What those who have studied authoritarianism since Adorno and his colleagues published The Authoritarian Personality, Hofstadter wrote
The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and Hannah Arendt was penning some of her classic work, up to more present-day theorists and researchers like Bob Altemeyer and John Duckitt have warned us about is increasingly becoming reality. David Neiwert’s latest tweet thread is well worth reading.
Herr Combover barks about a particular group he doesn’t like, and lo and behold, his authoritarian base give in to their base instincts – submission to Dear Leader and meting out violence against those Dear Leader targets.
Neiwert makes another pertinent observation: there is nothing even remotely like this on what we might think of as an actual left: communist, anarchists,antifa (sorry liberals – these folks don’t think of us as left by their standards). There is one side that is hell-bent on trashing democratic norms and institutions, and spill a bit of blood along the way. Those folks are right-wing authoritarians and the GOP is for all intents and purposes their home. Herr Combover has his stormtroopers. No one else does. The aftermath of the 2016 election unleashed the id of this bunch to a degree unseen in a long time. Even Obama’s impending 2008 victory produced less violence and eliminationistic rhetoric than the current era – and that election and the months afterward were ones of genuine economic insecurity (to put it mildly).
You can like it or hate it all you want, but there is one viable political party in the US that actually produces sane leaders and potential leaders, and has a base (and a much larger potential base) of sane people. It ain’t the GOP folks. It’s the Democratic Party. At this point, if anything even remotely resembling the progressive dreams that many of you once espoused still mean anything, you’ll be voting, canvassing, and donating like your life depends on it.
Why? Nostalgia for a party that no longer exists?
The party of FDR, Truman, Adlai Stevenson, JFK and LBJ no longer exists. We now have the party of Clinton & Obama. Same as the Republican Party but anti-white working man. remember? The deplorablea? The little people?
Until the (D) branch of the corporate party renounces ALL corporate contributions and personal contributions over some level that the average man could afford, I’ll continue to choose between the two branches of the duopoly on a personal basis, meaning that many races will get no vote at all.
Not nostalgia. Not by a long shot. I live in a state that went from blue/purple to red supermajorities in one fell swoop. It makes a tangible difference to the quality of the lives of the people who live here. I’ll take sane and reformist any day over what has become an authoritarian nationalist party (or in my state’s case neo-confederate – talk about nostalgia!).
Your state may be different. Dems are definitely ascendant here in Illinois and are already backing off of issues. It’s all Trump and abortion, neither of which are Illinois issues. Illinois is in dire shape and back in the primaries that was acknowledged and solutions debated, but now that’s all forgotten in a flurry of grade school name calling.
Pritzker polling 20 points ahead of Rauner. I saw Sean Casten signs today deep in the heart of the Republican big-money suburbs today. I read at capitolfax.com that there is a huge surge in Chicago voter registrations. So, I don’t think they need my help. I’ll vote for the Democrats I like or at least tolerate and won’t vote for the others. I’ll keep my money in my wallet. They will suck it out after the election anyway.