The Fascist-Curious Right: Salazar, Orban, and the yearning for an American Caesar

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
Bill Kristol
@BillKristol
“Something genuinely odd (and disturbing) is happening on the right. Ideas that would have been unthinkable just moments ago are now being normalized and, if anything, the drift toward authoritarianism seems to be accelerating.”
— ⁦@SykesCharlie⁩

The Fascist-Curious Right
Salazar, Orban, and the yearning for an American Caesar
morningshots.thebulwark.com
7:11 AM · Aug 3, 2021

https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/the-fascist-curious-right

*snip*

Ideas that would have been unthinkable just moments ago are now being normalized and, if anything, the drift toward authoritarianism seems to be accelerating. This includes the explicit embrace of the idea of an American dictator — an American Caesar. Literally and seriously. (This is not a parody.)

As I’ve mentioned before, the publication that unironically calls itself American Greatness likes to think of itself as the “intellectual” home for MAGAWorld.

Despite its dalliance with raw racism, and a fetish for sedition, American Greatness’s roster of contributors includes such right-wing luminaries as Victor David Hanson, Seb Gorka, David Harsanyi, Conrad Black, Roger Kimball, Mark Bauerlein, Josh Hammer, Ned Ryun, Dennis Prager, and Salena Zito.

It recently published an endorsement of military coups by a retired military guy with close ties to TrumpWorld.

But now its fetish for coups has morphed into a yearning for even more robust measures. “To survive today’s leftist threat,” argues author Christopher Roach, “we need to be committed to acquiring and using power in the service of a counterrevolution.”

*snip*

[Thomas Hurt]

1. fascist curious my a$$, conservatism is authoritarian at its core.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

2. Yes it is

That's why the right wing,all of it has to be amputated from politics. Too many psychopaths in the republican party.

[Turbineguy]

3. They want the

Russian strongman model.

"It's okay, because they aren't commies anymore!"

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Trump tried to appoint Michael Anton, to the National Board of Educational Sciences in Dec 2020

https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/researchers-balk-at-trumps-last-minute-picks-for-ed-science-board/2020/12

though those 8 are not listed on the official site, so hopefully the appointments were stopped by Biden when he came in: https://ies.ed.gov/director/board/bios.asp

Trump had previously put him on the National Security Council, for about a year. These are people who the far right try to insert into government positions, where they can work to overthrow democracy.

Here's the article about Anton and Curtis Yarvin (the notorious anti-democratic "Mencius Moldbug" blogger who was instrumental in the rise of the "alt-right", and has links to Peter Thiel) talking about how an "American Caesar" should seize control of the country and rule as a dictator: https://theweek.com/politics/1003035/the-far-right-contemplates-an-american-caesar