The white supremacist right is penetrating the mainstream right with increasing ease.
The Conservative Political Action Conference is the premier gathering of right-wing activists and politicians in America every year, and it serves as a bellwether for the direction of the conservative movement. This year Nazis showed up.
According to an NBC News report, “a group of Nazis who openly identified as national socialists mingled with mainstream conservative personalities, including some from Turning Point USA, and discussed ‘race science’ and antisemitic conspiracy theories.” (Hitler’s Nazi Party was officially called the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party.”) The reporter of the article has video of one of them giving a “heil Hitler”-style salute in the lobby of the hotel where the conference took place and of other members of the group reportedly used the N-word.
This is a critical frog-in-boiling-water moment for the right: The mainstream organs of American conservatism are apparently acclimating to Nazis in their pot. That this group was able to mingle with participants at a high-profile conference, wasn’t kicked out of CPAC, and wasn’t appropriately condemned is a sign of how contiguous mainstream conservatism has become with white supremacist politics today.
I’m old enough to remember when Republicans and Democrats weren’t that different… There were always key issues that they disagreed on but at the end of the day the majority of both parties just wanted what was best for the country, and they would even WORK TOGETHER from time to time when it was for the common good… How did the GOP go from that to this white trash hillbilly Nazi bullshit? Are they ever going to recognize that the enemies of democracy have taken over their party? When did they become so complacent?
I remember a clip from a McCain rally and he was going around, asking people questions, letting them talk to the microphone, etc. One lady said she didn’t like Obama because he was Muslim. McCain shut her down and said something to the effect of “he’s a good man, we just have different opinions on how to run the country”. That stands out a lot to me in hindsight.
McCain is one of the old guard Republicans that went down fighting. His final vote thumbs down for the repeal of the ACA was legendary. I didn’t vote for him but I do have great respect for him.
Contrast that against all the limp dicks who are silently retiring instead of speaking out and trying to right the ship.
He slipped real hard during his presidential bid. Remember how his VP pick was Sarah Palin, for example.
The beginning of backroom concessions to the crazy wing of the party that are so very, very obvious.
If I remember correctly, he didn’t want to nominate her. He wanted Liebermann and didn’t even like Palin that much. She was just sort of forced on him.
Yes, that’s what I mean. Noone in their right mind would choose her. This was a forced choice and an indication that the lunatics were if not running the asylum, at least in charge of a big part of it.
Lieberman is entirely awful in different ways, though. Come to think of it, I’d forgotten he was Gore’s running mate.
I think that wasn’t quite the beginning of the end, but it was definitely a warning sign for what was to become of the Republican party. I think they saw how Dubya was a moron and that was appealing to a lot of voters, so they thought “there’s a recipe for success here.”
On a random note, that just led me to this video where the guy who floated Palin’s name to McCain said it was “the biggest fucking mistake of his life”.
epic link, damn
She looks like a damned Rhodes scholar compared to what the GOP is putting up these days.
I’m not disagreeing with you, just a comment on how much farther they’ve fallen.
I think if you go back and watch her speaking she has a lot of gibberish with buzzwords as well. The only difference between her and Lauren Booblejuice or margery klanma is palin’s racism and conspiracy theories weren’t on full display.
Oh, I remember. She thought “which magazines and newspapers do you read” was a trick question. But Bobo and the Tuber are new levels of stupid.
She and other “tea party” imbeciles were very much the predecessor of the MAGA horror show.
That was an attempt to appeal to the crazies without directly appealing to the crazies. That never works.
McCain might have thought of himself as a responsible conservative, but he was still a part of the machine that has been a regressive force in America over the last 60 years. He did not fight for the heart or soul of the party, and this moment was an example of the flimsy lip service he paid to being a reasonable person.
Exactly. I just disagreed with him on how to run the country.
Watch just the first minute of McCain’s concession speech. (Watch the whole thing if you like. It’s pretty good.)
I watched him shut down the boos about Obama at the beginning. He took this very seriously and wouldn’t allow the crowd to get out of line. It was well done, and a great example of statesmanship and fair play.
