People's failure to understand that fascism is a fairly banal worldview reflects a refusal to understand how common and ordinary looking it is and how well it hides behind our modern high tech lifestyles.
Fascism doesn't have to have 1930s pomposity and daily military parades.
It can look like America, right now, today, depending on who and where you are. America already has military jingoism, mass incarceration, mass surveillance, unchecked paramilitaries, and theocrats denying our rights.
Honestly, I don't trust anyone who doesn't find stuff like the Pledge of Allegiance or the bombastic jingoism of the Fourth of July at least a little creepy.
But a lot of people -- cis-het white people specifically -- have internalized so much of this stuff as "normal" that political discussions are derailed by having to convince them that things are already bad for other people and that it's been happening for years.
"We have to fight fascism!"
Yes, but you don't even know what fascism looks like.
It's been here for a while. It just wasn't threatening you.
This is fundamentally the problem of arguing politics with white liberals: they prefer to believe fascism is a dramatic new thing that COULD happen, not an extension of existing systems with built-in inequity at every level.
Few are so tone deaf as to vocally support, e.g., sweeping up homeless people and throwing them in jail, but many accept it, and few seem to contemplate why homelessness even exists or why our only solutions are to criminalize and imprison people.
It just doesn't register.
@gwynnion
There's a certain gaslighting quality to liberals constantly browbeating everyone critical of Biden or Democrats in general by saying that it's either them or a fascist takeover.
Superficially, it's not *wrong.* In the ballot box, there are only two choices for all intents and purposes: dictatorship and not-dictatorship.
However, this conveniently ignores that the failure of Democrats to actually combat fascism is how we got to this point in the first place.
@jargoggles There's this very weird, smug mindset of people who chortle at Republican stupidity as if that will defeat them all by itself when Republicans are objectively winning.
And if it's a problem, they put the onus squarely on (other) voters and never on Democratic officials, whose job consists entirely of giving earnest speeches, apparently.
They have no theory of power or change whatsoever. And I don't think they actually want one.
@gwynnion
If I were a Democratic politician who was solely concerned on keeping my job while having to deliver as little as possible, I would be *thrilled* with the current status quo.
Any criticism of Biden is immediately compared to the fact that Trump will be worse. Can you imagine if your performance at work was held to the standard of the absolute least competent person for the job? And people think that's a good way to evaluate how well the fucking *president* is doing?
@jargoggles When you point out that GOP presidents seem to wield enormous power, they sniff and act like it would be illegal for a Democrat to do the same but for good things.
These Democrats would have impeached Eisenhower for sending federal troops to enforce desegregation.
@gwynnion
And FDR? Ew.
No way he'll get elected (four times). He's not doing enough to appease moderate Democrats (who vote for Democrats regardless) and Republicans (who are never going to vote for a Democrat).
@gwynnion
So saying that the Democratic Party as a whole needs to do better and demanding change is a much, much stronger rejection of fascism than what liberals are doing.
Telling us to hold our nose and bite our tongue is tantamount to saying that you are perfectly okay with voting for exactly the same circumstances that brought us to this point to begin with. Neoliberalism brought fascism to our doorstep. Simply not inviting it in isn't sufficient. We need to push it back.
@jargoggles Yeah, and I think many people, because they benefit from the status quo, see change as bad no matter what form it takes.
Trump is bad because he wants to change things (in ways that might affect them). Progressives are bad because they want to change things (in ways that might affect them).
It's all about their bottom line.
Enshittification is fine as long as it affects other people.
as long as you #vote
nothing bothers me about the rejection of milquetoast spineless democrats except those who go "and so i won't vote"
MAGA consistently votes, and so they successfully turned the party of john mccain into the party of licking putin's boots. that's remarkable
imagine if the left made over the democrats like that
rather than grow disenchanted with how bernie was treated, just show up to vote even more. it's so easy
then send 100 bernies to the top
@gwynnion I know you know they just don’t want to be out front on sweeping up the homeless & jailing them, but they are totally down with somebody doing it.
The societal failure they see isn’t the homeless, it’s that they have to be aware there are homeless.
Nowhere Girl
Jargoggles
ᴮᵉⁿ ᴿᵒʸᶜᵉVOTE IN THE PRIMARIES
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