So what would you do if you met an SS stormtrooper, in mid-depredation? One of the people who conquered Europe and ran the concentration camps? An actual “fascist”?
We’ll come back to that.
Boogie Man
So what defines an authoritarian, whatever label (“fascist”, “Nazi”, “Communist”, “Banana Republic”, and on and on?).
Here’s one trait.
Remember when this scene, from 1984, seemed fictional?
Authoritarians, from the Pharoahs to Kim Jong Un, knew that total authority rested on having a boogeyman – simultaneously the nadir of depravity and an existential threat – to divert the attention and energy of the people.
(Funny bit of trivia – at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Democrats tried to capture the magic of the scene from the movie. Didn’t work.)
Staring At The Social Ceiling
Remember that old trick from junior high, where you’d stare up at ceiling until other people started staring up with you to see what you were looking at?
“White Supremacist” groups have been shedding members at the rate of an order of magnitude per generation: they had millions of members in the 1920s (they the KKK drew 50,000 to a rally in Rocherster Minnesota in the ’20s), to hundreds of thousands in the ’60s, to tens of thousands in the early 80s (which saw the last great spasm of militant violence from those groups – the Posse Comitatus, the Alan Berg murders, and of course Oklahoma City).
Notwithstanding that, about the time Barack Obama got elected, Big Left started chanting “there’s going to be a wave of white supremacist/ultra-right terror that’ll dwarf 9/11. Any day now”.
And they’ve done their darnedest to tell that story – from portraying 100 doughy losers parading with tiki torches while outnumbered 10 to 1 in Charlottesville a “White Supremacist Uprising”, to shaking and baking more “right wing attacks” from the ether…
…almost as if they’re trying to goad someone into doing something as stupid and destructive…
…as the stuff “Anti”-Fa and BLM have been doing nationwide for the past couple of years.
But it’s not just about deflection.
It’s about making your side think the other side is just a little less noble, worthy and human than the people on your side.
All You Others
Which is what we’re getting from Democrat politicians. Last week, New York governor Kathy Hochul told all 5.4 million Republicans in her state to leave (she later clarified that to say she only wanted to expel the leaders and politicians that oppose her).
Charlie Crist, taking the next step on his road toward being the Harold Stassen of the deep south, told Republican voters to take their votes elsewhere, for their “hateful” act of (checks notes) supporting Ron DeSantis. .
Which is mostly par for the course, these days.
What, Are You Gonna Cry? Huh?
The propensity for bullies to try to goad their opponents to strike first, so they can appear to be defending themselves, is pretty much bully human nature. Extremists benefit from extreme responses; among the biggest supporters of German president Von HIndenburg’s “Hitler Cabinet” were the Communists, who bet long (and, while ultimately mistakenly, not without good reason) that promoting extremism in their opposition would benefit them.
But as we wait for the “President”‘s speech on “the soul of the nation” tomorrow, the chanting point has been deafening.
If brains were gasoline, Eric Swalwell couldn’t drive a Vespa around the inside of a Cheerio. But that’s the nice thing about being a “useful idiot” – being an idiot won’t count you out of the job:
Doesn’t he sound like that red-faced bully in sixth grade?
Speaking of sixth grade: don’t some of them sound like they learned “debate” from the mean girls in junior high?
Just some schmuck lefty who’s not the definitive opinion of the whole left?
OK – how about the President’s press secretary?
And this, er, person:
Berg’s Seventh Law alert; who said anything about a civil war?
And this next bit, from Brandon – is it yet another senile rant, or does he actually think that “right wing Americans” are killing cops?
Or does he just want his dumber, less critical supporters to think it?
Well, clearly Big Left wants people to think someone’s itchin’ to do some killin’:
(Note: not gonna say “this didn’t happen” I am going to say it happens all the time, and like Ilhan Omar’s “death threats” just in time for the state fair last year, calling them out, especially on the part of an intentional incendiarist like Swalwell, is more a matter of political optics than actual law-enforcement. I’m going out on a short little limb to suggest this is but one of many threats people on all sides of the aisle get – but this one happens to fit a narrative. Prove me wrong)
Now, it may well be that “bloodshed is coming”. We’ve already had a couple of examples – although neither this nor this are the examples Swalwell is thinking of.