For just a moment then, I wondered if I had voted for the wrong man in voting for Obama, who was more of an unknown for me at the time. McCain acted very differently in the middle of good campaign, compared to the beginning and the end. I couldn’t support the policies, the attitude, or the man that I saw during the national campaign. Listening to John McCain’s concession speech that night, I remember thinking, "where was this person—this attitude—for the last few months? I might have voted for this person.” The party and the campaign forced him to become something that he wasn’t. If he had been allowed to be more authentic, I think that Obama would have had a narrower victory, if he had won at all.
Everyone keeps forgetting about the tea party. It cracks me up. This is totally the tea party having its effect on the right.
…and the teabaggers were just a rebranding of the hatriots from the 90s. And they were a rebranding of the Birchers…this stuff goes wayyyyy back.
I’m surprised “hatriot” didn’t come up earlier with these MAGA hats and hatred for everything that the right spreads.
It’s always been there, Harlan Crowe has been a supporter of Clarence Thomas since the early 90’s, and the difference between Confederates and Nazis is only razor thin, so those types have always quasi gotten along, or even where the Klan meetings were on w Wednesday and the Nazi meetings were on Thursdays for some of these people, meaning that there’s a lot of crossover, especially when you factor in that Hitler was heavily influenced by the American Confederacy.
Where the Nazis really started showing up in public more was during the energence of the Tea Party, where the Alt-Right basically came out of the closet to join the Republican party.
Yep. The Confederates and the Jim Crow policies of the South were a huge inspiration for the Nazis specifically. If not, our own homegrown fascists. To make a recess analogy. Bigots have always been the peanut butter to the fascist’s chocolate. They like them both on their own. But they love them together.
Facism and race “science” has always been the backbone of American conservatism. We are just in a period of time where they are more open about it. And honestly, they might not even be any more open about it, it’s just that social media makes it easier to see; legacy media has always been hesitant to call out the right’s racism, when when it overt.
The modern Republican party was literally founded on anti-black racism. We’ve all heard of the Southern Strategy by now, but it was in 1957 that the RNC started “Operation Dixie” which was aimed at recruiting white southern voters (Dixiecrats) away from the Democrats.
By 1970, you have Nixon’s GOP strategist saying this,
From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10-20% of the negro vote… the more negroes that register as Democrats… The more the negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes lie.
It goes back even further. Look up Frederick Ludwick Hoffman. 3 US Presidents proposed a national healthcare system. The answer was “no”. There are racist roots to why we don’t have healthcare for all.
this is why I don’t take seriously anyone who says that both parties are the same or two side of the same coin. maybe you could make that argument 40 years ago. but these days saying that is a shorthand to me that “I don’t pay attention to what’s going on in the news.” clearly one party’s mainstream has gone extreme and you have to be willfully ignorant to not see it.
Both parties are neoliberal. You have to be willfully ignorant to not see it.
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I have no idea what you’re talking about.
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I hope you find peace at some point in your life.
Any Republican that would have been interested in a centrist governance framework has been run out by this point.
This was true only ~15 years ago. My how things have changed. The Tea Party replaced the old progressives, where like GW Bush even provided government funding to feed the homeless, teach kids, etc. Then even before that finished happening the Alt Right took over from the inside. Now I don’t even know what to call the latest movement, although it seems to no longer matter if it is already over and the Alt Right is back in power with Trump at the helm again.
I have heard that the person most single-handedly responsible for the rift before all that was Newt Gingrich, who proposed the hard-line stance of obstructionism, where after that cooperation was seen as weak while before that it was a strength.
9/11 deeply affected alot of emotion-first thinkers. It bothered the rest of us quite a bit too, but it hurt them in a way that permanently changed them. It was a major turning point in the GOPs course, since they primarily court emotion-first thinkers votes.
So much so that their name literally changed (to GQP).
There’s a very good (and very long) article about all the ways Gingrich screwed over American politics. Not just the obstructionism, but the dirty tricks, gaslighting, nonsense propaganda, as well as the shift from actually governing to constantly campaigning during your term, can be laid at his feet.
