Summary
Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell claims Republicans fear criticizing Donald Trump due to threats against them and their families.
He says Trump’s social media attacks provoke harassment, forcing lawmakers to consider costly security measures. This fear, he argues, is eroding GOP support for Ukraine and discouraging opposition to Trump’s policies.
Other figures, including Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney, have echoed these concerns. Elon Musk has also pressured Republicans by funding primary challenges.
Some GOP lawmakers reportedly faced FBI warnings of credible death threats for opposing Trump-backed nominees.
That’s what fascism feels like.
You’re not allowed to say that or invoke Hitler until we’re all in gas chambers! You’re only allowed to call it out after it happens! You’re supposed to believe the liars until people start writing the history of the events!
-Magoos
Historically, the problem of “this is just like Hitler!!!” has been the way in which it numbs people to the invocation.
That is, in no small part, the appeal among conservatives of calling everyone from Hegel to Whole Foods a form of creeping fascism. Putting every liberal politician (and a fair number of conservatives) in Hitler Cosplay helped diminish the idea of an authoritarian police state to seat belt laws and smoking bans.
The flip side is that stodgy NYT Op-Ed Writers who casually reject that any fascist impulse exists at all. Everyone from Fransisco Franco to Sheriff Joe Arpaio was just interested in Law & Order. The game of explaining why a given genocidal policy or nakedly fascist aesthetic is actually something different, you idiot, you imbecile, goes right up to the point of denying migrant detention camps along the border and mass extermination of Semitic people in the Middle East and trillionaires doing the “Roman” salute are what they clearly appear to be.
In the end
gets you coming and going.
It becomes a casual invective to describe even the most mildly distasteful political views and a “you’re just being hysterical” rebuttal to any policy that is quite literally adopting mass extermination.
Yep. Fascism doesn’t work without a dedicated cult of personality, and that’s exactly what Trump has with his legion of MAGA asshole-idiots who are willing to commit violence for their messiah.
They can’t kill all of us.
What do you think they develop AI for?
How so? Do you own any guns to protect us?
No. Can I have one of yours?
Because if we actually did what they did for the Civil Rights, show up to DC in the hundreds of thousands, they wouldnt have the balls to call the military death squads. Without even entering, we would win. No man is without fear. Everyone is scared. You either allow the fascists to take over or you dont. There is no path that allows a peaceful way forward without action.
They would absolutely call the military death squads.
They can literally try
I mean, that’s like 3 or 4 missiles from a helicopter or drone. The US military would logistically have no problem taking out that many people.
Tiananmen Square had like 1.5m people at one point. Thousands hurt or killed. But that was just army tanks and soldiers.
They didn’t have any of the fancy dispersal shit they do now.
Plus if there were ever a march the size of the March on Washington, they’d close access to DC.
No bridge crossings, no ferries, no subways.
The Civil Rights protestors didnt care about any of this (though they couldn’t care about Tiananmen yet).
They had a commander in chief that supported them. So long as they kept their word, he did
No, they absolutely still would. The amount of people means less than nothing. That is absolutely on the table with them.
Looks like a target-rich environment for raking belt-fed machine gun fire. Tiananmen Square had a lot of determined, angry people show up too.
Might wanna pack more than some picket signs.
There’s plenty more bootlicker MAGA loyalists, who all have enough firearms to equip quadruple their numbers and pacify a crowd double that size. You underestimate their rabid stupidity, which is how these dipshits got into power in the first place. Fuck Trump and fuck MAGA, but dont forget Democrats are all toothless finger waggling pearl-clutchers and allowed this to happen.