I’ll give him this: A hard thing to convey about Trump and the modern GOP’s fascism is that because it is predicated on white supremacy, it appeals MAINLY BUT NOT ENTIRELY to white people. We saw that at the Capitol.
Of course this isn’t new with fascism and proto-fascisms. Most famous are the handful of Jewish Nazis.
Trump didn’t always come out and say what he really believed—that white Christians, especially Germanic white Christians, should dominate the world—and broadened his appeal.
He appealed to anyone prone to fascism—the idea that they are victims of their inferiors, and that they should have license to rule. That appealed to some minorities, especially in places where they constituted a majority: Ultraorthodox Jewish Brooklyn. The Rio Grande Valley.
He’s a good example. Tarrio is a Cuban with some African ancestry from Miami. That is not a disadvantaged minority in Miami! Cubans have a ton of power in Miami, many are violently antisocialist, and some of them resent having to share power with anyone. 100% Trumpian.
In the 1860s, Puerto Rico was a colony of Spain. It was annexed by the United States in 1898, in an imperialist war whose antecedents included attempts by Jefferson Davis to annex parts of the slaveholding Caribbean. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
In 1851, Americans following a Venezuelan merchant named Narciso Lopez tried to start a war in Cuba. When they were discovered and executed, whites rioted in New Orleans to demand the US annex Cuba immediately.
To lead his mission, Lopez had tried to recruit Robert E. Lee.
Not to mention that the Gulf Coast and South Carolina were full of people going back and forth to the Caribbean. Many of the biggest slave holders in Louisiana were rich refugees from the Haitian Revolution.
You want to know how terrified I was of Trump being president? I pulled a GOP ballot in the 2016 North Carolina primary to vote for Marco Fucking Rubio. FUCKING RUBIO.
I thought maybe MAYBE there was a chance that asshole would win NC and stop Trump’s march to the nomination.
I got back to my car feeling like I was covered in slime, turned over the ignition, and immediately heard Rubio conceding the race lol.
Why? Because I knew that Trump was a fascist. (Just ask @mkady.) And you do NOT LET A FASCIST GET INTO THE WHITE HOUSE BECAUSE ONCE THEY DO THEY WILL DO EVERYTHING IN THEIR POWER TO NEVER LEAVE IT.
I wrote for @foreignpolicy about how Trump’s uniquely American fascism, which culminated (for now) in an attempt to neutralize Congress, is built on a century of Americans doing that sort of thing all over the world foreignpolicy.com/2021/01/09/cap…
I finished writing it just as the details of the leading putschists started coming out. Unsurprisingly many were trained and gained experience in America’s imperial wars, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is how fascism has always worked. As Aimé Césaire wrote half a century ago, European fascism was essentially “colonialist procedures” applied to Europe “which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the negroes of Africa.”
Yup. Trump’s pattern with the Charlottesville Nazi rampage was first incitement, then defiance, then cowed scripted bullshit, and finally lashing out at having been made to surrender (the “very fine people” press conference).
Trump encouraged sedition. He told a crowd of people (“hundreds of thousands,” he said) to go with him to attack the Capitol. “We’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”
That’s likely a violation of 18 U.S. Code § 2384
.@IlhanMN has introduced articles of impeachment. That’s good. I’m afraid it won’t move fast enough. Trump needs to be removed immediately—like, tonight—and disqualified from ever holding any government position again.