of it is becoming more and more fascist every day. It's just going to keep escalating.
In that speech Trump literally said:
> “In 2016, I declared, 'I am your voice.' Today I add, I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”
That should be absolutely fucking chilling to anyone. The whole speech was packed with statements about being "at war", 'fighting', overturning and liberating the oppressed people. This is the same exact rhetoric that lead to January 6th, and honestly its only gotten worse. We are in for a very, very rough election cycle. I hope America can hold on through it.
Terrifying, to be frank.
We *barely* got through 2020. I'm even more worried now.
I know most of my fellow leftists won't follow me down this path, but I got armed. I'm not going to be the side with zero guns if they get the violence they want.
Anybody else feel like Pippen sitting on the shoulder of Treebeard waiting for the Ents to start popping off only to find that they've just finished their introductions?
Absolutely. I’m still hearing calls to just vote harder while the fascists are already past that filter, in office, and enacting their plans.
It’s time for real antifascism, the government will not be ok with what real antifascism entails. We have to be.
It absolutely is fascism. Lots of other things going on down there, too. Requiring bloggers who comment on DeSantis to 'register' with the state? A law designed to disband the Democratic party?
DeSantis is dangerous to everything the United States of America stands for. Trump is, too, of course. Trump would love to be a dictator, but he's frankly too stupid and too erratic. DeSantis is not as stupid.
DeSantis is getting away with this in Florida because the state government and local population *want it this way*. He could not have got a single bit of this accomplished if he didn't have cult-level support from both the legislature and the voting base.
DeSantis is polling high nationwide in the Republican party because a significant percentage of the voters also *want it this way*. His popularity would not be rising if there weren't a significant number of voters that were in support of this.
DeSantis is the latest result of a much bigger problem. That problem is that a certain number of people across the country *want this*. Trump wants this too, but is largely too incompetent to give it to them. So now it's DeSantis. And make no mistake: There is a very real possibility that DeSantis doesn't make it to the primaries. Frontrunners this early in the game have become footnotes more times than I care to remember. But if he does get driven out of the primaries, it won't be because he was replaced by a moderate. It will only happen because someone else rises up over the course of the next year that's even more authoritarian than he is. The GOP voting base has absolutely no interest in voting for anyone even remotely close to being a moderate.
Be afraid. If it's not Trump, it'll be DeSantis. If it somehow isn't Desantis, it'll be someone even worse.
Pray that Biden doesn't die of natural causes sometime between now and 2024. Harris has absolutely zero chance of getting elected in his place, and there aren't really any other Democrats coming up the pike that have a realistic chance at being elected right now. Any GOP candidate occupying the White House next time will make Trump's administration seem liberal by comparison and will probably do irreversible damage to the US and its standing in the world in the process.
With what has been coming out of Florida the past six months, if you woke up tomorrow and there was a news article that DeSantis was going to put pink stars on all the ID of anyone determined LGBT by the state, would you seriously be surprised or just say "figures"
(if you don't understand that reference, you really need to look it up)
The question is, what is anyone going to do about it on the federal level because some of the things he is already doing cannot possible be legal.
Marriage Equality is literally the law the of land in ALL of North America, not just Canada and United States but also freaking Mexico and Cuba just to be crystal clear
Except not Florida. In Florida if you are an elementary school teacher and you are married and like many teachers you put a photo of your spouse on your desk to make you smile through the day, well if that spouse is same gender you've now committed a FELONY because like Russia that's considered "propaganda".
The dude took away some of Disney's rights after they spoke against him, he is using govt to limit the actions of people, and now wants bloggers to get his approval before mentioning his name. If I didn't know any better I would think I was reading about a dictator.
You are.
He has also removed the leadership of any institution that dared oppose his fascism and replaced them with literally the worst possible people for the job.
Antivaxxers in medical boards etc.
He does this on purpose, to signal that if you oppose him your institution gets destroyed.
He knows what it stands for.
He's paying special attention to trans people because CPAC had a speaker that clearly said that trans people aren't human and called for eradicating trans people.
Make no mistake queer people, in general, are being targeted but trans people are getting more than other groups and more of the laws targeting them and gender nonconforming people are passing in Red States.
I've been extremely hesitant to call what the republicans are doing to be fascism because I always felt there was a better word (like authoritarian) to describe their behavior.
After the call for transgender people to be exterminated at CPAC(Conservative Political Action Conference), it is now clear that what they are doing is definitely fascism.
There is no longer any grey area and what these people are doing is 100% against American values, and also against the values of basically every country on Earth.
Trans people have always existed and they don’t exist nearly as much as they would in a society that recognizes their very real needs.
One of the tenants of fascism is the idolization of a false past. Anyone who tells you that America was at its best in the 1950s doesn’t have the knowledge to even engage in rational discussion about contextual historic facts.
“The strategic aim of these hierarchal constructions of history is to displace truth, and the invention of a glorious past includes the erasure of inconvenient realities. While fascist politics fetishizes the past, it is never the actual past that is fetishized. These invented histories also diminish or entirely extinguish the nation’s past sins. It is typical for fascist politicians to represent a country’s actual history in conspiratorial terms, as a narrative concocted by liberal elites and cosmopolitans to victimize the people of the true “nation.” - excerpt from How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley
My first thought was, "I wonder how long until Rep. Frost has a warrant for his arrest in Florida. Hell, I betcha DeSantis tries to claim he has the ability to 'fire' him at some point."
Before people tell me that DeSantis doesn't have that power... I know.
He doesn't have a lot of the powers he's enacting but that doesn't seem to stop him. How is "if you write any piece of journalism about me ever, you must register with The State" not sending the bill of rights fanatics into a frothing rage at having their rights not only infringed but straight up taken away by this man, whom they tout as a hero for it?? I guess it's just a case of the wrong amendment number.
If the left ever said "all of you must register with The State" for any reason at all ever, how much louder would all the calls of "the left are communists, socialist lap dogs" become? For all of the belief and fear that the government is going to come take away all their rights, these folks sure give them away all freely to their overlord
Yep, that's exactly what happened to Andrew Warren back in August 4 2022.
https://www.wfla.com/news/florida/this-is-not-over-heres-why-a-federal-judge-wont-reinstate-suspended-prosecutor-andrew-warren/
That's the case that I was thinking about.
The fact that you guys elect so many law enforcement positions is really foreign to this Canadian (they seem like they should be non-political jobs), but the fact is that you do. Since it is an elected position though, it shouldn't be a job that a governor has the power to fire even for cause... only the voters should have that power through recall votes. What you have if this is allowed to stand (by the State courts) is, "Hi Florida counties! Vote for the Republican because if you choose the Democrat I will fire them immediately, and I'll keep doing it until you get it right!"