Thank you for sharing that.
He is not entirely wrong - the weaponization of such measures (e.g. gaslighting to name just one) is, if not quite “smart”, then at least “tactical”. i.e. even if your intelligence is about average but your emotional intelligence is roughly that of a 5-year-old, then yes indeed you can get your way using those measures. That is the largest part of the problem there: it works.
One quote calls out to me:
“It’s not viciousness,” … “It’s natural.”
But it is entirely a whoosh moment when he understands the idea that for a lion to eat when it is hungry is not viciousness - that much of what he said is (somewhat?) true - yet entirely misses the point that when a human DELIBERATELY CHOOSES to engage in similar behaviors, especially when no hunger is involved, THAT is indeed “viciousness”, essentially defined as:
deliberate cruelty or violence
Like, I get it - a homeless person might trespass to sleep somewhere that they should not be b/c they are cold. They might even steal a sandwich b/c they are hungry. That does not make it right but it is understandable. But how does Bezos or Musk not paying their workers measure up when compared to that? Why is the former called “theft” while the latter is called “just doing business”?
I struggle a LOT with the ethics of various matters in life. e.g. should I cease purchasing cheap chocolates, knowing full well that near (occasionally even actual) slave labor conditions are involved (even for those that claim to be “fair trade” or whatever - nope, it’s nearly all a lie, according to that video anyway), or would that actually lead to an even WORSE outcome, to deprive those workers of that source of income, when they clearly have nothing else to turn to besides that which can offer anything close to that quality of life?
And I think I know the answer, given by another quote in the article you link to:
There’s something about Newt Gingrich that seems to capture the spirit of America circa 2018. With his immense head and white mop of hair; his cold, boyish grin; and his high, raspy voice, he has the air of a late-empire Roman senator—a walking bundle of appetites and excesses and hubris and wit. In conversation, he toggles unnervingly between grandiose pronouncements about “Western civilization” and partisan cheap shots that seem tailored for cable news. It’s a combination of self-righteousness and smallness, of pomposity and pettiness, that personifies the decadence of this era.
In other words, like Trump, people often give him too much credit. He may symbolize the turning of the tide, and he may even have fallen victim to their swings before most anyone else (at least, at a roughly similar level of power & notoriety), but he is no “driving force” of a man himself, and rather seems more like a child to me. Which notably excuses him from precisely none of his actions btw. It’s just that the problem isn’t so much him, as all of our society that will continue to elect people exactly like him long after he is gone.
Cancer is also “natural” I note, but it would take a severely twisted person to act like a cancer on purpose. Moreover, why would we, The People, CHOOSE to elect a Cancer to lead us?
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
white trash hillbilly Nazi bullshit Don’t forget that there are plenty of business suit wearing Nazis, as well.
Not to discredit any of what you said, but to add to this I think a big piece of this that often gets glossed over is that since then the parties have become more ideologically sorted. Back in the day, conservative Democrats often worked with conservative Republicans and progressive Democrats often worked with progressive Republicans, and that isn’t really an option anymore.
Parties sorted between conservative and liberal, ideologies sorted between urban and rural, and social media sorted all of us into echo chambers. There is no longer any kind of crossover in any part of American society.
Don’t forget suburbs and car-centric city planning isolating people by wealth and white collar vs. blue collar jobs by removing the places where those groups would normally intermingle. And by race. The suburbs also sorted people by race.
Not that different in the sense that the Democrats were the home for bigoted, racist Dixiecrats. And the Republicans had always been home for American fascism.
However, they’ve been wildly different since the late '60s early '70s. When the fascist courted The racists.
Finally. Thanks for getting to the civil rights movement and the white flight of the Dixiecrats.
Southern Strategy.
You should also be old enough to understand that the leadership from back then is dead and buried.
I’m not sure what your point is here. We shouldn’t need leaders from the past to tell us that Nazis are bad.
We shouldn’t but we do.Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. And it’s quite easy to forget the past when you haven’t experienced it.
Those in charge now aren’t the ones that suffered. They don’t know the pain so they ignore the pain of others.
I’m old enough to remember when Republicans and Democrats weren’t that different…
Same.
There were always key issues that they disagreed on but at the end of the day the majority of both parties just wanted what was best for the country[…]
Literally never been true a day in your life. Politicians all want the same thing: money and power (they use each one to acquire the other). Exceptions exist, but are exceedingly rare; Bernie Sanders is an exception. In the days you’re talking about, Democrats and Republicans agreed on critical points like “We need to tax the absolute shit out of Americans”; what they disagreed on was where and how exactly to spend those dollars. It’s never been the case that the majority of Congress had a real interest in helping you or me out.
How did the GOP go from that to this white trash hillbilly Nazi bullshit?
All the “real” Republicans quit the party to stay clear of Trump. Only the worst remained, so now it’s the party of the worst.
Having two of the most charismatic Presidents in American history be democrats only separated by 8 years of the unmitigated failure that was GWB broke the GOP.
Clinton was a southern boy popular with blacks and racist whites alike. The GOP felt they had to go total scorched earth on him they were so frightened.
GWB was so bad he killed an entire ideology. His own brother couldn’t even run under his last name he was so toxic.
Obama was black, and the white people in the suburbs loved him. That subversive of ‘that natural order’ further drove the GOP into insanity.
I can’t even get into Trump, who is maybe the perfect reflection of what everyday conservatives have become, ignorant, stupid, and incredibly well off while whining about how they’re not well off enough.
who is maybe the perfect reflection of what everyday conservatives have become, ignorant, stupid, and incredibly well off while whining about how they’re not well off enough.
I wouldn’t say they’re that representative of a lot of everyday conservatives. A lot of them are doing pretty poorly, but they’re ignorant and get pissed off at the idea that anyone else might benefit from a program they personally don’t qualify for or disagree with. My father is absolutely convinced that if the Democrats had the political will and ability to implement a wealth tax, that he would somehow be absolutely murdered by taxes on his $10 or $11 an hour he’s making at a Winn Dixie in Florida. He’s also the sort convinced that welfare queens living it up with brand new cars and designer clothes are not just a real thing, but a common thing that happens that Democrats just don’t want people to know about. He’d probably also chalk up his retirement sucking due to what limited social safety net we have in the US, rather than him draining his retirement accounts while he was unemployed before hitting retirement age so he could play golf and go hang at the bar with his buddies even though he was broke. Medicare is his right, though, he worked for that and earned it, but screw these poors under 65 trying to get healthcare with Medicaid. About the only thing he’s missing for your average, everyday conservative is an unhealthy dose of religion.
He’s also the sort convinced that welfare queens living it up with brand new cars and designer clothes are not just a real thing, but a common thing that happens
So where’s his new phone and fancy car then? If it’s that easy, go out and get your free money, king. Stick it to the Dems or whatever. If Winn-Dixie pays shit then go get on that wonderful welfare. After he buys his new car he should have some money left over to buy some drugs, too, right? That’s how they think this works, correct?
Sorry, I guess YOU in particular aren’t really the person who needs to hear my scathing sarcasm, but I’m getting really really extremely tired of this viewpoint.
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Having two of the most charismatic Presidents in American history
Lincoln and JFK? No, wait, the two Roosevelts? No, Reagan and Lyndon Johnson? Jefferson and Washington?
If you’re talking about Obama and Clinton, sure they were relatively charismatic compared to boring presidents like Bush Sr., Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon. But, US history is filled with very charismatic presidents. Even Bush Jr. was fairly charismatic, that’s how he managed to rile up the country to take part in the “War on Terra”, and how showing up at ground zero and putting on a hard hat was so important for so many people.
The problem with Jeb Bush wasn’t George Bush Jr., it was Jeb Bush. He wasn’t very charismatic, wasn’t a deep thinker, wasn’t a leader, etc. The Bush name isn’t toxic among Republicans, it’s just that Jeb has even less charisma than Hillary Clinton.
