Well, welcome to the party, I guess.
Even if, as I put it in my other reply to a similarly limp dicked Atlantic article, you’re so late to the party that the caterers that were hired for it were deported by ICE months ago.
Stuff like this is why I unsubscribed. Just respectability politics.
Thinking it a term best avoided for reasons of decorum is part of what got us here.
I’m reminded of that smarmy dickhead that wrote “Liberal Fascism” that was about mansplaining how it was really the liberals that were the fascists.
Every conservative spent a lot of time telling me I simply must read this book.
Then there was Tucker, who said he’d have to blame liberals if he were to later support fascism because, really, what choice did he have? People kept calling him a fascist, the poor dear! And insisting that people Tucker doesn’t value have rights!
Yeah, that’s fucked. Liberals aren’t fascist, they’re just fascist enablers.
So you literally ignored hitlers plot playing out until it was to late, and now it’s okay to call them hurtful name. Another banger from the Atlantic.
So the United States, once the world’s exemplary liberal democracy, is now a hybrid state combining a fascist leader and a liberal Constitution; but no, it has not fallen to fascism. And it will not.
Well that’s alright then. I almost thought the Atlantic was becoming less useless for a second there
“I declare it”
Fucking ridiculous. “Hitler is a Nazi, but Germany isnt Nazi!”
If they keep plugging their ears it can’t be true!
I’d like to take this opportunity to express the profoundly tragic failure of Democrats to mount any kind of meaningful opposition to this fascist project, that has been underway since at least the Reagan administration.
Also the fact that Donny got off for January 6th still blows my fucking mind.
They just voted to fund ICE. Again.
That’s because they’re fine with fascism too. This isn’t a fight between parties. It’s a fight between the rich owner class and everyone else.
They’re not failing at anything. A significant amount of them are just quietly complicit.
Actually Clinton joined in with them and started them on their process of becoming controlled opposition.
Like Bill Clinton and Trump were very close friends.
I think this ‘attack them for being dumb’ angle is wrong and damaging.
Is your ego being salved by metaphorically spitting on someone and telling them that you were smarter than them and they should have listened to you sooner? Is that more important than having allies to defeat Fascism?
Every time I see someone on the right who speaks up about changing their views, they’re buried under down votes and toxic comments.
Nobody benefits from us allowing these toxic people to alienate people who are coming over to our side.
Yes, you were right first, congrats we’ll give you a big gold star right after the trials. Until then, stop shooting allies because you want to feel superior.
In a position commanding a wide public audience, Jonathan Rauch has spent years speaking against us and mocking us. Today, he’s had an epiphany and figured out he’s been well-paid to be wrong. That’s cool. “Welcome to the fight. This time I know our side will win,” and all that.
I’m not going to waste any effort kicking him today, but I’m also not shocked, not scolding anyone who doesn’t welcome Jonathan Rauch with a bouquet of flowers and wet kisses. Anyway, in five days or five minutes he’ll decide we’re wrong again. Shrug.
I think it’s telling that you’re getting down votes without response. Your question is simple: What do we have to gain by turning away potential allies other than massaging our egos?
It’s a good question.
What do, whoever is operating these toxic accounts, have to gain by turning away our potential allies?
To me, the people who are willing to alienate allies are in the same group as the ones pushing fear, uncertainty, doubt and division while encouraging violence.
I can’t know who they are or why they are saying what they are saying but the effect of their message creates a beneficial outcome for our opposition.
Pick a random one of these posters to engage in a conversation to change their mind and you will often find the same toxic behaviors, bad faith arguments, red herrings, strawman arguments. It’s like they’re all reading from the same encyclopedia of bad faith rhetoric.
The people with opinions over a fucking JOURNALIST not seeing fascism while it’s arresting his peers are doing the same thing as a fucking fascist!?
Holy hyperbole!
What the fuck is wrong with you?! “We want allies on our side… oh not YOU. YOU’RE JUST AS BAD AS THE FASCISTS! You must be a PLANT!”
Go fuck yourself you clear fucking hypocrite.
Oh and if that turns you into a fascist because i was mean to you then you already were one. Now fuck off.
Edit: when you fuck up people will be pissed off at you. Grow the fuck up if you can’t handle that. The answer is not to turn into a fucking fascist it’s to fucking apologize for being wrong.
I don’t need my ego salved and yes, i handle being called all sorts of names as a slight public figure and i don’t have a job important at all compared to a journalist. Knock this shit off. The fully grown professional man doesn’t need his ass patted because he might turn to fascism if not.