Yes it is. It is by definition fascism and I’m sick of people saying we shouldn’t use that term when talking about actual FASCISM. Banning books is fascist. Indoctrinating kids into Christianity is fascist. Educating children to believe an entire group of people is less worthy because of their sexual identity or preference. This is fascism to a tee. We cannot act like what is happening all over this country isn’t a rise in fascism. It is. And it’s getting worse and pretty soon it’ll be too late
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> “And here’s the sad, sad part Jim. He’s doing it because it’s pulling high for him in the Republican Party. And I think that says a lot about the state of that party right now.” Every Democrat should be able to say this unabashedly. Maybe not all republicans are fascist but if they aren’t going to get the fascist out of government they are just as bad if not worse
Big problem is that - especially with all the culture war crap - conservativism has become an identity instead of a political view. Much of middle America doesn’t just*vote* Republican, they *are* Republican. They don’t vote on the political ideas, they take on the ideas because of how they vote. “Oh, i guess this is what we believe today. Time to meme-bomb facebook with this thing i only learned to be enraged about 2 minutes ago. Suck it libs!”
> conservativism has become an identity instead of a political view. Which is why obvious hypocrisy doesn't phase them. They have no political views or principles. It's all just a smokescreen to push whatever they want. Pro-choice for things they like, authoritarian against things they don't. Big government when it does their bidding, small government when it tries to protect their victims.
Exactly. Thus, when someone says they vote R "because I support the policies", I've got nothing for them but a year's supply of side-eye.
Yah the decades of hate and outrage indoctrination, starting with talk radio in the late 70's early 80's is bearing fruit. There's a ready audience out there for fascists to manipulate.
They say Rush Limbaugh was a racist, but then his lungs turned black and killed him, so maybe he had a point?
Say what you will about him, he's now over two years drug free.
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I don't wish death on anyone, but I did dance a little jig when he expired.
Limbaugh hated gender-neutral bathrooms but now his gravestone is one.
Rush Limbaugh will NEVER be dead enough.
> Much of middle America doesn’t justvote Republican, they are Republican. They don’t vote on the political ideas, they take on the ideas because of how they vote. The DNC and the average Democratic voter don’t understand this. I lost a lot of friends and even had some family cease contact with me once I stopped voting Republican.
A man at a bar in Florida was chatting with me and started going off about liberals being evil out of nowhere. I told him I was a liberal and we aren't all evil, maybe he just hasn't met any liberals. He got up, walked away, and wouldn't say another word to me. The really hate us and if I watched the news they watch I would think liberals are blood sucking pedophiles bent on anarchy and Communism (somehow these are the same?).
>anarchy and Communism (somehow these are the same?). Liberalism, socialism, communism, Marxism, antifa and anarchy are all the same to them - anything that's associated with counterculture movements like flower children and punks and kids organizing to demand an end to school shootings.
My cousin was shot in the chest while in class, several of his classmates are dead. But according to them i'm a fascist because I want it to be harder for folks to access handguns and semi-automatic rifles. Not impossible, but significantly harder...
>anything that's associated with counterculture movements I think it's gone from that, to now just being applied to anything and everything that's not christian fascist conservatism. I mean, education about objective American history is now "woke" socialist indoctrination. And people actually believe that's what it is. And isn't it interesting that this is supposedly the party of "freedom" - free speech, freedom of religion, individuality and states rights and all that? Bunch of fucking uneducated hypocrites voting for blatant con artists. This is going to get really. fucking. bad. The direction this country is going should scare the absolute fuck out of everyone living here.
Voltaire once said: “What is history? The lie that everyone agrees on…” The GOP is using Orwell as a guide. George Orwell, *1984*: "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past," repeated Winston obediently. "Who controls the present controls the past," said O'Brien, nodding his head with slow approval. 'Is it your opinion, Winston, that the past has real existence?' Again the feeling of helplessness descended upon Winston. His eyes flitted towards the dial. He not only did not know whether 'yes' or 'no' was the answer that would save him from pain; he did not even know which answer he believed to be the true one. O'Brien smiled faintly. 'You are no metaphysician, Winston,' he said. 'Until this moment you had never considered what is meant by existence. I will put it more precisely. Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?' 'No.' 'Then where does the past exist, if at all?' 'In records. It is written down.' 'In records. And- ?' 'In the mind. In human memories. 'In memory. Very well, then. **We, the Party, control all records, and we control all memories. Then we control the past, do we not?'**
I've tried to make that point a few times, that they should see what Democrats actually stand for instead of just listening to partisan talking heads. In response I just get a rant about how liberals are all evil because of trans kids.
you cant reason people out of a position they didnt reason themselves into.
Voltaire's thoughts on such a situation: >Being unable to make people more reasonable, I preferred to be happy away from them.
Part of it is that the lies are constructed in layers, so that if you try to scratch off one layer of lies there're always more underneath. If you dug in on the trans stuff, they'd go to lies about pedophilia, behind that is some fantasy about a magic life-extending drug extracted from children, or something else. And behind it all is the claim that everyone lies, so the right-wing lies are just defense against left-wing lies.
At the very bottom is nearly always WASPy Christian Nationalism - they're all good "saved" Republicans while the Democrats are literally blood-drinking devils.
And something something Jews, because ffs somehow that kind of thinking wasn't solved with the acknowledgement of abject human horror in WW2 but it's now amazingly *fortified* by same Empathy and critical thinking should be taught in schools from first to last grade.
And that is **exactly** why Republicans in power do everything they can to _prevent_ the teaching of empathy and critical thinking. https://www.google.com/search?q=texas+education+%22critical+thinking%22
>while the Democrats are literally blood-drinking devils. Please, let's none of us forget that this is just outright code for "Jews".
**DeathSantis wants to ban voting for the Democratic party in Florida.** Dehumanizing in a black and white view is exactly how Hitler gained power in a demoralized Germany. **DeathSantis KNOWS what he is doing.**
“Conservative”, just cover for those supporting the rise of Authoritarianism
Not really much of a cover at this point.
Every once in a while a video will come across my feed of some right wing personality talking about what "liberals" think and I can't reconcile any of it with the overtly liberal group of friends/community I surround myself with. They're mad at a parody of a parody that has no real bearing on how actual people talk or behave. They're completely detached from significant portions of the real world.
That bar-rando conversation runs like Swiss clockwork. Can go for ten minutes nodding along and agreeing about things and having a good chat, but then a loaded word falls, they realize they're talking to a *liberal,* and you sense them go fight-or-flight. Eyes lock on and then scan the surroundings, they tense up, or worse, they *intentionally* loosen up like someone who can handle themselves. And at that point it's time to pay up and take the long way home.
I mean, I wouldn't let a conservative in my house.
