Yeah, not applicable. This is a squabble between people on the right side of this cartoon. EDIT: Dr. Wankler beat me to it.
Well thank God for AOC protecting black people from Pelosi's murder rampage I guess. This is exactly the type of hyperbole I'm talking about. Some of those younger or more naive twitter followers are probably actually thinking that this is literal. My advice is for people who think this is literal to just get it over with. Just start your revolution and start fighting in the streets. Stop pretending that we're at a stage where democracy is a viable way forward. If you think that there's death brigades out there killing black people, obviously we're beyond the viability of the democratic process. Just stop this charade of pretending to be into politics and so we know which side everybody is on.
Thought it was pretty obvious it's about the established Dems wanting AOC and other new Dems to move to the right and collaborate with Republicans to keep that corporate money flowing. To be fair Pelosi does want to kill black people, so long as they are overseas.
Look, Nancy Pelosi won her election just like everyone else in that chamber. If you don't like it, primary her. But each individual rep only speaks for about 0.2% of the country. Collectively the 4 ladies in "the Squad" represent about 1% of the country. They shouldn't pretend that they speak for everyone, despite the big Twitter followings. 80% of Americans aren't even on Twitter. Part of politics is compromise and persuasion. If they're not interested in participating in the democratic process with other democratically elected members, then they shouldn't have run in the 1st place. We've already seen what happens when a bloc of ideologues refuses to compromise when the Tea Party rose up. Led to the least productive Congress in history where virtually no bills were being passed. If the Dems create their own Tea Party, it may just implode the entire system. Not sure how that helps anyone these ladies claim to care about. In fact it's exactly this vacuum of no pragmatism and logic in the GOP that created Trump. You're naive if you think the left can't create their own version of Trump in the absence of pragmatism and logic.
Part of the problem with the left overselling this fear of fascism to whip up the base is that we'll run out of words to describe real fascism if/when that really happens. Not to mention the theory of self fulfilling prophecy. The more you talk about imaginary death squads out there killing black people the more likely it is that it'll actually happen. I'm as disappointed as anyone in what is happening at the border, but I'd rather talk about a roadmap on how you improve the situation there. The first step of that is winning elections and crafting bills that can pass both houses. In order to do that you have to appeal to as broad number of people as possible ... and yes maybe even sweeten the deal by making concessions. That's McFarlane's point. Get off Twitter, and do your job ... legislating.
You say we're not at a certain level of fascism already. I disagree, we're there. How far would the Trumpenwaffen have gone at the border had there not been investigative reporting and leaks to the press? Pence was dicking around down there on a PR visit as migrants shouted about no showers and not enough food to eat. By not kicking the Trump Admin in the nuts in the media as these atrocities are revealed we let it become normalized. He already gets a pass on rapey behavior. Everyone not in Cult 45 should be pissed off.
The operative word there is "certain level". These days a lot of the hyperbole ignores that scale context ... maybe it's the character limit on Twitter. I grew up in a part of Eastern Europe that was sandwiched between the Red Army and the Nazis. I grew up near abandoned synagogues and random cemeteries filled with unnamed soldiers. I'm all for confronting radicalism early to prevent the bad stuff from happening, but that's not the same thing as pretending that those things are already happening.
Were you shocked by the reports at the border and how many children were separated and how the government wasn't even keeping good records of the separations? I sure as hell was. The ACLU is just one group that is doing a lot of the grunt work to rectify this. But an administration with zero shame, as I bet a lot of totalitarian regimes are, make their work that much harder. We have a mentally ill president and departments & flunkies like Bill Barr that are willing to carry out these extreme policies. That's scary regardless of where it falls on the fascism scale.
OTOH Nancy could just not say anything and let The Squad vent on twitter like millennials are apt to do. Me thinks she's jealous of the attention they get and like Biden she's long in the tooth and has lost a step. PHILADELPHIA ― The chatter at Netroots Nation, a progressive gathering that attracts thousands of people each year, was expected to be on the rising influence of the left on the 2020 presidential election. But frustration with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, once considered an avatar of San Francisco liberalism, has emerged as a constant theme ― centered on her recent criticism of progressive members of her caucus. “She doesn’t act this way when Blue Dogs say stupid shit about other Democrats and about the party and constantly criticize the party,” said Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the popular liberal blog Daily Kos, referring to a group of conservative House Democrats. “For some reason, she’s singling out these four for a special brand of conflict. It doesn’t make any sense.” https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5d29ee90e4b0bd7d1e1d0aba
Wikipedia: Robert Paxton says that fascism is "a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."
IMO Nancy encouraged these racist tweets by not being a team player with the rookies. Reagan was a clown but he always pushed for public unity
humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints First of all some parts of this can pretty much be applied to the far left today as well ... Bernie, AOC and the various activists who are beating up protesters, storming ICE facilities, tearing down flags, shouting down university professors, getting people fired and so on ... The two defining aspects of fascism are the "mass-based party of committed nationalist militants" who are activated for "internal cleansing and external expansion." That's pretty close to the dictionary definition. By that standard at most you can say that we're witnessing the precursors to fascism, but very little fascism that is fully materialized. Yes, the Trump rallies are fascisty, but all those people are going home after the rally. They're not activating to walk the streets and beat people up or target anyone. It's basically fascism cosplay. We should denounce the behavior at these Trump rallies, but let's keep things in perspective. I live in a town that is 60% minority, and nobody's daily life has been impacted at all. I see the same queer Asian guy with tattoos and purple hair at the cafe every morning going about his business. Nobody's hiding their ethnic identity or sexuality. As for people losing their healthcare plans or whatever, that's not fascism. Those benefits are not inalienable human rights. Those were government programs created through the Democratic process, and can be taken away just as easily through the same process. If you want healthcare bennies, then vote ... As for ICE raids, those have been going on as far back as I remember. An uptick in ICE raids is not the same thing as internal cleansing. Every undocumented immigrant knows the risk when they decide to sneak in and live here. If you want to liberalize immigration, then change the laws. We have a democratic process for these things. As for external expansion, this is the most obvious component where the fascist terminology falls apart. I don't see any appetite in Trump world for external expansion. The problem with rich white American liberals is that they've been living in privilege for 150 years. No wars on American soil. None of them have been rounded up and tortured and jailed for being political dissidents. None of them have had family members sent away to gulags. They have no idea what these words mean in reality. The Jim Crow South was the last genuine example of actual fascism on American soil.
Wow - bothsidesing this one, huh? Does AOC head the military or the Justice Dept or was she trying to rig the census? And I'll go over this again...Antifa fights against real American Nazis when necessary. You should be thanking them for their defense of democracy. We expect better in a long-standing (yet imperfect) democracy. Decades of Jim Crow with the threat of lynching for stepping outta line. The Japanese were rounded up in WWII. Communists and alleged communists lost their livelihoods. Now immigrants are being put in concentration camps and treated like dirt. So is it the same as a Russian gulag, Chinese re-education camp or Argentinean leftists being taken out on death flights? No. But that's a very low bar for America.
We all know the big issue facing Amrrica is left-wing fascism. It might make some college professors uncomfortable & who wants that, snookems?