They kinda always have been. Did everyone just forget about the Ku Klux Klan? What about the 1920s Eugenics movement? Operation Paperclip? First NATO Secretary was an ex-Nazi.
Western society is fucking teeming with fascists and nazis pretending to be polite waiting for their chance. Leftists have been talking about this for decades and just got told “not everyone you disagree with is a fascist”…
The motherfucking business plot. A literal fascist plot to overthrow FDR. Implicating the Bush family. It’s been 100 years of creeping Republican fascism at least.
Technically… the nazis have always been us. Hitler took huge inspiration from US politics and policies, so to see it come full circle… the call is coming from inside the house!
We’ve managed some progress. As much racism is a huge issue and on the increase, overall minorities today are a bit better off. Lynchings are a bit less common; sundown cities far fewer in number. Haven’t seen segregated water fountains or anything like that in a bit. Although there’s certainly still redlining and plenty of inequality…
Women have done even better - as recently as 1974 being unable to open a bank account without husband’s signature. While there’s still plenty of inequality there as well, that situation has improved even more.
I certainly don’t want to minimize the successes, it’s just that the increases in bigotry that we’ve seen in many areas just feels worse because it felt like we were making progress, only to realize that it is truly a slog and struggle.
Quite so. And yet come election time we will hear, with the greatest fervor, how everything about our government should be changed instantly and successfully and that is why we must all refuse to vote or to throw away that vote on a candidate with no chance of winning.
During the KKK era, the Democrats were the ones in favor of hate, while the Republicans were not. The parties radically flipped after the passage of the Civil Rights act as a direct result of Nixon making a decision to support the hate to win elections, though the full flip took decades to play out. We’re hitting the end of that now.
This, but also it was more complicated as well: There were conservative and liberal contingencies in both parties, but after the big flip, conservatives went with or stay with Republicans, and progressives gravitated towards Democrats.
I’m 50, and I grew up after the flip, so it’s weird to think about how it must have been before. I think that’s the only reason things worked out as well as they did after WWII. Somehow we managed to push back against the racists and make some progress (Civil Rights Act, etc.) and even kinda pushed them into the racism closet for a while there. But boy howdy they exploded back out when the Tea Party took off and Obama was elected. But by that point, the Republians had already been working on attacking our democracy for a couple of decades.
The Southern Strategy was one big waterfall moment; another was when the Republicans partnered with evangelicals. I think the first big moment when partisanship really started to show its ugly head was the attack on Clinton and the attempt to impeach. Not that he didn’t abuse his office for blowjobs, but that really was not impeachable - and they didn’t get him for that, they got him on what was really a technicality. But after that, it feels like the gloves came off and partisanship was the primary tool of the Republicans.
They kinda always have been. Did everyone just forget about the Ku Klux Klan? What about the 1920s Eugenics movement? Operation Paperclip? First NATO Secretary was an ex-Nazi.
Western society is fucking teeming with fascists and nazis pretending to be polite waiting for their chance. Leftists have been talking about this for decades and just got told “not everyone you disagree with is a fascist”…
The motherfucking business plot. A literal fascist plot to overthrow FDR. Implicating the Bush family. It’s been 100 years of creeping Republican fascism at least.
Technically… the nazis have always been us. Hitler took huge inspiration from US politics and policies, so to see it come full circle… the call is coming from inside the house!
We spent all our industrial effort and millions of lives to defeat ourselves. Hooray us for stopping our evil ways. Eventually. In many respects.
We’ve managed some progress. As much racism is a huge issue and on the increase, overall minorities today are a bit better off. Lynchings are a bit less common; sundown cities far fewer in number. Haven’t seen segregated water fountains or anything like that in a bit. Although there’s certainly still redlining and plenty of inequality…
Women have done even better - as recently as 1974 being unable to open a bank account without husband’s signature. While there’s still plenty of inequality there as well, that situation has improved even more.
I certainly don’t want to minimize the successes, it’s just that the increases in bigotry that we’ve seen in many areas just feels worse because it felt like we were making progress, only to realize that it is truly a slog and struggle.
Quite so. And yet come election time we will hear, with the greatest fervor, how everything about our government should be changed instantly and successfully and that is why we must all refuse to vote or to throw away that vote on a candidate with no chance of winning.
Before the Southern Strategy(c.1960s), klansmen, etc… were more likely to be Democrats than Republicans.
The people have always existed (by various names). I think this is more an inspection of the party itself’s shift
I doubt they’re referring to the party affiliation, and instead to the ideology of the voters and politicians.
The orgs/brands/teams they’ve historically supported are irrelevant when their current support is dependent on present and future fascism.
Sure - if their point was “fascists have always been fascists” then I agree; who wouldn’t? But that’s not what the article or discussion was about.
During the KKK era, the Democrats were the ones in favor of hate, while the Republicans were not. The parties radically flipped after the passage of the Civil Rights act as a direct result of Nixon making a decision to support the hate to win elections, though the full flip took decades to play out. We’re hitting the end of that now.
This, but also it was more complicated as well: There were conservative and liberal contingencies in both parties, but after the big flip, conservatives went with or stay with Republicans, and progressives gravitated towards Democrats.
I’m 50, and I grew up after the flip, so it’s weird to think about how it must have been before. I think that’s the only reason things worked out as well as they did after WWII. Somehow we managed to push back against the racists and make some progress (Civil Rights Act, etc.) and even kinda pushed them into the racism closet for a while there. But boy howdy they exploded back out when the Tea Party took off and Obama was elected. But by that point, the Republians had already been working on attacking our democracy for a couple of decades.
The Southern Strategy was one big waterfall moment; another was when the Republicans partnered with evangelicals. I think the first big moment when partisanship really started to show its ugly head was the attack on Clinton and the attempt to impeach. Not that he didn’t abuse his office for blowjobs, but that really was not impeachable - and they didn’t get him for that, they got him on what was really a technicality. But after that, it feels like the gloves came off and partisanship was the primary tool of the Republicans.