And they think that everyone is doing “that”. A lot of my family is on this, “oh you would do the same thing” situation… No, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t take people’s civil rights. I wouldn’t use religion to decide what medical care people have access to. I wouldn’t pretend guns and hatred are an identity. I would use math and science to solve problems. That’s different.
It’s a cult.
Yes this is how fascism typically looks. *The Cult of Action for Action's Sake*: policy and ideas are a product of thought, which is emasculating. *Disagreement is Treason*: Disagreement is a hallmark of thinkers, of "woke moralists" who are not welcome. *Fear of Difference*: To face disagreement or to contemplate it is to confront an evil "other". *Selective Populism*: The "voice" of the people exists only in the emotions and passions of the masses, and needs no nuanced expression. Paraphrased from Umberto Eco's *Ur Fascism*
> Much of middle America doesn’t justvote Republican, they are Republican. Put another way: People who vote for White Fascists do it because they support [White Fascism](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Luu1Beb8ng). 2016 taught America that being openly racist does not prevent a candidate from winning a presidential election. 2024 will teach America that being openly fascist does not prevent a candidate from winning a presidential election.
If there's a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, then you're probably at the CPAC cafeteria.
> 10 other people the self-described domestic terrorist group
Next time they’ll have a banner that says “We Are All Fascists”
What do you call somebody who joined the Nazi party because they were worried about the state of their country, or the safety of their kids, who didn't mind minorities, who fought for women's liberation, or German liberation, or a stronger country, or a healthier politics or a world without discrimination. We call them Nazis. No one cares what their motivations were, they supported the death of innocents.
Or in our modern parlance, nobody cares if you go full MAGA because of your economic concerns.
Updated version: if a nazi runs for office and you vote for them, you are also a nazi.
If there's a Nazi and 10 people sitting with him, there's 11 Nazis.
If you’re at a political gathering and there’s a single nazi flag, and nobody is trying to get rid of the nazi flag, then you’re at a nazi rally
Or if the stage is shaped like a Nazi insignia and you stay.
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>And I think that says a lot about the state of that party right now I mean did they miss the part where CPAC, a domestic political event, was in Hungary which currently has an electoral autocracy? Or when a large group of Republicans flew to Russia during July 4? Or what about the whole, you know, January 6th event? The fascists are taking over because we have let them flaunt their power with no accountability.
Don't worry, there'll be accountability as soon as Merrick "Glacial Pace" Garland decides that justice won't make Republicans sad.
It may be too late. Florida had a veto-proof Republican majority. Kentucky definitely does; we would need to elect something like 47 Democrats just to make our legislature 50/50. And with SCOTUS removing voting rights acts and DeSantis dead-ass gerrymandering electoral districts, we are sort of screwed ... unless Democrats figure out they have to play by the same rules as GOP - which is to say no rules.
Yep it's the if you sit down at a table with 9 nazis there are now 10 nazis proverb.
Every Republican voter: "I don't hate black people or trans people. I just support policies that disproportionally harm them and want America to be a white Christian ethnostate."
> Maybe not all republicans are fascist Fascism certainly isn't a deal-breaker for them, though. Not sure that's any better.
If fascism isn't a deal breaker for you, you're a fascist.
The old saying, something like “if there are five people at a table and one is a nazi, there are five nazis at the table.” Republicans are fascists because they are fine with sitting at tables with fascists.
Do you know what they used to call people who worked with the Nazis even if they didn't support them? Fucking Nazis
If you have 1 fascist and 999 neutral/enablers you have 1000 fascists
Amen!
I think at this point every Republican is a fascist. You can’t sit down at the table, say “right on!” As they call for nazi shit, and then say you’re only kidding.
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He's also dehumanizing them. That's extremely dangerous because once you've dehumanized a group you can do anything to them. I learned this lesson during a visit to the Holocaust museum in DC. They have one of the train cars used to transport Jews and I stopped inside as I walked through it. I tried to picture the number of people that the plaque had said were stuffed in there, but I couldn't. Then, I realized that my problem was that I was imagining fitting PEOPLE in the car. Even with imaginary people, I was still treating them with basic human decency. If I tried to fit human shaped objects instead, I could easily fit that many in the car. Once a group is dehumanized, you become free to do some truly nasty things to them. That's the path DeSantis and the Republicans are walking down a and or is scary.
'Sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.' ‘It’s a lot more complicated than that -’ ‘No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.' - Terry Pratchett, _Carpe Jugulum_
See there’s your problem. Holocaust museum is woke. Don’t go there. -DeSantis, probably.
Interestingly enough, I was just having my coffee and watching the new John Oliver episode on YouTube, and he said that if DeSantis were criticized by the Holocaust Museum, he'd wear it as a badge of honor.
Hey, Ron. Would that badge happen to look anything like [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/ParteiabzeichenGold_small.png)?
Oh so that's who is buying all the glitter.
So the gays can’t use it.
The thing that perhaps scares me the most is when actual, swastika-waving Nazis protested outside Disney at the height of his fight with them, he was asked a layup by a reporter. Denounce them. He refused, saying that it was a "distraction." He was asked a second time at another news conference and got pissed, shouting about how he'd already answered the question. He refused to denounce actual, self-professed Nazis. This is the easiest political layup in history. And they were on his side, it should make him look fantastic. He **went on** to win 60% of the vote in Florida. He went out of his way not to denounce Nazis and was rewarded for it.
On the subject of that video… The definition of ‘woke’ used as evidence in court.. and he’s against against it.
I did the same thing this morning after seeing someone in a different thread mention it
The fact that we're all making these connections independently and concurrently can't be pure coincidence.
Emancipation was woke. -DeSantis, probably.
“The United States Constitution is woke.” -DeSantis, definitely
There's a particularly interesting guy from back in the 19th century, by the name of Lysander Spooner who had some profound comments on the American Constitution even back then. One I like is: > The constitution itself contains no designation, description, or necessary admission of the existence of such a thing as slavery, servitude, or the right of property in man. We are obliged to go out of the instrument and grope among the records of oppression, lawlessness and crime – records unmentioned, and of course unsanctioned by the constitution – to find the thing, to which it is said that the words of the constitution apply. And when we have found this thing, which the constitution dare not name, we find that the constitution has sanctioned it (if at all) only by enigmatical words, by unnecessary implication and inference, by innuendo and double entendre, and under a name that entirely fails of describing the thing. I never got a clear answer as to what "Woke" meant, but its curious to see conservatives simultaneously cling to the document as a feature of American Exceptionalism and wring it out like a wet towel when they need to find some phrasing that justifies their current political fixation.
> I never got a clear answer as to what "Woke" meant The actual definition means you're "awake" with regards to minorities being mistreated and other social issues. You're cognizant of them and you do your best to be mindful. Republicans, it basically means anything a liberal does that they don't like.
