Over the last 3+ decades, I've watched the Republican party bring fascism to the brink of victory again, a mere 60 years after its defeat in WWII.
Aided, hand-in-hand, by the post-communist, mafia-state apparatuses of Russia & China - countries the GOP spent the last 100 years using as bogeymen against US voters who wanted better services from their own national government - & by the multi-national corporations that funded the GOP & were rewarded with dismantling of anti-monopoly & FCC laws.
Obviously fascism has still been around, operating in the US and around the world.
I think of "defeat" of fascism more in terms of the way our bodies defeat staph infections or other bacterial overgrowths. Our skin lives with these harmful bacteria always, but a healthy system uses healthier bacteria to keep them in check, at a low enough level that it doesn't kill the whole body.
As Biden's response to Gaza & the GOP's racist border provocation shows, we don't have enough good bacteria.
I'm stunned at the lack of society-wide pushback this has received, within my lifetime. Nazis were loathed by everyone I knew except my uncle, who my mom told me used to be her favorite brother until she realized he was a secret Nazi sympathizer.
*But here's the point, guys: In the world I grew up in, he had to keep it a secret in order to maintain a social existence.*
I'm 100% certain that the pivot point was Murdoch's creation of FOX as a GOP propaganda outlet in the 1990s.
I don't think things could have moved this fast without FOX.
Side note: Don't go on FOX. Legitimizing it as a debate stage hurts the fight against fascists.
You have to find other ways to reach that audience. If you believe they are reachable.
@jud
Yes, 1964 was key for sure. But in my opinion, the turning point within the GOP (& the "party realignment" of the Southern Strategy) was made at least a decade before the 1964 nomination. They had already invested in a strategy that focused on recruiting white "Negrophobe" voters in the 1950s. I believe the Dixiecrat rebellion within the party in response to Truman's civil rights commission in 1947 was the start.
2020 thread on this here. https://twitter.com/chargrille/status/1321743483472814081
@xan_desanctis Nixon’s GOP strategist, in 1970: "From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10-20% of the Negro vote...The more Negroes who register as Democrats...the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats & become Republicans. That’s where the votes are."
Erin Conroy
Jud
Deirdre Saoirse Moen