US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

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US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by Tribble »

I was trying to figure out the best way to describe what’s going on. While at first I was going to do the usual Trump mantra, and he’s certainly a big part of the problem, overall I think it’s even more obvious now he’s just a symptom of a much larger issue. Sad truth is, the majority of Republicans are now at least tolerating if not openly supporting a (Republican-based) fascist coup, the only real debate in the party being whether or not it should be a violent overthrow vs traditional voter suppression and legal maneuvering:

The Capitol Rioters Won
Although some Republican leaders deplored their violence, most have come to support the rioters’ claim that Trump’s defeat meant the election was inherently illegitimate.

Republicans say they would like to move on from the 2020 election.

“A lot of our members, and I think this is true of a lot of House Republicans, want to be moving forward and not looking backward,” John Thune, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, told CNN on May 19. “Anything that gets us rehashing the 2020 elections I think is a day lost on being able to draw a contrast between us and the Democrats’ very radical left-wing agenda.”

After Thune and 34 of his Republican colleagues used the filibuster last week to block a vote on creating a bipartisan commission to investigate the Capitol riot, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer accused Republicans of fearing the wrath of former President Donald Trump. “Shame on the Republican Party for trying to sweep the horrors of that day under the rug because they’re afraid of Donald Trump,” Schumer said on the floor.

But Republicans are not blocking a bipartisan January 6 commission because they fear Trump, or because they want to “move on” from 2020. They are blocking a January 6 commission because they agree with the underlying ideological claim of the rioters, which is that Democratic electoral victories should not be recognized. Because they regard such victories as inherently illegitimate—the result of fraud, manipulation, or the votes of people who are not truly American—they believe that the law should be changed to ensure that elections more accurately reflect the will of Real Americans, who by definition vote Republican. They believe that there is nothing for them to investigate, because the actual problem is not the riot itself but the unjust usurpation of power that occurred when Democrats won. Absent that provocation, the rioters would have stayed home.

Americans have suffered through a pandemic, an economic crisis, and a presidential election in the past year; it’s understandable that many would want to disengage from politics. With Trump gone from the White House and banned from his favorite social-media platform, the most visible symbol of the nation’s democratic backsliding is out of office. But Trump’s absence has not arrested the Republican Party’s illiberal turn—on the contrary, he is now a martyr to an election that he falsely claims was rigged. If anything, though, our electoral system is rigged in favor of Republicans; Democrats had to overcome a significant structural bias in the Electoral College, meaning Trump almost prevailed again even as his opponent won 7 million more votes.

As New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait wrote, the “accommodation” that Republicans “have reached between their violent and nonviolent wings is a legal regimen designed to ensure that the next time a Trump rejects the election result, he won’t need a mob to prevail.” Trump did not impose this belief that elections are valid only if they result in Republican victory on the conservative rank and file; he was a manifestation of it. Nor are Republican officials held hostage by a base they fear; falsehoods about election fraud have been deliberately stoked by Republican elites who then insist that they must bow to the demands of the very misinformed constituents they have been lying to. The last thing ambitious Republicans want is to let this fire go out.


Trump infamously refused to concede the 2020 election until after the mob he had incited ransacked the Capitol in an effort to overturn the outcome. But even afterward, most Republicans in the House, and several in the Senate, refused to vote to certify the results. The rioters were outliers in the sense that they employed political violence and intimidation in an attempt to overturn the election. But the rioters fell squarely within the Republican mainstream in sharing Trump’s belief that his defeat meant the election was inherently illegitimate. The main ideological cleavage within the GOP is not whether election laws should be changed to better ensure Republican victory, but whether political violence is necessary to achieve that objective.

The large majority of Republicans are content with simply changing the rules to make it harder for Democrats to win elections, but figures beloved by the party fringe, such as former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and Representatives Matt Gaetz and Majorie Taylor Greene, openly flirt with the possibility of seizing power by force.


Greene has warned that freedom is “earned with the price of blood”; over the weekend, Flynn backtracked on a public call for a military coup; and Gaetz, on tour with Greene, told a receptive audience that “the Second Amendment is about maintaining, within the citizenry, the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government, if that becomes necessary.” As far as these three are concerned, this is the idle talk of studio gangsters. The issue is that it reflects a very real rejection of liberal democracy and the peaceful transfer of power among Republican voters.
Republicans are not “moving on” from the 2020 election. In state after state, Republican-controlled legislatures have passed laws making it more difficult to vote, in some cases explicitly targeting Democratic constituencies. Over the weekend, Texas Democrats temporarily blocked one such measure that would have not only outlawed methods that Democratic-led counties have used to increase turnout, but also curtailed early Sunday voting, a tradition for many Black churches. The Texas Republican state legislator Travis Clardy later insisted that the limitation on Sunday voting was a “typo”; if lawmakers can’t draw up legislation dealing with Americans’ fundamental rights without egregiously discriminating on the basis of race, they shouldn’t hold office to begin with.


