Trumpism is fascism

Introversion

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I think it’s been obviously true for awhile now, but even if you already agree, or are unsure, this Twitter thread by author Jared Yates (“American Rule: How a nation conquered the world but failed its people”) is worth reading.

https://twitter.com/JYSexton/status/1309895500200579073

I’m going pull out a portion of the text of it here; the accompanying images are worth seeing in the above thread though.

Jared Yates said:
This is one of the most important threads I'll write.

Trumpism is fascism.

We are in a full-blown crisis. We must recognize we're dealing with a religious death cult and warring over reality itself.

Here's what I discovered writing AMERICAN RULE.

1/

MAGA is a religious cult that worships a fake past, a mythology of America that never existed and was only used as a weapon for political and economic power.

It is dragging us into the fascistic abyss, and we need to understand what fascism really is before it swallows us.

2/

We must start with Benito Mussolini, who organized the fascistic ideology in the 20th century and defined it as a purposeful rewinding of history and a rejection of liberal democracy and the idea of equality and freedom.

It is MAGA. Pure and simple.

3/

Mussolini's writings on fascism declared that progress was a myth, that men of strength and will could roll back the clock, erase freedom and democracy, and create cults of meaning that were greater than science or evidence.

It was a call to drive us backwards in time.

4/

In the fascist world, a supreme leader owned "truth" and "reality."

Evidence didn't matter. It was about "higher truths" that originated from faith and a believe in the leader's infallibility.

It twisted reality into a religious, supernatural cult of leader worship.

5/

Fascism was particularly attractive to countries that had believed themselves "exceptional" but had suffered humiliating losses.

It saved the concept of nationalist exceptionalism, or being ordained by the universe as special, and "explained" those humiliations.

6/

One of the defining characteristics of fascism was a racist paranoia and set of conspiracy theories that scapegoated national losses on vulnerable populations

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion gave fascists an explanation for their national failures and a religious crusade

7/

It's important to note that the spread of antisemitism and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was largely due to the efforts of Henry Ford, who was lauded by Nazi Germany.

Hitler wanted to send troops to America to make him a dictator.

8/

The conspiracy theory of "the Knife in the Back" has given fascists scapegoats to paper over national failings while blaming vulnerable people, legitimizing preemptive violence, extralegal measures, and mass killings.

It worked in Germany and it's working here.

9/

Adolf Hitler offered a demoralized, failing Germany an alternate reality. If they simply believed they were exceptional, that they'd been betrayed, if they gave him their faith and worship, they would be instantaneously transported into an alternate reality.

10/

It's often overlooked, but fascism relied on religious faiths like Christianity to create cults of religious worship, using their iconography and authority to appeal to citizens' need for something larger than themselves that existed beyond empirical evidence.

11/

Hitler used Christianity to make himself a prophet until it wasn't needed any longer and his cult was told they didn't need the Bible anymore and that Hitler and Nazism had become a new revelation of god.

12/

It's not a coincidence that the swastika and idolatry of the Third Reich was so ubiquitous. Fascism and Nazism became nationalist, political religions and the expression of identity through the symbols (think MAGA hats, Trump flags) became like displays of crosses.

13/

The giant Nazi rallies were meant to create a sense of myth and power, to make believers feel as if they were chosen to be part of a larger calling.

They were church services worshiping the leader and the cult of fascism. It put them beyond the natural world.

14/

The problem was that in order for fascism to be a public religion, it relied on indoctrination and the conquering of reality.

Through schools and propaganda, alternative thought was destroyed, punished by violence and murder.

15/

We have to take a second and really sit with this.

Fascism is the conquering of reality by force and violence. It's the conquering of shared society based on lies, untruths, and misleading information.

It is a literal war with reality and truth.

16/

Nazism and fascism found homes in America because the US was fertile with these religious, national, racist myths.

Swastikas and American flags stood alongside one another, right there with icons like George Washington.

We watched fascism grow here.

17/

...

What Trump and his supporters (and Russian bots) have weaponized is accusing anyone not a Trump supporter of exactly the things they themselves stand for and are doing. It’s easy to dip into the Internet and find liberals being accused of being fascists, of being in a cult, of being the real racists, of denying reality, of wanting to indoctrinate children to think in particular ways, of wanting to suppress freedoms, of living in a fake news bubble, etc.

Trumpism is fascism. And it’s time to recognize that most of his supporters are okay with fascism, and swapping democracy for authoritarian rule, so long as it’s “their guy” doing the ruling. Germans from the early 1930s would doubtless see history rhyming here.
 
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Brightdreamer

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What's chilling is how effective this tactic--accusing your opponents of doing what you are, in fact, doing--has been at different times and places in history.

Humans, especially large groups of humans, seem to be sadly predictable.

That is why the monsters all use the same playbook. Because the playbook works.
 

Roxxsmom

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And in a related note: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/30/..._1BBgz-O7wq9taFg4p0rzDu5k_8bVWupqOVyeKIVJC714

WASHINGTON — Of the flood of misinformation, conspiracy theories and falsehoods seeding the internet on the coronavirus, one common thread stands out: President Trump.

That is the conclusion of researchers at Cornell University who analyzed 38 million articles about the pandemic in English-language media around the world. Mentions of Mr. Trump made up nearly 38 percent of the overall “misinformation conversation,” making the president the largest driver of the “infodemic” — falsehoods involving the pandemic.

The study, to be released Thursday, is the first comprehensive examination of coronavirus misinformation in traditional and online media.

“The biggest surprise was that the president of the United States was the single largest driver of misinformation around Covid,” said Sarah Evanega, the director of the Cornell Alliance for Science and the study’s lead author. “That’s concerning in that there are real-world dire health implications.”

I am less surprised by this than the study's authors.