Speaker 1: So let's talk about some of the specific policies and there are so many, but
let's talk about a few.
The Muslim Ban.
One of the first things that Donald Trump did as president was sign an executive order
banning travel from several Muslim majority countries.
It was done under the guise of protecting the United States, but it targeted Muslim
majority countries that had not actually been the sources of terrorism to the United States.
You could make the case that either way it was fascistic, but particularly when you're
not even targeting the right countries based on what you claim to want to achieve discriminatory
and absolutely authoritarian, scale up of the separation of families at the border,
the zero tolerance policy at the southern border, which resulted in the separation of
families and the detention of children in cages.
Inhumane, cruel, emblematic of fascistic authoritarianism.
The attacks on media.
Trump calling the media fake news.
Trump saying, You can't believe what you are hearing and seeing.
You've got to listen to me to know the truth.
Enemy of the people.
Get Jim Acosta out of the White House press briefing room, get adversarial media shut
down, etc., etc.
Undermining free press, which is a cornerstone of democracy, voter suppression of pushing
for.
For voter ID of the kind that would just make it harder for people to vote.
Shortening early voting hours, pushing for all of these different things while claiming
they are trying to steal and cheat and rob an election extraordinarily fascistic.
Militarizing the police.
Trump supported the use of military equipment by police under the guise of law and order,
and that was an open attempt to suppress dissidents, protesters and those with views adversarial
to Trump embracing authoritarian and dictatorial leaders.
Right.
I mean, listen, when you criticize Canada and France and Germany, democratic countries
and you go, I don't know.
I believe Putin, no matter what he says and I'm Kim Jong un and I wrote each other love
letters.
And Duterte has been very strong on drugs.
And she does quick trials and the death penalty for drug dealers and Bolsonaro and Erdogan
and Orban.
This is another authoritarian, fascistic slide, the entire attempt to steal an election.
Trump didn't win, of course, straight out of the dictator's playbook.
And then lastly, I would also point to hard core attempts to control private entities,
private businesses for your personal political gain.
And I'm thinking of big tech and social media.
We don't want to we don't want to regulate businesses unless it's absolutely necessary.
Businesses should be allowed to regulate themselves and do what they want, except when we want
to force Twitter to publish.
Trump's election lies covered this information and on and on.
So bottom line, the modern Republican Party may not fit all of the characteristics of
fascist ideology, and we certainly are not living under fascism in the United States.
And we weren't when Trump was president either.
But there are elements of extreme authoritarianism, nationalism, right wing populist rhetoric
used to justify some pretty hard core policy.
And it should concern all of us who worry about this fascistic direction to the American
Republican Party.
Fascism?
No, not yet.
Fascistic authoritarianism with some dictatorial dreams.
100%.
Let's talk about something else.
Many have written to me about.
What the hell happened to the alt right?
Where did they go?
Are they still around at the start of Trump's presidency?
Everything was alt right.
We are the alt right.
They are the alt right, both self-professed and discussed in media, in policy circles,
etc..
Rarely, if ever, do we hear about the alt right today.
So what happened to it?
Did it go the way of the Tea Party?
Partially destroyed.
Partially integrated into the modern Republican Party.
Has MAGA Trumpism essentially absorbed the alt right?
Well, let's talk about it.
In the early 20 tens, as the Tea Party had gotten their wins and then started to fade.
That happened in 2010.
So then you go to 2013, 2014.
This new political movement emerged in the United States, which was ultimately known
as the alt right, loosely defined group of individuals, rejected mainstream conservatism,
dabbled in white nationalism, dabbled in anti-Semitism, dabbled in xenophobia and all sorts of other
far right ideologies.
And as the 2016 presidential election got going and Donald Trump ultimately won the
nomination of the Republican Party and became a general election candidate and won 2015
2016, 2017, we saw the alt right gained significant prominence.
Since then, though, the alt right as such has significantly faded out of public eye.
Why did this happen?
There's a number of things that are going on important to identify, to understand the
continued evolution of MAGA Trumpism number one.
The alt right as such started to get hit with significant backlash from media, from the
left and from mainstream conservatives as well.
People like, you know, Mitt Romney, Kinzinger, etc., who distanced themselves from the movement
and condemned its extremist views.
They saw that under Trumpism it was continuing to grow and that it wasn't a good thing as
far as they were concerned.
Secondly, many of the alt right leaders ended up exposed.
They were exposed as really just being racist, really just being anti-Semitic, really just
being xenophobic.
And so many of the alt right leaders lost credibility and they lost support and some
of them ended up kind of dissolving into MAGA Trumpism.
Third, we saw MAGA Trumpism.
Accept and absorb some elements of Alt-Right ideology.
Certainly the cultish loyalty to Donald Trump, the rejection of establishment politics, embracing
populist rhetoric, which you then fill in with right wing policy prescriptions when
it comes to it.
And so Maga Trumpism, I mean, listen, I'm trying to be fair and charitable here.
There are, of course elements of anti-Semitism and white nationalism and MAGA Trump ism without
a doubt.
I don't believe Trump created them, but he coalesced them and he welcomed them in the
MAGA Trump ism.
Try to be accurate but also not weaken it.
Maga Trumpism was less overtly anti-Semitic and homophobic and whatever else the case
may be than the alt right, and thus has achieved some success by kind of integrating some of
those alt right elements into it.
One big difference between the alt right and MAGA Trumpism is that MAGA Trumpism has succeeded
in part because they have this charismatic to some degree cult like leader in Trump,
whereas the alt right never really had that leader.
They had a bunch of different people who led different aspects of it.
Richard Spencer Maybe.
Gavin McGuinness And I know I'm forgetting a bunch of others, but they didn't have Trump.
And so Trump's presence was a big factor in MAGA, Trumpism superseding the alt right.
So bottom line, the alt right as such has indeed greatly faded from public view.
Its views haven't gone away and it has a legacy inside of MAGA Trumpism.
The question we are now left with is will it survive another election cycle or will
the Bo burts and the Marjorie Taylor Green's and Trump himself suffer a 2024 defeat?
That could be the final nail in the coffin for this roughly decade period is what it
will be at the end of the day.
Eight years, ten years, roughly 11 years, depending on when you consider the start of
alt right will all right die as part of MAGA Trumpism in 2024.
That's the question that remains to be answered and one we're going to continue asking.
We'll take a quick break.
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But we have too much to talk about today for me to spend too much more time on that.