Texas joins 14 other states in attempting to curtail voting rights in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Some Republican-controlled states have purged officials who refused to obey Trump’s instructions not to certify the election results; a few are considering measures that would allow state legislatures to overturn such results outright.

The risks of such measures are obvious. Between the effectiveness of gerrymandering and the partisan polarization of urban and rural districts, in some states winning a legislative majority is well-nigh impossible for the Democratic Party as currently constituted. In the event that the electorate fails to produce the necessary Republican victory in a presidential election, impervious Republican majorities would be able to hand the state’s electoral votes to their candidate, regardless of whom their state’s voters actually chose. On Tuesday, an open letter from scholars published by the New America Foundation warned that “these initiatives are transforming several states into political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections.”

The most immediate threat to American democracy was removed once Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election failed. But with Trump gone, the Republican Party has focused on the long-term project of engineering the electorate to preserve its hold on power. This won’t necessarily lead to one party rule, but it would ensure that conservative ideological priorities take precedence no matter which party is in office, by enhancing the power of the most conservative elements of the American polity.

The closest historical analogue is perhaps the Gilded Age, when both parties worked to restrict American democracy to its “best men.” In the North, this meant seeking to blunt the influence of immigrants and workers; in the South, it meant disenfranchising Black men and the white poor. The result was a country with widening inequality, and one with an emerging bipartisan consensus on the justness of white supremacy. In Brechtian terms, they dissolved the people and elected another—but at least things grew more civil and less polarized.

In the more traditional corners of conservative media, writers at outlets like National Review argue for a more restricted electorate. In the more explicitly Trumpist corners of the internet, writers argue that secession or civil war is preferable to sharing power with those they consider “citizen-aliens.” The broad consensus they delimit, which you can see in the actions of Republican-controlled state legislatures and in Congress, is that if Americans choose the wrong political party, they should be coerced by the machinery of the state into choosing the correct one.

The same racial and religious polarization that is fueling the Republican turn against democracy has turned the Democratic Party into an institution that is potentially incapable of confronting the problem. The relative homogeneity of the GOP has left Republicans short of a national majority and reliant on minoritarian institutions to wield power. But conversely, because the Democrats remain a racially and ideologically diverse coalition, they lack their rivals’ unity of action. The mostly white party can be ruthless, but it does not represent a majority; the diverse party represents a majority, but coalition politics prevents it from being ruthless.

Many partisans view the other side as heartlessly efficient and their own side as weak of will. Yet the asymmetries between the parties and their coalitions are a matter of record: There is a reason Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is announcing that “100 percent of my focus is on stopping this new administration,” which is what he said of the previous Democratic administration, while President Joe Biden is fruitlessly seeking bipartisan support for an infrastructure bill after his prediction of a Republican “epiphany” following Trump’s loss did not materialize. The reason is that they serve different constituencies with distinct expectations.

Although Democrats retain slim majorities in the House and the Senate, the more conservative members of the Democratic caucus are loath to abolish the filibuster, which would allow them to establish a January 6 commission and use the federal government to prevent partisan power grabs in the states, if they chose to do so. Most of the attention has focused on Senators Joe Machin and Kyrsten Sinema, but as The New York Times reports, there are likely more Democrats opposed to scrapping the filibuster who are content to allow Manchin and Sinema to take the brunt of the criticism for retaining it. Ironically, preserving the filibuster gives Republicans no incentive to negotiate, as they can simply block most legislation outright; if bills were likely to pass, Republicans would gain more reasons to bargain.

Political coalitions are inherently unstable, and Republicans’ efforts to insulate their power from the majority may not be as effective as they hope. But future Republican defeats will simply fuel greater demand to rig the rules to their advantage. Democrats, if they are not shut out of power entirely, may find themselves desperately trying to win over an unrepresentative minority of the population whose political power has been enhanced by artificial means. The reverse is also true: A fairer electoral landscape would compel the Republican Party to moderate to win votes. If it were forced to appeal to a more diverse constituency, that longed-for “epiphany” might actually occur.
These are not morally equivalent outcomes; attacking Americans’ ability to choose their leaders because you fear their choice is not the same as ensuring that they have the right to do so. Unlike their counterparts in the GOP, Democrats are not seeking to disenfranchise voters on the grounds that they are ignorant or do not accept American values as liberals understand them.