But the larger point is, Big Left is trying to make half the nation into “boogiemen”.
“But the right does it too! What about Willie Horton? What about Reagan’s ‘welfare queens'”?
Say what you will about both of them; nobody ascribed their traits to half of the entire electorate.
Big Left is “othering” half the population; social media is a “90 Seconds Hate” that never ends.
Why?
You Travel Back In Time And Meet Teenage Hitler…
To answer the question from the first paragraph – what do you do if you meet an actual SS Stormtrooper?
Because the “fascist” of cultural lore was an enemy of humanity. There is no “semi”-concentration camp guard, is there?
You do what our grandparents did at Normandy or Bastogne or Saint Lo? You attack and destroy them. Right?
They are making about half the population into boogiemen so the other half doesn’t see them as human beings with political differences, but rather as villains to be feared, hated, subjugated, destroyed metaphorically or literally.
Let’s see if that’s part of Biden’s speech about “the nation’s soul” later today.
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Repost because I can…
The word “fascism” is so closely tied to Mussolini and Hitler that it’s impossible to separate it from the horrors they caused. And that’s what makes it tricky to use. People hear fascist, they think of Hitler, and the argument becomes “Did you just compare Republicans to Hitler?!” which is a tough argument to win.
There needs to be a better word to describe the political workings of fascism without bringing the holocaust into the discussion. The holocaust was a result of Nazism, not a feature of the overall picture of fascism.
Republicans are indeed semi-fascist, and we must fight hard to avoid them becoming full-blown.
Poor widdow Emery is looking in the mirror again.
Emery, perhaps look at Biden’s demonization of his opposition (and Hochul’s) and ask yourself “If the Democrats were to implement the plan of ‘1984’ fully, what would they do differently?”
Mitch, excellent 3-part analysis. Thank you.
The word “fascism” is so closely tied to Mussolini and Hitler that it’s impossible to separate it from the horrors they caused.
Yeah ,that’s why I’ve been using the word “authoritarian” in the titles – by way of contrast without a whole lot of distinction.
The holocaust was a result of Nazism, not a feature of the overall picture of fascism
You’re right in the sense that Mussolini, for all his many crimes, had little to no interest in exterminating people, and was very dilatory about participating in the Holocaust.
But I’m talking about the Democrats harnessing aspects of authoritarianism of whatever name in their campaign to demonize their opponents and the rule of law itself.
Republicans are indeed semi-fascist
Nah. Parts of the party are part of a personality cult – but nobody’s shutting the “enemy” down, demonizing entire groups of fellow Americans, or anything of the sort.
Democrats are using terms like “semi-fascist” to demonize, triballize, frame and isolate.
And that buck stops right here.
No, we are not.
@MBerg
Historical events must be understood in the context of their own time, not anachronistically by our retrospective insights. Past centuries were racist, sexist and homophobic, that’s not news. The evolution of these prejudices is important to know.
Semi Fascism is a very good analogy.
It is an easy argument to win.
No — we are not at the gas chambers, brown shirts in the streets and the destruction of the Capitol building being blamed on communists.
We have racist attacks in synogouges by member of the MAGA party in the Philidelphia area that gunned down Jews praying.
We have a Buffalo manifesto targeting black people based on skin color and gunning them down in a grocery store
Charlottesville Torch light parades with all white men shouting “Jew will not replace us”.
The MAGA flags flying over the Stars and Stripes.
The Confederate flag of traitors flown in the Capitol Building during a failed self Coup instigated by the former president of the US.
We have Fox news as a major Propaganda outlet pushing the Big Lie.
Look — Fascism is an after the fact thing, once the power of the state has been captured.. but not before the powerful tools of the Constitution have been.
wanting law and order is semifacist
wanting fair elections is semifacist
wanting secure borders is semifacist
wanting irs to leave me alone is semifacist
wanting out of ukraine is semifacist
wanting to stop iran nuclear is semifacist
wanting prosperity is semifacist
wanting lesko brandon to respect the constitution is semifacist
wanting you know what everything i want is semifacist okay fine better than full on facist
like liberals are
Repost because I cannot google up another quote so fast
FTFY, nitwit.
