It was always fascism.

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Today I grieve for my country, which has become a brutal authoritarian state that has declared war on its own citizens.  It’s surreal and heartbreaking to witness my worst nightmare coming true, but my eyes and ears don’t lie to me.  This horror is real.  I have shed many tears over my country’s collapse.  We are a failed state, no better than some despotic banana republic.  But with a lot more military power. We’re a country that has slipped into fascism.

When the federal response to accusations of police brutality is more police brutality and demands for further violence to be inflicted on protesters who are doing nothing but exercising their First Amendment rights, we are dealing with a fascist government.   When we are called terrorists by Trump and his heavily armed minions who always seem to get a pass and avoid accountability, that is fascism.  When the paranoid malignant narcissist president erects hurricane fencing around the People’s White House (which our taxes support), it’s a message that we no longer matter.  That we are seen as the Enemy, to be shut out.    That is fascism.

whitehousefence

Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Only now is the mainstream media and political pundits beginning to call what Trump and his hijacked GOP have been doing fascism.  What took them so long?

Perhaps if more of us had been willing to admit that what we were seeing was fascism, long before military police and Trump’s paramilitary thugs started physically attacking peaceful protesters (illegally) with teargas, rubber bullets, and fists, we might have been able to stop the decline.   We still can stop it, maybe, but it is going to be much harder than it would have been a year, two years, three years or four years ago, when this slide into the dark night of fascism began.  At least we’re finally beginning to flood the streets.  We need to stay there, for as long as it takes to take down this horrific regime of cruelty and chaos.

Here is a good article I just finished reading.

This is America’s Fascist Collapse. 

God help us all.

18 thoughts on “It was always fascism.”

  1. As for the media, what took them so long was, I think, they couldn’t believe it, thought someone, the “deep state”, or just enough GOP Senators voting to impeach, or the Supreme Court, somebody would put things back to normal. Or, they just couldn’t believe that Trump was really what he really is. It is a lot to wrap one’s brain around if one has not had enough experience with a malignant narcissist or studied the type.

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    • Even now, the way TV pundits talk about him, they seem to still be waiting for him to suddenly “pivot” and become a normal, caring president. It makes me want to scream and pull out my hair in frustration. HE IS NOT GOING TO CHANGE! This is who he is.

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      • Exactly, he does not learn, he does not evolve, and when he gets worried (which he cannot admit) or frightened (which he even more so cannot admit, even to himself) his response will always be “more of the same”.

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  3. I remember that the night of the election, I went to bed thinking there was nothing to worry about. The results weren’t in just yet, but I was confident that people wouldn’t fall in that trap. When I woke up, the next morning, I couldn’t believe my eyes… My first thought was ”This is a joke, isn’t it?” and the next ”Oh my, friends… You’re in deep sh*t!” And back then, we could only see the tip of the iceberg. I feel for you… xx

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  5. Those of us who saw it kept being dismissed as out of our minds. There weren’t enough of us, I guess–though I did try to spread the word. I’ve gotten so tired of Republican denials and laughter that I basically banned all right-wing comments from my Facebook page–and sometimes even unfriended people…. Still, people are finally waking up. Even my Republican hubby, who used to be one of those who thought we were ridiculous (though he didn’t like Trump), now says he has to help get Trump out of office.

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    • I got the same thing. “Stop hyperbolizing.” “He won’t be that bad.” etc.
      Now I just want to say to everyone who thought I was being too dramatic, “I told you so.”

      Liked by 2 people

  6. This didn’t happen over a few years but over many generations. American society had powerful strains of fascism for more than a century. The United States, after all, was one of the main inspirations to the Nazis.

    Many corporate giants and powerful political actors in the United States supported the rise of the Nazis. Prescott Bush, father of George H. W. Bush and grandfather of W., made the family wealth by doing business with the Nazis. Then after the war, those like the Bush family helped get Nazi War criminals jobs in the US government.

    Still, don’t get fooled that this is only a Republican thing. It was FDR who put innocent Japanese-Americans in internment camps (along with innocent German-Americans and Italian-Americans, anyone who was perceived as other). And it was the Clinton Democrats that pushed corporate deregulation, media deregulation, a racist crime bill, militarization of the police, mass incarceration, privatized prisons, etc.

    Then during the second Bush administration, Democrats helped beat the war drum for the war on terror. They quickly got in line with the demands for authoritarian power, government overreach, and destruction of civil rights. The executive power grab has been going on for decades and continued during Democratic administrations. Some of the increased power Trump now has comes from Obama’s push to increase executive power.

    This is where decades of lesser evil voting has led us to. It simply brought us greater and greater evil with each election. Even Democrats are far more fascist than they were earlier last century. Everything about our bipartisan system of power has become more authoritarian. Trump simply took advantage of the erosion of democracy. He is a symptom of a disease that should have been treated long ago. When we wait for it to develop into extremes, it’s already too late.

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      • It’s hard to see the way forward. There have been many great leaders and thinkers on the political left warning for a long time about the US becoming an authoritarian and fascist banana republic. It was all to obvious and we had no lack of historical examples to show the repeating pattern.

        But too few were paying attention. And still others chose to look away. None of it is a surprise. The only thing surprising is that some people are surprised, in our going down this path, by the inevitable and predictable outcome. Yes, more people are beginning to wake up and that is a good thing. What now? Is it too late? I don’t know.

        I’m still seeing liberals who are more riled up by the fearmongering narrative of ‘antifa’ than by the fascists themselves. And on the other side, I know of some conservative Republicans who hate Trump and yet can’t quite get over their mistrust of direct democracy with people demanding freedom and civil rights.

        That said, one can sense a shift happening in public mood, if not yet in political will. But it probably will have to get much worse before it gets better, assuming it ever will get better. I suspect this is only the beginning of an era of continuing crises where each crisis is the worst than the last, culminating in climate change catastrophes and world war.

        Liked by 3 people

    • All good points. I agree Trump is a symptom of a creeping disease that should have been addressed years or even decages decades ago. It may be too late now, or maybe not!

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  8. I have written several posts on strategic nonviolent resistance on my blog, The Well Run Dry. There are also other resources, like “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict” by Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, and “How Nonviolent Struggle Works” (available for free download from the Internet) by Gene Sharp, and YouTube videos on community organizing by Marshall Ganz. If we’re going to liberate ourselves, we need to educate ourselves first, then get to work! And you’re right – there’s not much time! But take courage: strategic nonviolent resistance helped the Filipinos overthrow the corrupt, fascist regime of Ferdinand Marcos in the 1980’s and the Russian-backed regime of Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic in the 1990’s.

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  9. One other thing – I know that a Russian trick used in the last election to make people uninterested in voting was to try to make it seem that there was no real difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. For me there is a clear difference between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, which is why I am voting in this election, and why I am voting for Biden. If liberation happens incrementally (which is usually the case), then you start with what you have, rather than listening to people who tell you that anything you do is hopeless.

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