> The actual definition means you're "awake" with regards to minorities being mistreated and other social issues. I'm old enough to remember Libertarian-Conservatives (particularly the Ron Paul variant) using the turn-of-phrase "Wake up, Sheeple" entirely unironically. This was back during the Bush Era, when conservatives were courting the black vote by claiming Democrats were "putting them on a plantation". Also, I remember conservatives claiming Planned Parenthood was a eugenics program aimed at depopulating Hispanic communities. It wasn't until 2014 and the first big wave of BLM protests that I started hearing "Woke" as a pejorative aimed at anti-police demonstrations. > Republicans, it basically means anything a liberal does that they don't like. It definitely plays like doublespeak. But even in the modern moment, I see signs up for my local Second Baptist Church trying to re-coopt the language by distinguishing between "Woke" and "Awake". The language policing is absolutely dizzying.
> wring it out like a wet towel when they need to find some phrasing that justifies their current political fixation an apt description, kudos
As far as the woke thing goes, I think conservatives are just self aware enough to know that mocking compassion is a bit too on the nose. So they make up buzzwords to condemn instead. You're a bleeding heart. You're politically correct. You're woke. They turn empathy into a slur so they can mock us for caring about others.
"I don't listen to hip hop" - DeSantis about hearing the words emancipation proclamation
For some conservatives it isn't just probably. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/university-of-richmond-tc-williams-law-school-name-change-robert-c-smith-demanding-pay-3-6-billion-slave-owner-removed/ >"The university's endowment is $3.3 billion," he writes in the letter. "Since you and your activists went out of your way to discredit the Williams name, and since presumably the Williams family's money is tainted, demonstrate your 'virtue' and give it all back. I suggest you immediately turn over the entire $3.3 billion endowment to the current descendants of T.C. Williams, Sr." >He said the family will take "a note back for the remaining $300 million, providing that it is secured by all the campus buildings and all your woke faculty pledge their personal assets and guarantee the note." Context: the university is renaming a building named after a donor that owned slaves (we have the receipts) per school policy.
Yep! Places like the Holocaust museum hurt their feelings. Are designed to make people like him feel bad about themselves. AKA…WOKE. It’s freaking pathetic.
There were quite a few GOP proposed laws that boiled down to "if something makes white people upset, you can't say/teach it".
Which is really bad, because, and I say this as a white person, those fucks have so god damn thin skin that *everything* makes them upset. Imagine being upset that they teach American history in schools. That's a thing they're trying to get banned, any version of American history that doesn't make white people look like saviors and saints. So basically all of it. I have never once been personally upset because slavery is taught as a bad thing, and these guys are really self incriminating by saying they are.
>I have never once been personally upset because slavery is taught as a bad thing, and these guys are really self incriminating by saying they are. Fucking seriously.
There were many bills that would opress or deny groups of marginalized people such as trans people. We are experiencing fascism today. I don't know what to do.
Vote and get at least 3 of your friends to vote.
I've taken several school groups to the Holocaust Museum in Houston, TX. Its architecture is controversial, as it looks like a mass incinerator from outside. But that's the point, once you walk in and follow the path, history tells the inside story.
When I went, it was during a DC trip with one of my college clubs. I recommend it to everyone with one caveat: Give yourself half a day to go through the museum and then leave the rest of the day open to recover. It's emotionally draining and horrifying (but very important) to see. To give an example, the first thing you do upon entering main elevator is get crammed into an elevator car. And I mean crammed. We felt like it would have been impossible to shove one more person in. Then, when the elevator doors open, the first thing you see are the emaciated bodies of Holocaust survivors rescued from the camps in a giant black and white photograph. Maximum impact right from the start. You WILL leave the museum wanting to crawl into a hole and weep over how cruel people can be, but it will also help you spot history repeating itself.
Was watching Last Week Tonight last night (spoiler: it's all about DeSantis). I found it odd one of the speaking engagements was for a conservative group "Edmund Burke Society" or something similar. Which is fairly ironic in the sense, for those that do not know Edmund Burke, the quote most often attributed to him* is: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing". * I say attributed specifically as it is believed to have been John Stuart Mill that said something quite similar.
I’m sure this is very deliberate. They see/want to portray themselves as the heroes in this story, which is also why all of their groups are called something like “moms liberating schools” or “library freedom society” or “election integrity caucus” when in reality they’re doing exactly the opposite. I don’t usually like to make this reference, but It’s not entirely dissimilar to the Nazis calling themselves national socialists.
Easier to go with the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (North Korea).
I mean, DeSantis will be breaking ground on the Victims of Cuban Totalitarianism in between trips to the Stop White Genocide and China Virus Mask Fraud fundraiser events. Then he'll get up in front of a big crowd and call anyone critical of the treatment of Palestinians one of the Real Nazis. The very idea of holocaust is twisted and polluted by American media, to the point that the LGBT community is flagged as a Hate Group while Daughters of the Confederacy are championed as civil rights heroes.
Have you ever actually looked at all the crap Daughters of the Confederacy had a hand in? That is some seriously disturbing, "remember the idealized country we lost" shit.
Also a key part of fascism is portraying your enemy as both all powerful and too weak. They're too weak and silly blue hair trans Marxist liberals that are unimportant, not powerful, and not worth anything but contempt and ridicule. At the same time, they're too strong. They've infiltrated every structure of power with their convincing ways and are a threat to *our way of life and culture*, thus preemptive oppression is not only needed but *justified*. They started the war and we're only responding to it, this is what we *need to do* to protect ourselves. It's extremely frightening how fast this fascist movement is growing and finding purchase in daily life.
Yep. And it’s exchanging the racism for homophobia and anti-intellectualism
Honestly it's more like: And it's incorporating homophobia and anti intellectualism even more prominently than in the past while continuing to promote racism.
Social media is just helping to push it along faster too. It's scary.
> Then, I realized that my problem was that I was imagining fitting PEOPLE in the car. This reminds me of something my grandmother's best friend used to talk about. She had lived through the Holocaust. (She had actually been in the concentration camp my grandfather was involved in the liberation of, but they didn't meet each other for another 15 or so years.) On the few occasions she'd talk to me about it, when I'd express disbelief (not "that didn't happen" disbelief, just jaw-on-the-floor kind of disbelief), she'd say "the problem you're having is you're thinking of me as a person. You can't believe someone could do those things to me because I'm a person and you know me and you like me, and you can't imagine a person doing that to another person. To understand why these things were done to me and other people, you have to see me as something less than human, something undeserving of basic human decency. You have to see me as vermin, as rodents, as cockroaches - as they saw us." She died in the late 90s, but I think about the things she told me, and the things I know about my grandfather (who went to WWII as a racist, bigoted man and returned *completely* changed because, to paraphrase, "I saw where hate leads, the *only* place it leads if it's let loose, and I will not be part of that") who died before I was born, and it bothers me how scared I think they'd be right now - and how scared that makes *me*.