For the Trumpist base, defined by the sense that a country that belongs to them is slipping away, a future full of elections contested by a right-wing party and a slightly less right-wing party would be an ideal outcome. Trump’s election was, among other things, a gesture of outrage from his supporters at having to share the country with those unlike them. Successfully restricting democracy so as to minimize the political power of rival constituencies would mean, at least as far as governing the country is concerned, that they would not have to. Most elected Republicans have repudiated the violence of the Capitol riot, but they share the belief of the rank and file that the rioters’ hearts were in the right place.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... on/619075/

And lest you think this is still being over dramatic, just remember that Liz Cheney and many other republicans have been purged for the sole crime of acknowledging that the election was legitimate and that the rioters were wrong for rioting!

As flawed as America is, no doubt a total fascist takeover would be bad, not just for them, but worldwide. So probably a good idea to have an ongoing thread to keep up to date on their attempts.
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by GuppyShark »

As an outsider, it's pretty clear that while the Confederacy may have lost the Civil War, they didn't surrender, they just changed the battlefield and they're taking the United States down from the inside.

When the rest of the world looks at something like tipping culture and asks "what the hell is this?" it's pretty easy to observe its origins in the post-war economy with former slaves now occupying most of those tipped jobs.
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by Gandalf »

It's remaining hilarious to see various "exiled" Republicans claim that Trump and the actions of the riot are some weird aberration and don't represent the party.
GuppyShark wrote: 2021-06-06 04:47am As an outsider, it's pretty clear that while the Confederacy may have lost the Civil War, they didn't surrender, they just changed the battlefield and they're taking the United States down from the inside.
I would say that it's not even the Confederacy, but more generalised angry white supremacy. It's been there since the beginning, and while it had a real moment with the Confederacy, has always been powerful in one form or another.
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by MKSheppard »

https://www.al.com/news/2021/06/putin-s ... olice.html

Tsar Vladimir I is a master troll.
“You are presenting it as dissent and intolerance toward dissent in Russia. We view it completely differently,” he said in an interview with NBC News broadcast Monday. He then pointed to the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington when protesters barged into the Capitol to try to halt the count of electoral votes to certify Biden’s election victory over Donald Trump.

“Do you know that 450 individuals were arrested after entering the Congress? ... They came there with political demands,” he said.

Although the protests that erupted across Russia after Navalny’s arrest in January were unsanctioned, demonstrators were largely peaceful and did not enter government buildings or cause significant property damage, unlike the Capitol riot.

Putin also reiterated denials that the Kremlin was behind last year’s poisoning of Navalny with a nerve agent that nearly killed him.

“We don’t have this kind of habit, of assassinating anybody,” Putin said.

“Did you order the assassination of the woman who walked into the Congress and who was shot and killed by a policeman?” Putin said, referring to Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally shot by a Capitol Police officer as she tried to climb through a window that led to the House floor.
From another source

https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-s ... ers-2021-6
"Did you order the assassination of the woman who walked into the Congress and who was shot and killed by a policeman? Do you know that 450 individuals were arrested after entering the Congress? And they didn't go there to steal a laptop. They came with political demands. 450 people," said Putin.

"They're facing — they're looking— they're— they're looking at jail time, between 15 and 25 years. And they came to the Congress with political demands," Putin continued.

"Isn't that persecution for political opinions? Some have been accused of plotting to topple— to take over government power. Some are accused of robbery. They didn't go there to rob."
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by Rogue 9 »

Putin knows he's bullshitting. That he goes for whataboutism isn't really news.
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by Gandalf »

Yeah, the last few years have made it pretty hard for the US to grandstand about freedom, democracy, and whatever.
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by Zwinmar »

Been listening to a pod cast on US history (History that Doesn't suck), got to the restoration...and well, what they were saying in their speeches sounds very familiar to whats going on now
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by loomer »

"Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth." M.A.A.A
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by Rogue 9 »

Gandalf wrote: 2021-06-16 09:32pm Yeah, the last few years have made it pretty hard for the US to grandstand about freedom, democracy, and whatever.
Oh come on, you can't be seriously giving credence to Putin's assertion that storming the Capitol to try to find and kill lawmakers and the Vice President is the same as picketing in the streets.
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by Agent Fisher »

Rogue 9 wrote: 2021-06-16 11:07pm
Gandalf wrote: 2021-06-16 09:32pm Yeah, the last few years have made it pretty hard for the US to grandstand about freedom, democracy, and whatever.
Oh come on, you can't be seriously giving credence to Putin's assertion that storming the Capitol to try to find and kill lawmakers and the Vice President is the same as picketing in the streets.
I think he was referring to the government's response to demonstrations, protests, riots, along with US actions aboard?
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by Gandalf »

Indeed so. Does Rogue not remember last year's massive protests, and how the government stomped on them with seemingly few repercussions?
"Oh no, oh yeah, tell me how can it be so fair
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by loomer »

Let's not forget the bit where they started an active persecution of anarchists that still hasn't finished, and that the current regime hasn't arranged amnesties or pardons even for political prisoners who carried out acts of non-violent civil resistance to fascist tyranny.
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by Rogue 9 »

Of course I do, but the immediate context was:
Vladimir Putin wrote:“Do you know that 450 individuals were arrested after entering the Congress? ... They came there with political demands,” he said.

