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Americans Are Losing Sight of What Fascism Means
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/americans-are-losing-sight-of-what-fascism-means/ar-BB1amXfkThe Atlantic
Americans Are Losing Sight of What Fascism Means
Shadi Hamid
10/25/20
snip
Words matter because they help order our understanding of politics both at home and abroad. If Cotton is a fascist, then we dont know what fascism is. And if we dont know what fascism is, then we will struggle to identify it when it threatens millions of liveswhich is precisely what is happening today in areas under Beijings control. Chinese authorities have tightened their grip on Hong Kong. And while the world watches, they are undertaking one of the most terrifying campaigns of ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide since World War II in Xinjiang province, with more than 1 million Muslim Uighurs in internment camps, as well as reports of forced sterilization and mass rape.
For morality to operate, moral proportion is required. Unfortunately, the Trump era has badly damaged our ability to see whats right in front of our noses.
[Read: Saving Uighur culture from genocide]
Today, the United States is consumed by internal divisions, which means that the flow of ideas is the reverse of what it otherwise might be. Instead of solving problems through the very democratic institutions that once gave inspiration abroad, we now import foreign notions from Europes dark past in an attempt to comprehend what seems incomprehensible here in our own country. Donald Trumps election led to a whole cottage industry of thinking that fascism is near, right here at home. It has grown steadily, reaching its culmination in the lead-up to the November election. In the past month alone, readers have seen Mussolini comparisons from eminent historians, explainers on what its like to live through a civil war, and an endless stream of warnings about Reichstag fires and a fascist coup. Here, Trump deserves some of the blame. He has a knack for bringing out the worst in his opponents, giving them license to use the very hyperbole and distortion that they criticize in others. This is one of many reasons to hope he is voted out of office.
If America doesnt descend into fascismand Joe Biden wins by a comfortable margin and Republicans accept the result, however reluctantlythen Americans will be able, once again, to gain a proper perspective on their long, four-year episode of unreason and myopia. Sometimes, life is elsewhere. In some places, democracy, or whats left of it, is truly under threat. One of those places is Hong Kong.
.snip
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Americans Are Losing Sight of What Fascism Means (Original Post)
saidsimplesimon
Oct 2020
OP
ZZenith
(4,136 posts)1. Horseshit.
Complete and utter horseshit.
Give him four more years and hell be stuffing people into ovens.
He will throw them out of helicopters into the ocean instead
ZZenith
(4,136 posts)3. Not enough helicopters in the world
to manage all the people who hate this fucker.
DBoon
(22,422 posts)4. It worked for Pinochet
Pinochet is a hero to american conservatives.
TheRealNorth
(9,500 posts)5. They are already doing forced sterilizations...
and possibly a politically-motivated extra judicial execution in Oregon.