Beware of far-right politicians fixated on demography and White racial rescue. When "empty cribs" preoccupy governments, full prisons are often not far behind.
Make no mistake , the Republican party and Fox News , are dialed in on supporting and getting elected , an authoritarian dictator in Trump . Tucker Carlson's embrace last week of Hungarian Strongman Viktor Orban , has set the stage for the GOP to do away with our Democracy , our Constitution , our Elections ( how are those recounts going in Arizona GOP ? ) , and our Voting Rights . The ones who belong in American prisons are Trump , the Trump Crime Family , all the talking heads on Fox News , and any Republican politician who believes The Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen .
Chilling! When I read the Mussolini quote, I realized how long this movement within the Republican Party has been evolving, metastasizing. Newt Gingrich and others like him were talking about 'low population rates' and the importance of pro-family programs since the 90s. Of course, the underlying context was diminishing population rates among the White Christian conservative right. It brings the obsession on abortion and contraception into sharp focus. It's always been this fear of 'replacement.'
I was surprised seeing the likes of a Rob Dreher on the list of slobbering Orban fans. Dreher is the senior editor at the American Conservative and a Roman Catholic convert. He's written some very reasonable (perhaps sanitized) editorials over the years.
I was raised as a RC and certainly Orban is someone who has used the Catholic Church (and the Hungarian bishops have given their approval) to push these anti-immigrant, anti-'other' policies. But history has given its warning that authoritarians can change on a dime. Overall, Catholics haven't fared well under totalitarian regimes. In the US, many evangelicals do not consider Catholics 'real' Christians bc according to their perspective the faith is poisoned by the Vatican and the Satanic Pope. Anti-Catholic fervor has a long history in America.
People like Dreher ought to be careful what they wish for.
Bottom line, I cannot get my head around those who wrap themselves in Christianity and yet embrace hate, fear and mistrust so passionately.
This whole movement towards fascism/authoritarianism in the USA is very much like a virus. It started out decades ago with just a few people. The virus took hold in many ways…Nixon… Regan, Bush… It was promoted and spread deep and wide via Fox and now has been rapidly spreading through the web. As this virus grows, it starts mutate, get more transmissible and sadly, uglier and uglier. The Tucker Carlson fanboy appreciation of Hungary and Orban was disturbing and unfortunately, where I think the USA is headed except, you’ll have the repressive abortion laws of Poland, the insane surveillance of China and the incredible kleptomaniac government that is Russia. We are less than 18 months away from the mid-terms…and I truly hope I am wrong.
It makes me laugh- like in the blues tune "I Keep Laughin' and A Cryin' Just To Keep From Cryin'- at this family and children thing from these men who's larger appeal is to be like Trump- cheat in business, cheat on your taxes, cheat on your wife and get away with it. Break the law and everything and get away with it. Pathetic every one.
The ethnic bigotry and Social Darwinism of fascism are alive and well among our followers of this proven destructive politcal concept. They feel that they should have an equal platform in which to speak against our quasi-democracy but it is a false equivalency. They are abusing freedom of speech.
Thanks for the historical perspective, it really does illuminate everything today. It feels like the right in the US has been going about this piecemeal for a long time, but the Former Guy normalized vocalizing and showing one's true colors. The hypocrisy of these guys is just shameless beyond belief.
It’s all so clear when you put it in historical perspective! Tucker Carlson is playing the same game invented by Mussolini, white victim hood, the other is scary, dirty, not worthy. Tucker is especially scary as he is very smart, much smarter than Trump, calculating and ruthless. He’s also a master gas-lighter, he will get on tv and scream that the left loves autocrats right after kissing Orbán’s ring all week
Is there any coordinated action or messaging plan? Where is it? how to help? Regular news anchors, contributors (we need more Ruth) and democrats don't have an alarming campaign like the Right's. "Grandma can't get water in a voting line" and "Trump tried another bad thing-this time it's a coup" is a pretty weak rallying cry to what's really going on and far along the plan it is. Without a clear action plan, this would be easy to go into apathy about. It's chilling. So what to DO ABOUT? Ruth, have you met Dr. Adam Grant? All the disciplines - history, sociology, direct response marketing, advertising, internet marketing & influencers, social and consumer psychology, activists and Democratic strategists need to get together NOW with a plan. I do internet marketing but this is all hands on deck.