...

“Did you order the assassination of the woman who walked into the Congress and who was shot and killed by a policeman?” Putin said, referring to Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally shot by a Capitol Police officer as she tried to climb through a window that led to the House floor.
If Putin had focused on the BLM protests over the summer instead that would be different, but would run into the small problem of none of them actually facing multi-year prison sentences simply for picketing.
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by loomer »

Biden's new anti-terror strategy continues the persecution of anarchists. What a shocker. oh, and it also targets environmental protestors. Again, what a shocker.


Fascism isn't just a Republican problem. Its basic precepts are baked into both parties at this stage.
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by Darth Yan »

loomer wrote: 2021-06-19 03:14am Biden's new anti-terror strategy continues the persecution of anarchists. What a shocker. oh, and it also targets environmental protestors. Again, what a shocker.


Fascism isn't just a Republican problem. Its basic precepts are baked into both parties at this stage.
Republicans yes. Democrats I'm not so sure they're there yet. I've seen people misuse the word fascism to say "anyone I don't like" so I'd be careful just throwing the word around.

And how ARE anarchists being persecuted? There aren't any mass arrests from what I've heard.
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by loomer »

Darth Yan wrote: 2021-06-19 05:15am
loomer wrote: 2021-06-19 03:14am Biden's new anti-terror strategy continues the persecution of anarchists. What a shocker. oh, and it also targets environmental protestors. Again, what a shocker.


Fascism isn't just a Republican problem. Its basic precepts are baked into both parties at this stage.
Republicans yes. Democrats I'm not so sure they're there yet. I've seen people misuse the word fascism to say "anyone I don't like" so I'd be careful just throwing the word around.

And how ARE anarchists being persecuted? There aren't any mass arrests from what I've heard.
Anarchists were literally being hauled off the streets in unmarked cars and questioned by the FBI as part of a counter-terror strategy under the Trump administration, and the Biden regime's new counter-terror strategy explicitly identifies anarchists as targets. Pay attention to what's happening before you dismiss it.

As to the Democrats? I'm afraid they're also biting on the basic precepts of fascism, and it's not just namecalling. They too are playing the us against them card with law and order politics, idolizing the nation, idealizing a mythic past that was never really there to begin with, and idolizing violence done by the right guys to the wrong guys. They're still engaged in the persecution of refugees and migrants, still engaging in secret wars overseas, and still expanding the surveillance state. They're carving out political adversaries that can safely be dehumanized and brutalized for a show of strength in the form of environmental protestors, anarchists, and Indigenous sovereignty movements. They continue to actively bullshit and lie to the public about things as basic as how well the US is doing at vaccinating its population against the plague.

Fascism does not arise from nowhere. It is baked into the bedrock of capitalism and neoliberal democracy, and that underlying fascist drift has not been prevented - just given a human face. Until the underlying conditions are resolved - until both parties return to actual democratic traditions, roll back the persecution campaigns against refugees and immigrants, and work to end the mindless military worship that pervades the American political arena - both parties are at risk of enabling it.

And no, this is not a 'both sides!' argument. The Democrats are less actively evil than the Republicans, and less actively represent a threat to the immediate future of American democracy. But watch them closely: watch the way they lie, the way they continue to persecute immigrants and refugees (and use them as political scorepoints), the way they continue to rely on strong man appeals through promises of persecution of the enemies of the nation in the form not just of those who have provably committed acts of violence, but in the form of nebulously defined 'anarchists'. Watch the expansion of special powers to protect the nation against those enemies. Watch them continue to militarize the police. Watch them continue to define spaces outside the reach of law to brutalize enemies of the nation in (and yes - he's said he intends to shut That One down. But he hasn't yet. And until he does, he gets no credit - Obama said he would, too.)

Complacency is disaster when on the right, there is an active fascist coup threatening, and on the left, the same propaganda tools are being deployed.
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by Darth Yan »

Ok. Thanks for pointing this out.

I personally think anarchism is a profoundly stupid and unworkable idea (https://roadupward.wordpress.com/2014/0 ... esnt-work/) but as long as they aren't outright planning violence they should be allowed to believe whatever the hell they want.
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by loomer »

To go with that last post, conditions at Gitmo have worsened under Biden.

You may ask 'what does this have to do with fascism?' Well, three elements of fascism are:
1. the creation of a Them, distinguishable on racial, religious, or political grounds, who may be abused freely in the name of the people/the nation;
2. the institution of a state of exception that enables the extraordinary detention, punishment, and genocide of the aforementioned criminalized and pathologized people as a show of strength and source of unity,
3. the creation of infrastructure, human and concrete, to enforce the above.

