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Mark's avatar

I always want to ask when I witness the appeasers of our fascist party “Where do YOU think they’ll stop? How much will you give them before they persuade you they are serious? Will you once again wait until it’s too late?”

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Ian Douglas Rushlau's avatar

"bullies tend to operate on a sliding scale of permission. They start by pretending to do a thing to see how pretending goes for them before actually doing it, and if they don’t get opposed for issuing threats, then they understand that to be permission, and then they progress to actually doing it, and if that works out for them, then they progress to doing more."

This is precisely correct.

This can be extrapolated to the methods of V. Putin, for example, who has incrementally upped the actions he will take- from brazen assassinations across Europe with poisons only the FSB employs, to hacking voting machines in the EU and US, to scorched earth war in Ukraine. He does these things because there was never pushback. (Side note, depraved realpolitic filth like H. Kissinger peddled a mythology of 'strategic balance' among 'great powers', which required tolerating crimes against humanity and subjugation of entire nations. I hope he's dropped from a high place onto an unyielding surface. But I digress.)

It's good that more among us are waking up to the reality that the GOP is a fascist rabble, and conservatism was always a sham, word-salad camouflage for fascism.

The only remaining question- what are we prepared to do, now that it is clear that our political adversaries mean to utterly dismantle every vestige of pluralistic democracy?

Do we tolerate the fascists in our midst? What about family and friends who align with fascists by voting GOP?

'There are fascists, and there are antifascists. These are the only choices available.' (Feb. 15, 2023)

https://iandouglasrushlau.substack.com/p/there-are-fascists-and-there-are?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2

1) Fascism is a reflection, and public expression, of a worldview:

...powerful groups support social attitudes and beliefs and policies that place themselves to a greater advantage over lesser groups...

2) If someone is comfortable aligning with any group that espouses manifestly fascist aims and policies, that person is demonstrating they are unbothered by those aims and policies...

3) If someone is unbothered by callous indifference to the suffering and death of others, to genocide, to mass violence, state sanctioned brutality, and facilitate these by way of the choice to affiliate with a group whose policies endorse genocide, mass violence, and state sponsored brutality, then that person is simply a fascist...

4) Whatever narrative of self-absolution a person constructs for their participation in elevating a fascist regime, for <reasons>, presumably to skirt any personal accountability for contributing to suffering and death of other human beings, it is inherently a narrative of justification for maintaining a fascist worldview, and a preferred identity within that frame...

Stated differently, there is no such thing as 'fascist-adjacent'- one is either fascist or antifascist.

Thems the options.

A person's choice shows who they are. This is not even remotely arguable.

All else is noise."

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