Yeah, that was my reaction to the title as well, but the article makes it clear that there is a fresh new uprising by the Christian Nationalists to try and truly take over. They’re a part of the MAGA idea, but a lot of Republican politicians are less about nationalism and more about serving their corporate masters.
So if this truly is nationalists moving to take over the party, it could really be a big deal.
Or it could fizzle.
I don’t know how much actual support these fascists have, but THESE are the people champing at the bit to shoot their guns at “libruls”. So it’s really not a Good Thing™. But as to how serious a threat, I’m honestly not sure.
So these people think maga wasn’t extreme enough? Not far-right enough?
It wasn’t even hyperbolic to call the maga movement fascism. And yet these people viewed it as too moderate?
That’s a scary prospect, but I know a lot of republican voters don’t want the insanity. They’re just fooled into thinking a “moderate republican” platform still exists in practice. Maybe this movement will wake those voters up, maybe even restore a viable moderate republican platform. That will at least shift the overton window a little towards the center.
After all, without trump’s perplexing charisma, I don’t think they’ll have a singular figurehead to unite around. Nobody to threaten, bribe, and intimidate people into compliance. Stephen Miller and JD Vance don’t have that kind of sway. I doubt Tucker Carlson does either, but we’ll see.
So this could blow up in their faces. The party caucus seems to be digging in on the “No, the voters are wrong, we need to double down.” So maybe they’ll shoot themselves in the foot even harder than centrist dems are trying to do to themselves now.
It’ll be a shitshow for a couple years, but it’ll be interesting to see what effect this has on the primaries.
On the internet, you have a certain type that is always trying to top each other for who is more edgy. This is not so much of a thing on the left, but you will see a few outliers ( if you see someone talking about “shitlibs”, climbs into their armchair to give a lecture about the terms liberal vs. leftist, or is trying to make “blue maga” happen, it’s possible it is an instance of this. If they claim they are a Communist, it likely is.)
I think on the right, it’s much more the case to see this kind of crap. Lots of “burn it all down” energy as if that would really benefit anyone.
I saw an article where a psychologist basically said the mind of the average maga voter is similar to the mind of an internet troll, and I was like… yeah that tracks…
Whatever you call maga, their policies have not proven to work for the majority, just theories that never panned out, and too many are still fooled that they are legit and treat them as if they are. Their policies fail people and we can see what policies do work elsewhere, but maga will never pass them. Dems maybe if enough majority for long enough. The polices work in states that have them, passed by Dem majority almost always. So no, we don’t want any flavor of gop, call it moderate but no thanks, still shit.
I’m not saying that I personally want a moderate republican government. I’m saying if moderate republicans can make a comeback within their party and the party as a whole abandons maga extremism, that can help shift the overton window a little back towards sanity.
I still wouldn’t vote republican. But I’d rather have the main political debate be between progressives and a center-right party, rather than what it is now which is largely between centrist dems and the far-right.
The thing that worries about these people is that I don’t think we’re really sure how many of them are out there and how far they can be radicalized and how far they’ll go.
I don’t intend to fearmonger, but honestly state the above. But with the above comes the flip side: While some of these types of people have gone on murdering sprees, there haven’t been many, and it’s usually been that they’ve selected some target and some of them succeed and some of them don’t.
The thing that actually worries me is that I think we may face an uptick in the rhetoric that drives some of these people to go out and shoot people; we may see groups like Proud Boys decide to go shooting instead of intimidating.
I don’t know. I’m not saying these things are going to happen, but it’s the thing that worries me most about that background level of nationalism and the people building up incel communities.
That said, this election gives me some hope. For a good while, I didn’t really see a path out of fascism, but if we can get enough actual progressives in power and force the establishment Dems to be more progressive, get enough going to give us a blue President in two years with enough in Congress to get shit done AND if there’s enough progressives in there to help real change happen, we might be able to show the American people that government isn’t broken - just Republicans and establishment Democrats are. IF, and by damn that is just about the hugest if of all time, IF we can pull that off, maybe we can pull back from the brink of fascism - and by brink I mean more like we’re already over the edge hanging on to a comically small tree root hanging out the side of the cliff with our fingers losing strength.
