The GOP's 'Pre-Fascist' DNA

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The term “fascist” is too often thrown around carelessly—but it can be helpful in explaining the direction of the Republican party.

by Richard North Patterson
January 26, 2021

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Classical fascism conditions its followers to accept “the big lie” which unifies their discontents and justifies their leaders’ actions. So, in 2020, did the GOP.

Granted that the big Republican lie did not equal Hitler’s poisonous assertion that perfidious Jews stabbed Germany in the back. But the GOP’s 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 Trump—from them.

To believe this, one must not only distrust an electoral system dispersed across 50 states and countless localities—and everyone in it—but 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.

Its implications are grave indeed; if most Republicans disbelieve in democracy, they will support its subversion by electoral chicanery—if not worse. The attack on Congress created a beachhead for anti-democratic violence: Polling shows that a full one-third of Trump supporters feel that the mob represented their grievances. More broadly, half of the party’s electorate believes that GOP lawmakers did not go far enough in attempting to overturn the election.

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https://thebulwark.com/the-gops-pre-fascist-dna/

[TheRealNorth]

1. The were Pre-fascist in 2000....

When you try to seize control of government via a coup, use fear, violence, and intimidation to try to get your way - you have crossed that line.

They were subverting democracy far before 2020 by using gerrymandering, restricting/making it more difficult to vote for voters likely to vote Democratic, putting voting machines with higher "spoilage" rates in Democratic precincts, targeted voter purges, etc,

[The Roux Comes First]

2. Most of Us Would Likely Agree That Lawmakers "Did Not Go Far Enough,"

But the occasion was Impeachment the First.

And I think that almost as important as the openness to the Big Lie is the dangerously inbred idea in that "party" that they are always pitiful or at least pitiable victims. Self-pity can be awfully pernicious, too.

[WyattKansas]

3. I remember talking with a U.S. Government Attorney right before the 2004 Election...

And I told him that Republicans were becoming fully fascist, instead of just flirting with it anymore. He did not think so and dismissed what I told him. I have wondered if he ever changed his mind after I told him that years ago, but there was no way for me to contact him again. I am sure that he had a rude awakening during the tRUMP Dictatorship.