FAKE NEWS EXPOSED: A Service of PoliticalChat.com

[RickeyM]

Waaa waaa waaa, you can't listen to these MAGA extremist politicians and media personalities for five minutes without hearing them call Democrats soci@lists, Marxists and/or communists.
"extreme MAGA Republicans" are there other kinds of Republicans? Of course there are. The MAGAt's of course like to pretend Biden was painting the whole party with the same broad brush. It fits in with their narrative. On the fascist label you know the old saying...

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by whell

...If these contacts to social media were coming from, say, the FCC, I'd say you might have a point. But the contacts came from the government's premier law enforcement agency, who also communicated their displeasure in some cases that, for example, Twitter wasn't moving fast enough.

How is this not coercion?

Because there were no threats of force/punishment, which are required elements of coercion.

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by whell

You ever notice how many folks in this forum sound like Biden's fall 2022 speech? It's like Biden gave the left license to use the word "fascist" and "extreme MAGA Republicans" to describe their political opponents.

I started a thread on the topic in August 2022. The GOP's fascist leanings were long since clear at that point. Hell, it's been obvious since 2016. His very fascism is what many of his supporters find so appealing about him.

[whell]

Originally Posted by finnbow

Because there were no threats of force/punishment, which are required elements of coercion.

I contend that the use of the FBI as the instigator and pursuer of these requests to remove content is enough of a threat.

Imagine a guy in your neighborhood who likes playing his music too loud. The neighbors ask him to turn it down on many occasions. Maybe he does for a day or two, then he's right back at it again.

The neighbors call the cops. The cops show up, talk to the guy, don't threaten him, but tell him the neighbors called about his loud music, and the cops ask him to keep the noise down. I suspect he'll keep the noise down going forward, even though the cops didn't threaten him directly, because the guys not a fool: he knows that the cops won't ask nicely next time.

[whell]

Originally Posted by RickeyM

Waaa waaa waaa, you can't listen to these MAGA extremist politicians and media personalities for five minutes without hearing them call Democrats soci@lists, Marxists and/or communists.

It's one thing for a TV talking head to say it. It's quite another when the president uses the "bully pulpit" to call his political opponents fascists.

[Chicks]

Originally Posted by whell

It's one thing for a TV talking head to say it. It's quite another when the president uses the "bully pulpit" to call his political opponents fascists.

Were you asleep when your Dear Leader was bashing every perceived "enemy" of his during his fake presidency*? Are you really this idiotic?

[whell]

Originally Posted by finnbow

I started a thread on the topic in August 2022. The GOP's fascist leanings were long since clear at that point. Hell, it's been obvious since 2016. His very fascism is what many of his supporters find so appealing about him.

The left has coopted the word "authoritarian" and found a great way to misapply it to the right, and in particular Trump. This article you posted describes its genesis, and of course, in this forum and other lefty circles, the use of the word multiplied faster than rabbits.

Your article describes how aggressive election-year rhetoric may have appealed to some fraction of 1800 or so registered voters. You and others then spun this into a narrative that Republicans are fascists.

Congratulations. I hope you're proud of your accomplishments.

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by whell

The left has coopted the word "authoritarian" and found a great way to misapply it to the right, and in particular Trump. This article you posted describes its genesis, and of course, in this forum and other lefty circles, the use of the word multiplied faster than rabbits.

Your article describes how aggressive election-year rhetoric may have appealed to some fraction of 1800 or so registered voters. You and others then spun this into a narrative that Republicans are fascists.

Congratulations. I hope you're proud of your accomplishments.

There are plenty of respected political scientists and researchers (e.g.,Timothy Snyder, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Jason Stanley) who agree with my assessment of Trump. Indeed, I'm not sure how you can, in good faith, deny what is obvious to a lot of experienced historians and researchers. Might it not be the case that all of these knowledgeable people labeling Trump and his movement as fascist or protofascist be because he exhibits the salient traits of fascism (he and his movement pretty much check all of the boxes of Umberto Eco's 14 defining traits of fascism)?

Consider for a moment how Robert Paxton, a professor emeritus at Columbia University, defines fascism in his 2004 book The Anatomy of Fascism. It defines Trumpism to a T:
A form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

I think the crux of your argument is that Trump cannot be a fascist (or more accurately a protofascist IMO (or perhaps "semi-fascist")) because you like him and voted for him. That's not a particularly convincing argument. BTW, I blew up your argument that it was Joe Biden who "gave the left license to use the word 'fascist.'" These historians (and I, for that matter) did not seek (or need) Biden's permission to state the obvious long before Biden himself did.

[Oerets]

It is hard to break thru to one when in a fascist cult.....

They have to want to get out!

Quit wasting your time trying.

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by whell

It's one thing for a TV talking head to say it. It's quite another when the president uses the "bully pulpit" to call his political opponents fascists.

You mean like Trump did? At least when Biden did it, it was largely true. There's a whole lot of truth to the assertion that Trump and his movement are "semi-fascist." There is no such truth when applied to Democrats as Trump did in the linked clip.