After nearly two years in office, Biden's messaging has been rightly criticized for being unfocused and uninspiring. There was no overarching theme that Democrats could win brand opponents with unpopular positions on various public policy and governing methods. That changed on August 25 during a fundraiser and a rally in Maryland. It was about time. This was welcome for those urging him to go on the attack with sharp, easy-to-grasp rhetoric. His delivery looked like he had some fire in his belly, giving a chance for those in his audience to agree and participate. Biden tagged Trump loyal Republicans as extreme MAGA Republicans and semi-fascists. While he had used "extreme MAGA Republicans" in May, it had faded, and he revived it on the rally platform on August 25 and joined it by describing their ideology as "semi-fascist." He was leaving room for those Republicans repulsed by Trump and his loyalists and independents to support his more moderate agenda with bi-partisan appeal and a continuation of the democratic system we have enjoyed for centuries. In short, punchy words, Biden touted his implementation of popular public policy issues that appealed across the partisan divide but also was aimed at some in his base who had shown a lack of luster support, including younger and senior voters, among others. Polls had begun to reveal the Democratic base saving democracy and making Roe v Wade the law of the land their top issue. In very recent special elections where Democrats beat Republicans, it became apparent that this approach appealed to dissident Republicans and independents, as well as his base in swing states and districts..
Biden also used 'fear" to rev up the crowd to support Democrat mid-term candidates for Congress.. He turned the Dobbs/end Roe v Wade abortion issue against the "extreme MAGA Republicans" by charging they wanted to pass federal legislation to ban abortion in all states, including nearly half of them who still honored the provisions of Roe v Wade. He would veto, he said, any such legislation passed by Congress.
He also used "fear" to brand the MAGA Republicans as semi-fascists. He is not the first to do this. Some others in the media, Joe Scarborough for one, who called the MAGA crowd fascists, and others had evoked the Nazi image. Neither attack negative brands had caught on because they were both inflammatory and not an exact fit. There were elements, however, which did look like the fascists of the 1930s, including anti-semitism, use of violence to effect change, an attempt to use active military and militias to shape domestic politics, and a cult-like loyalty pledged to a leader, Donald Trump, instead of loyalty to the rule of law and the Constitution. In addition, there is a national effort to put the mechanism of voting in the hands of one party loyalists, the MAGA GOP, using lies and deception that the 2020 elections were stolen. Some also intimated that the kind of democracy we have had for 250 years should be replaced. By what? An autocracy, a dictatorship? A voting system run by Trump loyalists? Replacing the Refs - States United Democracy Center Trump often expressed his admiration for those models of modern fascism: Putin, Hungary's Viktor Orban, Turkey's Erdogan? All of them fit Merriam-Webster's definition of fascism: "a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition and a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control" The case for calling those three leaders fascists was made by the late Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in her book, Fascism, a Warning. Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine K. Albright | Goodreads The extreme MAGA Republicans are not there yet, but there are elements in that group that aspire to implementation of aspects of a similar ideology.
My observation of fascist governments is that "freedom" is only for the dear leaders' supporters to do and say as the leader approves. The usual way to oust fascist leaders who have control of all governmental power centers is by violent or velvet overthrow. Free and fair elections are no longer able to change regimes because who votes, how they vote, and how the votes are counted are also controlled by fascists. It is an ideology, but its application is similar to other dictators who tout communism or a particular theology.
Three major events have given Biden the gifts and inspiration to make the remarks: 1)Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, 2) the January 6 committee showing video of the violent attack on the Capitol again and again and revealing the role Trump and his close advisors played; 3) a list of both bi-partisan and partisan legislation that broke through a log jam in a closely divided Congress. By contrast, the GOP had pinned hopes on the turnout of their base in the midterms motivated by fear and hate. Their top campaign issues in the primary season were inflation, immigration, and violent crime while/ opposing any common sense gun legislation. More subtle was the party's hyping and cultural and racial divisiveness by supporting book banning in schools, whitewashing America's slavery past in teaching history, opposing gay and transgender rights, and implementing the most extreme agenda of anti-abortion laws.
Often some GOP candidates claim they are acting politically under the banner of Christian nationalism, and some even to turn the US into a Christian nation using the power of political action. That mindset is held mostly by evangelical Christians, who constitute 25% of the population per a Pew Poll. The Roe v Wade overturns, 40 years in the making by the Christian evangelical movement, is now causing a political backlash which will most likely be the one issue that shapes the outcome of the 2022 midterms and the makeup of Congress.
There is a very good reason why our country's founders forbade the establishment of a state religion. It did not work well in the Colonial era and the original colonies that joined together to form our more perfect union were very diverse.