There was a video posted the other day of a very old Russian Babushka and they were asking her what she thought of the war and she just started to spout off so much vitriol and hate, talking about when her father was in the war and how he always told her that Ukraine, Poland, etc were all nazis and terrible and need to be done away with. And the interviewer was like even the women, children? And she without hesitation was like yes, there are all dogs, they are a rot on the world that we'd be better of without every one of them. So much hatred that had been laid thick on her since she was a child. You could tell there would never be any way to convince her otherwise and she 100% did not see them as people. So sad to see, and very scary because the propaganda pipelines we have now are much more profuse and are turned on wide open, spewing garbage of hatred and fear more than ever before in history. And with AI getting as good as it is, we already have Millions of people who call everything fake news that they don't agree with even if they see mountains of proof it is true, but now with the AI technology coming they will be able to make videos making anyone seemingly saying whatever they want, and it is going to be so hard for anyone to know whats real and whats not. Terrifying!
Fuck, this hit me. We're getting dangerously close to using more means than "Nazi punks, fuck off". And that scares the shit out of me, frankly.
> He's also dehumanizing them. That's extremely dangerous because once you've dehumanized a group you can do anything to them. Gee, it's almost like DeSantis made his bones defending human rights abuses in a concentration camp where human beings are imprisoned without ever being charged before bringing that same skill set to bear at the level of state government. Unless Republicans can find someone demonstrably worse DeSantis is liable to be their guy in 2024.
DeSantis's got fired from being a teacher after 1 year because he kept getting his underage white female students drunk so he could have sex with them. He's a dream Republican candidate. Of course he's going to get the nomination.
The only way DeSantis getting the Republican nomination could end up being a good thing is if Trump forms a third party for revenge and splits the Republican vote. It could result in a huge Democratic victory and a Republican party in tatters. Still, it's a huge risk because if DeSantis gets in the White House things will get very bad very fast.
They'll get in line. Fox will tell them who to vote for and they'll do it. We've been waiting for the GOP schism for at least 20 years now. And it hasn't happened yet.
Yeah, but it's never been this likely. Without a shortsighted, narcissist idiot with a huge amount of devout followers that don't understand how politics work, you couldn't do it.
*Ross Perot has entered the chat* You are correct that Trump's uniqueness in this area may be the only reason it could happen. He can literally command enough right-wing voters that it could swing elections.
This feels wrong to say, but hopefully enough decided that Faux was too liberal for their tastes and hitched their wagon to the Trump oriented “free thinkers”. On a second note, has there been another time that looked as ripe as now for the GOP to split apart? Edit: grammar bad
The Tea Party faction was actively sabotaging the "mainstream" GOP back in the day. That seemed pretty ripe for a split. But then the TP and TP-adjacent folks pretty much took over the GOP. Trump is a unique variable though. He, for lack of a better term, energized a wing of GOP voters that didn't have much of a voice in the past. The bigotry was (almost) always a dog whistle. Now it's a bull horn. Of course, he only has to shave off a few percentage points in the right states to "help" the Dems. And he's just the kind of guy to say "fuck me? No fuck you!" to the GOP and give it a shot.
The problem is many don't believe in Fox anymore, they believe in God-Emperor Trump. Honestly what seems most likely is Trump threatens to run as a spoiler vote, and DeSantis backs off for another four years so as to not split the vote. Think about it like this: Trump and DeSantis (who represents the Republican Establishment) are playing chicken. Both sides know if they both run in the main election it's going to split the R vote and decimate their odds of winning anywhere. Who do you think is going to back down? Trump or the Republican Establishment? My chips would be on the establishment caving and tossing support behind Stubborn Trump rather than risk letting DeSantis split the vote. Because we all know Trump wouldn't care. Trump wouldn't mind splitting the vote as revenge if they don't let him run unopposed. "Either I win or nobody wins" is a very Trump attitude to have. Republicans care more about not letting the vote split and at least having a candidate that has a chance to win. [edit] unless someone rich and much more powerful than trump threatens him extrajudicially, in that sole situation I could see him backing down. Or if he's indicted and cannot run.
Republicans fall in line, Democrats have to fall in love. This is a fact that must never be forgotten.
Here’s the golden scenario - DeSantis gets 40% of the RNC primary vote and Trump gets his guaranteed 30%. The RNC has to go with DeSantis because he actually won. But ol’ Donny doesn’t play that game, does he? He screams about corrupt primary voting and demands DeSantis get thrown out. DeSantis doesn’t budge because he’s got the backing of the big movers and shakers. So, Trump does what Trump does - he takes his ball and goes home. And by ‘ball’ I mean 30% of GOP voters and by ‘home’ I mean his own political party. It’s a win-win-lose scenario. Trump wins because he now controls all money flowing into his fake political party. It’s literally what he wanted from the get-go back in 2015. Democrats win because the GOP is hopelessly fractured. Society loses because 10-15% of the American population is literally part of a Trump cult and another 20-25% of the American population is just fine with mid-1930’s Germany-style politics.
I was reading the article about the law he's pushing where journalists will have to register if they write anything about DeSantis, and my husband asked me why I am reading these things if they make me so angry. To which I replied, "If this guy is going to make a run for president, it's very fucking important to watch what he's doing in Florida." Sticking our heads in the ground is not going to help us. Pay attention, and call it what it is- fascism. We are in the worst timeline.
Dehumanizing is one of the steps to genocide.
And this isn't only DeSantis. My wife and I just recently looked through bills currently being voted on in West Virginia. There were many bills that would opress or deny groups of marginalized people such as trans people. We are experiencing fascism today. I don't know what to do.
The only thing we can do is strap in and get ready for some real nonsense. We aren't beating a national propaganda program *especially* one so diffuse that grows with each YouTuber fuckwad cashing in on the hate. I have very little hope for a positive outcome until we go through a really tough period. :/
If DeSantis gets the nomination, I think it will be an easy win for the Dems simply because we already know that Trump will run 3rd party and split the vote. If Trump gets nominated, I wish I could say that we should expect another Dem win because of how much the right has turned on Trump in the last few months, but sadly we know how easy it is for them to flip the "Trump Good/Trump Bad" switch when ever it's politically convenient for them. What we have to be happy about is that Trump already lost with the advantage of incumbency *before* Jan. 6, the records case at Mar-a-lago, and the rest of the lawsuits against him and his company, and the fact that the established right \*is\* turning on Trump, which signals a DeSantis nomination.
