All jokes aside, yesterday should've been a wake up call for the entire country to see how easy this is for the right wing. When the next fascist comes, they won't be making the same mistakes Trump made.
For anyone decrying this and blaming BLM protesters for not being able to do this, go back and watch the videos. The cops helped them. They opened the gates and let them storm the capitol. More than one cop hung back and took selfies with them and generally showed no letehal force whatsoever. Had that been BLM protesters, they wouldn't have even got to the gates. Cops would've already teargassed, flashbanged and sprayed them with rubber bullets while DHS and the National Guard would've been waiting to arrest them.
Half of the GOP are in support of this. They've been calling the election rigged and riding that train with the base.
The most amazing part to me IMO is that liberals live in some weird alternate reality where the mainstream media has been feeding them BS for what they want to hear for 4 years. Trump has an over 90% approval rating with the GOP voter base and it only went up after the riots last year and all of his stunts. This isn't that hard to figure out. They love him cause he says the quiet parts out loud and don't put on a happy face around the coded language. Libs have had 4 years to get it that people vote conservative in America to go after the people they hate. It's about keeping black people and minorities out of their neighborhoods; putting the LGBT back in the closet, jailing immigrants and sticking it to poor people. But instead of realizing this, mainstream media has simply shoved microphones in the face of any old neocon who they label "anti-Trump" and propped them up as if they run the GOP.
The biggest thing to take into consideration is how police protected them, allowed it and then sat back and refused to use lethal force. Liberals can't seem to figure it out and acted all stunned, but it's really not a shock. Far right groups have been infiltrating police departments for decades. We've been screaming about this for years while libs just ignore it and think voting is going to solve all of these problems. The next fascist that comes around, also will have the backing the police, you can bet on that.
If Trump wasn't a stupid idiot worried more about his ego than anything else, he could've totally pulled it off and seized power yesterday. But once they got in the capitol, he did what he always does and chickened out after all his big talk.
Liberals also proved how useless they are yesterday, not that it's a big surprise. They don't know how to do anything but be smug and condescending. You saw how they act in a coup yesterday. They'll just get on twitter, make 'white privilege' trend as a hashtag and try to explain that the problem isn't so much our system, or corrupt police helping fascists. Then sit back and scream and shout that the cops aren't beating these people or showing lethal force. Libs don't get it and they never will. They're over-educated wimps who will cower in the face of fascism unfolding.
I have long believed that when Trump originally ran for president back in 2015, that the Republicans were fine with him as a sort of experiment and test. It was like they were testing the waters to see how far the American public would be willing to accept fascist rhetoric and how far they could go with someone like him and get away with it. Yesterday definitely felt like a test run for a coup. They've had 4 years to realize they can pull it off cause Dems are a bunch of cowards and will just hide behind the system and status quo, regardless who is in power. 4 years of a bumbling moron president and no real push back for it from Dems. Just liberals fact-checking and writing smug articles for years decrying everything. Yesterday was the last test and it proved to them, they can pull this off in the future when they get their ideal fascist, opposed to a reality TV star game show host.
We're starring right down the barrel of fascism. The next fascist we get isn't going to be a moron reality TV show star. Somewhere out there, the next Trump is sitting and watching. They are vowing not to make the same idiotic mistakes he has made through all this time.
Will Dems learn from this and take advantage from a GOP in disarray? I doubt it. They just barely won the Georgia runoff, squeaking that out after McConnell and the GOP wouldn't push for the $2k stimulus and doomed themselves. Another 4 years of Obama style nothingness and open, naked class war is going to lead us to Trump 2.0.
Start preparing cause it's a rough ride ahead.
It was always going to be trivially easy because in Germany and Italy the fascists only came to power by a backstairs coup by the conservative establishment and the military. It will be the same here. Fascists can only be placed in the driver's seat by the conscious collaboration of existing institutions and the military.
and liberals aren't going to do jack shit about it. They'll just act shocked again when they see cops still siding with fascists in the future.
I mean Matt addressed this in his blog yesterday in brutal fashion. What can they do? What could we or anyone do about it? Oh you're saying its a fascist coup? Why are you posting about it instead of riding down the street raising your militia and marching to defend the state?
Fascists will take over and we will let them because we are powerless. I mean in Italy and Germany there was a very strong and organized and militant political left. Nevertheless in both countries that left was paralyzed by indecision, lack of preparation, and inaction when the moment came that demanded decisive anti-fascist action. Here? We don't even have that. We have nothing. So yes, if it happens we all will let them because we have no alternative.
Matt seems intent on being a helpless doomer well beyond what's reasonable.
