Muslim terrorists exist. That’s not an excuse to target all Muslims.
Right wing terrorists exist. That’s not an excuse to target all right wingers.
But the people who are actually out there encouraging terrorism? Go ahead and target those guys. I don’t care if their base is in Syria or Idaho. And a mullah in Tehran calling for attacks against Americans and a right wing radio host calling for attacks against Americans are both valid targets. This is imminent lawless action territory.
Obama is President, you gotta go out and get more guns and ammo. Now, he isn’t President any more, and now you really gotta go get more guns and ammo. 'K, got it.
I think its new. I read an article today that talked about how authoritarianism is strongly correlated to the prevalence of infectious diseases in a society. Granted in the US we do not have many infectious diseases, but the brain areas are similar. The brain areas that make us disgusted by outsiders are activated both as a way to maintain social cohesion and to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.
And the US is changing rapidly. I think Trumps ‘MAGA’ was just a dog whistle for 2 things.
Return the US to a time when it was a white hetereosexual christian patriarchy and everyone accepted that. Everyone accepted the role of what male hetero christians as the rightful rulers and most valuable members of society who were entitled to monopolize the most lucrative, rewarding and powerful positions in the socioeconomic system.
Return to a time when a high school diploma was all it took to find a job that could support a family.
The US is rapidly changing culturally and I think the rhetoric on the right as they see what they feel is their america swept away. And desperate people do desperate things (like ignore how deranged Trump is and vote for him anyway).
It is going to get worse. The US is going to keep changing culturally. Non-whites are now 40% of Americans and 30% of voters. LGBT rights are pretty widely accepted. Women earn more college degrees than men. At the same time a wave of automation is about to hit that will destroy a lot of jobs.
Combine that with the fact that all these disenfranchised people will now have hate radio to radicalize them to help them deal with how terrible they feel.
People act like the wave of automation will usher in universal basic income. I don’t believe that’ll happen in the US. We are so politically divided, we will probably move more towards fascism when we hit 30% unemployment. People will start clamoring to return to a time when white men had the best jobs rather than pushing for redistribution.
TL;DR - I think it is a response to cultural and economic changes, and it is going to get worse both as these trends continue and as people prone to being disenfranchised find themselves able to get news from outlets that validate their angry, exclusionary beliefs.
There, of course, was never a time like that really. Sure, there was a time when straight white Christian men ruled. But there wasn’t a time when everyone else accepted that. They just put up with it because the white heterosexual christian patriarchy made sure to keep everyone else down.
The straight white Christian men figured they were happy. And nobody else was allowed to complain too loudly so they could tell themselves everyone else was as happy as they were.
Ironically, it was conservative Republicans who broke unions and rewrote tax laws and threw out business regulations and destroyed the prosperity of the working class.
Counter-intuitively, I am actually less frightened by the idea of some widespread right-wing organizing for mass bloodshed than I’m worried about a trickle of “lone-wolf” attacks on liberal/progressive/Democrats.
If there was some mass movement among the Alt-Right to attempt an overthrow of government or other institutions in a manner akin to a small war or insurrection then the response would be strong and harsh and would go a long way toward stamping this bullshit batshit insanity out.
But if we get isolated killings of a progressive here and a liberal there it’s more like the frog in the pan of slowly boiling water. Ignored because “Oh it’s just a random nutjob.”
Alex Jones clearly has the right under the 1st Amendment to spew whatever hatred he wants to. Up to a point.
He does not have a right to shout FIRE! in a crowded movie theater when there isn’t one.* What he’s vomiting up on his show lately is a lot like doing that but with a threat more dangerous than fire and in a venue much larger than a theater.
Schenck v. United States. SCOTUS ruled unanimously that the First Amendment, though it protects freedom of expression, does not protect dangerous speech.
I’m sure I read somewhere a poll that found that Trump supporters did actually regard “upsetting liberals” as one of the key benefits of a Trump win. But I have been utterly unable to find a citation ever since. Annoys the heck out of me because I’ve wanted to make this point, complete with citation, several times since. If anyone knows where to find it…
You don’t understand how posing for one (admittedly extremely tasteless) photo shoot is different from encouraging millions of followers repeatedly, day by day, week by week, to treat those who disagree with them as mortal enemies and to literally arm themselves against this purported threat?
