Die USA zwischen Demokratie und Diktatur Morgen Abend spreche ich in Hamburg über die politische Lage in den Vereinigten Staaten - und über die lange Geschichte des Kampfes um die amerikanische Demokratie. Mit viel Zeit für Fragen! gruene-altona.de/termine/die-...

Die USA zwischen Demokratie und Diktatur Nächste Woche spreche ich in Hamburg über die politische Lage in den Vereinigten Staaten - und über die Geschichte und Gegenwart des Kampfes um die amerikanische Demokratie. Kommt vorbei! gruene-altona.de/termine/die-...

“Pluralism is a lie”   That really captures the essence of MAGA: A movement at war with the reality of American life and a large portion of the population.   And it also points to one of the regime’s key weaknesses: They have fully bought into their own white nationalist propaganda.

To emphasize what @moiradonegan.bsky.social is saying: In the same speech where Rothbard announced his desire to “repeal the twentieth century,” he raged against “organized feminism” and the “loony left” as a key enemy - the “feminist, deconstructing, quota-loving, advanced victimological left.”

None of this is surprising, of course: Remember the “Mass Deportation Now” signs at the Republican Convention last fall? This is a party devoted to an ethno-religious understanding of America as a land defined by white Christian patriarchal dominance.

This was on full display in the Right’s freak-out over the NYT’s “1619 Project.” Every piece in National Review, for instance, focused on the fact that slavery existed outside America – but only ever to de-legitimize the attempts to advance a narrative about U.S. history beyond white male heroism.

The piece also serves as a primer on who or what the AfD really is, why the decision to officially designate it as a “confirmed rightwing extremist” party is obviously correct, and why a party ban is nevertheless unlikely. Always remember: This is who the Trumpists are siding with:

This can’t possibly come as a surprise either, considering that Republicans have been doing exactly this on the state level wherever and whenever they got a chance. Just look at Florida, the spearhead of this campaign to purge anyone and anything daring to deviate from the white nationalist story.

Utterly unconscionable – though hardly surprising – for the New York Times to print such vile fabrications, completely untethered from empirical reality, and to keep platforming a man who would spread such extremist propaganda as one of their most prominent columnists.

WTF. Democratic leaders have had their brains poisoned by a consultant class and a bunch of “popularist” bloggers who believe anything related to “democracy” is bad messaging and they should stick to the “pocketbook” instead. And so we get this, in the midst of an acute constitutional crisis.

Douthat isn’t exactly pro-MAGA – he is just vehemently anti-anti-Trump and fully dedicated to laundering the Trumpist Right for a mainstream audience by intellectualizing and sanitizing it to the point where the version of the Right we are getting from him is deliberately detached from reality.

I tend to think that such utter Nazi shit from this completely unhinged extremist is more likely to hurt the German far-right in the February election. Rightwing extremists depend on support from people who self-identify as mainstream conservatives - and they tend to regard open Nazism as uncouth.

“Was once a critic of the president-elect” is really funny. This is a whole genre now: “Here’s why this reactionary went from being staunchly anti-liberal and aggressively anti-anti-Trump to openly supporting Trump.” A particular kind of normalization of authoritarianism and blaming “the Left.”

Oh look, another Democratic elected official going all in on normalizing Trump and preemptively accommodating his regime.   It is incredibly deflating that the defense of basic rights and democratic self-government depends so much on people who have nothing but compliance and acquiescence to offer.

Today’s Right, meanwhile, disdains norms and rules - there is only Us vs Them, only power; Democrats are a fundamentally anti-American faction, a threat akin to the terrorists of 9/11, as far-right thinker Michael Anton put it in his “Flight 93” essay. Do whatever it takes. So little time left.

Behold, the leaders of the “party of law and order.” The most blatantly lawless and comically corrupt major politician in history and the Right’s latest icon of white vigilante violence. An excellent reminder of what “law and order” politics has always been about, what “order” it seeks to protect.

“Conservatism is no longer enough” should be required reading for anyone who seeks to understand what’s been happening on the Right: It captures the escalating siege mentality, the “counter-revolutionary” sensibility, the increasingly unhinged radicalism. This is where and what the Right is today.

And yet, judged by their answers to these questions, 29% of Republicans qualified as QAnon believers, up from 23% two years earlier. And while support was lower among Democrats, we encounter the same trend, as the number of Democratic QAnon believers had doubled since March 2021, from 7% to 14%.

The survey sought to measure support for the QAnon conspiracy by breaking it down into the following three questions, which seems adequate to me. The questions do not sanitize this inherently violent conspiracy theory – they capture how out there, how deranged and extreme this stuff is:

I remember this shocker from digging into the 2023 American Values Survey: “Since March 2021, the share of QAnon believers has increased significantly, from 14% to 23% today. The percentage of Americans who completely reject QAnon beliefs has significantly decreased from 40% to 29% in 2023.”

This pervasive misunderstanding is why mainstream media outlets have found Musk’s politics “complicated” and confounding - and why, for instance, I have been asked several times in interviews since the election why the “non-political” or “liberal” Musk would support Trump.

So. Very. Much. This. One concrete example: The survey data we have strongly suggests that support for anti-trans legislation is less driven by consistent and stable ideological leanings and much more a function of how the issue is framed. Here are the results of the 2023 American Values Survey:

The most pointless form of election discourse: Just baseless assertions about what cost Democrats the 2016 and 2024 elections - there is no empirical basis to claim the “progressive Left” is why Hillary lost, or that campaigning with Cheney had an impact either way - in service of settling scores.

And finally, the bizarre, but fully unsurprising crescendo: In order to save democracy, we must let the criminal demagogue abolish it. Gaslighting nonsense, packaged as sage advice.

Same here: Just completely adopting the Trumpist argument that it’s all just a political witch hunt, that a prosecution in a “liberal” place is fundamentally illegitimate. Pure MAGA propaganda. Exactly the attack line Trump has pursued.

Look at this utter horse shit. This isn’t a legal argument at all. It literally just says: If someone is politically powerful, the legal system should leave them alone - and also, Trump is the Tribune of the people who must not be hampered by puny laws. Indistinguishable from MAGA propaganda.

Here is just one concrete example: The survey data we have strongly suggests that support for anti-trans legislation is less driven by consistent and stable ideological leanings and much more a function of how the issue is being presented. Here are the results of the 2023 American Values Survey:

Thomas Chatterton Williams has one thing, and thing only to say about the world: “Wokeness” is a threat! The root of all evil that plagues us! You’ll see him around here on Bluesky now - complaining about “echo chambers” and “cancel culture.” That’s all he has. All you’ll ever get from this guy.

Reminds me of how David Brooks boldly declared “Peak wokeness has passed” after the 2022 midterms. This stuff is so revealing: There is never any actual evidence for these ludicrous assertions - these guys will go right back to screaming about “wokeness running amok!” whenever it suits them.

I think you should read the piece before criticizing: