This diary began as a comment in reply to a DKos member, who feels my perspective that the GOP is a fascist cabal, and it’s rank and file voters are proto-fascists, is both incorrect, and worse yet, may cause us to lose potential GOP votes from those GOP voters that are, at heart, decent and reasonable, and would side with the left if we approached them in the right way.
The DKos member I replied to characterized my views as ‘a dead end’.
I’m describing the camps people sort themselves into.
Dead is where it ends, for millions.
History is exactly what I’m trying to get people to learn from.
Casually dismissing fascism, when it is plainly in front of you, is what history tells us is a dead end:
QAnon is a Nazi Cult, Rebranded
Gregory Stanton/ Just Security
September 9, 2020
I have studied and worked to prevent genocide for forty years. Genocide Watch and the Alliance Against Genocide, the first international anti-genocide coalition, see such hate-filled conspiracy theories as early warning signs of deadly genocidal violence.
The plot, described above, was the conspiracy “revealed” in the most influential anti-Jewish pamphlet of all time. It was called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It was written by Russian anti-Jewish propagandists around 1902. It collected myths about a Jewish plot to take over the world that had existed for hundreds of years. Central to its mythology was the Blood Libel, which claimed that Jews kidnapped and slaughtered Christian children and drained their blood to mix in the dough for matzos consumed on Jewish holidays.
The Nazis published a children’s book of the Protocols that they required in the curriculum of every primary school in Germany. The Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer (derived from the German word for “Storm”) spread the Blood Libel. Hitler’s Mein Kampf, his narcissistic autobiography and manifesto for his battle against the Jewish plot to rule the world, copied his conspiracy theories from the Protocols.
The Nazis worshiped Adolf Hitler as the Leader who would rescue the white race from this secret Jewish plot. Nazi “storm troopers” (“storm detachment” – Sturmabteilung) helped bring Hitler to power. Nazi Germany went on to conquer Europe and murder six million Jews and millions of Roma, Slavs, LGBTQ and other people.
America had its own dark side. Henry Ford echoed Nazi hatred of Jews and had 500,000 copies of the Protocols printed and distributed in the U.S. Father Coughlin preached the Protocols on national radio. The Ku Klux Klan combined its white supremacist racism with hatred of Jews.
QAnon’s conspiracy theory is a rebranded version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
QAnon purveys the fantasy that a secret Satan-worshiping cabal is taking over the world. Its members kidnap white children, keep them in secret prisons run by pedophiles, slaughter, and eat them to gain power from the essence in their blood. The cabal held the American Presidency under the Clintons and Obama, nearly took power again in 2016, and lurks in a “Deep State” financed by Jews, including George Soros, and in Jews who control the media. They want to disarm citizens and defund the police. They promote abortion, transgender rights, and homosexuality. They want open borders so brown illegal aliens can invade America and mongrelize the white race…
In July, the Texas Republican party unveiled a new slogan, “We Are the Storm.” Over a dozen Republicans running for Congress have signaled support for the QAnon movement. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican candidate from Georgia who has endorsed QAnon’s views, is likely to win a seat in Congress. The President praises her as a “future Republican star.” The Trump campaign welcomes QAnon supporters to his rallies. When asked about QAnon on national television, the President replied, “I understand that they like me very much, which I appreciate.”
My diary of Oct. 8, 2020:
Using the harshest derogatory and scatological terms to refer to people who have shown themselves utterly beneath our contempt is not ‘stooping to their level’.
Putting children in cages and performing hysterectomies on captive vulnerable migrant women would be stooping to their level.
Knowingly causing the preventable illness of millions, and deaths of hundreds of thousands, and showing disdain for those trying to save lives would be stooping to their level.
Decimating all of our democratic institutions would be stooping to their level.
Covering your eyes and ears to what is happening may be a comfort to you.
Maybe you really believe taking a conciliatory approach to those that embrace crimes against humanity will win an election here or there. (You’re wrong about that, and if this week hasn’t made that clear to you, I’m not sure what would.)
But taking a conciliatory approach to those that embrace crimes against humanity— rank and file GOP voters, who voted in greater numbers than in 2016, have made calls for violence, and calls for the arrest of those who act as political obstacles— moves us further down the path in which crimes against humanity warrant a shrug of the shoulders, and aren’t the main concern of those who consider themselves on the left:
Violence Against Women and Girls in ICE Custody
By Laura Wilson, GRW Staff Attorney
September 21, 2020
For years now, the general public has turned a blind eye to human rights abuses at immigration facilities, and national leaders have done far too little to protect vulnerable people, particularly women and children. Many women and children arrive at the Southern border fleeing violence by gangs, drug cartels, and abusers – only to be locked up in crowded and unsafe detention centers.
In the past two years alone, we’ve heard multiple reports of systematic sexual abuse of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees. In February 2019, multiple national media outlets reported that over 4,500 children had reported sexual abuse in ICE detention and immigrant youth “shelters” since 2015. While most of the complaints were about abuse by other detainees, “178 of the complaints were against staff at the shelters — in particular, youth-care workers who escort the children everywhere they go.”
In July 2020, the Miami Herald reported that at least four children were abused by staff members who had not been properly vetted with background checks at the now-shuttered Homestead Shelter, where migrant children were detained in Miami.
Last month, the Texas Tribune and ProPublica reported that ICE guards had been systematically sexually assaulting women in an El Paso detention center. Women were abused in areas of the facility not visible to security cameras and were told they would not be believed if they complained. A guard told one woman he would prevent her deportation if she “behaved.”
Although the allegations are being investigated, on September 15, ICE deported one of the survivors – a key witness in the case. An attorney for the survivors says that sexual abuse in detention facilities is rampant, in part, because the victims are extremely vulnerable due to the likelihood they will be deported.
ICE also attempted to deport one of the women who says she received a hysterectomy without her consent; Congress intervened to prevent her deportation after she was already on a plane, waiting on the tarmac. At least 17 women have now come forward to report unnecessary medical procedures, including hysterectomies, in the ICE facility.
Clearly, you have to decide how important any of this is to you, since you can ignore it from a distance if you so choose.
Ignoring it means it will keep happening.
Pretending the people who have brought us to this point are not responsible for bringing us to this point, are not who they publicly declare themselves to be, serves only to ensure it will keep happening.
Not sure why you think that’s the path forward to anything.