Of course not. Does the fact that the First Amendment applies in both cases mean that the two things are equivalent?
Sure, but I’m not sure what this has to do with what I wrote. I was describing why I don’t find the idea of regular terror of any sort of large scale likely. I find I Love Me’s scenario more likely, but even that doesn’t particularly “frighten” or worry me. Like I said, I find the election results to be much more likely to be damaging, and even then, I’m not 100% convinced that it’s a clear, sustainable road to the worst cases.
Which itself will be more difficult BECAUSE of the changing demographics and beliefs you mention earlier. As I see it, the most likely outcome from what you suggest would be some kind of race war, hot or cold, whether fascism happens or it’s just attempted; there are just too many oppositional forces out there that won’t roll over in a country, as you say, that is divided. I personally don’t find that very likely, for the same reasons I’m not particularly worried about politically motivated violence from the right. Sure, it’s possible, maybe more possible than I think, but I just don’t see it happening the way things are right now. (And yes, I know you’re talking about a hypothetical automated future, but I would still need to see more development in that direction before I take it more seriously as a possibility.)
Here’s a question I’ve wondered a time or two in regards to this issue: is fascism, in general, good for business? Is it worth the 1%'s time to go along with it? Because those on the left seem to see the country as an oligarchy right now, and that makes me wonder what they think of a country run by a Trumpian racist religious zealot autocrat. Maybe they can’t stop such a slide if they wanted to, but I can’t see them as not caring one way or the other, if only for the economic havoc a Handmaid’s Tale America would cause across the globe. Does it matter if America’s breadbasket stops feeding the world because of a supervolcano or because the President For Life doesn’t want to do business with the rest of the heathen, godless world? I don’t think so.
And you’d provoke counter-action from the loons on the opposite end, leading to an ongoing call/response mutual concert of “no, YOUR guy was shot by a random nut I can’t account for, MY guy was shot in a deliberate political act and it’s your fault” as we’d start getting a Gabby Giffords here, a Steve Scalise there, and each one be seen by the picked “sides” as just proving what they knew all along about the “other side” and making all more disposed to see it as the “new normal”.
Fascism is an antiquated system for running a society. Markets want easy movement of capital and labor and they talk up liberal values for mercenary reasons – diversity means more consumers, more ideas, and plucking good minds from around the world. Some industries might prefer authoritarian rule though, like private prisons. Some sectors were nervous about Trump burning everything down with trade wars, but he’s mostly hot air and can’t do what he said he wants. If he’s just another Republican who deregulates then he’s fine in their eyes.
An ascendant left-wing movement might make fascism attractive to the business community. Historically it seems like liberals side with the right in the name of stability, and the reaction of American liberals to a milquetoast figure like Sanders didn’t instill any faith they’d be different, but who really knows.
I am not sure what opinion is being confirmed by anyone’s bias. If you are referring to those who believe this drek, I would guess that you are right. People who fear change are more susceptible to this sort of rhetoric than others. (People looking for change tend to have a different set of fears over which to engage their paranoia.)
The current rhetoric is a bit more lascivious, but it is hardly new. Fr. Coughlin in the 1930s had a very large radio audience. The John Birch Society achieved a certain amount of regionalized political power in the late 1950s and early 1960s. KKK recruitment and membership tracts have been filled with this stuff forever. Both the Left and the Right enjoy engaging in conspiracy theories. (I’d bet that Vietnam would love to actually have the off-shore oil deposits that kooks on the Left assured me was the only reason we were hanging out in that neighborhood in the 60s.) So the rhetoric is hardly new.
The electronic media has made it more instantly available. (No more buying the paper and ink for the mimeograph machines to pump out the tracts “exposing” the “conspiracies” and then having to find ways, (money, time, and people), to distribute them.)
I would, however, be amused to see how much infowars.com traffic is inflated by folks on the Left rushing over to be scandalized by the terrible things that have been posted each day.