Strongmen get supported by mind warped coalitions that feature the leader as a demigod.
Christian Nationalism: A Political Trope
Politics until Eisenhower was religiously neutral but Ike decided in the 1950's to align the Republicans to the evangelical movement with the help of evangelist Billy Graham but little did he suspect that the path he set would turn into a diabolical monstrosity of today.
To be clear CN has nothing to do with today's religious beliefs but is a convenient political tool to dupe part of the electorate into a voting bloc that has little to do with the principles of Christianity such as love thy neighbor and everything to do with racism, eugenics, intolerance to nonwhite communities, its attachment to support of other religious right wing efforts such as Palestinian genocide, and its fan base supported by billionaires are not popular positions.
Nazi Republicans have modeled their political losing movement after Orban's failed corrupt far right attempt at a fascist takeover of a country. With an electorate that has slowly pulled away from organized religion, getting traction for a religiopolitical tact will be a losing proposition for the current Nazi Republican Party. With polling numbers tanking it will prove to be a liability.
Agree with you. I agree with the murder/suicide comparison.
Christian Nationalism is a warped ideology of the concept of Christianity Jesus Christ taught his followers. It’s the attempted murder/suicide of a faith - but it’s those soulless people who are carrying it out can’t stand up against to the TRUTH.
Actual Science frightens them.
Actual Christianity frightens them
Actual American history and the struggle of our people to aim for the Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness - for ALL terrifies them.
But - Reality spits in their faces because “they” have NOTHING to offer. “They” have NOT delivered!!!
The Trump Administration has not delivered ANYTHING.
Here consider the suicidal behavior of the Trump Administration. The Republican Party has pushed the Second Amendment through the compromised SCOTUS.
Now the American people are facing more financial hardship. As Tim Synder is saying, the World is looking at the United States as weak because of Trump.
We are having to withdraw from a war that we never should have been involved in.
People who continue to support Trump are seen as “stupid” by their neighbors because nothing is being delivered.
And the country is awash in privately owned firearms.
The book by Chris Hedges called "American Fascists" is an inside look at what he calls Christo-fascism. He talks about their organization and their theocratic agenda. People are now calling it Christian Nationalism.
Re a substack with Tim Snyder and Ruth Ben-Ghiat re super power suicide and nihilism. Arguably, what is fueling all of these destructive actions coming from the Trump Administration is a basic resentment emanating from the relatively disenfranchised working and precariat classes. i.e. “if we can’t participate in the good times going to the entitled middle classes and above, depicted regularly on TV and in the movies, then we will tear the whole structure of society – down.”
Ruth, please, please stop using the 8-syllable words no one outside of this tiny group understands, much less cares about.
Please, please stop talking about Mussolini and Hitler--whom few recognize and even fewer care about--and start talking about Putin and Trump. If they were planing to destroy America (our military, our economy, our relationships with partner countries and organizations who jointly stabilize the world) and leave it--and us--defenseless while Trump clinks champagne glasses in Moscow, might their actions not look exactly like what we are seeing?
Confront THEM; drawing historical parallels actually serves THEM; it distances and normalizes their horrific actions from us, their victims.
Ruth, i value your intellect and depth of knowledge -- this is why i follow you. you are here to talk about the history of fascism. and you do so brilliantly.
i do not know why this person is complaining about your 8-syllable words?? nor why he thinks you are not talking about Putin and Trump. i guess i have a vocabulary and did not notice that you used a big word or two?
who do you think is Ruth's audience, Mark Premo? the illiterati?
i am glad that you are not reciting dactylic hexameter. that would not have much of an audience in this day and age.
Human science empowers humans. In particular astronomy and space exploration empowers humans against the sadistic Nazi Space Invaders.
Nazi Space Invaders oppose the Thirty Meter Telescope for more than a decade. They tore down the radio astronomy telescope at Arecibo in Trump's first term. They caused incidents inside the Solar Observatory at Sunspot, NM. Today they are building a highly polluting electric generation plant on the Atacama near humans’ most important terrestrial astronomical observatories; humans will lose hundreds of billions of US dollars worth of construction in that remote location plus much precision scientific equipment.
This was all interesting. Strict Conferentialism has generated an image of the government mystified by its own existence and intent: how can we countenance post-historicism? 201
Best analysis yet of Trump, his actions and their effects. Share widely, everyone—I heard in their insights the rattling of the keys which can unlock the door of the deadly trap Americans are in.