Think local , Jaycee, and create personal, face2face connections …. some folks near you are a group of helpers who could use your talent… in my home state of Oregon, there’s a great statewide group “Rural Oregon Project” and in my county is an Indivisible group, or maybe your local paper could use a stringer, or maybe your city council/commissioners/ whatever have ears that can give you a listen at public meetings
A white nationalist leader cult threatens to gain power and get hold of the levers of government beginning in 2022 with the retaking of congress and then the Presidency in 2024. The core animating force of the movement was and has always been fear and resentment of brown or black people of different races! Illegals coming in over the border, black and other minorities populations voting are seen as key threats to the white nationalist order. Race is the movement's fall back position for every problem society faces.
Florida Gov. DeSantis fired back at Biden after the President said “I say to these governors: Please help. But if you aren't going to help, at least get out of the way,” DeSantis says “Joe Biden has the nerve to tell me to get out of the way on COVID while he lets COVID-infected migrants pour over our southern border by the hundreds of thousands. No elected official is doing more to enable the transmission of COVID in America than Joe Biden with his open borders policies.”
What's apparent in MAGA's white nationalist appeal is its latent fascism. It is a desire to have a white Christian racially pure majority in control of the country and for brown and other ethnic minority populations to be disenfranchised from political power through drastic voter suppression laws backed up and enforced by corrupted state officials who are blindly loyal to Trump and his big lie. Many parts of the loyal Trump base remain heavily armed and locked and loaded. If they succeed in retaking control of the government, Tucker Carlson's week-long preview of Victor Orban's Hungary may be just the beginning.
In today’s propaganda saturate media pundits refer to people as fringe elements of society, making it sound small and in effectual. In fact they are not fringe at all but supported puppets of well funded elite and organizations whose end game is totalitarianism. Fascists bio politics places the emergence of our country’s destiny, not through the fringe actions but through the media’s inability to educate us sooner than later to the deadly path awaiting us. Too Much to lose.
Although you mention a cross section of groups that Facist dictators target, in the US the target contemporaneously (white nationalists/conspiracists) and historically (slavery) has been people of African descent and Indigenous communities (Manifest Destiny, reservations and boarding schools). Isabel Wilkerson in “Caste” writes about the influence of the treatment of colonizers towards those they claimed to “own” as inspirational for Hitler in methods used to torture and dehumanize Jews. ‘Tucker and friends’ have their sights directly on black and brown Americans and are using a bullhorn to signal they are ‘winning’ by attempting to manipulate, demoralize and desensitize all Americans to a uniquely American blueprint of voter suppression, minority, kleptocratic, Second Amendment loving and white evangelical rule. Rupert Murdoch, the Koch’s, Republican Governor’s, state and congressional representatives are bulldozing their way to a country most of us thought inconceivable a decade ago. “It can’t get worse” has been the reporting by media on a daily basis for the past 6 years and everyday is worse!
And it can get better. In the last chapter of CASTE, A World Without Caste, Ms. Wilkerson writes, “To imagine an end to caste in America, we need only look at the history of Germany. It is living proof that if a caste system - the 12 year reign of Nazis - can be created, it can be dismantled.” She offers many solutions we each can employ; my favorite is “each time a person reaches across caste and makes a CONNECTION, it helps to break the back of caste.”
Thank you for the positive observation. “Do not judge a book by its cover.” Every “connection” matters, even a smile in a parking lot. It is a recognition that caste is artificial, and therefore wrong.
We have only to look at the history of eugenics in this country, starting about 1908, to see how this biopolitics developed here at home, culminating in a program to cull the weak from the population for the broader health of the nation (see Black, War "Against the Weak") through forced sterilizations. This practice of forced sterilization is not some action out of ancient history. In Oregon, the practice went on as late as 1983 (see https://mn.gov/mnddc/news/inclusion-daily/2002/12/120202orapology.htm).
As you note, Susan, it only gets worse. The impulse to eugenics never went away. It just lay dormant, waiting for the right opportunity to grow and expand. I agree with you, we are in the thick of it here at home.
In Steve Silberman's book "Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity" the journey current model of Autism as a 'disorder' is rooted in this country with psychiatrists institutionalizing native men, women and children intentionally to study various diseases including the root of the autism diagnosis. At the "Asylum for Insane Indians" in conjunction with government agencies and psychiatrists, this institution was "quietly" turned "into a prison for native men and women on reservations deemed troublesome by federal agents". All were deemed insane without a shred of evidence and most died in this prison without ever seeing family again. Of course, the treatment that was "very much below the standard of a modern prison". In a "cleaned up" area of the prison, the public was invited to "see the crazy Indians". Not only did Hitler learn torture techniques from slavery in America but he also adopted many notions of eugenics. Tucker Carlson as a guest for the far right in Hungary, messaging to his audience in the US and Republican congressman vacationing in Russia on July 4th are successfully normalizing Dictators who torture and murder their own. History is repeating itself.
