How could you possibly mistake us for Fascists?
Did the Jew Press put you up to it?
Or was it the queers?
Reader Michael takes issue with my analogy of Republican supporters as “Good Germans.”
Which is precisely why it's a bad analogy, DG. The Nazis had not a lot of electoral support from the average Germans. They were the new kids on the block and they were promising everyone the moon--so people figured, hey, let's give them a try. It wasn't about indifference to the outcome, it certainly wasn't about supporting their party platform--it was about being stuck in a seemingly never-ending spiral of economic malaise and political paralysis, and wanting a change.
Now explain to me how that looks anything like the Republican Party or its platform, or the average GOP supporter. We agree that there are plenty of fascist elements in the modern Republican Party and its programs--and as a modern European historian who specializes in the Second World War (and Germany in particular), you don't have to tell me about parallels between the end of the Weimar era and the beginning of the Shrubbery. But that background also teaches me to be very, very careful when using that historical era to explicate matters that are happening in this one.
Two things I want to make clear.
First, Mother driftglass whelped no idiots, and certainly not one stupid enough to cross swords with a “modern European historian who specializes in the Second World War” over the historical details of the Third Reich. I’d as lief take on Steve Gilliard over the Roman strategy at Masada.
Second, Michael isn’t being unreasonable: he appears to be a thoughtful commenter who wants to make sure that my rhetoric doesn’t run me out into the wastelands. I don’t think it does, and I’ll tell you why, but let's be clear that this is a civil conversation.
And, as Dick Durbin learned, you have to be careful if you bring the Nazis into any conversation, but the Durbin case was illuminating precisely because it had less to do with what he was actually saying, and everything to do with how determined his opponents were to deliberately misinterpret what he was saying. What made it especially galling to watch was the all-hard-drive-and-no-RAM stupidity of his detractors who used casually direct comparisons to Hiter and the Nazi Party themselves.
Hell, their own Primitive Radio God – Rush Limbaugh – uses “feminazi” as punctuation and the GOP never bats an eye.
So are comparisons between Bush and Hitler fair? No, and I have tried to avoid making such. He’s a Cult of Personality fascist right down to the soles of his faux cowboy shit-kickers, but he is much more struck from the moldy, banana republic dictator mold.
Are direct comparisons between the Media, Religious and Political leadership of the GOP and the leaders of the Nazi Party fair? Nah. Inviting, yes, but not fair. True, we have been led into an ever-expanding war of conquest by irresponsible liars.
True, Bush appears to have all but signed a Non-Aggression pact with our traditional enemy – Communist China.
True our free and fair press is anything but, and stories that are simply and truthfully critical of Dear Leader are, by and large, completely embargoed by the mainstream media.
True, the incestuous three-way between Oligarchs, Theocrats and Racists have reached their apotheosis under Bush. True also that this has not been an accident, but part of a deliberate 30-year Long March to power.
True that the Dear Leader has actually left us poorer, weaker and vastly more endangered than when he took office. That all he offers is fear.
True that the Dear Leader was never elected in the first place, but anointed.
Also true that all talk of Diebold aside, Dear Leader’s Party has been engaged in a steady program of undermining the integrity of the electoral process by much more direct and old-fashioned means.
Also true that if you add in the 50% of eligible Americans who have simply opted out of the electoral system entirely, Bush’s support among the electorate isn’t much more that 25%.
True that the GOP exists within an entirely self-contained propaganda machine that pimps lies and bile as “news” and pollutes the groundwater of political discourse to the point where honest discussion becomes nearly impossible. And that destroying discourse is explicitly the function of the Fake News.
True that the Bush Administration is the most secretive, anti-Democratic and power mad in modern history.
And, true, that undermining the whole idea of democratic checks and balances on power is a goal they work diligently towards, and not a nightmare they try to guard against.
OK, where was I going with this again?
Ah yes. That the Media, Religious and Political leadership of the GOP aren’t literally Nazis, as much as they may awake writhing in sodden ecstasy at their own Fourth Reich Wet Dreams.
But when describing the Good German, Michael makes this point:
“It wasn't about indifference to the outcome, it certainly wasn't about supporting their party platform--it was about being stuck in a seemingly never-ending spiral of economic malaise and political paralysis, and wanting a change.
And that, I would argue, is the key.
Because what motivates GOP supporters -- and what drives them willingly into the arms of theocrats and fascists -- is not what kind of world they are
actually stuck in, but what kind of world
they believe they are stuck in.
And who they believe is to blame for their imaginary suffering and victimhood.
I think the Clinton years, taken all-in-all, were a net plus. Yes, a lot of progressive values got short shrift, but for the sake of argument let’s agree for the moment that an eight year stretch of relative peace, prosperity, international respect and budget surpluses has a certain value that cannot be diminished.
And how did the various factions of the GOP – the blindly loyal thralls – view that same era?
As a lurid, terrifying disaster from which they must flee as fast as their fat little hooves could carry them.
As a festering swamp of immorality. As the denigrating nadir of everything that is good about America, worth waging seven years of Total Political War against Clinton. Worth impeachment. Worth trying by every means at their disposal to bring down the elected government of the United States.
