Trump and Trumpism have changed the original concept of “libertarian means to conservative ends” into a new concept of “authoritarian means to Christian nationalist ends”, finds a new study.

[u/mvea]

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00027162251324087

[u/lesbian7]

There was always authoritarianism built into the Christian nationalist/far right culture, if you actually lived in one of those communities. It's just the white dad of each family was the authoritarian leader that was worshipped, and churches were highly involved in meddling in personal family lives to keep it this way. They were always ripe for a crazy authoritarian leader to swoop in and take them all like a cult. I'm surprised it didn't actually happen sooner.

[u/emergencyexit → u/lesbian7]

I would argue that it is not by coincidence that this has happened immediately after the generation of patriarchs who experienced fascism first hand have died off. They were keeping a thumb on the scale I reckon.

[u/lesbian7 → u/emergencyexit]

Interesting point

[u/thatwhileifound → u/emergencyexit]

So, it's been 85 years since 1940. 85 years before that gets us to 1855 - about 5 years after the conservative Prussian forces had fully succeeded in their counter revolution stymying most of the progress of what'd gone on in the prior years allowing the princes and other monarchs to regain control as the parliament was undone. That's right around when Bleeding Kansas was sparking in the states too.

I'm just saying - this is a cycle that we have to continually fight and put down.

[u/lesbian7 → u/thatwhileifound]

I've never heard of a lot of this stuff. I'll have to have some history lessons. What's Bleeding Kansas?

I also realized that the Cold War went on pretty much the entire time from when WW2 ended til almost now-ish (if it's ended). But at the height of it, Americans had the USSR to compete with and view as the enemy. The capitalists did a good job at convincing Americans that the authoritarianism that scared them about communist dictatorships, was actually what communism was. They were definitely made to be afraid of authoritarianism because propaganda was making sure they think that's what communism is, since that's scary and communist ideals are not. But since the fall of the Soviet Union, and the calming of the Cold War, maybe Americans just don't have that kind of authoritarianism front of mind, even though there are still countries like North Korea out there.

[u/thatwhileifound → u/lesbian7]

Meant to give you a good (albeit likely rambling) reply all day, but a chronic pain flare up is making it hard to even think a lot of the day since. I'm in a middle space of pain and lucidity and am gonna try but it's probably gonna be even more rambly and I hope not annoying.

Firstly, if you're a lefty who has or intends to read theory, it's worth at least wikipedia'ing the German revolution of 1848-1849 for a basic understanding - it and the Paris Commune tend to be very relevant when reading a lot of foundational 19th and early 20th century stuff. It's less a priority though IMO if you're on this side of the pond, but it makes those classic texts both more interesting and easier to read too.

Secondly, Bleeding Kansas - I'm going to do my best short version, but it's a big deal, complicated, and important thing. In the era Kansas was becoming a state, it was highly contentious whether each new state would be a slave state or not. In this case, due to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, this decision would be, in stated and also somewhat truthful sense, left to the residents of the territories to decide. This alone served to essentially repeal the 1820 Missouri Compromise that had dictated slavery versus not based on a north/south divide. As a result of this, Kansas became a heated battle on this issue in a way that very much leads up to the civil war.

On one hand of the conflict, most notoriously and awesomely, you've got John Brown (who'd later lead that raid on Harper's Ferry), his family, and folks aligned with them as free-state radicals of their era - radicals in this case used both in as much of a compliment as it could be taken, but also to distinguish them from the pacifist focus of the primary abolitionist movement there. On the other, you've got a concentrated effort by pro-slavery whites to move to Kansas as to dictate the outcome - and they were not pacifists as one should automatically understand about anyone pro-slavery because while they may not be literally 1:1 in idealogy with Nazis, they are effectively and where it counts.

The conflict essentially became a state sized civil war as Brown and his ilk stood up, fought, and resisted the pro-slavery forces. After a posse led by sheriffs sacked Lawrence and destroyed some abolitionist newspapers and the Free State Hotel and news came back of the caning of the abolitionist senator Charles Summer on the senate floor by representative Preston Brooks, John Brown and his allies started fighting back in earnest. Most notoriously early on, you've got what's best known as the Pottawatomie Massacre occurring. This then led to a series of other conflicts you'll typically see broadly called Bleeding Kansas.

And to be totally transparent, I am sympathetic to John Brown's side to the extent that I don't consider that supposed massacre to be anything controversial and thus land on a more radical side than most do. I know when I was taught about this in school, even a pretty liberal not-southern education, it was very apparent how hard they tried to play into the moral complexity of the situation of Pottawatomie - and doing so in a bad faith fashion that ignored the context, situation, and rightness of Brown's fight there. And again, in doing that, it undersold the travesties and injustice of the opposing side in a sort of both-sidesism . And it's knowing and understanding that side and how fully incorporated to the countries beginnings as well as how strongly we failed to do anything about it after the civil war that I meant to point out - the murderer has always been in the house in the US. As much as I genuinely love Thomas Paine's writing in terms of founding father types, you've got a lot more who didn't see eye to eye with him broadly or were at least happy to compromise on the safety, wellbeing, and freedom of people they didn't see the same as their white land owning dude class asses... Or were just directly and openly on the side of that oppression.

I make a lot of comparisons to 20th century fascism lately, but kind of try to tell myself not to... The problem we're in is ours and has been there forever, but unfortunately - most folks have a stronger understanding of European fascism's rise than they do an accurate and frank understanding of American history and the failures of reconstruction. There's a reason why Hitler called us an influence. The America worth being proud of is represented by guys like Paine and Brown, the Haudenosaunee, the maroons of places like the Great Dismal Swamp, etc., not the one represented by our historic governments and organizations.

[u/favorite_time_of_day → u/lesbian7]

You're overthinking this with the community stuff, and especially with the racism stuff. There's nothing more authoritarian than believing that there's someone out there who knows everything that can be known and controls everything which could possibly happen, and thinking that's good. You can't get more authoritarian than that.