EDIT: sorry for being absent in the thread, i mostly go on here when im doing time theft :soviet-playful: bc im spending most my time w gf. i like responding to most comments on threads tho
i think the state of the far right in amerika is really interesting and currently at a point of divergence.
there are 4 separate camps that are becoming increasingly hostile to each other. just like in highlander, there can only be one. one party will emerge as the voice of amerikan fascism and will direct the feral hogs in counterrevolution
the first camp is the institutional Republicans. these guys will stick to the neoliberal consensus, and they know they need the Dems as controlled opposition. they still want fascism, they just want to bring it about piecewise, drop by drop. they use dogwhistles and expertly use propaganda. Turtle Mitch, Ron DeSanctimonious, and Tom Cotton are great examples, wolves in sheeps clothing, they are "acceptable" in the eyes of Dems
then out of the ashes of the Tea Party came the trump camp. this camp attracted the republican base-- petit bourgs and reactionary labor aristocrats. now the institutional republicans have a hard time accomplishing anything without the approval of the trump camp. there are now a ton of trump sycophants currently in congress. they go more mask-off with their rhetoric but they still retain some of their "plausible" deniability.
then there are the elonheads. techbros and techbro wannabes who believe in the "technocracy". they think :my-hero: is the most special boy who invented online money management, electric vehicles, and space travel. they think all social ails can be solved like an efficiency problem, blind to the barriers posed by capitalism. in their quest for "efficiency" they will tighten the contradictions and probably plummet us into fascism faster than the two aforementioned camps. the melonheads have always been distinct from the trump camp due to geography (trump popular in rural areas and elon more popular on the coasts) and political differences (some elonheads associate with Dems more than Repubs; still fascist tho). BUT, these camps have diverged more sharply after feuding between :melon-musk: and the :cheeto-man: himself. they go mask-off like the trumpeters but in a different way, opting to focus more directly on class (melt-the-poor type shit); we know that all the right wing (dems included) hate the poor but none are so brash about it
now the Yeezus camp is arising, and its hard to differentiate this camp from the other three and thats what i think make it uniquely dangerous. it seems like the yeezy/trump friendship is weaker than its ever been and musk is censoring Ye, BUT YE IS GOING MORE MASK-OFF THAN ANY OF THEM. and this will inevitably attract the nazis. and all 4 of these camps NEED the nazis to do their dirty work. the german fascists needed the freikorps and the brownshirts to enable fascism to grow. now all these freaks who rallied around trump in 2015 will support Ye and, just like in 2015, bring massive attention to the fascist movement.
at this point the institutional Republicans have lost a lot of popularity and support among the far right. im sure there are more democrat voters who like mike pence than republican voters. if Ye, trump, and musk can coordinate better they will be the new republican party and they will be scarily popular (remember how the GOP was dying before trump, and remember that they dont need a majority of amerikans, they dont even need a majority of the voters, just enough to win the dumb electoral game)
ik my analysis is kinda disjointed, i mostly want to hear ur guys thoughts on the far right and more perspectives on the current situation
Trash Future this week compared Elon-type fascists to Italo-Futurism which is spot on in my opinion. They're utopians with no concept of history beyond vague impressions that some period was great and some other was bad. They want to burn down all of that historical infrastructure and replace it with whatever the shiniest machine of the era is. That machine and the boy geniuses who love it will erase all contradictions if we just give them enough power.
I think they're the most dangerous because they're the most esoteric. Nazi conspiracists only have so much reach and it's mostly the dumbest kind of Guy. Tech bros capture such a broad swath of the public imagination that AOC drives a Tesla and every nerd thinks they're getting a ticket to Mars if they like enough tweets. They're integrated so deeply into the state through public-private partnership and it's specifically the military/defense contracting/intelligence communities. The funding from that gives them a monopoly on futuristic aesthetics and aesthetics drive fascism more than anything.
