Thread by @tzimmer_history

This is not some far-right internet troll, but a Republican state senator - and it’s impossible to adequately understand American politics without grappling in earnest with why her radicalism is widely seen as justified on the Right and within the GOP.

https://twitter.com/benlorber8/status/1497434562237980672

Every “Western” society harbors far-right extremists like Rogers who dream of committing acts of fascistic violence. But it’s the fact that the Republican Party embraces and elevates her, and others like her, that constitutes an acute danger to democracy.

Just ignoring this won’t work, because it’s not coming from some rightwing troll, but a Republican elected official who’s in good standing with the rest of her party. No use making fun of it either: These people are in positions of power, intent on using that power.

What Rogers is expressing here is not some fringe sentiment, but a clear - albeit bizarre - distillation of the white Christian nationalism that animates the American Right and defines the Republican Party’s political project.

This ideology is incompatible with both religious freedom and multiracial, pluralistic democracy. And she’s not elevated to a position of political power despite holding such beliefs, but *precisely because* she does and because she is aggressively championing them.

Sure, the exact language Rogers uses might be slightly crasser than what some conservatives are comfortable with, and some Republicans might disagree with some aspects of the public image she projects. But it’s obviously not enough for them to break with her.

How do we know Rogers isn’t just a crazy outlier? Because Republicans don’t treat her like one. In any (small-d) democratic party, what Rogers is saying here, and where she’s saying it, would be disqualifying. In today’s GOP, she’s not being expelled, she’s elevated.

Why is that? Because what she’s saying, and the underlying worldview, is well in line with the GOP’s central political project of preventing multiracial pluralistic democracy. Rogers, the GOP, the Right more broadly: United in the quest to entrench white reactionary rule.

Let’s not be lulled into a false sense of security by the clownish crassness, the bizarre ridiculousness of it all. Some of history’s most successful authoritarians were considered goons and buffoons by their contemporaries - until they became goons and buffoons in power.

I fear that - after four years of Trumpism in power, after January 6, with rightwing fascistic militancy now all around us - we have become so accustomed to outrageous political acts that we might be becoming numb to how bizarre, how extreme, how dangerous these developments are.

I’ll add one more thought: Let’s try to stay away from pathologizing language when describing Rogers and people like her. They are not “crazy,” or “insane,” or “delusional” - they are committed ideologies, pursuing a specific vision of white Christian dominance for U.S. society.

Let’s take these people seriously. They’re not just grifters (although there’s lots of grifting going on), opportunists (although they can be plenty opportunistic), or “lunatics”: They are true believers in their political vision. That makes them not less, but *more* dangerous.