I’m hopeful that this low-level rumbling of fascist nationalist racist bullshit will remain low-level.
I feel ya. Yeah, it’s a concern. I wish there were an easy answer. Some cartoonishly simple solution, like just surrender and let go of that tree root and then suddenly a giant bird swoops in and catches you and carries you to a nice safe deus ex machina.
But this isn’t a fiction novel, and real life doesn’t work like that. There are despicable, hateful people in the world and in this country, and those people are exploiting otherwise legitimate grievances to twist the minds of large numbers of vulnerable people. They lie to them about some overly simplistic solutions to complex problems, that they have no intention of following through with, and then once they win their trust and have them thoroughly deluded with an entire system of “alternative facts,” then they twist their minds further through fear-mongering used to stoke hatreds, and empty flattery used to inflate egos. It’s a dangerous concoction and some truly vile people have seen that and used it as an evil means to evil ends.
I don’t have a simple solution to that. It’ll likely take generations to heal, if we can even start the healing process. If we can’t even do that, it’s only going to get worse. Unspannable chasms have likely already grown.
Some victims of mass manipulation may be redeemable if we break the hypnosis, but I don’t have a clue what kind of proportion that is. Is it a vanishingly small percentage, or the vast majority of their base? I don’t know, and I won’t pretend to. I won’t pretend to have any better answers than this. I wish I did.
For now let’s just hold onto a little hope and see how the next session of congress goes. See if our political leaders will provide oversight and accountability. Fix what’s broken and use our systems to address the underlying problems at their roots.
If they can’t or won’t do that, then I don’t know what to tell you. Stock up on whatever you might need to protect yourself and your loved ones? Build trust and community among your neighbors, if you live in an area where that’s possible. The rest is what everyone needs to decide for themselves…
They already have… what the fuck do they think has been going on the past six years?
Yeah, that was my reaction to the title as well, but the article makes it clear that there is a fresh new uprising by the Christian Nationalists to try and truly take over. They’re a part of the MAGA idea, but a lot of Republican politicians are less about nationalism and more about serving their corporate masters.
So if this truly is nationalists moving to take over the party, it could really be a big deal.
Or it could fizzle.
I don’t know how much actual support these fascists have, but THESE are the people champing at the bit to shoot their guns at “libruls”. So it’s really not a Good Thing™. But as to how serious a threat, I’m honestly not sure.
So these people think maga wasn’t extreme enough? Not far-right enough?
It wasn’t even hyperbolic to call the maga movement fascism. And yet these people viewed it as too moderate?
That’s a scary prospect, but I know a lot of republican voters don’t want the insanity. They’re just fooled into thinking a “moderate republican” platform still exists in practice. Maybe this movement will wake those voters up, maybe even restore a viable moderate republican platform. That will at least shift the overton window a little towards the center.
After all, without trump’s perplexing charisma, I don’t think they’ll have a singular figurehead to unite around. Nobody to threaten, bribe, and intimidate people into compliance. Stephen Miller and JD Vance don’t have that kind of sway. I doubt Tucker Carlson does either, but we’ll see.
So this could blow up in their faces. The party caucus seems to be digging in on the “No, the voters are wrong, we need to double down.” So maybe they’ll shoot themselves in the foot even harder than centrist dems are trying to do to themselves now.
It’ll be a shitshow for a couple years, but it’ll be interesting to see what effect this has on the primaries.
A thread of hope at least, is better than none.
On the internet, you have a certain type that is always trying to top each other for who is more edgy. This is not so much of a thing on the left, but you will see a few outliers ( if you see someone talking about “shitlibs”, climbs into their armchair to give a lecture about the terms liberal vs. leftist, or is trying to make “blue maga” happen, it’s possible it is an instance of this. If they claim they are a Communist, it likely is.)