Guantanamo Bay is precisely such infrastructure, and the men imprisoned there by the American regimes have been subjected to precisely this kind of treatment. They exist largely outside the rule of law, in a place set aside specifically to be outside the rule of law for the disposal of enemies of the nation. This is not exclusively fascist, of course - but fascism builds on prior currents in a society all the same, and so long as Guantanamo Bay is open it represents a threat to democracy. Recall Trump's boasts and his use of the forever prison as a propaganda tool to bolster his strongman cred with his supporters.
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by Tribble »

loomer wrote:And no, this is not a 'both sides!' argument. The Democrats are less actively evil than the Republicans, and less actively represent a threat to the immediate future of American democracy.
Your arguments do have merit - I've never been a fan of Biden whom was the oldest, blandest, whitest, most boring, least offensive centrist candidate the Democrats could find and/or rig the nomination for. Definitely a status quo person by nature IMO; the only reason why he has some left leaning tendencies atm is because he knows the amount the backlash he'll get if he drops the more left wing members of the party entirely. That or the Alzheimer's has set in and other people are calling the shots behind the scenes.

Problem is, the Republicans are so far down the road of fascism in comparison that they viewed this guy of all people as a mortal threat and literally tried to stage a violent overthrow to keep their fuhrer in power! And are actively doing their best to both overthrow the existing government infrastructure to insure their victory next time while arming themselves just in case that doesn't pan out.

As many issues as the Democrats have (and they have many,) and as much as you may want to see the USA overthrown and dissolved (iirc), I don't think it will pan out the way you hope it will if the current Republicans are the ones who end up doing it!

Quite frankly while Biden and the Democrats still need to be held accountable I would rather spend more effort on the party that is right now openly aiming to overthrow the existing elected government and replace it with a neo-white Christian fascist theocracy so that they can imprison, enslave, deport and/or kill the rest. That is not hyperbole - that is literally what they are after, and they are proud of it!
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by loomer »

Tribble wrote: 2021-06-26 03:32pm
loomer wrote:And no, this is not a 'both sides!' argument. The Democrats are less actively evil than the Republicans, and less actively represent a threat to the immediate future of American democracy.
Your arguments do have merit - I've never been a fan of Biden whom was the oldest, blandest, whitest, most boring, least offensive centrist candidate the Democrats could find and/or rig the nomination for. Definitely a status quo person by nature IMO; the only reason why he has some left leaning tendencies atm is because he knows the amount the backlash he'll get if he drops the more left wing members of the party entirely. That or the Alzheimer's has set in and other people are calling the shots behind the scenes.

Problem is, the Republicans are so far down the road of fascism in comparison that they viewed this guy of all people as a mortal threat and literally tried to stage a violent overthrow to keep their fuhrer in power! And are actively doing their best to both overthrow the existing government infrastructure to insure their victory next time while arming themselves just in case that doesn't pan out.

As many issues as the Democrats have (and they have many,) and as much as you may want to see the USA overthrown and dissolved (iirc), I don't think it will pan out the way you hope it will if the current Republicans are the ones who end up doing it!

Quite frankly while Biden and the Democrats still need to be held accountable I would rather spend more effort on the party that is right now openly aiming to overthrow the existing elected government and replace it with a neo-white Christian fascist theocracy so that they can imprison, enslave, deport and/or kill the rest. That is not hyperbole - that is literally what they are after, and they are proud of it!
The problem with focusing solely on the Republicans is it does nothing to address the social and material conditions that primed America to accept openly fascist politics once again. That's why, while I'm happy to agree that the Republicans are a far more serious and imminent threat, I don't think that in doing so we can afford to allow linchpins of the American fascist worldview like the worship of the military and the use of Guantanamo Bay as a black hole where enemies of the nation can be placed outside the rule of law to go unchallenged. This is for two reasons - first, challenging and destroying them is a direct challenge to America's fascist tendencies and an attempt to rehabilitate its democracy, which will in turn weaken the pre-existing cultural infrastructure that the active fascists are exploiting, secondly, because it's wrong to turn a blind eye to abuses no matter who does them and doing so creates hypocrisy that can be exploited.

Think of it this way. The current fight's focus is, naturally and properly, fending off the current and immediate threat of an open fascist coup, but unless the underlying fascist tendency in American political thought and the conditions that enable it to thrive are properly combated as well, the best that can happen is at best partial remission, more likely palliative care for the republic - and I think we all want to see an actual cure, not just palliative care. So I hope that clarifies how this isn't so much an issue of 'the democrats are bad too!' as it is an issue of those underlying political conditions that enabled the rise of fascism in the first place being a poisonous well that both parties have been drinking from, just to different degrees of eagerness and depth, with the result that you can either treat the symptoms, or remove the poison itself.