Ruth just said they weren't intending to destroy America by sabotaging science, etc. , but I don't understand why she thinks it's not intentional. I think the through-line through all their policies is the intentional mass murder of whoever they consider losers. They are deliberately culling the world's population while destroying America.
Exactly. Musk gleefully murdered 600 thousand brown and poor people, mostly children, and that number continues to rise. Republicans are eugenecists, who want brown people dead, and poor white people only while they can work / birth workers, then discarded to die badly.
Thank you both - yes, please keep it going! These murderous but for now, largely cosplaying fascists aren't capable of community, which is needed even for the most brutal regimes. they're deluded by the myth of the independent individual, disregarding the help each one of us has received from the womb through adulthood. they deny the interdependence of existence which is related to their ends justify means M.O. i imagine that each of them has a developmental history which can help to explain their individual trajectory; multidetermined as it is with everyone. Trump experienced humiliation when he forayed into the Big City and was rejected by Manhattan society for being a bore; he hadn't and hasn't cultivated himself. This culminated with public humiliation in the 2009 WH Correspondents Dinner. Humiliation is a pernicious affect. To wit, Germany after WWI. In terms of facts, it's as though Trump and crew hijacked and concretized the critical theory of deconstruction to nefarious ends so that facts don't matter to them. Trump admires actual autocrats who have more toys and more spectacles than he does. It's all one big video game. Hegseth is a bona fide Nazi, a homicidal maniac, chomping at the bit for Holy war. My fervent hope is that he turns his aggression inward. Trump wants the tarp to remain on the Kennedy Center to hide his black hole of a self from himself and us. The table was set for a despot since 9/11. But like embers flaring before they die, we need to stay alert. Risa M
It does appear that anything that can generate facts needs to be compromised because they have to control the narrative. Facts/data gets in the way of their processes.
Strongmen get supported by mind warped coalitions that feature the leader as a demigod.
Christian Nationalism: A Political Trope
Politics until Eisenhower was religiously neutral but Ike decided in the 1950's to align the Republicans to the evangelical movement with the help of evangelist Billy Graham but little did he suspect that the path he set would turn into a diabolical monstrosity of today.
To be clear CN has nothing to do with today's religious beliefs but is a convenient political tool to dupe part of the electorate into a voting bloc that has little to do with the principles of Christianity such as love thy neighbor and everything to do with racism, eugenics, intolerance to nonwhite communities, its attachment to support of other religious right wing efforts such as Palestinian genocide, and its fan base supported by billionaires are not popular positions.
Nazi Republicans have modeled their political losing movement after Orban's failed corrupt far right attempt at a fascist takeover of a country. With an electorate that has slowly pulled away from organized religion, getting traction for a religiopolitical tact will be a losing proposition for the current Nazi Republican Party. With polling numbers tanking it will prove to be a liability.
Agree with you. I agree with the murder/suicide comparison.
Christian Nationalism is a warped ideology of the concept of Christianity Jesus Christ taught his followers. It’s the attempted murder/suicide of a faith - but it’s those soulless people who are carrying it out can’t stand up against to the TRUTH.
Actual Science frightens them.
Actual Christianity frightens them
Actual American history and the struggle of our people to aim for the Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness - for ALL terrifies them.
But - Reality spits in their faces because “they” have NOTHING to offer. “They” have NOT delivered!!!
The Trump Administration has not delivered ANYTHING.
Here consider the suicidal behavior of the Trump Administration. The Republican Party has pushed the Second Amendment through the compromised SCOTUS.
Now the American people are facing more financial hardship. As Tim Synder is saying, the World is looking at the United States as weak because of Trump.
We are having to withdraw from a war that we never should have been involved in.
People who continue to support Trump are seen as “stupid” by their neighbors because nothing is being delivered.
And the country is awash in privately owned firearms.
Suicidal Administration
Amen
The book by Chris Hedges called "American Fascists" is an inside look at what he calls Christo-fascism. He talks about their organization and their theocratic agenda. People are now calling it Christian Nationalism.
🙋🏻♀️✌️🫶good afternoon n evening from south Fl
Tim - you seem very tired…working too hard!
061526
Re a substack with Tim Snyder and Ruth Ben-Ghiat re super power suicide and nihilism. Arguably, what is fueling all of these destructive actions coming from the Trump Administration is a basic resentment emanating from the relatively disenfranchised working and precariat classes. i.e. “if we can’t participate in the good times going to the entitled middle classes and above, depicted regularly on TV and in the movies, then we will tear the whole structure of society – down.”