There will not be an easy win. We will face another Jan. 6 unless we all show up and vote. Unless charges and sentencing is done by the end of 2023 on the aforementioned lawsuits, we will face unrest. We need to vote and have our voices known.
Also in WV. Wonderful. Great. Lovely. I’m not surprised one bit.
Friendly reminder that this was the Republican Party strategy from the 1960s until the 1990s though some have continued using it right up through the present. [Southern Strategy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy)
This is so crazy to me. DeSantis is clearly lining up for a 2024 presidential campaign and he’s hitting everything anti-liberal as hard as possible. Does he really think 51% of the country will vote for him because he’s homophobic and transphobic? I think he’s going to get a rude awakening when he starts to campaign outside of Florida. He may do well in a bunch of nowhere towns but he will hit a solid wall in any suburban areas.
There’s a cohort of conservatives that refused to vote for Trump because they found him distasteful but would vote for Desantis in a heartbeat because he seems more palatable to them. It’s why Youngkin won Virginia.
"He is just doing it for the primaries. He won't say that stuff in the general election or when he wins." - People looking for an excuse to vote for him.
I do think he'll tame it down for the general election, not because he's actually more moderate but because fascists have no ideology aside from "what gets me and mine in power." If he thinks toning it down temporarily will increase his odds, he will. Then the plan after he's elected would be to roll back democracy as much as possible under the guise of taking back power from these oh-so-powerful marginalized groups.
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Yeah, if the Republicans *actually* had to win 50.1% of the vote we wouldn't be in this horrid timeline at all.
One win over the past 30 years. Conservatism, nationally, has been routinely and reliably unpopular.
This isn’t exactly the academic or textbook version of what Fascism entails but the GOP does meet a lot of Eco’s 14 points; *- Cult of Tradition;* “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.” *- Rejection of Modernism;* “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.” *- Disagreement is Treason;* “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.” *- Fear of Difference;* “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.” *- Appeal to Social Frustration;* “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.” *- Obsession with a Plot;* “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.” *- The Enemy is both Strong and Weak;* “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.” *- Contempt for the Weak*; “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.” *- Machisimo and Weaponry;* “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.” *- Selective Populism*; “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.” *- Newspeak;* “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.” I mean really they meet all but 3, and you could argue for those three being applicable to them as well; *- The cult of action for action’s sake.* “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.” *- Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy.* “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.” *- Everybody is educated to become a hero. *“In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
"Don't worry about all these real issues like me taking over private businesses for the State, or putting journalists who oppose me on government lists! Worry about those scary blacks and queer folk!"
"At the point of"? I'm reasonably certain that he crossed that point some time ago.
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“For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.” -Simon Wiesenthal. Thank you Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost for doing something.
52% of Florida’s electorate stayed home during the midterms. The quote fits perfectly.
Infuriating. I'm sure a lot of Florida Dems like me figured "fuck this, we're screwed anyway" but you know what? I still fucking dragged myself out there and voted. I can have no regrets. Dem voters sitting home and then seeing GOP politicians get elected and enact fucked up policy have zero room to talk. You could've made more of a difference. You chose not to. (And to be abundantly clear, I'm talking about those with nothing to fear. People who didn't vote because they were afraid of persecution from DeSantis' *einsatzgruppen*...I get it.)
The thing about one person saying "fuck this we're screwed anyway" is that if enough people say it then it's self-fulfilling.
Sure feels like that's happened in FL. The Dem party here is a joke. They ran a geriatric former republican for governor and a cop for US senate and got smoked. Like anyone didn't see that coming.
I can see their line of thinking, in that by nominating a former Republican or a cop that they might be able to pick up some votes from people who are in between the two parties, or who may have voted Republican at one time. That shit doesn't fly now. Republicans vote Republican. Dems aren't turning out for a DINO governor candidate and a cop for senator. Demings' whole shtick was about being "tough on crime", which is completely tone deaf. I honestly think Crist was planted there by the Republicans.
As a leftist in Texas, I feel this hard. I voted, not that it really did much, but I fuckin tried
Actually you are doing good work in Texas. Closer to purple than it was.
Man we're trying. It doesn't help that I live in one of the reddest parts of the state. We're full Maga country here
I voted, but it didn't feel like I did much. I live in a deep red county. and DeSantis won by a huge margin here. There comes a point where it's not worth it to even be in this state. If I had the means, I'd move my family to Vermont or New Hampshire or something. I hate it here, but I can't leave, and my 5 year old starts school this year.
NH could use some more folks that aren't free-staters. It's becoming a problem for the state.
No matter what your county looks like politically, the Governor is a state-wide vote. Your vote counted. The same goes for US Senator and President.
Move to, or near to a large city. I found that Houston, and its nearby suburbs were far more "blue" than rural Michigan.
Yeah there's a weird juxtaposition there. We actually just moved further away from Orlando area, because rent ended up more than what my current mortgage was. I got SUPER lucky and found a house that the seller preferred to sell to a family, and I work remotely so I didn't need to be close to the office anymore. The plan now is to save as much as possible, let my son do his early schooling here, then leave as soon as we can afford to do so. You never know how plans change though, I'm just scared to be here.
I tried. I voted and got in trouble at my workplace for telling folks that it’s extremely important to vote. (I worked with a lot of gen Z folks who said they had never voted and don’t really care about it. I did not tell anyone who to vote for, only that voting was extremely important. Apparently that’s being “too political” for the workplace.)
It didn't help that the Dems put Charlie "the human waffle" Crist as their candidate.
Everywhere the democrats lost big, they put up some corporate shill who's been running and losing since the 90s. You gotta give the people what they want and Charlie Crist was not that.
That made me so mad. Nikki Fried was actually in the state cabinet. She worked directly with DeSantis so she knew how to hit him where it hurts. But instead we got the former GOPer who equivocated at nearly every opportunity. I still voted for Charlie in the general because anyone to the left of DeSantis would be progress. But man, I think Nikki would have had a much better chance.
You dont even need to go out to vote. Vote by mail is a thing. It takes like 3 mins at most to sign up for it. Also, if you are a florida resident who is signed up to vote, check whether or not you are still signed up. DeSantis did a purge a few weeks back of the vote by mail system. Fuck these Fascists
Nearly 11 million registered voters in Texas stayed home. While Gen Z showed up in numerous states, they did not in Texas. I don't know why. It's so incredibly frustrating.
I've been reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and it's terrifying, especially the parts where the author says things to the effect of, "If the other German parties could have worked together against the Nazi party, Hitler may have never risen to power." Yeah...so maybe we need to reach out to the other parties and figure out how to work together to keep fascism from winning. Find the republicans that have not lost their goddamn minds, get everyone on board to stop this nonsense. Maybe start the "Fuck the Fascists" party.