Nah. Parts of the [rump, Neo-con] party are part of a personality cult – but nobody’s shutting the “enemy” down, demonizing entire groups of fellow Americans, or anything of the sort.
FTFY, Mitch.
Neo-cons continue to “reach across the isle”, to pass grifts back and forth. It’s OK for a neo-con to say “Chuck Schumer’s rhetoric is not helpful to the country”, but “Chuck Schumer is a conniving grifter whose universe revolves around money and power.” will never pass neo-con lips….because it applies just as honestly to them.
Once a fellow frees himself from the indoctrination of years of lies, lays the truth out flat and has an unobstructed, unbiased look at it, it’s easy as pie to say “Leftists (as a group and singularly) are human scum. They are a detriment to civilization and need to be removed from participating in society, and they can take their grasping, neo-con fellow travelers with them.”
Fairly rolls off the tips of my fingers…
OK, let’s see how this goes:
Semi Fascism is a very good analogy.
It is an easy argument to win.
We’ll see, won’t we?
We have racist attacks in synogouges by member of the MAGA party in the Philidelphia area that gunned down Jews praying.
I say it all the time because it’s true: the easiest way in the world to become famous is to be a crackpot on “the right”, no matter how fringe, ostracized, and pathetic. You will not only get lavish media coverage, you’ll be held up as an example of all Republicans.
Meanwhile, if you’re a leftist that mows down 11 at a synagogue, it disappears down the memory hole, with nobody making him a standing for all Democrats.
We have a Buffalo manifesto targeting black people based on skin color and gunning them down in a grocery store
And he represents “the right”, or even Trump supporters, exactly how? Be specific.
Given that Trump got more Black and Latino voters than any Republican in sixty years, that seems like a stretch.
Charlottesville Torch light parades with all white men shouting “Jew will not replace us”.
100 pathetic endomorphs, pretty much every “neo-nazi” that could be rounded up from 6-8 states and then some, roundly condemned by every significant Republican up to and including Trump.
See my note above about “the easiest way in the world to become famous”.
The MAGA flags flying over the Stars and Stripes.
Huh. Haven’t seen that. Whose official policy is that?
Or is it just some overzeaous Trump supporter?
I’m gonna guess “b”.
Given the left’s decades of mutilation of the flag, that’s some pretty ofay whataboutism.
The Confederate flag of traitors flown in the Capitol Building during a failed self Coup instigated by the former president of the US.
And they’re all in jail today. #shrug.
We have Fox news as a major Propaganda outlet pushing the Big Lie.
Now you’re just phoning it in, Emery.
But I’m not – because when you want to talk about media pushing Big Lies, the NYTimes and WaPo don’t even bother being coy about it.
Look — Fascism is an after the fact thing, once the power of the state has been captured.. but not before the powerful tools of the Constitution have been.
And, as I’ve shown, the Democrats are rolling down that road in high gear. The whole ‘semi-fascist’ schtick is part of that.
Mitch rushing to counter the inane twaddle of an 80IQ troll is Ultra Cringe, ngl.
Troll: “You’re a Fascist!!”
Berg: “No, YOU!”
Blade: 🤢
Biden was elected on a platform of unity. That message was even more important after the events of Jan 6, and as we learned later, a concerted attempt by Trump to disrupt the transfer of power to his successor.
The Republicans could have used the above events to move on from Trump, return to party to a more sane stance and engaged with Biden to indeed “build back better”. Instead they chose to double down on brown-nosing Trump, selected ever more extreme candidates and allowed their party to be taken over by election deniers, conspiracy theorists and outright crazies.
The new breed of Republicans do not play by any rules. They are implementing widespread voting restrictions, deliberately targeting (formerly neutral) election supervisors and using outright lies to push on trigger issues (guns, borders, abortion, conspiracy theories), all the time having only two real targets; enacting tax cuts for the richest and reducing federal institutions to powerless entities.
The time has come for Democrats to call out the Republicans for what they are. A party beholden to a wannabe authoritarian whose highest form of debate is playground insults, who is corrupt to the core and combines all this with a breathtaking level of ignorance. If he and his ilk get to power again, the US can indeed kiss goodbye to democracy.
