American Fascism is Becoming American Nazism
The American Right is Hardening Into a Full-Blown Nazi Party
Let me try to make sense of what’s happening to the right wing in America. It’s as simple as it is chilling. American fascism is now becoming American Nazism. Yes, really. There is a big difference between the two. Fascism is an angry teenager, and Nazism is a bureaucrat organising a mass atrocity. Nazism is what happens when fascism grows up — and that’s what’s happening in America right now. Making matters worse, as I’ll come to, the Dems are fumbling in the background, letting fascism’s embryo reach Nazism’s adulthood with barely a whimper.
Let me try to explain.
A few years ago, when American fascism exploded — just as I’d predicted, as many had — it was just that: a nascent fascist movement. It dabbled with the doing the things fascist movements always dream of, having ascended to having its very own demagogue in the White House. Bans, camps, kids in cages, kids in cages in camps, raids, purges, Gestapos…beatings, disappearances, hate…all culminating a violent coup.
The coup on Jan 6th was a turning point — at least that’s how history will remember it. That’s going unnoticed by Americans, at least liberal Americans. But it was a moment of sudden and sweeping transformation for the Republicans and their base. Violence was legitimized. The Big Lies were acted upon. Brutality was normalized. A head of state allegedly led a violent coup that left five people dead (and counting) to overthrow a democratically elected government by trying to stop the process of vote counting. It’s a minor miracle there wasn’t a massacre.
Why do I say that was a turning point? Because after that, Republicans could have thought “we’ve gone too far.” Or “That was wrong.” Or “that was way too much, and we are on the wrong path.” And to be fair, a few have — a tiny, slender few. That is the exception which proves the rule.
By and large, Republicans — not just leaders, but everyday people — believe the “election was stolen” and therefore “it needed to be taken back,” presumably by any means necessary, right up to paramilitaries storming Congress and hunting down members of Congress to kill. Republican support for Trump has soared after the coup.