As for what killed the GOP, it’s much more complicated than just two somewhat charismatic Democratic presidents:
- The financial crisis, and how the US focused on stabilizing the banking system without also helping the little people
- A black president, driving racists to the GOP and making them determined to vote
- Centrist presidents taking fairly moderate economic policies, destroyed the GOP’s image as the party of fiscal responsibility
- Clinton and Obama not shying away from military solutions to problems made the GOP’s image of the hawkish party weak
So, when the GOP was at a period where it was trying to figure out how to define itself, Trump arrived and defined it as the anti-establishment, dog-whistle racist, christian theocratic party.
JFK was pretty charismatic in the same way Clinton was. Lincoln was not charismatic, he had a high pitched voice that sounded like a screaming kettle according to sources.
There’s obviously many factors in the GOP’s decline, I’m just saying that a big part of it was the psychological effect of seeing voters from demographics who they thought were locked in republicans being willing and enthusiastic to vote for democrats
MSNBC thinks we’re gonna buy the bullshit framing that this is just now something that needs to be addressed?
Fuckers you’ve been watching this go by for over a decade, and you still want to act indignant. The failure of corporate news to fight trump will not be forgotten. Take your pathetic opinion piece and shove it up your earnings ratio.
They’re right that it was a frog boiling in water situation, except that it started decades ago and the frog has been long boiled
The frog in boiling water moment was over a decade ago. They’re openly supporting fascists now.
We never actually de-Nazified after 1945. Between Operation Paperclip, Operation GLADIO, and the rat-lines to Latin America, we just shuffled the Nazi deck chairs on the Nazi Titanic.
This failure to de-Nazify post-war Europe, combined with the need to engage mercenaries and scientists in the ramp up to Truman’s war in Korea and the coups in Greece, Albania, and Iran, led to a kind-of global re-Nazification. Former Nazis took power in South Africa, in Brazil, in the newly reconstituted West Germany, and became influence brokers in Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey.
From the Prescott Bush and Thomas J. Watson days of outright collaboration with Fascist Governments to the United Fruit Company rampaging through Latin America to Reagan’s Iran-Contra deal, we’ve been working hand-in-glove with Nazis practically since their inception.
Hey, just like we failed to de-traitor the American South after the civil war! It’s almost like you have to pull that bullshit out by the root.
Whoa.
I know the son of a paperclip. He is one of the best guys you’d know; the kind of guy who doesn’t come from asshole parents.
Maybe the scientists and many others weren’t true believers? Maybe leave the regular victims out when their only crime was being unable to leave until their science degree gave them a way to escape?
Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.
Hannah Arendt
Maybe the scientists and many others weren’t true believers?
Or maybe they weren’t shy about turning their coats when their backs were against the walls.
Or maybe the wheels of the genocide machine turn the same, whether they folks at the controls are true believers or not.
Maybe leave the regular victims out when their only crime was being unable to leave
Ah, the good old Nuremberg Defense.
Frogs been boiled
I don’t think the boiling frog analogy really applies when the frogs are never going to jump out of the water.
Conservatism is the foundation of nazism. They know it looks bad, so they publicly downplay it. But they still embrace their nazi constituency.
Exactly.
Try to tell a conservative that fascism is a right-wing ideology; they’ll reject the premise every time. This is because either:
- they’re playing cryptofascist games and enjoy pissing you off
- they’re brainwashed into thinking evil=left and will never consider any alternative
So they’re either on board or a useful idiot. I invite people to try it sometime if they don’t believe me.
I get the point of analyzing fascism in logical circles but to discuss the issue with the adherents sounds a bit “lost ball in tall grass” to me.
Who cares what Republicans think of the origins and prior applications of the ideology while they are exclusively leaning into it in the present moment? Frankly it seems like a strange jumping off point to change people’s minds or engage in any kind of fruitful conversation.
My two pennies (by way of Ecco I suppose.)My suggestion isn’t for the edification of fascists; it’s to show leftists that conservatives cannot be honest about fascism.
We’re in agreement that it doesn’t much matter which option they choose, as the effect is the same.
I see, thanks for setting me straight.
So a combination of boiling frogs and crabs in a bucket?