Emery, your handlers in Beijing (or is it Wuhan?) have got you in major deflection mode today. Over the course of history, Democraps have fucked this country up more than any other group, including the KKK, which was a Democrat version of the Brownshirts. Woody Wilson gave us the disaster that is the Federal Reserve, dragged us into WWI, segregating the military until the Korean War, Roosevelt caved into Hitler, knowing that the Holocaust was occurring, then orchestrated the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to allegedly get us out of the depression, which his meddling made worse and Truman dropped the bombs, killing thousands of people and starting the Cold War. Then, Kennedy, orchestrated the disaster that was the Bay of Pigs, sacrificing the lives of many Cuban patriots, then got us into Vietnam, then exacerbated by Johnson, which was another useless waste of American blood and treasure. Then, they adopted communism as their platform and continue today.
So, stick your bullshit back down your throat, you pathetic loser!
Boss, let us not overlook that LBJ enlarged our involvement in Vietnam, and then used the US Treasury for his “keep the niggers voting Democrat for the next 200 years” campaign.
We’ll be paying for that one until the last light goes out in the US, and so will the blacks.
Sure, Emery, we can point to crackpots on the right, and at the very same time, I can point to crackpots on the left, e.g. Occupy and Antifa. So that’s equal. Where we’re not equal is where we have a Democratic governor and a Democratic President saying “conservatives shouldn’t live here” (Hochul) and calling half the electorate fascists (Biden).
Combine that with cancel culture in the universities and among the Democratic Party as a whole, along with a media that celebrates that media, and the needle is pointing left, strongly.
no idiot your analysis is wrong cuz lesko brandon was not elected on a platform of anything he was not elected at all the election was stolen by democrats rinos and never trumpers to keep power out of the hands of the icky voters
you want to see not playing by the rules wait until the economy crashes the irs starts auditing middle class businesses trump is arrested and democrats steal the next election there’s a reason lesko brandon is so afraid of ordinary citizens owning firearms same reason as king george
OMG, this is hilarious-
@MBerg
Historical events must be understood in the context of their own time, not anachronistically by our retrospective insights. Past centuries were racist, sexist and homophobic, that’s not news.
Past centuries did not have words for racist, sexist and homophobic. these words all had their first use in the 20th century.
Sentence 2 directly contradicts sentence 1. What an f’n moron . . .
Blade;
Totally correct. He also stopped bombing Hanoi, because his media allies were turning on him. Later information came out from the NVA leadership that a. Had we bombed for two more weeks, they would have surrendered. They thought the U.S. leadership knew that and were shocked that they stopped. Lots of guys are on that wall that were killed after the bombing stopped, and b. That same enemy leadership, said that their biggest ally was the U.S. media. I give Nixon credit for getting us the hell out of there. Oh, and when several senators were literally screaming for money to support the pullout of loyal Vietnamese military and civilians, the one rat bastard that railed the loudest AGAINST it and got it killed? Pedo Pete Biden!
Democrats and the media, have been responsible for lots of our military men being killed because they were stupid. A traitor Dem Senator bragged to the media that “the Japs can’t sink our subs, because they are setting their depth charges too shallow”! Of course, the Japanese were monitoring the media and promptly reset their depth charges, costing an estimated five sub crews their lives.
“what do you do if you meet an actual SS Stormtrooper?”
I did meet an actual SS stormtrooper, or at least a guy who claimed to have been in the Austrian SS. This was in Kona about 25 years ago. Old guy at a bar drank too much on Saint Patricks Day. Heavy accent, missing a lot of fingers & a nasty scar across his neck. Showed me an old tattoo of numbers on his forearm as his bona fides. He thought that I was Irish and explained that he was Austrian and that’s when the convo got weird.
It was an interesting conversation. He told me the SS did not kill civilians because where ever the SS is, that is the front, and there are no civilians at the front. He said he wanted to fight to the death, but his officer ordered his men to put down their arms & surrender.
Then he changed his mind about me being Irish. He said I must be a Jew. That’s when I left.
What do you call it when one political party tells the other political who it can run for office?
“Democracy,” according to the troll.
What do you call it when one political party tells the other political who it can select for a “bi-partisan” Congressional investigative committee?
“Justice, and transparency” according to the troll.
What do you call it when 66% of voters vote for the R and a D ends up the winner?