good point!! def agree with the blackshirts comparison. yeah elon needs trump more than the other way around, he still gets the subsidies from the demonrats but he ultimately wants to accelerate the torment nexus. i think elon has a critical mass of ppl who are favorable toward him (from https://www.statista.com/statistics/1304563/us-adults-impression-of-elon-musk/ he has a 42% "approval rating"). trump will inevitably realign with elon and all the other ppl who previously shirked him. some will fail to reenter trumps orbit and that will be really funny. elon losing 90% of his wealth bc his subsidy, VC, and public investment schemes fall in support would be the best outcome, but trump will be cool w him :(
It's going to be a wild and horrifying ride to see just how far Kanye is going to go. He's quickly running up against a wall where he has to come out as an open neo-nazi at this point. After denying the holocaust and saying you like Hitler, you really can't sneak back to doing dog whistles. My pet theory though is that people are going to try and distance themselves from him save for his inner-circle and the true believer groypers online. Republicans love fascism but really hate it when their own take it too far and start singing the third reich's praises, their game is to paint democrats as the real nazis while hiding behind a wink-wink nudge-nudge facade.
Yeah Kanye is going to get exiled and ostracized for breaking kayfabe. Kanye is not some scheming genius, he’s lost his marbles and he’s breaking the narrative facade that Antifa are the real fascists and all that. Even Alex Jones tries to reel him back in and give him softball questions about how the left are the real Nazis, and Kanye is just like “no actually Nazis are good and cool”
It's pretty obvious that he's in a manic state and mentally unwell. I just hope that doesn't paper over what he's said, as I can see liberals being all like "he's unwell, he doesn't know what he's saying!". Plenty of people have had breakdowns that didn't result in them becoming fascists. But otherwise yeah he's breaking the right's narrative that antifa are the real fascists and it's not going to bode well for him. I can't see anyone outside of hardcore kekistani frenworld types buying into Kanye, he's too extreme now for the mainstream conservative right.
they said the same about trump tho. ik hes going further than trump did but i dont think its healthy to underestimated the unruliness of the hogs
but i mostly agree. no way Ye has a path to the presidency or anything. but he might bring a new wave of popularity to fascism
"...a new wave of popularity to fascism" Is it possible to be a fascist ironically? Does Nazism gain or lose power by becoming a fashion statement?
irony is the best mask for fascism. a large number of amerikans are liberals, and can be scratched into fascists. ye supporting fascism makes the fascists bolder. and fascism will spread to petit bourgs and labor aristocrat STEMlords, some arent contaminated yet.
Kanye is already being alienated from these spaces. He willingly left the tim pool web show or whatever, but Elon Musk has banned him too. Thing is, the cultural myth that partly sustains american fascism domestically and abroad is that they beat the nazis in the second world war, this is how they get to justify how democrats are nazis actually, because american nationalism is symbolically opposed to nazism (its enemies are by extension nazis too). so this brand of fascism can't easily absorb nazism as readily as some people would like to believe, they would lose the ideological substance that makes america exceptional, so for now, Kanye must and probably will go.
I don't know where this might end up though, either the whole world really falls down into a hole of neonazism, or the US seeps into nazism quickly enough so that it loses its luster abroad and is transparently revealed as a monster, which kinda did happen with trump a little bit, we'll see how he'll fare on his second try.
edit: my guess is that trump will distance himself from Kanye and Fuentes but he will be rather non-chalant about it. I do think that embracing outward nazism will alienate a significant portion of his voter base. He may be able to shoot a man in the street and not lose any points on the polls, but I don't think him giving a hitler salute may be as welcome.
good point, ye could still pull the brakes at this point. just 6 months on the dogwhistle diet will have ye as VP. maybe an exaggeration but that kind of "rehabilitation" happens all the time in the right.
US is fucked Death to Amerika
I would argue the only way forward for Kanye at this point is to fully embrace facism. No idea how successful that would be for him in the political arena (for the sake of the Americans I hope it would fail). With all that said Im sure he could earn some bucks selling not just right wing but facist talking points to an audience.
It’s Thiel not Elon. Elon is more a mascot than actually involved in that political project afaik
I think these are all definitely types, but I think the latter 2 types are given undue focus. The party establishment holds actual political power, and the unruly Trumpist mob constitute the voting block they have to continue wooing. Techbros also have power, but they're not as cohesive politically, and are just as likely to support right wing dems or dead end third parties. I don't think the open fascists will gain as much from the kanye media spectacle as they would hope, and though they're dangerous to the oppressed masses, they don't have much of a chance of making a dent politically. I think Elon as an individual has a lot of power, but he can't represent the interests of a wider group, and if anything seems motivated by outrunning the new legal and financial problems his stupid ass keeps causing.
