Well, no one is a capital-F historical-level Fascist now, except maybe some weirdo Hitler-or-Mussolini fans, and it’s literally impossible for anyone to be one. Fascists are always going to find convenient scapegoats for their own time, and different-sounding rationales for their loopy ideologies, so this line of argument is inherently fallacious. But it comes down to embracing racism and authoritarianism–everything else is just details.
I’d rather be whooshed than fall victim to Poe’s Law, so I’m going to politely ask if that’s an attempt at humor.
Also, shoo-in.
With the sheer level of infrastructure sunk into Disney World, I don’t see how the company could truly pack up and leave - but the mere threat of doing so could ignite enough Orlandian outrage to get DeSantis to back off.
If Disney didn’t relocate the comparatively lightweight footprint of their Marvel location-filming apparatus out of Georgia despite that state’s aggressive anti-minority fuckery, there’s no way the company would be willing to engage in the much more arduous task of trying to move what is, quite literally, a cluster of several standing cities.
I have nine relatives who are definitely sympathetic to fascist ideals and five of them are openly talking about sending money to DeSantis’ campaign. They don’t use the word fascist but it’s 85% there. I get a picture of extremely nationalistic government when they share their views.
What would be an example? Because as far as I know everything that DeSantis has railed about has been made up. For example, kids are not being taught CRT in the classroom. So what are his valid points in your mind?
I wonder if the Germans in the early 1930s thought so too?
There is a very real danger of the USA slipping into fascism, and ignoring that danger is exactly how you get fascism.
I disagree with the tenets I’m going to write but my relatives feel that LGBTQ advocates are the worst kind of people. DeSantis backs that viewpoint.
They also feel that people shouldn’t be allowed to be immigrants unless they’re reactionary. I think this is DeSantis’ second tenet. I think his third tenet is left-leaning people shouldn’t have the right to assemble in person or online. Like someone said these principles may be currently imaginary yet millions of voters hold them in their hearts and are actionable.
I know what DeSantis’ tenets are. My question was mainly for @fordgt100 who said he agreed with some of them. I’m curious which ones.
The entire extreme right-wing movement has a definite fascist flavor to it. Perhaps their attempted overthrow of our democratic government has something to do with that. I do agree, however, that name calling isn’t going to help. It just polarizes people more. Besides, anyone who still can’t see what is going on, after all that has been said and done, is pretty much unreachable anyway, so pointing out the obvious is useless.
It’s weird, because conservatives call the Democrats socialists, communist, Marxists, child predators, groomers all day long, and those are seriously bullshit.
Calling DeSantis “fascist” isn’t name-calling, it’s descriptive.
You have to look at this question from the point of view of a DeSantis supporter. They don’t know what a fascist is - all they know is what they see and hear from him, and they like that. Concepts like fascism and authoritarianism are too complex to compute. DeSantis is making “those” people uncomfortable, so his suporters like that, and want to hear and see more. If Democrats start calling DeSantis a fascist, his supporters just look the other way - they don’t know what it means, but as long as DeSantis is making the libs squirm, they’re for him, and want to hear more and see him do more. The GOP could change their name to The Fascist Group (TFG) and few Republicans would care, because they don’t know what that means. “But Mr. DeSantis is showing signs of being a fascist.” “Shut-up lib! He’s gonna get rid of the woke!.”
I did not read the whole thread, but I did search.
I’d suggest a very good parallel to DeSantis is the current President of Türkiye, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
He started as a mildly mainstream religious clean-government reformer fully on board with the secular constitution of his country. Fast forward a mere 9 years and he’s now Head Cheese in a country that’s a full-on authoritarian cult of personality. With lots and lots of populist (read “know-nothing”) support from the voters in the hinterlands. Not that something silly like “voting” matters any more there.
The 9 years is a bit of an undercount since he was Prime Minister for 11 years before President, and at the time he was PM that was the big job, with the president largely a ceremonial figure. As PM once he finished re-fashioning the role of the presidency to being head honcho, he assumed that title.
DeSantis has the same personality and the same goals. What sells to populists in the USA is different in detail than what sells in Türkiye, but nurturing grievances based on ethnicity, religion, and economic class are universal. And are all but definitional to the word small-f “fascist”.
The largest obstacle to DeSantis succeeding in driving the USA into a full-blown descent into large-F Fascist is the two-term 8-year limit as President. He’ll have to move fast, although admittedly the disgraced previous R president did some skid-greasing in this direction already that Biden has not been able to fully reverse.