Remember that the Right – especially the Religious Right – were whipped into a frenzy over the supposed debauchery of Clintons. Within Right Wing circles, Clinton's illegitimate children and Clinton's conspiracies to assassinate their political enemies, and friends like Vince Foster when he became inconvenient, were spoken of as commonly accepted facts instead of the obviously ludicrous wingnut propaganda that they actually were.
And just to complete the GOP circle-jerk, the mere fact that the weak and shallow main Stream Media still wouldn't report on such obvious slander and virtual incitements to riot as straight "news" was only seen in Wingnuttylvania as further proof that the Evil Liberal Cabal was controlling the press.
Remember the 80s and 90s when the Upright Christian Citizen’s Brigade national was locked into full witch-hunting hysteria over allegations that millions and millions of American children were being ritually molested – and perhaps murdered – by Satanists?
The “degenerate art” frenzy over everything from Robert Mapplethorpe and “Piss Christ”, to NEA and PBS?
The ranting obsession with the evil plots and traps of gays and feminists, “elitists” and Liberals, along with a continuous, strong anti-Semitic subtext that breaks the surface and beaches itself on Fundamentalist podia from time to time.
No there are no mobs of Communists in the streets threatening a coup. And our currency isn’t inflating so fast that we have to roll our lunch money around in wheelbarrows and get paid twice a day just so we can buy bread before the prices go up again.
Yet.
But I would argue that the actual facts on the ground have become completely irrelevant to the Republican rank and file, because the rank and file have sealed themselves into the delusional nut-house in which they have been festering for nearly thirty years. In brief, that pathology is the answer to the question, "What's The Matter With Kansas?"
What else can we make of Republican power-broker Jerry Falwell when he opens his dung-hole after 9/11 and his hateful dogma that it was all the fault of fags, feminist and Liberals is what comes naturally and automatically oozing out?
When Tom DeLay takes to the steps of the Capitol after Columbine to tell the world that the reasons children go on killing sprees are 1) Teaching evolution and, 2) Handing out condoms?
Pat Robertson…shit…where do you even begin with a rabid cur like Robertson?
Republicans US Senator and embarrassment to our entire species -- Ricky Santorum -- writes a whole book on how Liberals are to blame for conspiring to make war on motherhood AND the Catholic Church’s epidemic of molestation. Then implodes on national teevee when asked to point to one, single FACT to supports his deranged yelping…and the squalling little halfwits who put him in office never flinch.
Oh and don’t forget that the ACLU is out to destroy our Democracy, and that abortion-loving Democrats revel in the murder of babies. Don’t forget that we’re also conspiring with Negroes to despoil the purity of the White Race.
On a more personal and local note, I have any number of conservative acquaintances who will swear on the graves of their mothers that the press is completely controlled by Liberals so the true extent of the Evil Liberal Conspiracies never reach a wider audience.
These reprogrammable pinheads get their “facts” from Limbaugh, Hannity and Coulter…and fall apart like Santorum when asked to name Just One of these fiendish Liberal Overlords, and point to Just One of their “lies”. Where is the Liberal Fox News? Where is the Progressive CNN? The Lefty Hate Radio to balance out twenty years of Rightwing AM lies?
And to any student of modern history, doesn't this all sound frighteningly familiar?
The Christopaths believe we are living in the End Times, under siege on all sides by the forces of Darkness, and the Republican Party is the anointed agent of The Lord.
The bigots believe they are at war. That the Negroes and the Jews are in league with the Commie Liberals to steal their jobs and their country. That their glorious Jim Crow Nation can rise once again, and the Republican Party is the place where that Segregationist Reformation can begin.
The oligarchs laugh and laugh and fund the whole filthy mess so they can loot the Earth unmolested.
There is considerable overlap between these factions, but each of them have each been steeping in their own wholly delusional and poisonous mythology for so long that in a very real sense they are not capable to recognizing reality.
Even when reality comes home in body bags.
The burning Right Wing lust for Fascism – for a White Christian Military Strongman who will brutally enforce Fundamentalist ideals of Order and Decency by any means necessary -- has made more inroads, faster, under George Bush than I ever thought would happen in my lifetime and, no, it hasn’t arrived with jackboots and swastikas. It never will. As Huey Long famously said, "When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in an American flag."
It will come swaggering across the deck of an aircraft carrier in a flight suit, looking straight into the cameras, and lying to the American Public.
But none of it is possible without the Moderates. Those I referred to as our own version of the Good German. Men and women who aid and abet and go along with it all because they want their fucking tax cuts and, in the end, they’d rather Rule in Hell than Serve in Heaven.
No, there are no riots and no Depression. No chaos in the streets but as I said above, the question is not kind of world GOP supporters actually live in, but what kind of world they have deluded themselves into believing they live in.
And who do these false martyrs blame for their phony stigmata?
As Mark Twain said, "It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."
So I will happily refrain from referring to Republicans -- Moderate and otherwise -- as Good Germans, or Stalinists, or Pinochet-heads or Nehemiah Scudderites...when they stop behaving like them.
Or, to misquote Paul Krugman, "I'll stop calling them 'Orwellian' when they stop using '1984' as a fucking playbook."