Make no mistake , the Republican party and Fox News , are dialed in on supporting and getting elected , an authoritarian dictator in Trump . Tucker Carlson's embrace last week of Hungarian Strongman Viktor Orban , has set the stage for the GOP to do away with our Democracy , our Constitution , our Elections ( how are those recounts going in Arizona GOP ? ) , and our Voting Rights . The ones who belong in American prisons are Trump , the Trump Crime Family , all the talking heads on Fox News , and any Republican politician who believes The Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen .
Chilling! When I read the Mussolini quote, I realized how long this movement within the Republican Party has been evolving, metastasizing. Newt Gingrich and others like him were talking about 'low population rates' and the importance of pro-family programs since the 90s. Of course, the underlying context was diminishing population rates among the White Christian conservative right. It brings the obsession on abortion and contraception into sharp focus. It's always been this fear of 'replacement.'
I was surprised seeing the likes of a Rob Dreher on the list of slobbering Orban fans. Dreher is the senior editor at the American Conservative and a Roman Catholic convert. He's written some very reasonable (perhaps sanitized) editorials over the years.
I was raised as a RC and certainly Orban is someone who has used the Catholic Church (and the Hungarian bishops have given their approval) to push these anti-immigrant, anti-'other' policies. But history has given its warning that authoritarians can change on a dime. Overall, Catholics haven't fared well under totalitarian regimes. In the US, many evangelicals do not consider Catholics 'real' Christians bc according to their perspective the faith is poisoned by the Vatican and the Satanic Pope. Anti-Catholic fervor has a long history in America.
People like Dreher ought to be careful what they wish for.
Bottom line, I cannot get my head around those who wrap themselves in Christianity and yet embrace hate, fear and mistrust so passionately.
Jesus weeps.
This whole movement towards fascism/authoritarianism in the USA is very much like a virus. It started out decades ago with just a few people. The virus took hold in many ways…Nixon… Regan, Bush… It was promoted and spread deep and wide via Fox and now has been rapidly spreading through the web. As this virus grows, it starts mutate, get more transmissible and sadly, uglier and uglier. The Tucker Carlson fanboy appreciation of Hungary and Orban was disturbing and unfortunately, where I think the USA is headed except, you’ll have the repressive abortion laws of Poland, the insane surveillance of China and the incredible kleptomaniac government that is Russia. We are less than 18 months away from the mid-terms…and I truly hope I am wrong.
It makes me laugh- like in the blues tune "I Keep Laughin' and A Cryin' Just To Keep From Cryin'- at this family and children thing from these men who's larger appeal is to be like Trump- cheat in business, cheat on your taxes, cheat on your wife and get away with it. Break the law and everything and get away with it. Pathetic every one.
The ethnic bigotry and Social Darwinism of fascism are alive and well among our followers of this proven destructive politcal concept. They feel that they should have an equal platform in which to speak against our quasi-democracy but it is a false equivalency. They are abusing freedom of speech.
Thanks for the historical perspective, it really does illuminate everything today. It feels like the right in the US has been going about this piecemeal for a long time, but the Former Guy normalized vocalizing and showing one's true colors. The hypocrisy of these guys is just shameless beyond belief.
It’s all so clear when you put it in historical perspective! Tucker Carlson is playing the same game invented by Mussolini, white victim hood, the other is scary, dirty, not worthy. Tucker is especially scary as he is very smart, much smarter than Trump, calculating and ruthless. He’s also a master gas-lighter, he will get on tv and scream that the left loves autocrats right after kissing Orbán’s ring all week
When "empty cribs" become a state preoccupation, full prisons [and cementaries] are not far behind.
Is there any coordinated action or messaging plan? Where is it? how to help? Regular news anchors, contributors (we need more Ruth) and democrats don't have an alarming campaign like the Right's. "Grandma can't get water in a voting line" and "Trump tried another bad thing-this time it's a coup" is a pretty weak rallying cry to what's really going on and far along the plan it is. Without a clear action plan, this would be easy to go into apathy about. It's chilling. So what to DO ABOUT? Ruth, have you met Dr. Adam Grant? All the disciplines - history, sociology, direct response marketing, advertising, internet marketing & influencers, social and consumer psychology, activists and Democratic strategists need to get together NOW with a plan. I do internet marketing but this is all hands on deck.
