All right. Happy Sunday. I am annoyed. As always, social media has against presented itself as a completely inept platform for discussing larger and important issues. Following a long and…interesting thread from Tom Nichols on whether MAGA / the current GOP is a “fascist” movement, I grabbed my cup of coffee and weighed in.
I’ll be honest. I’m so tired of this garbage. For years now we’ve watched this threat get worse and worse and worse and Nichols and people like him, who helped create this mess in the first place, have been paid so much money in order to muck up the discourse and obscure what is actually happening.
Here is my response:
Included is a dialogue about what Nazism and Fascism are, how this authoritarian mindset is not specific to a time period or location, and how the MAGA/Right Wing Movement is both fascist and fascistic, and what that all means.
As always, thank you for your support. I would lose my mind in this environment if it wasn’t for your kindness. We have a long, long battle, an arduous battle ahead, and watching these people continue to mislead and miss the point entirely never stops weighing on me, but you give me hope.
If you haven’t already, and if you support my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to DISPATCHES FROM A COLLAPSING STATE and if you want to learn more about these things my book THE MIDNIGHT KINGDOM: A HISTORY OF POWER, PARANOIA, AND THE COMING CRISIS focuses on these ideas and ways they can be defeated.
Found the video so fascinating. Was not that familiar with your work. Now I'm a paid subscriber and have order The Midnight Kingdom. Look forward to reading it and more of you substack writings.
If we give names to political movements, if we say fascism or MAGA or whatever, we are applying concepts we understand and drawing borders around these movements so that we feel we're in control of the narrative. What the Republicans seem to be trying to do is to instill puritanism, a version of Christianity that is meant to lure in the right wing dimwits who don't understand that the GOP doesn't give a shit about them. Yes, it's about racism. And it's about misogyny, a 2,000 year old ideology as busy as ever in working for its goal of shutting down feminism.