Conservatism is founded explicitly on paranoid fears of a Jewish/Masonic/Illuminati conspiracy to overthrow hierarchical, white supremacist power.
That isn’t new. It’s at the very root of the ideology. The GOP isn’t haywire. It’s operating according to principle.
The Right has, for centuries, oppressed and exploited, but when that power is troubled they rely on open means of suppression and reveal fascistic, violent tendencies. That’s where we are. The veneer is fraying. The true nature of the Right is being revealed.
We have to stop pretending like we’re dealing with just an aberration, a blip on the radar, and recognize the crisis we’re in currently is both intensely dangerous and the result of generations of oppression. Denial isn’t going to save us.
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So. A lot of people want to believe the GOP will heal itself or "return to normal."
But we have to talk about how the Right, from the moment of their origin, has used wild-eyed, antisemitic conspiracy theories to justify oppression and fascism.
People are delusional in thinking that Donald Trump represented an aberration with the GOP and that as soon as he was gone things would return to "normal."
The truth is that Trump represented the true, actual nature of the Right and their racist white supremacy.
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What we are watching with antidemocratic violence, voter repression, racist conspiracy theories, attempted coups, and this daily horror show in which shared society and representative democracy are imperiled isn't new...it's what the Right does.
Over and over again history shows that the Right is animated by paranoid fears of conspiracies that allow them to enact widespread oppression, surveillance, and violence in order to protect their power and increase their wealth.
It’s the only consistent mindset.
Honestly, it’s staggering. I knew in researching the new book I’d find the Right infected with conspiratorial thinking, but it’s throughout the centuries. Consistent, uninterrupted paranoia that legitimizes oppression. Instance after instance after instance.
The point is this: the paranoid, conspiratorial ramblings we’re dealing with are not novel. They’re ever present. And when they heat up like we’re seeing, especially when the Right recognizes it’s losing control, it inspires massive oppression and violence.
Just so everyone's clear, widespread corruption, abuse, and genocidal tactics, including spying on political enemies and withholding life-saving resources from states helmed by opposing political parties, has been completely and utterly normalized.
This is how it works.
There's hardly a crime, abuse, or murderous tactic that could come out now from the Trump Administration's time in power that would barely garner much attention.
It was so vast, so cruel, so everpresent, that it has just become something to expect and endure.
So many people are in such a rush to live in the delusion that Trump was an aberration and that we’re safe and beyond that stain of a moment that they’re actively stunting any engagement with or investigation of the abuses and cruelties that ensure more abuses and cruelties.
The GOP's assault on education and history is a fascist attack based in Nazi ideology and is obsessed with power, control, and the protection of murderous white supremacy.
Yesterday, as a political measure, the state of Florida, pushed by the GOP, banned the teaching of "critical race theory," or the investigation of systems of power, racism, and oppression.
This isn't innocuous. It is a literal replaying of Nazi totalitarianism.
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Underneath all of it is the concept of "Cultural Marxism," or the idea that there is a secret conspiracy by communists, Jews, and liberal traitors, to destroy the culture of the country and unseat systems of power.
And this is not just limited to Republicans. Democrats and Republicans have enjoyed an economic, hypercapitalistic consensus for decades because certain Democrats believed markets would lead to more freedom and dignity.
We’re watching the collapse of that philosophy.
The belief remains, with certain political leaders, that this moment of crisis will solve itself. This is a delusional faith in this system, which is predicated and built explicitly on white supremacy and cruel exploitation. It was always heading here.
Some thoughts on the G7 news and the growing, desperate war between nations and corporations over which will come to be the defining body in human civilization.
It’s a major moment. The question is whether it’s too little, too late.
Decades of hypercapitalism, spurred by people like Reagan, has created a multinational corporation that feeds off nations, coopts their political and social structures, and drowns the people in inhuman labor, austerity, and exploitation.
Corporate dominance is one of the major reasons we’re in this crisis, why we’re suffering, why our democratic institutions are under dire threat. The redistribution of wealth from the bottom up pushed by Reagan has come to define this new second Gilded Age.