The Atlantic is the worst
I wonder which of the 3000 things over the past decade changed their minds.
3000 things? Using the short list? 😆
Yeah, printer ran out of ink, so we could only get the top 3k; HP promised new ink is in the mail.
Yes, we know.
See, everyone knows that fascism is a bad thing. That has been taught in every school since the end of WW2.
It’s just a shame that most people never bothered to look up what fascism actually is, and it can be something your guys do as well.
Our general discourse has been so deeply and deliberately poisoned that people don’t pay attention to words broadly anymore. So many different foreign and domestic forces have worked so tirelessly to amplify the chaos and boost the worst takes on both sides of every social issue, that the general population of the US stopped paying attention. (The horrific 2024 exit-polling confirms this too.)
This is why people are latching onto character over policy, it’s why Trump retains power despite not having any clue what he’s doing and is just obviously being led around by his cabinet. It’s why we all seem to care a lot more about what our favorite internet streamer has to say about a candidate than AP our Routers or the evening news, because the words have been said so much that people stopped paying attention.
This is not a new, modern ploy either. The KGB and CIA both have written how to destabilize nations using these tactics as far back as the 50’s or earlier.
Who’s that kgb guy that runs Russia loves trump and had been accused of interfering with international elections. Has a bigger army of Internet bots than the army he fields?
I would wager that the army Elon employs is bigger. He deliberately monetized blue-check twitter accounts for high views and shares. Not much, just a few dollars a month, maybe a couple hundred dollars if you break some thousands of shares and views.
For the average American this is not worth the time and effort to stay on Twitter all day and night farming engagement, but for the average citizen of a place like India, this is a living. So now in addition to the Russian bot-farms, Chinese espionage orgs, domestic groups of angry incels employing bot armies, we also now have millions of people in countries like India, Philippines, Pakistan and other countries who have been holistically outsourced to push rage-bait and propaganda through US culture and conversation.
This has had a devastating effect on our domestic conversations. These people are probably fine, normal, decent people, but they have no stake in the USA’s future and are wrecking our present day so they get a meal tomorrow.
We have to start treating the information feeds in new ways. Namely, by turning them all off and spending more time in local communities and socializing to form protective groups and power blocs in our neighborhoods and cities. The most sensational bullshit someone reads online will not withstand peer-pressure to think critically and not act stupid.
Fascism is bad, communism is bad, socialism is bad. Leftists have successfully been labeled socialists and communists, why would the other side care about being labeled fascists anymore? They’re just words, meaningless abstractions now.
Right, but if you say to a Leftist “You are a socialist!” they’ll say “Yes, that’s correct”.
The MAGA hats aren’t owning the word fascism. They don’t know what it is. They know it’s bad. It’s something that happened in WW2. It’s something others do.
I’d link Michael Rosen’s “I Sometimes Fear” poem, but this administration did walk in saying exactly that, and half the people still didn’t connect the dots.
And because you didnt have the spine to say when it could have made a difference, we are here.
Worst “hair”/toupee/failed transplant/hairspray/hair gel mess ever. JFC.
“Oh gee wiz, turns out he’s doing the dictator thing like he said he would”
“President Trump was clearly making a joke.” - Enablers like the media, “centrist Democrats”, and others
It was fascism this time 12 months ago when Trump had women and people of colors plaques and images covered at national museums and at nasa.
When they banned words from research. Like: women. Female. Bias, transgender, equality. Privilege.
When they prosecuted women as murderers for having a safe first trimester termination of pregnancy.
When they started demanding a woman must die before any medical procedures would be performed that could harm a fetus, even if that fetus was dead or non viable.
When they removed black veterans stories from the VA websites and other government websites.
When they changed the dod to the department of war.
My gawd. This all started a year ago. It was fascism then.
It was fascism in 2016 when he promised to ban people from entering the US based on religion.
It was clearly fascism when Project 2025 was leaked.
It wasn’t leaked. The people who made it made a website and publicly posted it. They announced their fascist agenda and still people ignored it
Shocked. I am shocked. Shocked I tell you.
Sure, all of that is true.
Why would you (not you, daannii, the general ‘you’) want to alienate an ally by rubbing that in their face?
You get a little emotional boost by feeling self-righteous in exchange for helping splinter the enemies of Fascism.
Welcome converts, don’t spit on them.
