Toro
Diamond Member
No, the GOP is not a fascist party. But it is demonstrating nascent fascist markers.
Robert O. Paxton, in his 2004 book The Anatomy of Fascism, provides these hallmarks: āobsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purityā; involving āa mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elitesā; which āabandons democratic libertiesā; and āpursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing. . . .ā
These phrases more readily evoke brownshirts on Kristallnacht than fervent Republicans; writing in Vox, Dylan Matthews draws some useful distinctions.
But consider the predicates of nascent fascism.
Trump relentlessly exploited a sense of decline, humiliation, and victimization among marginalized whites, even as he evoked Americaās loss of strength and purity. His supportersā āredemptive violenceā at our capital was preceded in Michigan, as one example, by armed incursion the state legislature and an abortive effort to kidnap and execute the governor. While claiming to protect democracy, the GOP persistently undermines the right of disfavored groups to vote.
Though nothing in America equals the predictive virulence of German anti-Semitism, anger at the racial, societal, and religious other animates a goodly portion of the Republican base. Its loathing of supposedly degenerate liberalism provides another linkāas does the desire for authoritarian leadership to restore their chosen hierarchy.
Perhaps most salient is the attack on reality itself. āPost-truth,ā writes Timothy Snyder, āis pre-fascism.ā Hitler castigated the media as āenemies of the peopleā; so does Trump and, often, his party. Like the avatars of fascism, Republicans increasingly trumpet mendacious propagandaāincluding about voter fraud.
Classical fascism conditions its followers to accept āthe big lieā which unifies their discontents and justifies their leadersā actions. So, in 2020, did the GOP.
Granted that the big Republican lie did not equal Hitlerās poisonous assertion that perfidious Jews stabbed Germany in the back. But the GOPās lie to its base was, nonetheless, breathtakingly ambitious: that an unfathomable conspiracy involving thousands of state and local officials and judges, many Republicans, had stolen the presidency from Donald Trumpāfrom them.
To believe this, one must not only distrust an electoral system dispersed across 50 states and countless localitiesāand everyone in itābut reject an overwhelming amount of easily available evidence and the dictates of common sense. Yet most Republicans did just that. In their collective mind, the GOP was cheated by perfidious forces, and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. The dangerous myth of political dispossession is now embedded in the Republican narrative. ...
The GOPās āPre-Fascistā DNA
The term āfascistā is too often thrown around carelesslyābut it can be helpful in explaining the direction of the Republican party.
thebulwark.com