WATCH: Biden calls for Democrats to vote in midterm elections, slams' semi-fascism' in GOP | PBS NewsHour
WATCH: President Joe Biden joins Wes Moore for DNC rally Thursday at local school - YouTube
Biden calls MAGA' most extreme' group in American history (nypost.com)
Replacing the Refs - States United Democracy Center One of the most troubling views of the extreme right movement in the US is that they want to replace our form of democracy based on the rule of law with a democracy ruled by a person who agrees with them. The laws passed with approval by their representatives chosen in free and fair elections serve as the referee when there are disagreements. Put in sports terms, imagine a football game without referees, where the team owner sitting in the home team owner's box calls who committed the fouls as he defines them, levies, and enforces the penalties. It only works without a brawl if everyone in the stands and on the field is on the same team, as it is in Hungary, where over 90 percent are of the same ethnic/racial, religious, and language group, yet many on the US right fawn over the autocracy of their president, Viktor Orban, a modern-day version of a fascist. It takes years and often violence to end a dictator's regime. What usually brings down a dictator is corruption since there is no one to stop avarice, lies, and greed. A dictator's control of media keeps corruption from the public eye until it is exposed by those who object to the unfairness of it al..Autocrats and dictators control the police and military and use them to suppress opposition by force and fear.. Sometimes failure on the battlefield causes a revolt or a conquering force to take over. (Hitler). Often they use force and fear to maintain that rule. Transitions to another ruler are, at best velvet, more likely violent, after street demonstrations, military coups, and civil war.
There are reasons why the U.S. does not have a theologically based Constitution and why a state religion is forbidden by the First Amendment. Those who claim we were founded by Christians as the reason for this ought not repeat history. It did not work well when we were a bunch of colonies. There was a great deal of diversity then as there is now and there was no single consensus on the issue of which one or none should be proclaimed as the religion. Those colonies who tried to impose their religion on others also experience turmoil, strife, and divisiveness, and mother England was still reeling from a history of religious-based wars at home and abroad.
The alternative view of Christian nationalism from a non-evangelical Christian was explained in an op-ed that traced the movement's beginning to the Ku Klux Klan, who used the burning cross to terrorize black people to be subservient to the white folk.
A version of this was published in the Sky Hi News, 11/20-21/2018
https://www.skyhinews.com/news/opinion/opinion-muftic-thank-the-pilgrims-who-began-americas-quest-for-religious-freedom/
Summary:
The Pilgrims got the ball rolling, but it was only the beginning. They saw freedom of religion as freedom from a government-run religion that persecuted them. It was not freedom for others...but after the colonies provided a rocky start of hanging heretics and hunting witches, the Constitution gave all of us freedom of religion. The application of that First Amendment is still a work in progress.
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This Thanksgiving, we should thank the Pilgrims who have become an icon of what made the New World so unique in the civilizations that preceded them. They left England and the old world to seek freedom to practice their own religion, free from a government-backed state religion that oppressed them. It was a beginning. There was a rocky road ahead to laws guaranteeing religious freedom for everyone, not just one group.
Some colonies adopted laws with limited forms of freedom of religion while others established state-sponsored religions hung heretics, and launched witch hunts. Pennsylvania and Virginia had enacted their own laws effectively protecting freedom of religion. The Constitution authors adopted those concepts in the First Amendment, ""Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." Congress later passed civil rights and hate crimes legislation that protected religious practitioners and punished those who interfered with their practice.
Biden: MAGA is the 'most extreme political organization' in recent U.S. history - POL
Using the definitions above for what is fascism, is Donald Trump a fascist himself? It is not that he did not try. I would put him in the "aspiring" category, which is a good reason why he should not be given a second term to succeed. His calling neo nazi marchers chanting "Jews will not replace us" in Charlottesville fine people at least shows tolerance of such sentiment. He attempted to use overwhelming mounted federal employees and trick active military to appear to clear demonstrators to make way for a photo op in Lafayette Square caused General Milley to object to the use of active military to support a domestic political agenda and eventually to write a damning resignation letter (not delivered). His activities on January 6, 2021, was not the first time he condoned the use of violence to get a political outcome, but at the very least he was a central figure that inspired and refused to stop the Capitol rioters. That he threatened to primary anyone not loyal to him personally before the 2022 midterms and the cult-like devotion on his core followers continue even after he left office is a matter of public record and reporting. That he believes he was above the law even after he left office is what the Mar-a-Lago has dramatized.(Those documents are mine, not the government's, etc). To take control of two of the three power centers, the judiciary and executive branch, he tried to replace the Attorney General with a yes person after Bill Barr resigned, and he began the process of replacing thousands of career civil servants with loyalists in the Schedule K scheme. After the fake elector and bullying Georgia officials failed to overturn the 2020 election, the "stop the steal" mantra became his rationale to try to get election officials replaced and elected and filled with Trump loyalists and election deniers even after the left office.