I think on the right, it’s much more the case to see this kind of crap. Lots of “burn it all down” energy as if that would really benefit anyone.
I saw an article where a psychologist basically said the mind of the average maga voter is similar to the mind of an internet troll, and I was like… yeah that tracks…
Whatever you call maga, their policies have not proven to work for the majority, just theories that never panned out, and too many are still fooled that they are legit and treat them as if they are. Their policies fail people and we can see what policies do work elsewhere, but maga will never pass them. Dems maybe if enough majority for long enough. The polices work in states that have them, passed by Dem majority almost always. So no, we don’t want any flavor of gop, call it moderate but no thanks, still shit.
I’m not saying that I personally want a moderate republican government. I’m saying if moderate republicans can make a comeback within their party and the party as a whole abandons maga extremism, that can help shift the overton window a little back towards sanity.
I still wouldn’t vote republican. But I’d rather have the main political debate be between progressives and a center-right party, rather than what it is now which is largely between centrist dems and the far-right.
The thing that worries about these people is that I don’t think we’re really sure how many of them are out there and how far they can be radicalized and how far they’ll go.
I don’t intend to fearmonger, but honestly state the above. But with the above comes the flip side: While some of these types of people have gone on murdering sprees, there haven’t been many, and it’s usually been that they’ve selected some target and some of them succeed and some of them don’t.
The thing that actually worries me is that I think we may face an uptick in the rhetoric that drives some of these people to go out and shoot people; we may see groups like Proud Boys decide to go shooting instead of intimidating.
I don’t know. I’m not saying these things are going to happen, but it’s the thing that worries me most about that background level of nationalism and the people building up incel communities.
That said, this election gives me some hope. For a good while, I didn’t really see a path out of fascism, but if we can get enough actual progressives in power and force the establishment Dems to be more progressive, get enough going to give us a blue President in two years with enough in Congress to get shit done AND if there’s enough progressives in there to help real change happen, we might be able to show the American people that government isn’t broken - just Republicans and establishment Democrats are. IF, and by damn that is just about the hugest if of all time, IF we can pull that off, maybe we can pull back from the brink of fascism - and by brink I mean more like we’re already over the edge hanging on to a comically small tree root hanging out the side of the cliff with our fingers losing strength.
I’m hopeful that this low-level rumbling of fascist nationalist racist bullshit will remain low-level.
I feel ya. Yeah, it’s a concern. I wish there were an easy answer. Some cartoonishly simple solution, like just surrender and let go of that tree root and then suddenly a giant bird swoops in and catches you and carries you to a nice safe deus ex machina.
But this isn’t a fiction novel, and real life doesn’t work like that. There are despicable, hateful people in the world and in this country, and those people are exploiting otherwise legitimate grievances to twist the minds of large numbers of vulnerable people. They lie to them about some overly simplistic solutions to complex problems, that they have no intention of following through with, and then once they win their trust and have them thoroughly deluded with an entire system of “alternative facts,” then they twist their minds further through fear-mongering used to stoke hatreds, and empty flattery used to inflate egos. It’s a dangerous concoction and some truly vile people have seen that and used it as an evil means to evil ends.
I don’t have a simple solution to that. It’ll likely take generations to heal, if we can even start the healing process. If we can’t even do that, it’s only going to get worse. Unspannable chasms have likely already grown.
Some victims of mass manipulation may be redeemable if we break the hypnosis, but I don’t have a clue what kind of proportion that is. Is it a vanishingly small percentage, or the vast majority of their base? I don’t know, and I won’t pretend to. I won’t pretend to have any better answers than this. I wish I did.
For now let’s just hold onto a little hope and see how the next session of congress goes. See if our political leaders will provide oversight and accountability. Fix what’s broken and use our systems to address the underlying problems at their roots.
If they can’t or won’t do that, then I don’t know what to tell you. Stock up on whatever you might need to protect yourself and your loved ones? Build trust and community among your neighbors, if you live in an area where that’s possible. The rest is what everyone needs to decide for themselves…