The 8-year term limit is a pretty flimsy reed against the hurricane if/when the evil team controls most statehouses and both houses of Congress.
The ideal replay of the Turkish scenario has DeSantis as Veep for the next 4 or 8 years behind a highly popular but not very controversial apparently centrist President, so he can be the éminence grise maneuvering behind the scenes to align all the building blocks while the pliable President lulls the masses. Then he “graduates” to president himself with the stage fully set and cements his takeover in the next 4-8 years.
Similar plays have been done elsewhere with husband / wife teams such as the the Kirchners.
Exactly.
The specific version of authoritarianism isn’t really the issue. Fascism, theocracy, Stalinism, left wing noises, right wing noises, rule by personality cult: they’re all the same thing underneath, whatever they use for an economic system. They’re all insidious, they’re all massively damaging, they’re all massively dangerous.
I agree with BKB, which is why I said upthread that one of reasons we won’t say it is that American’s think it can’t happen here.
But it can, and -gasp- it has. Talking to @Cervaise’s points on the toxic nature of America’s exceptionalism, we tend to pride ourselves on our rule of law and orderly transition of power. But what happened just over two years ago now?
While it failed, the attacks on the capitol were in some ways less damaging than the Trump efforts to invalidate the election by means of Pence’s capitulation. We had a moment, a brief one, in which if the Republicans had stuck by their outrage and held Trump accountable, we might have had a chance to recover. The fact that two years later it’s all being re-written as a modern “lost cause” by Fox news and the Republican party as a whole is likely a death knell for American representative government.
Sure, it may be a few more election cycles if we’re lucky. Or perhaps an amazing sea change will happen, or the terror of what happened to Disney will pull more corporate spending away from the Republicans, or (best of all) Fox will be crippled and forced to at least temporarily stop it’s BS due to Dominion, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Which brings us to @thorny_locust’s point - in the long run it’s doesn’t matter particularly which form of nasty authoritarianism comes out of the fertile stew of evil currently inhabiting the Republican party. Ignoring what it is attempting to do, or fighting over which flavor of evil is a part of the same denial that it’s happening. Or, if not denial, saying that by understanding it, we can control it.
I doubt that very much at this point.
Has he ever explained/justified his migrant shipping stunts to nonsupporters? Evidently, he can sell it, because aiui, he got a couple mil from the Fla legislature to go after migrants who aren’t even in Florida!
If I wanted to find the political opposite of DeSantis, Nestor Kirchner, and moreover Cristina Kirchner will be very near the objective.
We are talking about the people who oversaw laws legalizing first Gay Marriage and then abortion, who favor trade unions, inmigration, universal healthcare, sex education in schools, etc, etc.
As for perpetuating themselves in power, we had first NK and then CK yes, and then CK couldn’t run because of term limits and she… stepped down.
Her favored candidate lost the election, and they… acepted it, no fraud claims no riots in the capitol, nothing.
I know it’s normal in US culture to equate peronism with fascism and that could have some truth to it in the 50’s, but at this point is little more than a tired trope. We’ve had more than 50 years of accumulated authoritarian dictatorships in Argentina, all of them led by pointedly anti-peronist leaders.
Authoritarians often get their hands on power, these days, by saying they’re going to Protect Your Freedoms from somebody else’s authoritarianism. Whether the people they’re so accusing are actually also authoritarians is beside the point – the question is, can they get enough people to believe it.
The USA’s current brand of would-be dictators is providing a really good example of that technique. And they’re taking a lot of people in; primarily, as near as I can tell, by assuring them that their particular freedoms will be protected; including the freedom to tell other people how to behave.
Look, folks (not that they’re reading this thread): if they can tell you that you have to be Christian (and do not hand me “JudeoChristian”, even aside from the people left out by that bit of nonsense): then they can tell you what kind of Christian you have to be. And given the chance, they will sure as very-close-to-literal hell get around to it. And no, it probably won’t be whatever kind you think you are.
Yes. The Kirchners are absolutely not fascists. But they are an example of a long play towards personal domination of politics. Which was the connection I was trying to draw.
My apologies if I’ve stomped on your, or your countrymen’s, toes.
It’s a bit of a sensitive topic, with the aforementioned anti-peronists always acusing peronists of being fascists, all evidence pointing the other way being conveniently memory-holed.