by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
While MAGA Republicans and the Nazis share a lot in common, there is one big difference between the two strains of fascism. The Nazis were an expansionistic form of fascism, while MAGA is one bent on retrenchment. “Bring the boys home” and all that.
If you game out the ominous idea that the insane Qanon conspiracy theory could very well engulf the entire Republican Party, what does that mean whenever Republicans gain power and and promptly turn the United States into an autocracy?
Well, it gets pretty dark pretty quick. What MAGA Republicans are shooting for — and they’re very open about this — is an “illiberal democracy” similar to what is found in, say, Hungary and Turkey. They sell this vision to otherwise reluctant traditional conservatives who want the goodies of fascism without all the parts that make them blanch.
But the is a fatal flaw with this “fascism light” concept that MAGA Republicans are so intent in getting traditionalist conservatives to believe — race. And if you work on the self-evident believe that Qanon is pretty much just an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory updated for the social media age and American sensibilities then it seems that should we go the autocracy route instead of Second American Civil War route that two things may happen before it’s all over with.
One would be the emptying of the cities Khmer Rouge -style because that’s where all the evil liberals live. The other would be massive genocide against fascism’s usual suspects.
Trump is obviously too stupid and lazy to actually organize such behavior but he definitely is in a position to get the ball rolling and then very dark macro forces would take care of the rest. I’ve long believed that because of the population of the United States being so much bigger that MAGA could endup being directly responsible for the deaths of more people than WW2 — most of them Americans. Though, of course, that may be a bit of an exaggeration — some of the dead would come as part of WW3 happening when the United States abruptly pulled out of global affairs because it was too busy having a MAGA Qanon holocaust.
All of that sounds very, very hysterical. I get it. But it’s definitely something to think about going forward.
