“Trump extremists of the Right, the MAGA Republicans, are promoting semi-fascism.”
When President Biden made this statement in a Philadelphia speech last week, Republicans and their useful idiots in the media had a classic hissy fit and said they were extremely offended by being called semi-fascists.
This might shock you, but I agree with them completely.
These people are not semi-fascists.
No, they are out-and-out Nazis.
That has pretty much been the case since 2016, as you can see from Trump Jugend pundit Laura Ingraham saluting her fuehrer at the 2016 convention.
If there was one interesting fact about Trump voters in that election and the next one, it’s that many of the people supporting him — the MAGA ones — approved of authoritarian leaders.
In other words, once they pick a leader, he’s the boss.
Sound familiar?
Biden disagrees with that, of course.
I’m reminded of a story from the years after the Second World War.
It used to be said that an Englishman strode the Earth as if he owned it. An American, on the other hand, walked the Earth as if he didn’t give a damn who owned it.
Or maybe more to the point, an American was someone who if he heard someone tell him to jump, he’d say “Screw you.”
In other words, we were not people who approved of authoritarians. Guys like Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin were still too fresh in our memory to want to submit to authoritarians.
But when the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement and the women’s movement came along, all of a sudden the bottom had dropped out for folks who weren’t well equipped to handle societal change.
Hence the desire for an authoritarian society — to keep those people in their place. Add the gays and lesbians who came along later, and the foreigners who crossed the border and you get the picture.
Exactly the kind of situations the Hitlers and Stalins, and lesser figures from Francisco Franco to Donald Trump and others thrive on.
Actually, Trump is a perfect example of why we shouldn’t elect businessmen who don’t even have to answer to a board of directors. When guys like him tell you to jump, they don’t even want you to ask how high. They just expect you to start jumping and not stop till they say so.
As for his followers, the so-called MAGA Republicans, they’ve made the classic mistake so many others in history have made. They expect their Dear Leader only to be tough on those people — the non-white, non-Christian women, gays and immigrants.
The problem is, the time always come when even if you’re one of his faithful followers, you’ll have something he wants. Or you’ll want something he doesn’t want to give you.
Then you end up living out the famous quote from Martin Niemoeller in the face of Hitler.
Make no mistake about it. If it goes long enough, they will come for you.
Even if you never stop jumping.