I really hate this trend in some parts of this community where I or others talk about one of Matt's correct but hard-to-swallow takes and then brush it off as "oh he's just doing doomerism", as if counting perceived contrarianism with counter-contrarianism will resolve the contradiction here, but Matt's take isn't doomer, it's Marxist. This is the entire point Marxist have been trying to make in theoretical texts when it comes to the phrases and concepts "organize" and "mobilize" and "vanguard party".
All states are class dictatorships. America is the paramount bourgeois dictatorship. To destroy a bourgeois class dictatorship through revolutionary action you must disrupt the circulation of capital which is the source of bourgeois class power within that dictatorship. This cannot be done through mere participation within the existing legitimate institutions of the dictatorship, as those institution are explicitly built to protect and defend the class power of the bourgeoisie. They can only be destroy through organizing and mobilizing the proletariat into a mass movement, led and given direction by a party of the proletarian interest, which together constructs the counter-institutions of a future proletarian dictatorship outside of the boundaries of legality and legitimacy of the bourgeois dictatorship. You don't defeat the dictatorship by conforming to its laws, you defeat it by defying those laws and building a movement robust and coherent and militant enough to resist it violently if necessary. When this movement reaches a threshold of organization, mobilization, discipline, and militancy in a time of acute crisis for the bourgeois dictatorship, the proletariat will establish its dictatorship through revolutionary violence. The shadow counter-society and counter-state it has constructed after years of organizational effort will step into the vacuum left by the dissolution of the bourgeois state, and the vanguard party of professional revolutionaries will lead the charge into the breach with the masses of the workers on their heels.
It's. About. Power. Organization, mobilization, and discipline give you power. Power allows you to impose your will upon your enemies. Lack power, and your enemies will impose their will upon you. We lack power. If the fascists truly gain the power necessary to impose their will, we entirely lack the ability to resist it. Acknowledging that FACT is not "doomerism", it's acknowledging material reality and that is what Marxism is all about.
very good post comrade
No it's doomer. Or at best it's selective materialism. he refuses to do any real analysis of the right because it would conflict with his "well they can't do anything because we can't do anything" rhetoric.
They won't do anything becomes well what they did doesn't mean anything.
:stalin-stressed:
They effectively didn't do anything because they failed! They had no plan! No organization! They were a spontaneous mob! Their supposed "leader" quickly backed down and abandoned them because he's a fat coward with no plan or ambition either! They were literally doing idealism by thinking if they believed hard enough and shouted loud enough occupying the Capitol they could make Trump President for another term but guess the fuck what it doesn't work that way!
These MAGA CHUDs aren't the fucking Nazis. The Nazis had a party. They had paramilitaries. They had leaders. They had manifesto and a (literally just lying) political platform. And eventually they had corporate and military backing too, which was the final piece needed to seize power. MAGA has none of these things. They're at war with their own fucking party leadership. Their notion of "organization" is posting on fucking Facebook groups and fringe websites. Their leader has no ambitions or coherent ideology or barely functioning brain, for fuck's sake.
They occupied the capitol yesterday.
How did that happen?
The police let them. And then they kicked them out after like two hours. They didn't even reach anyone important enough to take hostage. The lesson here at the end of the day being that the police are the ones with the fucking power here, not the MAGA CHUDs. Sure, the cops sympathize with them vis-a-vis the left and liberals, but they aren't yet ready to outright throw in with them, which is what actual fascists NEED to take power. They can't do it by themselves, establishment power must hand it to them willingly.
Like, I understand hysterical takes inevitably pop up after events like this, but people need to stop overstating the power of these morons. These people are not organized. Like, at all. This was fucking Occupy but for MAGA, it was arguably even less significant in material consequences.
sigh.
You admit that the police siding with them is a huge concern but you just ignore that yesterday they sided with them.
~800k cops, overwhelming violent heavily armed fascists. Spread out everywhere with military like organization.
Donald Trump is president.
This isn't a fascist takeover from nothing, this is trying to entrench someone who already has power. Very different.
Just because you label your takes as materialist doesn't make those who disagree wrong, and it certainly doesn't make anyone hysterical.
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Please quit spamming this at me.
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There’s a non zero chance it’s a bot given the ubiquity of their posts
It's on every response in the thread.
Bot, sorry it autocorrected
ah that makes much more sense.
It's very hard to do historical materialism and not have that perspective imo
I don't find his material analysis convincing, I think he sort of, perhaps unintentionally, ignores material conditions to suit a larger narrative.
oh interesting. I don't know enough history to catch smaller oversights like these. Do you have an example I can think about?
It's not the historical part, it's the interpretation.
The right won't do anything. Then they do something and he comes up with a new set of excuses.
ah I see. Thanks for clarifying!
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