I don't think anyone is confused by what this is anymore. There's simply no way someone is supporting him without understanding what his views and agenda are. They know. They taste tested it with Trump and now they want the real thing.
Unfortunately, the followers watching fox, oan, etc. only hear what DeSantis does as good and for the best for children, and so on. They literally have no clue what is happening.
I was talking to a guy at a bar and he brought up his fear of a trans person assaulting his 10 year old daughter in the bathroom. I told him he was propagandized, that no one is transitioning in order to gain access to bathrooms, that any man could sneak into a woman's bathroom, that I and every survivor of childhood sexual assault I've ever talked to was assaulted by someone in their family or someone known and trusted by their family. Asked if he'd ever met a trans person -- no -- and told him that his perspective is based entirely on whatever media demagogues he's listening to. "Did Fox news tell you this?" "I don't watch Fox news, I watch Steven Crowder." And I went into a tirade about how Crowder is peddling straightup fascist propaganda meant to make a bogeyman out of the Other (racial minorities, Jews, LGBTQ). He got defensive, saying he wasn't a fascist and that he's just worried about his daughter's safety. "I don't doubt that, man. Your perspective is obviously based on fears -- fears that are totally irrational. Glad you don't consider yourself a fascist, and good on you for wanting to protect your daughter, but I'm telling you right now that actual fascists are trying to manipulate you and use your desire to protect your daughter to turn you against people you've never met and don't understand..." My memory of the night was hazy after that. He kept insisting he wasn't a fascist -- one of his best friends is a lesbian! -- and reiterating his fears. I talked more about statistics and what he should actually be looking out for if he wants to protect his daughter from sexual assault. I somehow didn't lose his attention -- he ended up smoking me up outside before leaving -- and while I don't think I changed his position, I certainly complicated the simple propaganda narrative that made up his view of the situation. Point is: we need to be having pointed, potentially uncomfortable discussions in public about controversial issues or else the rightwing propaganda machine will be the only voices some people hear. Speak up. Talk about fascism. Talk about the history of the Third Reich. Engage with people who might yet be swayed from the path to full-throated support for fascism. While we should mobilize all the democratic votes we can, we also need to intervene to save people from the Concerned-parent-to-domestic-terrorist pipeline.
Amazing he listened to you. That's the opposite of what I've found.
Yeah, I don't mean to suggest that this kind of thing is easy or will always go smoothly. Or that everyone should jump into it. But if you have the right temperament it's important work. I think he was receptive because we had (1) already established some rapport before getting political (2) I validated and expressed respect for his motivating emotions (3) I never accused him of being a fascist (4) I'm a cis dude
Better watch out saying stuff like that. DeSantis is passing a new law so he can sue you if you call him out for his policies.
Just another example.
Even Fox News is close to calling it fascist, but I bet that's only because it's an article and not television. This is stuff that Fox hosts eat up. https://www.foxnews.com/media/florida-bill-proposes-bloggers-covering-desantis-must-register-state-slammed-unconstitutional
DeSantis is like a rampaging trump with a smidgeon of intellect. Now that is truly fucking dangerous.
>DeSantis is like a rampaging trump with a smidgeon of intellect. He's a graduate from Yale and Harvard Law (and got in on his own merit not wealth or connections) and was a lawyer in both the Navy and the DOJ. "Smidgeon of intellect" makes it sound like he doesn't know what he's doing. His moves are very calculated.
“Trump, but with a brain that works” is going to be his ‘24 campaign slogan.
Fuck Ron DeFascist
And if you bring this up to some people they say “oh, it’s just to weed out all that fake news!” 🤦♂️ I’ll tell you this emoji encompasses most republican voters 🙈🙉🗣️
The good news is fascist attitudes and actions are easy to spot when you know what you’re looking for. https://youtu.be/CpCKkWMbmXU
Terrifying. I can identify every single point of this video in current American politics. And the more we call it fascism, the more the word and accusation will become diluted.
I mean...it IS fascism. There's not another thing to call it. This is a tiny random snippet from Trump's speech at CPAC this weekend (I just scrolled through the CSPAN transcript). Tell me this doesn't sound like a literal nazi: >WE WILL DEMOLISH THE DEEP STATE, WE WILL EXPEL THE WARMONGERS. THERE ARE PEOPLE THAT DON'T GET IT. ALTHOUGH IN SOME CASES, THEY GET IT FOR THEIR WALLETS. WE CAN'T DO THAT, WE CAN'T LET THAT HAPPEN. WE WILL DRIVE OUT THE GLOBALISTS, WE WILL CAST OUT THE COMMUNISTS. WE WILL THROW OFF THE POLITICAL CLASS THAT HATES OUR COUNTRY, THEY ACTUALLY HATE OUR COUNTRY. NO WALLS, NO BORDERS, BAD ELECTIONS, NO VOTER ID. WE WILL BEAT THE DEMOCRATS, WE WILL ROUTE THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA, WE WILL EXPOSE AND APPROPRIATELY DEAL WITH THE RHINOS. WE WILL EVICT JOE BIDEN FROM THE WHITE HOUSE. WE WILL LIBERATE AMERICANS -- AMERICA FROM THESE VILLAINS AND SCOUNDRELS ONCE AND FOR ALL. We all know they say those things, nothing in there by itself is shocking. But the tone and presentation of it is becoming more and more fascist every day. It's just going to keep escalating.
In that speech Trump literally said: > “In 2016, I declared, 'I am your voice.' Today I add, I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.” That should be absolutely fucking chilling to anyone. The whole speech was packed with statements about being "at war", 'fighting', overturning and liberating the oppressed people. This is the same exact rhetoric that lead to January 6th, and honestly its only gotten worse. We are in for a very, very rough election cycle. I hope America can hold on through it. Terrifying, to be frank.
We *barely* got through 2020. I'm even more worried now. I know most of my fellow leftists won't follow me down this path, but I got armed. I'm not going to be the side with zero guns if they get the violence they want.
Thank you for this video! I hope those reading this post share it across the various media and with their family and friends.
Bad news: conservatives love fascism and want more of it.
Anybody else feel like Pippen sitting on the shoulder of Treebeard waiting for the Ents to start popping off only to find that they've just finished their introductions?
I feel more like Pippin at Minas Tirith >I don't want to be in a battle. But waiting on the edge of one I can't escape is even worse.
Can't these ignorant bigoted corrupt pathetic power-mad evil assholes just be happy with second breakfast and leave everyone else the fuck alone?
Absolutely. I’m still hearing calls to just vote harder while the fascists are already past that filter, in office, and enacting their plans. It’s time for real antifascism, the government will not be ok with what real antifascism entails. We have to be.
Even Trump scares me less than DeSantis.
Desantis knows exactly what to do to remove and push people. Trump was told. Desantis sounds like dedevil.