I think Trump is the party and will continue to be the party. I think the attempts to fuck him in the primary will fizzle, and the hogs will run rampant again.
good points! yeah i can see a lot of elonites voting for the forward party :lenin-laugh:
yeah im putting my money on the outcome of trump being the repub nominee
Mentioned this in another thread but a friend of mine is a big Elon and Andrew Yang guy who loves him some Twitter and based.memes
LOL the far right is highly sectarian. And they get banned all the time and communities splintered which makes it hard to follow them. Trump was the most pro-Israel president America ever had; you think the nazis love him? He didn’t build the wall and Obama deported more than he did. All of the far right hate each other and spend a great deal of time infighting about trivial differences which are super important to them but nobody else. It’s hard to even follow their discourse, frankly, with them trying to out-cite each other from obscure books from authors nobody ever heard of published by obscure publishers that had print runs of 1000.
a lot of nazis love israel. evangelicals would love it if all the Jewish people moved there. they dont care abt Palestinians, they get positive views on israel crammed down their throat on MSM. they dont care abt statistics either, they want suffering, they see suffering and their hog brains think it means the "border situation" is being "handled". they in-fight a lot and thats great, but they will kill us before they kill each other
yeah i might just be drinking the news cycle kool aid, ye has nowhere near as much power/support from fascists as trump and elon.
also those tate and JP guys are prob mostly where the trump/elon venn diagram overlaps lol
You're missing the Christofascists unless you're lumping them under Trump (or Kanye lol). The particular flavor of US fascism is Christofascism just like how Bolsonaro's base is evangelical Bible-thumpers.
They're in one of the first two groups depending on how good they are at dogwhistling
they def fall under trump. evangelicals love him. there are a few dissenters but good luck on them finding a church safe for them. a lot of whole ass denominations of christianity should just be abolished. the more virulently racist christians might be less accepting of ye for reasons
Ye is just a billionaire having a meltdown, I don't know of any indication that there's actually a significant camp behind him. Just because he says fash stuff doesn't necessarily mean that fascists will rally behind him. It is of course disturbing to have mask-off Nazi rhetoric voiced by a high profile figure, but he's not acting strategically. It's more likely that he blazes the way for a more competent fascist who hasn't been coddled by yes men and knows how to use the tricks in the playbook.
ur right, ye kind of just joined an existing camp, the groyper-failson-proud-boogaloo legion
I really like your post but...
there are more democrat voters who like mike pence than republican voters.
I have no idea what polling indicates so maybe I'm all wrong. But I assume if democrats were asked about his favorability rating - then something like 15% of them would say they are mildly in favor of him. There are are always going to be West Wing libs who have tautology brain. It makes no sense but they think because he was vice president - he's still worthy of support because he vice president.
there are 4 separate camps
This reminds me I have to change how I think about the GOP. I hate them so much that even though I know it's all wrong - I end up thinking of them as a collective. Like the Borg or something. I always end up thinking of them in a big continuous pile of shit. It's hard for me to think of them in camps. But that's realty.
Ye, trump, and musk can coordinate better they will be the new republican party and they will be scarily popular
That's a scary thought. But Trump's candidacy announcement was shockingly super-low energy. His heart clearly wasn't in it. Of course - it was just one day - but his charisma is his magic. I rated 2/10 stars with 10 stars being Trump at his best. I guess his best would be 2016 debate Trump. He was a steamroller.
It's a Grand Canyon-sized "if" but if he can't get at least some of his mojo back - his support could start to fade. But if he can maintain a 5/10 - that's probably good enough. Whatever happens - it's Trump's nomination to lose.
yeah i was kinda doubting myself abt the dems liking mike pence thing, but it was mostly to make the point that the republican base will support trump over the blanket GOP
i agree, trump was just playing the old hits and he needs something new to invigorate his base. he might be staying away from musk and Ye bc hes afraid of their controversy, but thats such a big mistake since his base would LOVE a unified conservative front. who knows tho. maybe biden dies and we get another 4 years of drip fed fascism from a different democrat instead of being drowned in it by an unrestricted GOP
trump was just playing the old hits and he needs something new to invigorate his base.