New and improved democracy!
What do you call it when 81million people (most in history) vote for a senile old pedophile who campaigned from his basement, and who’s rallies couldn’t draw flies?
Most secure election; ever.
Here’s an interesting fact — polling shows there are more Democrats who believe that the 2016 election was stolen by Trump from Hillary than there are Republicans who believe that the 2020 election was stolen by Biden from Trump.
Those Dems are crazy, man!
For those of you who are interested in the real Joe Biden, here is why Joe Biden was forced to drop out of his 1988 campaign for the Democrat presidential nomination.
In September, 1987, on the campaign trail, Biden gave a speech to supporters where he said “Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university? Why is it that my wife…is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright?… Is it because they didn’t work hard? My ancestors, who worked in the coal mines of northeast Pennsylvania and would come after 12 hours and play football for four hours? It’s because they didn’t have a platform on which to stand.”
This was mostly plagiarized from a speech — a very famous speech — given by British Labour leader Neil Kinnock. The parts of Biden’s speech that weren’t a straight out lift of Kinnock’s words, the American references to Pennsylvania coal mines and American football — were completely made up. Joe Biden was not descended from coal miners. His father and grandfather were drifters.
Joe Biden has always been vague about his family history, mining, it, when he could get away with it, for sympathetic stories, true or false. The New Yorker, of all publications, had a journalist track down the real history of the Bidens. It ain’t pretty, you can read it here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/22/the-untold-history-of-the-biden-family
For example, during WWI, Biden’s grandfather was an asphalt and pitch contractor who ripped off the government on a million dollar contract.
If you want to know what a real hard scrabble life was like back then, my paternal great grandfather, in 1918, worked as a laborer in Montana’s Anaconda mine.
Emery- Republicans are implementing widespread voting restrictions..” Please show proof that those measures are “restricting” anyone. Show your math. You can’t , because there’s no proof. But I see- trying to restrict gun ownership is ok? Your lack of self-awareness is astounding
“Enacting tax cuts for the richest”. All Emery can do is repeat the dem mantra “tax cuts..”. Again, where’s the proof of your assertion? Trump’s tax cuts gave relief to just about everyone who pays income taxes. You do realize that the bottom 50% of wage earners in this country pay at most 3% of the income tax bill. Actually, the US has one of the most progressive income tax systems in the world-where an extremely small number of individuals pay most of the tax. The top 1% pays around 40% of the total income tax bill. If you look up the data (I know, you’re a lib) you’d see that as the top marginal income tax rates have come down since the Reagan years, the amount the top 1% pays has gone UP.
Emery-you’re a clown ..
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jmf;
In addition, the tax codes are intentionally complicated. When the DemoCommies first implemented it and wrote those codes, they claimed that the taxes would only be on the rich. Hmmmm. How many times have they used that lie? Funny! Why is it that no one caught on that those codes were initially written so that someone with an eighth grade indoctrination could understand it? Back then, how many rich people fit that category?
Now, some CPA can’t figure them out, because they are still written to confuse people, so the overlords can implement tax increases. These increases are all designed to make the unwashed masses pay higher taxes, but, unless they pay attention and are not intimidated by the IRS, they don’t see it. Those loopholes were also deliberately installed to protect their big donors. Again, the peons don’t see through the bull.
This is why, despite proof by math whizzes, tax experts and statisticians that they will work, there can be no bipartisan support for a flat tax. These swamp dwellers know that if those were implemented, they would not only lose their control, but their political talking points, as well.
^^ Republican arguments for defunding/disbanding the FBI and the IRS are as inane as “defund the police” nonsense. I personally find the tax code needlessly complicated and the rates rather high. However, not have a well funded tax agency simply complicates my life as I am sure it does for many other Americans who may resent the tax code but want to comply honestly. Republicans should try to focus on simplifying the tax code.
I’ve been cast into MBerg’s “Semi-Fascists” Vs. Not-Semi-At-All Authoritarian” moderation purgatory…
Emery,
Huzzah! Should happen more often, because you’re peddling hate speech and misinformation.
^^ It’s appears to be more authoritarian moderation than fascist ….
^^ could have instituted an IQ filter, too. If so, you’re fucked.