And yes, you're definitely right that while I want to see CANZUS dismantled, I definitely don't want to see it done on the lines proposed by the Republican party!

Edit:
I should probably mention that my perspective here is very much coloured by having witnessed both the Coalition and Labor here in Australia consistently utilize offshore concentration camps to produce an us vs them mindset and an appearance of strength and order to appeal to the same tendencies. Our political system has drunk very, very deep of that particular poisoned well - so I'm not suggesting this is uniquely an American issue, either. I've seen how insidiously the proto-fascist tendencies work their way into the political mainstream if they aren't combated consistently, and how the hypocrisy involved empowers those pushing to move from proto-fascist to outright fascist and aids their campaigns to demolish the idea of truth.
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by Tribble »

Biden's infrastructure bill — no matter how "bipartisan" — will not defeat fascism
Biden has a well-meaning strategy: Prove to Republicans that democracy still works. That's not nearly enough

Trumpism and other forms of American fascism are not acute illnesses in the nation's civic life and society. They are more like chronic illnesses; the infection runs deep.

New research by Morning Consult reveals the extent of this problem, reporting that "26% of the U.S. population qualified as highly right-wing authoritarian." Using researcher Bob Altemeyer's right-wing authoritarianism test and scale and building on work he has conducted recently with the Monmouth University Polling Institute, Morning Consult "found that U.S. conservatives have stronger right-wing authoritarian tendencies than their right-of-center counterparts in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom":
Altemeyer defines authoritarianism as the desire to submit to some authority, aggression that is directed against whomever the authority says should be targeted and a desire to have everybody follow the norms and social conventions that the authority says should be followed. Those characteristics were all on display in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, culminating earlier this year in the attack on the Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump. ...

Take views on the rioters themselves, for example: More than a quarter of high-RWA respondents and conservatives said those that broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6 were protecting the U.S. government rather than undermining it, compared with roughly 9 in 10 liberal or low-RWA respondents who said the opposite.

Similar divides cropped up on the questions that helped lead to the Jan. 6 riot, with most right-leaning and high-RWA Americans agreeing that Joe Biden won the presidential election due to widespread fraud. A slim majority of those respondents also said they were more likely to believe Trump than U.S. judges when it comes to the existence of evidence of voting irregularities.
These findings complement new research from the Voter Study Group finding that 46% of Republicans believe state legislatures should have the power to overturn the results of the popular vote — specifically, to nullify Biden's victory by giving electoral college votes to Donald Trump, irrespective of the actual vote.

Political scientists and other experts have described the political system that Republicans want to impose as "competitive authoritarianism" or "managed democracy," which is used by Vladimir Putin in Russia.

Nearly one in three Republicans reject the basic premise that in a democracy the candidate who loses an election should admit defeat and respect the outcome. These new findings complement earlier research showing — that Republican voters – especially Trump supporters — are willing to reject democracy and embrace authoritarianism if it means that white people remain the dominant and most powerful group in the United States.

There are many more examples of the ways the Republican Party and its voters have rejected democracy and embraced authoritarianism.

The Jim Crow Republican Party is currently engaged in a nationwide campaign to keep Black and brown people and other likely Democratic voters from voting at all. Republican voters have been propagandized and programmed with racist lies about "voter fraud" and "election integrity," and overwhelmingly support these attacks on democracy.

New research by the American Enterprise Institute shows that almost 40% of Republicans are willing to support political violence if they deem it necessary to "protect the country" or America's "traditional way of life."

As a result of the Big Lie strategy and repeated claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, approximately 70% of Republicans believe that Trump is still president and see Biden as a usurper. Furthermore, 30% of Republicans have managed to convince themselves that Trump will be "reinstated" as president as soon as August. (There is no legal or constitutional way to accomplish that.)

The Department of Homeland Security has warned that Trump's followers may engage in acts of political violence and terrorism, as they did on Jan. 6, if he does not return to power.

Other polls show that 21% of Republicans support Donald Trump's coup attempt and attack on the U.S. Capitol, with 30% of Republicans describing those who stormed the Capitol in January as "patriots."

How are President Biden and the Democratic Party responding to this rising tide of fascism and authoritarianism and its toxic hold over tens of millions of (white) Americans? In fairness, Biden has repeatedly voiced his profound concerns about the Republican Party's ongoing attempts to overthrow America's multiracial democracy.

But Biden's response to this democracy crisis is to focus on "bipartisanship," creating economic growth, fighting the coronavirus and passing an infrastructure bill and other legislation as a way of improving the lives of all Americans — including, of course, Trump supporters and Republicans. To this point, Biden's approach to governance has relied on ignoring the right-wing rage machine and its attempts to bait him into "culture war" fights.