Think local , Jaycee, and create personal, face2face connections …. some folks near you are a group of helpers who could use your talent… in my home state of Oregon, there’s a great statewide group “Rural Oregon Project” and in my county is an Indivisible group, or maybe your local paper could use a stringer, or maybe your city council/commissioners/ whatever have ears that can give you a listen at public meetings
A white nationalist leader cult threatens to gain power and get hold of the levers of government beginning in 2022 with the retaking of congress and then the Presidency in 2024. The core animating force of the movement was and has always been fear and resentment of brown or black people of different races! Illegals coming in over the border, black and other minorities populations voting are seen as key threats to the white nationalist order. Race is the movement's fall back position for every problem society faces.
Florida Gov. DeSantis fired back at Biden after the President said “I say to these governors: Please help. But if you aren't going to help, at least get out of the way,” DeSantis says “Joe Biden has the nerve to tell me to get out of the way on COVID while he lets COVID-infected migrants pour over our southern border by the hundreds of thousands. No elected official is doing more to enable the transmission of COVID in America than Joe Biden with his open borders policies.”
What's apparent in MAGA's white nationalist appeal is its latent fascism. It is a desire to have a white Christian racially pure majority in control of the country and for brown and other ethnic minority populations to be disenfranchised from political power through drastic voter suppression laws backed up and enforced by corrupted state officials who are blindly loyal to Trump and his big lie. Many parts of the loyal Trump base remain heavily armed and locked and loaded. If they succeed in retaking control of the government, Tucker Carlson's week-long preview of Victor Orban's Hungary may be just the beginning.
In today’s propaganda saturate media pundits refer to people as fringe elements of society, making it sound small and in effectual. In fact they are not fringe at all but supported puppets of well funded elite and organizations whose end game is totalitarianism. Fascists bio politics places the emergence of our country’s destiny, not through the fringe actions but through the media’s inability to educate us sooner than later to the deadly path awaiting us. Too Much to lose.
Although you mention a cross section of groups that Facist dictators target, in the US the target contemporaneously (white nationalists/conspiracists) and historically (slavery) has been people of African descent and Indigenous communities (Manifest Destiny, reservations and boarding schools). Isabel Wilkerson in “Caste” writes about the influence of the treatment of colonizers towards those they claimed to “own” as inspirational for Hitler in methods used to torture and dehumanize Jews. ‘Tucker and friends’ have their sights directly on black and brown Americans and are using a bullhorn to signal they are ‘winning’ by attempting to manipulate, demoralize and desensitize all Americans to a uniquely American blueprint of voter suppression, minority, kleptocratic, Second Amendment loving and white evangelical rule. Rupert Murdoch, the Koch’s, Republican Governor’s, state and congressional representatives are bulldozing their way to a country most of us thought inconceivable a decade ago. “It can’t get worse” has been the reporting by media on a daily basis for the past 6 years and everyday is worse!
And it can get better. In the last chapter of CASTE, A World Without Caste, Ms. Wilkerson writes, “To imagine an end to caste in America, we need only look at the history of Germany. It is living proof that if a caste system - the 12 year reign of Nazis - can be created, it can be dismantled.” She offers many solutions we each can employ; my favorite is “each time a person reaches across caste and makes a CONNECTION, it helps to break the back of caste.”
Thank you for the positive observation. “Do not judge a book by its cover.” Every “connection” matters, even a smile in a parking lot. It is a recognition that caste is artificial, and therefore wrong.
We have only to look at the history of eugenics in this country, starting about 1908, to see how this biopolitics developed here at home, culminating in a program to cull the weak from the population for the broader health of the nation (see Black, War "Against the Weak") through forced sterilizations. This practice of forced sterilization is not some action out of ancient history. In Oregon, the practice went on as late as 1983 (see https://mn.gov/mnddc/news/inclusion-daily/2002/12/120202orapology.htm).
As you note, Susan, it only gets worse. The impulse to eugenics never went away. It just lay dormant, waiting for the right opportunity to grow and expand. I agree with you, we are in the thick of it here at home.
In Steve Silberman's book "Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity" the journey current model of Autism as a 'disorder' is rooted in this country with psychiatrists institutionalizing native men, women and children intentionally to study various diseases including the root of the autism diagnosis. At the "Asylum for Insane Indians" in conjunction with government agencies and psychiatrists, this institution was "quietly" turned "into a prison for native men and women on reservations deemed troublesome by federal agents". All were deemed insane without a shred of evidence and most died in this prison without ever seeing family again. Of course, the treatment that was "very much below the standard of a modern prison". In a "cleaned up" area of the prison, the public was invited to "see the crazy Indians". Not only did Hitler learn torture techniques from slavery in America but he also adopted many notions of eugenics. Tucker Carlson as a guest for the far right in Hungary, messaging to his audience in the US and Republican congressman vacationing in Russia on July 4th are successfully normalizing Dictators who torture and murder their own. History is repeating itself.