There is some weird, stupid ass internet-era thing where if you ever feel the right wing may be a more imminent or more dangerous threat than capitalist liberals, you are not a good enough leftist
Liberals are bad because they'd rather ally with fascists than leftists, which is why leftists must never ally with liberals even when they claim to be fighting fascism
In the 1920s and early 1930s when bourgeous governments implemented social aid & reforms like the New Deal they were denounced by Comintern followers as "social fascism". When Stalin made nice with Hitler they stopped b/c they no longer could insult fascists. Then Hitler eliminated the KPD.
There's a reality in the fact that the goals have been the same since 1968 (and before), but the tactics have evolved/changed. The mainstream of the Republican Party was not willing to be openly antagonistic to democracy, as a concept, in the way they are now. That's pretty significant.
Do you not think the end of Jim Crow wound have changed the goals, in order to allow them to return to Jim Crow era goals, and that time, context and conditions would enforce an evolution in tactics or do you think we should all pick up some muskets and head to a nearby hand operated printing press?
Not really sure what you're asking. Yes, some technologies are very different now than they were in 18th century. I'm not sure if professed concern for democracy is how I would signify how conservatives are different.
Give it some thought, including who they’re professing what to, and how the landscape changed when post ‘68, there was a broad national support to the broader concept of equality.
I think that's a fundamental misunderstanding of Corey's entire intellectual project. I'm skeptical about some of his arguments re: Trump, but it's BS to claim that the main goal of the author The Reactionary Mind is to blame the libs (or that he has much of a 'crew').
The guy, much to his admitted embarrassment, predicted a historic Clinton win, and thought it was important to make that happen, despite being very for Bernie. People are making up a guy to get mad at
RevCom spent the Trump years trying to use the right wing threat to make the case that we needed a communist revolution. Which is frequently kinda annoying (ie organizing protests with no clear ask) but it's a lot more respectable than this stuff.
this is funny because it’s true that the republican party has been a threat to democracy since 1968 or so, unless you downplay black voter suppression to the point where (white) people agree it doesn’t really count
That’s been the thing about the whole debate to me. It kind of comes down to semantics and whether people should be alarmed about the expansion of racist discriminatory policy that’s been aimed at Black people forever. There aren’t any stakes in it imo except to properly categorize oppression.
And I totally get being annoyed with people who act as if Trump is the spring from which all harms have flown but I don’t understand how acting like those things are just fine and good and acceptable as regular business helps anyone.
(The one that makes me say “alright, man” is the Black Male Studies folks who really seem to be repeating critiques of feminism made by Black feminists and other feminists from the Global South and recasting them as a conspiracy against Black male scholars.)
what I would say is that Trump is rooted in traditional conservative authoritarianism, racism, and lunacy going back to the 30s (which used to be quite bipartisan), but also a major break with tradition. Dixiecrats never attempted a coup against the national government
Not against the *national* government no but they did against state governments, and part of the reason why is, they didn’t need to because they were firmly in charge. Trump is a break inasmuch white people don’t feel firmly in charge anymore so definitely an escalation.
Well, that's essentially what 1877 was about: Dixiecrats tacitly agreed not to try to take national power in exchange for the GOP and Northern Dems tacitly agreeing not to try to take power away from the Dixiecrats in the South.
AS an academic, I think academia and the public square both suffer when people privilege absolutely unique contributions over communicating information people still need to hear. It's not without value but that value doesn't include making change and can certainly inhibit it
You'll see it a lot when an academic is trying to market a book so it sounds like someone at all normal would want to read it - that usually means making overbold claims and someone will always say "is that really new?" No man, but only you and 10 other ppl have heard of it, let's spread the news
I am an academic working on this stuff, and this is how I distinguish the two problems: inclusion and machinery.
Who gets to vote? - that’s an inclusion question. Can one group control the government so that no one gets to vote again? That’s a machinery question.
The fights in American democracy since the war have been inclusion fights. The machinery hasn’t been an issue. But now, machinery is THE problem, and all the public discourse around democracy is still set up for inclusion fights.
I read your thread.
Good takes.
Trump is a symptom of a problem that has been festering, often in public, for a pretty long time with the GOP...They are a fundamental threat to the way this country works.
Yeah like Bouie is always saying it's really the failure/abandonment of reconstruction, linking trump all the way back to the pre-war south. And I'm totally comfortable describing it as partaking of or even adjacent to fascism.
Exactly. We aren't dealing with white Christian Nationalists in power because of Trump in 2016.
Preserving white supremacy via rigging the system towards one party rule by GOP whites has been going on for 60 years now.
Few people know for instance that Nixon, via Kissinger talking secretly to the North Vietnamese, prevented the Vietnam War from ending that year because it would have helped the Democrats. (remind you of anyone?)
Thus condemning thousands upon thousands more to death for years, just so he could win
It's definitely a thing that most people are less confrontational in person, because it's much more uncomfortable and there are stronger norms about being polite and cordial. And sometimes you just don't want to argue with somebody about a topic and so shrug it off with a well I see your point.
So I don't necessarily take it as a kind of cowardice or lack of strong belief in your opinions or inconsistency. There are rational reasons to sometimes soft-pedal or dodge a conversation in that different context.
