This recent article in the New York Times [it’s a gift link, you’ll be able to read it without a subscription] is a good reminder of how easily people abandon their principle when they think it will help them “win.”
The problem with siding with fascists — or quoting them — in order to be on “the winning team” is that they start off with a big, welcoming “circle”in group” when they need you — and then recategorize you into one of their “out groups” when you’re no longer useful. Moms for Liberty is willing to ignore Trump’s (and by extension, the Republican Party’s) disdain for women if it means that gay and trans kids people go back to being closeted and shunned.
Maybe, they hope, what he consistently and unfailingly says about women and how he views and treats them won’t be part of how he’ll govern. But he’ll get rid of the rainbow flags and gender-neutral bathrooms!
Roman magistrates carried them as symbols of their power, and they were later used as emblems of authority in Mussolini’s Italy.
Creative Commons image — click to see the source.
Lest you think I’m throwing around the term fascist as hyperbole for “evil,” or at least “people whose ideas I don’t like,” I’m not. I’m using it as the adjective that describes people who’ve bought into palingentic ultranationalism, a phrase made of two ten-dollar words that can be boiled down to these three points:
- My nation is of the utmost importance
- The people running the nation should be a narrowly-defined “us”
- “We” should rule because it’s more or less our destiny
But once again, the New York Times buried the lede! The real story is in the correction at the end of the article:
Don’t vote with people who approvingly quote Hitler.
Worth watching
White Fascism, a disturbing yet necessary video by Ian Danskin and part of his video series, The Alt-Right Playbook, explains the topic very well.