I meant more that it was clear he didn't give a shit and he didn't want to be there. The lack of "hooks" and "riffs" was a problem but even greater than that was is lifelessness. During his speech - members of the audience weren't allowed to leave. Staff kept the doors closed and locked.
maybe biden dies and we get another 4 years of drip fed fascism from a different democrat instead of being drowned in it by an unrestricted GOP
The future certainly could be even more insane than now. Trump's 2016 win broke reality in America. If Biden shuffles off this mortal coil - I can imagine a "law and order" democrat becoming very popular to "counter" the GOP. And the dems 100% do not want Kamala. The public just doesn't like her and I think she's not the sort of person that can change her POV or her manner. She is who she is.
If she got the nomination - she'd lose and drag the entire party down into the murky depths with her. But I wonder how palatable to the public she'd be if she was on something every day. Edibles? Could something like that work for her?
bernie would give them the best chance but we all know the DNC doesnt want that. yeah theyll put another standard neoliberal up and trump will knock them down :doomer:
i mean the sectarianism here isnt too toxic. there is some bullying sometimes but i think those are isolated events. correcting reactionary attitudes isnt bullying, to not do so is a form of liberalism
So, the traditional division is
Institutional capital (enough said)
Evangelical Freaks (Fascist Theocrats, but their theory diverges from Fasicsm Proper)
Libertarian Techbros (The Ron Paul crowd)
Libertarian Rural and PB rabids (not, quite, Facsist but the kind of people who say they want Libertarianism but really want Huey Long)All of these are about equally racist, though the techbros and institutional might murmer some lib doctrine.
In the last 20 years we've got added 3 stripes of Fascist Proper, usually taken from the last two of the above.
NRx. The "Intellectual Dark Web" who want either technocrat or theocrat dictators. Heavily influenced by weird ex-trots, Transhumanist thoughts worst aspects, and right-accelerationism.
The Tea Party Basically the 3rd category falling into full Fascism and taking some of the 4th group with them by pretending they want the same things.
The Alt Right: The most radical/Longist factions of the 4th group realising Huey Long isn't coming and splitting off, along with sections of every other group. Lead by people versed in NRx but ultimately too populist to be compatible with it's absolute monarchist wankery.Like traditional fascism, because they have the most marginalised parts of the Republican base they often highlight contradictions and even say stuff that sounds a bit leftist. Do not be fooled they're the most fascist of them all. MAGA Communism et al are also just the Alt-Right in another coat.
Kanye is basically just the latest incarnation of the Alt Right. The rhetoric is the same, the messenger is just slightly different.
thank you for the reply, great analysis! also the "capital" category can be divided to separate out the petit bourgs bc the larger capitalists usually support neoliberals.
It really all comes down to how people get their information. Musk's takeover of Twitter pretty much makes him the kingmaker. It's now a battle of the establishment neo-liberal media vs the Elonheads. Klan-ye is out. The MSM has cut him off and so has Musk. He can shout on Parler all he wants, nobody is listening.
yeah, its hard to tell if buying twitter was a great or horrible move, but we'll see. it has to all fall down eventually :)
I don’t think trump came out of the tea party. The tea party people weren’t initially fans of trump.
Yeah Tea Party types are more WASPy than the "Basket of Deplorables" that makes up the MAGA base.
Tea Party types are your smol gubmint "independant"/libertarians, federalist society or sovereign citizen goons. They're the ones making posters of Obama dressed like Hitler. They pretty much fractured and broke up by 2016 and nowadays I bet you see them in groups of militia-types (which I think is a minor category missing from the OP, you have many militia people who are not ideologically hitched to the Trump Train) or re-absorbed back into the "institutional" republican party.
trump got 70 million votes, proud boys, boogaloos, and groypers dont account for that. there are plenty of tea party fascists who bandwagoned off trump in the end
thanks for the reply comrade! yeah i might be underestimating the popularity of group 1 since the hogs will terminally vote R no matter who 95% of the time. i also overestimated ye's influence
trump and/or elon. and most of them supporting institutional republicans too
its fragmented but these groups are still interrelated