David Jed Schwartz
64 Bow St.
Somerville, MA 02143
Ruth, please, please stop using the 8-syllable words no one outside of this tiny group understands, much less cares about.
Please, please stop talking about Mussolini and Hitler--whom few recognize and even fewer care about--and start talking about Putin and Trump. If they were planing to destroy America (our military, our economy, our relationships with partner countries and organizations who jointly stabilize the world) and leave it--and us--defenseless while Trump clinks champagne glasses in Moscow, might their actions not look exactly like what we are seeing?
Confront THEM; drawing historical parallels actually serves THEM; it distances and normalizes their horrific actions from us, their victims.
Ruth, i value your intellect and depth of knowledge -- this is why i follow you. you are here to talk about the history of fascism. and you do so brilliantly.
i do not know why this person is complaining about your 8-syllable words?? nor why he thinks you are not talking about Putin and Trump. i guess i have a vocabulary and did not notice that you used a big word or two?
who do you think is Ruth's audience, Mark Premo? the illiterati?
i am glad that you are not reciting dactylic hexameter. that would not have much of an audience in this day and age.
Human science empowers humans. In particular astronomy and space exploration empowers humans against the sadistic Nazi Space Invaders.
Nazi Space Invaders oppose the Thirty Meter Telescope for more than a decade. They tore down the radio astronomy telescope at Arecibo in Trump's first term. They caused incidents inside the Solar Observatory at Sunspot, NM. Today they are building a highly polluting electric generation plant on the Atacama near humans’ most important terrestrial astronomical observatories; humans will lose hundreds of billions of US dollars worth of construction in that remote location plus much precision scientific equipment.
This was all interesting. Strict Conferentialism has generated an image of the government mystified by its own existence and intent: how can we countenance post-historicism? 201
Best analysis yet of Trump, his actions and their effects. Share widely, everyone—I heard in their insights the rattling of the keys which can unlock the door of the deadly trap Americans are in.
Ruth just said they weren't intending to destroy America by sabotaging science, etc. , but I don't understand why she thinks it's not intentional. I think the through-line through all their policies is the intentional mass murder of whoever they consider losers. They are deliberately culling the world's population while destroying America.
Exactly. Musk gleefully murdered 600 thousand brown and poor people, mostly children, and that number continues to rise. Republicans are eugenecists, who want brown people dead, and poor white people only while they can work / birth workers, then discarded to die badly.
So grateful for this conversation between two of the world’s foremost experts on Authoritarianism.
Thank you Ruth…And Tim!
And as usual, I learned so much more after hearing / watching it twice.
Tim and Ruth,, Thanks agaain for your thought provoking discussion. I always learn alot from both of you.
Thank you both - yes, please keep it going! These murderous but for now, largely cosplaying fascists aren't capable of community, which is needed even for the most brutal regimes. they're deluded by the myth of the independent individual, disregarding the help each one of us has received from the womb through adulthood. they deny the interdependence of existence which is related to their ends justify means M.O. i imagine that each of them has a developmental history which can help to explain their individual trajectory; multidetermined as it is with everyone. Trump experienced humiliation when he forayed into the Big City and was rejected by Manhattan society for being a bore; he hadn't and hasn't cultivated himself. This culminated with public humiliation in the 2009 WH Correspondents Dinner. Humiliation is a pernicious affect. To wit, Germany after WWI. In terms of facts, it's as though Trump and crew hijacked and concretized the critical theory of deconstruction to nefarious ends so that facts don't matter to them. Trump admires actual autocrats who have more toys and more spectacles than he does. It's all one big video game. Hegseth is a bona fide Nazi, a homicidal maniac, chomping at the bit for Holy war. My fervent hope is that he turns his aggression inward. Trump wants the tarp to remain on the Kennedy Center to hide his black hole of a self from himself and us. The table was set for a despot since 9/11. But like embers flaring before they die, we need to stay alert. Risa M
Death of this country by a thousand cuts!
It does appear that anything that can generate facts needs to be compromised because they have to control the narrative. Facts/data gets in the way of their processes.
Thank you! This was brilliant! I’m eagerly awaiting the next one!
The murder, the suicide... I can't help but keep asking over and over...why? Why murder America? How does it benefit them???
It benefits Putin and Netanyahu, and the Epstein Class.