Biden's core logic is as follows: If his administration and the Democrats in Congress can improve people's material circumstances and day-to-day lives, democracy will be redeemed as the best form of government. In a new essay at CNN, Frida Ghitis describes this strategy:
The President has not changed his mind about how important democracy is; he didn't just decide that bridges and highways are a higher priority than the right to vote. Rather, Biden has made a tactical choice. He is wagering that improving infrastructure, creating jobs and raising standards of living for the bulk of Americans will prove a more effective way to show democracy works than shifting procedures on how to vote. It's a gamble, and like every gamble, it may or may not pay off. …

Biden understands that voting rights are paramount to safeguarding democracy. But from what he has said we know that he believes the future of democracy depends on something beyond everyone's right to cast a ballot. What matters more is persuading the public that this is a system that produces tangible results for them. If the system doesn't give you a better life, some may ask, why is it so important to protect it?
Ghitis concludes with this warning:
The risk is that, as Biden allocates his finite political capital toward longer-range programs, even as Republicans focus sharply on strangling Democrats' efforts to strengthen voting rights, he is allowing the most fundamental mechanism of democracy, the act of voting, to become increasingly difficult for citizens to exercise.

If his gamble fails, he could end up creating prosperity and well-being, just in time for the party that is undercutting democracy to take power.
Unfortunately, Biden is in error here: Like other forms of fascism, Trumpism is fueled by resentment, fear, collective narcissism and an almost primordial belief that one's own racial or ethnic group is superior to others. Improving the material circumstances of Trump's followers may peel a few of them away on the fringes, but the base and core will remain.

Biden's error reflects a more general mistake in reasoning that all too often hobbles Democrats, liberals and other members of the so-called left in their confrontations with fascists, authoritarians and other illiberal forces: Yes, the economy and "class" are important, but fascist movements are also fueled by dreams of a fictive past and a return to "greatness," power, and dominance for one's social or demographic group.

Trump's followers are not, as a group, economically impoverished. "White working-class" Trumpists have a median household income of $72,000. As seen on Jan. 6, it is not the white poor or the working class who are being most severely radicalized into right-wing extremism. Rather, it is middle-class white people who have become afraid of being "replaced" by nonwhites.

Joe Biden is receiving high marks from Democrats as well as many Republicans for his approach to stopping the COVID pandemic and reinvigorating the economy. Nonetheless, Republicans overwhelmingly oppose him and view his presidency, along with the Democratic Party and its voters, as an existential threat to white power.

Writing at CNN, Matt Egan offers this warning about how Trumpism distorts Republicans' perception of the state of the economy:
Unemployment is shrinking. The stock market is booming. Americans are returning to the skies and even to movie theaters. And yet Republicans are deeply worried about the state of the economy.

Even though the US economy is expected to grow this year at the fastest pace in decades, consumer sentiment among self-identified Republicans is worse today than during the height of the pandemic, according to the University of Michigan.

In fact, Republicans are more pessimistic than at any point since September 2010, when the economy was just beginning to dig out of the Great Recession.

Meanwhile, consumer sentiment among self-identified Democrats is higher than at any point during the presidency of Donald Trump — even though unemployment was far lower then than it is today.

This polarization of consumer sentiment across party lines is not entirely new, but it got significantly worse during the Trump era and continues to this day.
Unfortunately, white identity politics and white rage are more important than pocketbook issues for many of today's Republican voters. How can Biden and the Democrats and Joe Biden fight back? They must start by acknowledging that this crisis of democracy is existential — and then act with extreme urgency.

This means not cooperating with the Republicans on any policies in the name of "bipartisanship." Protecting American democracy should be the Democrats' No. 1 priority. To work with Republicans is to legitimize them as responsible partners in government, when in reality today's Republican Party is an extremist, anti-democratic and white supremacist criminal organization. The Senate filibuster, long an impediment to democracy, must at last be eliminated.

The Democrats should learn from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's cruel tutelage in realpolitik. "What would Mitch McConnell do?" should be a principle that Democratic leaders internalize — and they should then turn McConnell's ruthless tactics on the Republicans.

The Democratic Party must develop better messaging that attacks the core brand identity of the Republican Party. To that end, the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential election must become a referendum on democracy versus fascism.

