Over on a RWNJ board, someone made the argument that
Trump has managed to turn the Republican party into the socialist party, all the while calling the Democrats Marxists.
We now have the government telling companies how to make their products, controlling the press, controlling universities, choosing winners and losers in markets, making some consumers pay more to create inefficient jobs for others, and literally taking a controlling interest in companies.
And it landed. It got the MAGA crowd tied in knots trying to argue none of that is socialist. So, for anyone looking to make hay, this argument seems to work.
I’m afraid this argument is going to run into the same wall that 100 other arguments that ought to ‘hit home with MAGA’ do: namely, that Trump supporters may acknowledge it but won’t care, or will consider it acceptable.
Actually, I like this tact and think it could work to some degree. Most of my wife’s family has turned MAGA, primarily because of abortion and anti-trans but they like to dress it up in anti-socialism arguments. This is a good way to stop the sheer stupidity of their economic arguments, especially with the recent steel deal where Trump gets massive control over a private corporation. Velocity’s correct in that they’ll ultimately segment off that part of their brain which is conflicted but at least it’s one brick removed from their support wall. Thanks for posting this and I’ll let you know if it does any real world good.
I seriously doubt most MAGA could tell anyone what constitutes a Marxist and how it is that democrats are changing the US into a Marxist state. Heck, I doubt Trump himself could make that argument.
It’s all sound bites. The reality is of no interest to them as long as they think it owns the libs.
Trump did not win solely on hardcore MAGA. There’s probably 20-30% of his base that IS persuadable. And socialism is a dirty word to them.
Observationally, it tends to go something like this: If something is posted that they are just fine with, they respond by defending it. If something is posted that they don’t like, they pretend it isn’t true- literally deny things that are easily verifiable. But when something is posted that doesn’t look good for Trump and that is really plain to see, they respond with two things: ad hominem attacks on the poster and lots of “but Harris would” and “Obama did.”
The responses I saw were those two, along with some deflection along the lines of “that’s not socialism, that’s protecting workers”
If you spend some time there, you learn their language.
Nothing will ever hit home with MAGA. They are lost souls. The only cure is embalming fluid. To them, DJT is incapable of error. He could institute state control of every industry and call it unbridled capitalism and they’d swallow it whole. Every single thing he ever says and does is by definition correct and just and the best thing to ever happen to the US. Nothing he can say or do could ever change their minds.
I’m not sure what the particular issues under discussion were, but if they are what I suspect they were (the stuff RFK is doing with junk food, Coke bringing back cane sugar sodas / ditching the HFCS*, the presidential fitness award, etc.), then it’s because Trump is doing what I have said before is the only thing that will lose him supporters. He (or at least RFK, and therefore Trump by proxy) is taking the liberal position. The fact that the way Trump is doing it isn’t the correct way to do so isn’t important**. It’s that these are things which will actually help the health of the general American public, and they are against anything that helps people that they don’t like. The MAGA philosophy is essentially “we want to do things that will hurt the people we hate, and if it hurts as well, we can live with that as a side effect”. If something helps the people they hate, they are going to be against it, even if it’s Trump that is doing it.
*. Yes, I know cane sugar isn’t the healthiest of foods, but it is better than HFCS.
**. Ironically I suspect that liberals would be the exact opposite, in that they will oppose things that are good if Trump is imposing them in a way that violates the letter of the law / the old democratic norms.
There really isn’t any evidence for that, and in fact in a soda both HFCS and cane sugar convert to the same mixture of fructose and glucose. In fact, if you analyze them, you get the same results.
Let’s not forget that the president (not even the government) has a “golden share” in US Steel
The reason I think it landed is that most of those really are left of center (in the US) actions.
Yes. That’s what I’m getting at. If Trump does things that are going to benefit the poor or minorities, they will be opposed to that, regardless of it’s done by presidential fiat or if it goes through the regular legislative process. Helping people that the MAGA base hates is the only possible sin that Trump can commit.
Of course they can’t. In their lizard brains, ‘Socialist = BAD!’ So keep calling them Socialists. Make them think that everybody thinks they are, and calls them, Socialists. Make them think that their friends think they’re Socialists. And pound it into them that their Messiah is a National Socialist. It’ll drive them nuts.
Mussolini was, of course, a Socialist. Likewise, so was Hitler,
Uh, NO.
That “Reason” for a New Age site is dumb.
While Benito Mussolini began his political career as a socialist, he ultimately rejected socialism and became the founder of the fascist movement. Initially, he was a member of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and even edited their newspaper, Avanti!. However, his views shifted towards nationalism and he was expelled from the PSI for advocating military intervention in World War I.