‘Red Caesarism’ is rightwing code – and some Republicans are listening

WHYAREWEALLCAPS@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 114 points –
‘Red Caesarism’ is rightwing code – and some Republicans are listening
theguardian.com
21

post-Constitutional

And those fucks have the nerve to call themselves patriots.

As the fascist ideology demands, only the subversion and destruction of democracy can save it.

No one around me agrees with me. Surely, it must be literally everything else that’s wrong.

sigh, i gotta deal with this every day with my parents lmao

i’m exhausted

My father isn't quite "Red Caesar," but he recently told me that his dream ticket is Trump and RFK Jr. 🤦‍♂️

The sad part is that, when I carefully avoid buzzwords, he'll actually agree with me on things. Say Medicare For All and he'll rant about how that's socialism. However, when he praises Medicare, he'll sometimes wonder why more people can't sign up for it. (Like, maybe allow All to get Medicare?)

If you say Defund the Police (a slogan I think is stupid), he'll rant about lawlessness and crime. But talk about the specific issues and he'll agree that the police unions have too much power, police officers who abuse their positions should be fired - not rehired one precinct over - and that police should have more training so that they don't act like the first thing to do is whip out their gun and open fire.

It's like he comes close to understanding why Progressiveism is good, but then immediately slides back into MAGA-land.

That’s propaganda-driven cult behavior.

It’s a serious, like, planet-about-to-kill-us-serious, problem

It's as much of a "code" as claiming Obama was born in Kenya or chanting "let's go Brandon;" it's completely obvious what they're going for, but they think they're being clever.

Anyone currently supporting the GOP is either a neo-fascist or is comfortable in bed with them (which makes them actual neo-fascists). "Red Caesarism" is about getting people comfortable with that fact.

Asking for a repeat of a republic being torn down by a literal dictator. Might as well call it "Red Palpatine" since subtlety is out the window

Exactly.

This is the next step after "tHe US iSn'T a DeMoCrAcY, iT's A rEPuBlIC!"

Time to Caesarean the Republican party.

I'd rather a decades-late abortion for them, to be honest.

Must be easier than getting everyone copies of the turner diaries.

It used to be people like Timothy Mcveigh reading that shit and shouting “race war” while they confused reality for the distopian world of that book,one filled with “tolerance police”.

Now they just make up a few words, say “the end is here” and watch newsmax.

So, literally a fascist in every sense.

I mean, yeah - we know. It’s bad. Our sweet old aunts and the neighbor who waves hello are all supporting this, even if they don’t or won’t know it. Heck some of the most marginalized and wronged people in society support this “right-wing”, “conservative” “ideology”.

I think the reasons why they do have everything to do with the media by which they would otherwise learn they do not. This propaganda is hitting society right in the göebbels.

This is the best summary I could come up with:


In June, the rightwing academic published a book-length polemic claiming that ideas that had emerged from what he called the radical left were now so dominant that the US republic its founders envisioned was effectively at an end.

Slack, a politics professor at the conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan, made conspiratorial and extreme arguments now common on the antidemocratic right, that “transgenderism, anti-white racism, censorship, cronyism … are now the policies of an entire cosmopolitan class that includes much of the entrenched bureaucracy, the military, the media, and government-sponsored corporations”.

For the last three years, parts of the American right have advocated a theory called Caesarism as an authoritarian solution to the claimed collapse of the US republic in conference rooms, podcasts and the house organs of the extreme right, especially those associated with the Claremont Institute thinktank.

Though on the surface this discussion might seem esoteric, experts who track extremism in the US say that due to their influence on the Republican party, the rightwing intellectuals who espouse these ideas about the attractions of autocracy present a profound threat to American democracy.

Their calls for a “red Caesar” are now only growing louder as Donald Trump, whose supporters attempted to violently halt the election of Joe Biden in 2020, has assumed dominant frontrunner status in the 2024 Republican nomination race.

His diagnosis of US social and cultural life unfolds under a series of subheadings that are almost comical in their disillusionment: “The universities have become evil”, “Our economy is fake”, “The people are corrupt”, “Our civilization has lost the will to live”.


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I love how these Rabid Right™ fucksticks rant about the "radical left" and then basically list things that amount to not being a total fucking asshole.

Regressivism is sick and twisted, and I really wished humanity didn't consist of quite so many of these fucked up people.

Part of it is projection. Part is them assuming that if they want to do X, then the other side must be doing it even more. (Which they also use to excuse doing X.)

We must show them more painted roman sculptures. For the sake of society. We can't let history be misunderstood as this being the least racist, least bigoted time, for fuck's sake.