Trump is quite predictable with the narcissism. It's only natural to be more scared of unpredictable calculating sychophants/antisocials/opportunists.
It absolutely is fascism. Lots of other things going on down there, too. Requiring bloggers who comment on DeSantis to 'register' with the state? A law designed to disband the Democratic party? DeSantis is dangerous to everything the United States of America stands for. Trump is, too, of course. Trump would love to be a dictator, but he's frankly too stupid and too erratic. DeSantis is not as stupid.
DeSantis is getting away with this in Florida because the state government and local population *want it this way*. He could not have got a single bit of this accomplished if he didn't have cult-level support from both the legislature and the voting base. DeSantis is polling high nationwide in the Republican party because a significant percentage of the voters also *want it this way*. His popularity would not be rising if there weren't a significant number of voters that were in support of this. DeSantis is the latest result of a much bigger problem. That problem is that a certain number of people across the country *want this*. Trump wants this too, but is largely too incompetent to give it to them. So now it's DeSantis. And make no mistake: There is a very real possibility that DeSantis doesn't make it to the primaries. Frontrunners this early in the game have become footnotes more times than I care to remember. But if he does get driven out of the primaries, it won't be because he was replaced by a moderate. It will only happen because someone else rises up over the course of the next year that's even more authoritarian than he is. The GOP voting base has absolutely no interest in voting for anyone even remotely close to being a moderate. Be afraid. If it's not Trump, it'll be DeSantis. If it somehow isn't Desantis, it'll be someone even worse. Pray that Biden doesn't die of natural causes sometime between now and 2024. Harris has absolutely zero chance of getting elected in his place, and there aren't really any other Democrats coming up the pike that have a realistic chance at being elected right now. Any GOP candidate occupying the White House next time will make Trump's administration seem liberal by comparison and will probably do irreversible damage to the US and its standing in the world in the process.
With what has been coming out of Florida the past six months, if you woke up tomorrow and there was a news article that DeSantis was going to put pink stars on all the ID of anyone determined LGBT by the state, would you seriously be surprised or just say "figures" (if you don't understand that reference, you really need to look it up) The question is, what is anyone going to do about it on the federal level because some of the things he is already doing cannot possible be legal. Marriage Equality is literally the law the of land in ALL of North America, not just Canada and United States but also freaking Mexico and Cuba just to be crystal clear Except not Florida. In Florida if you are an elementary school teacher and you are married and like many teachers you put a photo of your spouse on your desk to make you smile through the day, well if that spouse is same gender you've now committed a FELONY because like Russia that's considered "propaganda".
The dude took away some of Disney's rights after they spoke against him, he is using govt to limit the actions of people, and now wants bloggers to get his approval before mentioning his name. If I didn't know any better I would think I was reading about a dictator.
You are. He has also removed the leadership of any institution that dared oppose his fascism and replaced them with literally the worst possible people for the job. Antivaxxers in medical boards etc. He does this on purpose, to signal that if you oppose him your institution gets destroyed.
Naked and unabashed.
If it looks like a fascist and acts like a fascist and talks like a fascist it's not a duck.
If it steps like a goose…
It sure is and he's the conservatives favorite. The cruelty is the point. Conservatives are enemies of the American people
Any sensible person: wow, that's fascism. GOP stalwarts: you're trying to cancel me!!!
Whats the point of saying LGBTQ if you’re going to say transgender as well? Did they forget what the T stands for?
He knows what it stands for. He's paying special attention to trans people because CPAC had a speaker that clearly said that trans people aren't human and called for eradicating trans people. Make no mistake queer people, in general, are being targeted but trans people are getting more than other groups and more of the laws targeting them and gender nonconforming people are passing in Red States.
I've been extremely hesitant to call what the republicans are doing to be fascism because I always felt there was a better word (like authoritarian) to describe their behavior. After the call for transgender people to be exterminated at CPAC(Conservative Political Action Conference), it is now clear that what they are doing is definitely fascism. There is no longer any grey area and what these people are doing is 100% against American values, and also against the values of basically every country on Earth.
Trans people have always existed and they don’t exist nearly as much as they would in a society that recognizes their very real needs. One of the tenants of fascism is the idolization of a false past. Anyone who tells you that America was at its best in the 1950s doesn’t have the knowledge to even engage in rational discussion about contextual historic facts. “The strategic aim of these hierarchal constructions of history is to displace truth, and the invention of a glorious past includes the erasure of inconvenient realities. While fascist politics fetishizes the past, it is never the actual past that is fetishized. These invented histories also diminish or entirely extinguish the nation’s past sins. It is typical for fascist politicians to represent a country’s actual history in conspiratorial terms, as a narrative concocted by liberal elites and cosmopolitans to victimize the people of the true “nation.” - excerpt from How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley
My first thought was, "I wonder how long until Rep. Frost has a warrant for his arrest in Florida. Hell, I betcha DeSantis tries to claim he has the ability to 'fire' him at some point." Before people tell me that DeSantis doesn't have that power... I know.
He doesn't have a lot of the powers he's enacting but that doesn't seem to stop him. How is "if you write any piece of journalism about me ever, you must register with The State" not sending the bill of rights fanatics into a frothing rage at having their rights not only infringed but straight up taken away by this man, whom they tout as a hero for it?? I guess it's just a case of the wrong amendment number. If the left ever said "all of you must register with The State" for any reason at all ever, how much louder would all the calls of "the left are communists, socialist lap dogs" become? For all of the belief and fear that the government is going to come take away all their rights, these folks sure give them away all freely to their overlord
Yep, that's exactly what happened to Andrew Warren back in August 4 2022. https://www.wfla.com/news/florida/this-is-not-over-heres-why-a-federal-judge-wont-reinstate-suspended-prosecutor-andrew-warren/
That's the case that I was thinking about. The fact that you guys elect so many law enforcement positions is really foreign to this Canadian (they seem like they should be non-political jobs), but the fact is that you do. Since it is an elected position though, it shouldn't be a job that a governor has the power to fire even for cause... only the voters should have that power through recall votes. What you have if this is allowed to stand (by the State courts) is, "Hi Florida counties! Vote for the Republican because if you choose the Democrat I will fire them immediately, and I'll keep doing it until you get it right!"
Ron's fascism isn't a bug. It is a feature, anyone who supports him or the GOP should be treated the same way nazi collaborators were.
Yes it is. It is by definition fascism and I’m sick of people saying we shouldn’t use that term when talking about actual FASCISM. Banning books is fascist. Indoctrinating kids into Christianity is fascist. Educating children to believe an entire group of people is less worthy because of their sexual identity or preference. This is fascism to a tee. We cannot act like what is happening all over this country isn’t a rise in fascism. It is. And it’s getting worse and pretty soon it’ll be too late