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The phone calls have ALWAYS been coming from inside the house. Because they invited them in…and asked them to bring their friends…
That has been the goal of that movement for at least the last 7 years, to use the chaos of the Trump administration to slowly infiltrate the Republican right. Clearly they have been successful, and CPAC the last few years have been a bellwether of that (e.g. the message: We are All Domestic Terrorists)
Trump did very publicly tell members of the Proud Boys, which is a recognized hate group, to “stand back and stand by”. So in allowing Trump to run the party they must also allow in all these wannabe Nazis, as these are his people, his “muscle”. He very much sees himself as the mob boss he has always wanted to be, but becoming president allowed him to create this cult that also has no issue answering his calls for violence.
Trump also has no loyalty to anyone, which is irony lost on a man that demands it from everyone else. And I think most in the party know by now that unless you want the cult putting the crosshairs on your back, you better stay in line.
Trump is really looking forward to the time he has enough power to celebrate his first “accidental” defenestration of a political opponent. That’s how you know you’ve finally made it as a dictator.
Trump also has no loyalty to anyone
got me thinking, does that make Trump chaotic evil ?
Neutral evil. He seeks power for himself, but doesn’t follow the rules of others. Chaotic evil is more often unconcerned with building structures of power. They may build networks but structures of power are binding, even if just to one’s will.
The crosshairs are not figurative. Not sure the general public has understood this yet.
Nazis always were in the party.
Yeah, but they didn’t directly say the n word and are therefore not actually racist. -conservatives
Didn’t say it in public. Let’s be honest. They definitely have been saying it in private since forever. Anyone who has these people in their family knows this from personal experience.
The right isn’t a frog in a boiling pot. It’s reaching its final form as dictated by the Southern Strategy.
Correct the right is an ignorant thug in a white hood wishing we could have a redo of concentration camps domestically so he can apply to be an SS guard
I’ve been saying that someone has collectively labotamized the republican party for years now.
It’s all the lead poisoning! I’m telling you! I’ve been saying it for years.
We’ve all been poisoned the same amount. It’s gotta be something else.
Observing from across the pond, CPAC seems at fever pitch.
Feels like none of the Christians know who they’re getting into bed with. It will be a high price for them to pay.
Unfortunately there aren’t alot of rational Christians left. Secularism has been on the rise for a long time, and unsurprisingly, the people who decide religion is no longer the way to go tend to overwhelmingly be rational people. Most of the current remaining Christians are emotional thinkers, easy to manipulate with “scary” words. Their version of being religious has nothing to do with what their super important book says anymore, most of them have no idea what it says, even if they have tried reading it. They listen to what people say, not books. They follow their local shephard, and all do whatever he tells them to do. You’ll know them when you see them, they’ll be the ones calling you a sheep.
Big facts. I see it here where I live also. People coming back from church with alllll sorts of misinformation and bullshit.
Feels like none of the Christians know who they’re getting into bed with.
They very much do know. Christian Nationalists are the biggest segment of fascists in the US, and it’s not even close.
You know what the inciting incident for their movement was? The racial integration of schools back in the 1950s. They decided to make a wedge issue out of abortion so that they could get more Christians to vote for racist policies.
The KKK is a conservative Christian organization. The United Daughters of the Confederacy espouses “Christian values.” Nick Fuentes, an out-and-proud antisemitic fascist is loud about imposing Catholicism on the rest of the country.
It’s not a coincidence; it’s a plan.
I think this was not the boiling frog moment, but when cpac exported itself to european venues.
as for fever pitch, if I’m not mistaken for the last few years they’ve had TWO cpac conferences a year.
and I’m fully convinced that the christians know who they are getting involved with, and that is an indictment on that flavor of christianity than anything else. I’m reading tim alberta’s new book “the kingdom, the power, and the glory” and he goes into in part how that version of christianity got tied into republican politics. in short, I’m less surprised that nazis showed up to cpac and more surprised that cpac actually let them in the door.
That frog was hardboiled years ago lol
Hey, here’s a Fun Fact: MSNBC is literally a corporate entity trying to grift liberals into defending the wealthy. Now the Nazis they overlooked might cost them money.
