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mia

(8,356 posts)
Thu Sep 1, 2022, 06:09 PM Sep 2022

Fear of Fascism

We’re hesitant to use the word, and for good reason.

...President Joe Biden has been getting a lot of static for referring to the ideology of Donald Trump and his followers as “semi-fascism.” It isn’t surprising that right-wing pundits, such as the Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway, are practically having to take out loans to buy extra strings of pearls to clutch. But even John Avlon at CNN and Matt Lewis at The Daily Beast are trying to warn Biden off from insulting millions of voters.

It’s risky politics for the president to use words like semi-fascism, much as it was a needless fumble back in 2016 for Hillary Clinton to call people “deplorables.” For the rest of us, even to consider the word fascism feels like failure. It is a Rubicon we fear to cross, because it makes our fellow Americans into our civic enemies and implies that there is no road back for them, or for us.

We cannot, however, let our understandable fear of words such as fascism scare us out of talking about the reality staring us in the face. The GOP itself might not meet the full definition of a “fascist” party—not yet, anyway—but it’s not a normal party, and its base is not an ordinary political movement. It is, instead, a melding of the remnants of a once-great party with an authoritarian, violent, seditionist personality cult bent on capturing and exercising power solely to benefit its own members and punish its imagined enemies among other Americans.

Is that fascism? For most people, it’s close enough. A would-be strongman and a party of followers enveloped in racism, seized with nostalgia for an imagined glorious past, and drunk on mindless blood-and-soil nationalism all stinks of fascism. There’s a reason, however, that I still counsel against rushing toward the F-word: Things are poised to get worse, and we need to know what to watch for....

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/08/fear-of-fascism/671289/

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Fear of Fascism (Original Post) mia Sep 2022 OP
It's fascism .... Lovie777 Sep 2022 #1
It sure as fuck isn't democracy. The Unmitigated Gall Sep 2022 #2
Here comes the parade kwolf68 Sep 2022 #3
Past time to say the f word 303squadron Sep 2022 #4

The Unmitigated Gall

(3,720 posts)
2. It sure as fuck isn't democracy.
Thu Sep 1, 2022, 06:17 PM
Sep 2022

There might not be stadiums full of drone-people in uniform giving the sieg heil, but the warped mindset is there.

kwolf68

(7,365 posts)
3. Here comes the parade
Thu Sep 1, 2022, 06:18 PM
Sep 2022

Republicans lambaste Dems with undeserved vitriol for literally 30 fucking years or more. Bill Clinton was the OG of "Marxism" I think. They have used the red baiting tactics to scare the weak minded into eschewing Liberal policies that ostensibly help the average person in the street. They corral their masses by feeding them scare-mongering, labeling even the most moderate Democrats as "Marxist". It's the way they control the narrative, though it's mostly bullshit. There may be some socialists in the US government, but absolutely there are no communists. Yet, he we sit getting labeled communists.

NOW is the right time to fight the fuck back. And instead of just CALLING them fascists, call them that THEN explain WHY we believe you to be a party that is "semi" fascist.

The media of course never has a single goddamn word to say when Biden is called a Marxist (Biden a Marxist? Goodness). The media promotes it through the echo chamber doing their part to brainwash the masses.

Then when a Dem fights back with the exact same tactic (other than the fact Biden actually has REAL evidence of WHY they are behaving like fascists) the media latches onto the Republican handwringing. Just being stenographers for the right wing cabal.

I want someone in the media to ask idiots like McCarthy:
"Given you are so distraught that President Biden has called some parts of the Republican Party semi fascists, do you have anything to say about your side calling basically every Democrat (other than Tulsi Gabbard) a communist?" Please explain the difference, sir."

303squadron

(521 posts)
4. Past time to say the f word
Thu Sep 1, 2022, 06:20 PM
Sep 2022

Germany once had a leader who vowed to make Germany great again!
Germany once had a leader who called the press the "lying press."
Germany once had a leader who said that fascism was a Christian movement.
Germany once banned and burned books.
Germany once outlawed abortion.
Both Italy and Germany purchased the religious right with the Lateran Pact and the Concordant. (Think Amy Coney Barrett).

fascism: a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.

When they stop acting like fascists I will stop calling them fascists.

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