Mark Lawrence Schrad writes that Republicans have abandoned policy to promote the public good, including assistance following natural disasters.

William Lindsey :toad:

"Since at least 2016, scholars and journalists have consistently sounded the alarm on the Republican drift into right-wing authoritarianism. But even tinpot dictators and autocrats at least pay lip-service to working for the common good."

#Republicans #CommonGood #NaturalDisasters #authoritarianism
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(www.salon.com)

William Lindsey :toad:

"Modern Republicanism’s belief that the core role of government is instead to wield the power of the state to punish one’s enemies goes beyond myopic allusions to authoritarianism, fascism or caesarism to a premodern, pre-capitalist rival conception of government known as patrimonialism, in which the state is not meant to serve society but society is meant to serve the state — and the autocrat who runs it."

#Republicans #CommonGood #NaturalDisasters #authoritarianism
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William Lindsey :toad:

"The most obvious indicator of this premodern turn is the longstanding Republican hostility to any policy meant to promote the public good. Public schools? Defund and privatize them. Department of Education? Abolish it. Medicare, Medicaid and public health care? Slash and repeal them. Public transit? Kill it. Public libraries? Defund them, ban certain books and doxx librarians with the threat of criminal penalties."

#Republicans #CommonGood #NaturalDisasters #authoritarianism
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William Lindsey :toad:

"Community and public health? Attack and undermine it. Community centers? Shut them down. Public lands? Sell them off. Public and national parks? Slash them. Public servants? Attack and fire them. Public restrooms? Monitor them, and make it a crime for people to use what are deemed the 'wrong' ones. Aside from the military, modern Republicanism is fundamentally allergic to any governmental … actions that promotes the public interest, safety and well-being…."

#Republicans #CommonGood
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Philip Cardella

@wdlindsy as much as I agree with the author here, I feel like they don't understand what fascism is.

As you know, fascism is a replacement of politics with violence, a rejection of the Enlightenment in favor of a birth determined hierarchy all serving the biggest grievance based ideology imaginable.

While Interwar fascisms absolutely had a goal of some common good for the people it assigned as worthy, this was secondary to the need for violence and grievance.

What they're describing.

JB

@wdlindsy Modern Republicans want government Constitutionally limited to giving it access to cheap natural resources, cheap and obedient labor, and more territory with both. #republicans #commongood

William Lindsey :toad:

@JBShakerman Yes — and always, always, used as a weapon to serve the interests of the ruling elite and keep everybody else knocked into place.

William Lindsey :toad:

@philip_cardella My reading of the term "fascism" as it now echoes through both popular and academic discourse is that the term has taken on a more elastic meaning. Some might say that development makes it meaningless. For me, it gives the term more power, since it detaches the term from its discrete historical roots in the same way that, say the term "clericalism" can be detached from the battles in 18th-century France that produced the French Revolution.

Philip Cardella

@wdlindsy interesting. We might disagree here. The author in my opinion doesn't give the concept more power rather they dismiss concept while literally using definitionally fascist characteristics to describe what they call not fascism.

Also, while the press and lay population may use a more flexible variety of the word, people like Stephen Miller are using the textbook definition (if such a thing exists, strictly speaking), though I'd argue it's an evolution best described as neo fascism.

JB

@wdlindsy Republicans want a US government modeled after the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz, the 19th Century Mexican president whose wise leadership led to the 1910 Revolution and his permanent exile.

William Lindsey :toad:

@JBShakerman Well-noted. Yes, they want to take us back to models like this.

William Lindsey :toad:

@philip_cardella I suspect there are always going to be fractious moments (of friction) when academic and popular discourse get overlaid. That also seems inevitable to me, the overlaying.

Philip Cardella

@wdlindsy from the standpoint of persuading the broader public there may be some merit to a more flexible definition of the term.

However, from the standpoint of using observations of the current neo fascist movement and making reasonable assertions of their true intentions given *they are sticking to the historic model* it's important.

For example, they know damn well before the Holocaust came mass deportations and property seizure and before that came talk the masses dismissed as hyperbole.

Philip Cardella

@wdlindsy the current neo fascist movement isn't just taking inspiration from Mussolini and Hitler, they're trying to be a continuation of Mussolini and especially Hitler.

Because of that, I think it's really important we understand what Mussolini and Hitler thought fascsim was (not that they agreed or even understood it themselves) because the people pushing it on us today are doing just that.

And they absolutely were trying to go to glorious past before the Enlightenment and move forward.

William Lindsey :toad:

@philip_cardella I know I'm repeating things I've said before, but as someone who had (perhaps still has?) a foot in the academy, and also someone sharing commentary in the public square, I see matters like this through a kind of split screen. I understand and honor the academic concern to ground popular usage of terminology that points back to discrete historical moments in those formative moments. I also think it's inevitable that popular usage will take flight from that historical grounding.

William Lindsey :toad:

@philip_cardella Yes, I agree. And I agree that that historical perspective enriches our understanding of the term as it's used in the popular square. What I'm less content with is the attempt of the academy to curb, control, even deny the term "fascism" as it's used in popular discourse, all of those academic gestures being fueled by claims that the term has taken leave of its original historical context and sense.

Philip Cardella

@wdlindsy I appreciate that. But even Orwell said in 1944 the term fascism has no meaning other than things we don't like. But he warned that was a mistake though he wasn't sure what to do about it. "All one can do for the moment is use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swear word."

I know you're not doing what Orwell warned us not to do. I'm suggesting the author of the piece you quoted is.

Philip Cardella

@wdlindsy I mean, the author is basically saying what's going on now is a return to pre enlightenment thinking, which is contrary to what fascism is. The problem is that's definitionally what fascism is.

I'm not trying to make an academic argument or gatekeeping so much as saying that if you're describing a game that involves a bouncing ball, baskets and the NBA rule book you can't just decide that game is called something other than basketball.

William Lindsey :toad:

@philip_cardella My perspective is to ask repeatedly, Why is so much of American political commentary (and media commentary) so averse to using the term "fascism" and to comparing Trump to Hitler even when Trump parrots Hitler's exact words as he talks about racial purity or the bloodstream of the nation being infected by the impure?

William Lindsey :toad:

@philip_cardella I suspect you're reading the article more carefully with a certain trained historical eye than many of us will do so — more carefully than I did when it comes to making those connections. Which is to say, the word "fascism" worked for me when I read it….