Seth Cotlar: This is why I consider the political culture of Trump's GOP to be fascist because when is the last time you heard a Republican make an evidenced-based, rational argument for some policy? Or heard Republicans have a serious, evidence-based policy argument amongst themselves?

Some people have taken Noah's thread to be a minimization Hitler's antisemitism. That's not how I read it. I read it as emphasizing the importance of time & "political culture" for understanding fascism...and the distinction between what people in the general public will ACCEPT vs. what they WANT.

Fascism is a *process*, not a fixed state. That process almost always involves an extreme minority getting a larger minority (and almost never a majority) to ACCEPT certain dehumanizing propositions as politically legitimate, even if they don't 100% agree w/ their most radical implications.

Fascism as a political practice has little to do with persuasion & is all about intimidating one's opponents into silence, ultimately via state sanctioned murder. But the murder part is the last stage of a much longer process of imposing the minoritarian will of the fascists on society more subtly.

This is why I consider the political culture of Trump's GOP to be fascist because when is the last time you heard a Republican make an evidenced-based, rational argument for some policy? Or heard Republicans have a serious, evidence-based policy argument amongst themselves?

I follow the online conversation amongst active Oregon Republican fairly closely, and I can't tell you the last time I saw a meaningful exchange across political difference in which people used evidence and logic to try to convince one another. It's all about personalities & loyalty to Trump.

Part of this is undoubtedly just a symptom of what social media does to all of us. But another part is about the desperation of a party that (in Oregon) has been loosing grievously for many decades now and has resorted to conspiratorial delusions to explain it, rather than change course.

I wrote about those conspiratorial delusions here. On one hand, they're hilariously absurd. But on the other, they're terrifying...because what was Nazi discourse about Jews if not a "conspiratorial delusion" transformed into a deliberate governing strategy? sethcotlar.substack.com/p/its-funny-...

It's funny until it's not; why I've stopped finding absurd right wing conspiracy theories so hilarioussethcotlar.substack.com What is there to do, really, other than laugh at stuff like this? Candace Owens investigates…lol. Candace’s grim look is the icing on the cake—putting on her best Katie Couric “this is very serious” f...

I also want to join @nberlat.bsky.social in (what I take to be) his subtweet of Corey Robin, who's take on the "fascism debate" I take to be deeply unconvincing and ahistorical. For example, tell me you know nothing about the GOP ca. 1968 without telling me you know nothing about the GOP ca. 1968.

There were as many if not more pro-ERA politicians in the GOP in 1968 as there were in the Democratic Party. Many white evangelicals & most Republicans were fine with abortion in 1968. The far right elements that fed into Trumpism supported Reagan or Wallace in '68 & were quite marginal in the GOP.

The far right, fascistic, and Trump-friendly mobilization that would eventually take over the OR GOP began in the 1960s, but the process of institutional capture took decades and was by no means ever a foregone conclusion. sethcotlar.substack.com/p/walter-hus...

Walter Huss's plan to take back America for God, one precinct at a time, Part 1 of 2sethcotlar.substack.com Or, a reminder that Steve Bannon isn't the first right winger to propose a grassroots

I think of Hatfield and Packwood from your state of primary research. I recall the McGovern-Hatfield bill to withdraw from Vietnam. The Robert Taft/Goldwater crew set the stage for Reagan, who set the stage for Trump. Also George Wallace and the Rs becoming a southern party.

As Wallace's son told me a few years ago, if he had continued to live, George would have become a Republican.

The same-old GOP of the 60s....

Dallas conservatives back in the day thought Dwight (from Denison, TX!) was a Swedish Jew. Our most deranged city.

Yes, that's the segment of the GOP that would eventually wind up in the driver's seat with Trump's ascendance, but most of those folks thought of themselves as complete outsiders to the national GOP in the 60s & 70s, and many flirted with 3rd parties that would be more authentically "conservative."

Corey's just weirdly wrong on this stuff.

“Any serious person” vanishes millions of serious people who lack the resources or material possibilities to a) up and leave or b) stock up on guns w/o being swiftly murdered or caged by by the police state…

Robin’s political anthropology presupposes, by omission, intersecting categories of superfluity (as Arendt conceptualized it).

I'm unable to find any of them funny anymore because it seems like we are losing power to every single one of them.

I've said it before and will say it again: when you've been told for 50+ years that you're the "Silent Majority" and "Real America" and you keep losing elections or barely eking out the wins you do get, you have a choice between admitting you're the minority or calling shenanigans on the opposition.

The active Oregon R's are almost all deluded, no matter the issue. I mainly follow a couple of local school boards who have suffered from deluded members. It gets wild! Trying to use facts and logic simply won't work with them. They get very suspicious, then angry.

This right here. Trump presents a, "who you gonna believe me or your lying eyes?" problem every single day that he heads the Republican party and they have made their choice quite clear.

🎶It’s a Vibe World After All🎶

1991

(Unsarcastic answer, it's the last time the GOP had a hard conversation about fiscal responsibility that included revenue and not just expenditures and literally every conversation since has been bullshit)

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