In a recent conversation here at Salon, political scientist and polling analyst Rachel Bitecofer summarized the Democrats' predicament:
The GOP is running this very strategic, very intentional branding campaign, and we're still talking about politics in terms of policies and things like that. We're ... making a huge mistake when we're tinkering around in the branches of electioneering infrastructure on the left, because our real problem lies at that root level, where we are not engaged in a campaign technique that matches the moment.
Finally, Biden and the Democrats must understand that time is once again their enemy. Bold and forceful action to save American democracy is needed, right now. It is better to act boldly and with confidence than to wait for salvation at some future moment — because the Trump movement and the Jim Crow Republicans are working to foreclose all such future options. If Democrats, and all Americans, are going to lose this existential struggle for the future, it would surely be better to go down swinging rather than to sit there passively, hoping for the best.
https://www.salon.com/2021/07/07/bidens ... t-fascism/

I'm wondering when Democrats are going to wake up and see the full extent of the danger they are in?
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

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I can only assume that they're trying to court the alleged "moderate Republicans," who fifteen years ago were an ugly lot of neoliberals, but are now perfect for the Democrats, like Steve Schmidt.
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

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Gandalf wrote: 2021-07-09 12:01pm I can only assume that they're trying to court the alleged "moderate Republicans," who fifteen years ago were an ugly lot of neoliberals, but are now perfect for the Democrats, like Steve Schmidt.
They are not going away as a voting block, so ... yes. Some effort to get them on board a more... sane if old and broken trajectory is a good way to fight the fascism. Getting chunks of they opposing party to not continue down the path of fascism will help a lot. Granted, not kowtowing to the centrists and continue a more progressive track will do the same.
They say, "the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots." I suppose it never occurred to them that they are the tyrants, not the patriots. Those weapons are not being used to fight some kind of tyranny; they are bringing them to an event where people are getting together to talk. -Mike Wong

But as far as board culture in general, I do think that young male overaggression is a contributing factor to the general atmosphere of hostility. It's not SOS and the Mess throwing hand grenades all over the forum- Red
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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

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Knife wrote: 2021-07-24 03:04pm
Gandalf wrote: 2021-07-09 12:01pm I can only assume that they're trying to court the alleged "moderate Republicans," who fifteen years ago were an ugly lot of neoliberals, but are now perfect for the Democrats, like Steve Schmidt.
They are not going away as a voting block, so ... yes. Some effort to get them on board a more... sane if old and broken trajectory is a good way to fight the fascism. Getting chunks of they opposing party to not continue down the path of fascism will help a lot. Granted, not kowtowing to the centrists and continue a more progressive track will do the same.
In doing so provide people with a choice between the fascism of the modern Republicans, or the fascism of the 2004 ones. Way to go DNC.

Presumably inviting them in also helps dilute the influence of the Sanders side of the party.
"Oh no, oh yeah, tell me how can it be so fair
That we dying younger hiding from the police man over there
Just for breathing in the air they wanna leave me in the chair
Electric shocking body rocking beat streeting me to death"

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Re: US Republican Fascist Coup Thread, 2021 edition (Ongoing)

Post by Tribble »

Gandalf wrote: 2021-07-25 08:27am
Knife wrote: 2021-07-24 03:04pm
Gandalf wrote: 2021-07-09 12:01pm I can only assume that they're trying to court the alleged "moderate Republicans," who fifteen years ago were an ugly lot of neoliberals, but are now perfect for the Democrats, like Steve Schmidt.
They are not going away as a voting block, so ... yes. Some effort to get them on board a more... sane if old and broken trajectory is a good way to fight the fascism. Getting chunks of they opposing party to not continue down the path of fascism will help a lot. Granted, not kowtowing to the centrists and continue a more progressive track will do the same.
In doing so provide people with a choice between the fascism of the modern Republicans, or the fascism of the 2004 ones. Way to go DNC.

Presumably inviting them in also helps dilute the influence of the Sanders side of the party.
That thought crossed my mind as well. The Democrat establishment clearly doesn’t like the progressive side of its base and would be glad to be rid of them if possible. They shooed in the most boring, old, bland, white centrist guy they could find after all (whom Republicans still view as an anti-Christ because he’s not rounding up minorities in concentration camps.) What better way of doing that than by embracing “moderate” republicans?

Unfortunately this mindset appears to be extending to the vote as well. They have the ability if they so choose to pass voting legislation to protect their democracy. They are choosing not to do it, in the spirit of “bipartisanship.“

And Filibuster my ass - that rule should have been tossed ages ago as the Senate is already designed to be a counterweight to pure majority rule (and generally favours republicans). We’re not talking about a spending package, we’re quite literally talking about an open attempt to suppress votes to support a fascist (I would even go so far as to say neo -nazi) takeover. If that’s not important enough to warrant breaking the filibuster, what is?

Either the Democrat establishment still doesn’t truly believe they are under serious threat, they don’t have the fortitude to do what is necessary to protect what’s left of their democracy … or perhaps there is a good chunk of the party that wouldn’t mind it if the lower classes and minorities were deprived of the vote, even if it means risking a fascist takeover.
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