Fascism Watch for 28 February, 2023

[solarbird]

Florida State Republican Senator Blaise Ingoglia wants to “cancel,” by which he means “disband,” the Democratic Party. He’s filed a bill to that effect.

And I do mean that literally, as in the Democratic Party in the state would be deregistered, and all voter party registrations would be revoked. A new party could be formed with a “substantially different” name from “any party previously registered,” and it would have to file as a party no less than six months before an election.

Since the bill would take effect July 1, 2023, that means _no_ new party could register for elections in 2023, making Florida a one-party state.

This is fascism.

In not at all related news, Florida Governor DeSantis refuses to condemn street Nazi harassment of Jews, so the Volusia County sheriff has stepped up. It’s extra spicy, too. Good for him.

In other not at all related news, DeSantis’s education bill – HB 999 – would impose massive state censorship on education through university, and would sanction any programmes or campus activities that “expouse diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Those words are literally in the bill. That’s literally a quote.

And it’s fascism.

I’ve sure you’ve heard, so I’m being light on coverage here, but Elon Musk went into full defense of Dilbert Man’s racist/segregationist rant. He deleted his tweets eventually, but then kind of double down, and supported Dilbert Man’s “blame the media” bullshit. (Here’s WaPo’s full article if you have a subscription.)

Musk is also continuing to amplify Russian propaganda. He won’t stop, I mean – that’s the whole point. Turn Twitter into a far-right disinformation and propaganda fountain and hope that makes it profitable. That’s why Twitter has to fail, and why everyone should leave it in order to help make that happen.

One of the better comments I’ve seen on Musk and Musk Twitter is this post originally on YouTube but echoed to Mastodon since there wasn’t a direct way to link it; it’s worth a read.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Comments

[vatine]

Following the pattern that Adams eventually settled on, I now think of him as Racistbert.

[solarbird]

And misogynist. But I guess MisogynRacistBert is a bit of a mouthful.

What's the over/under on "I was ready to retire Dilbert anyway, now here's my new comic for fashlandia," anyway?

[vatine]

Yeah, I pretty much gave up on Dilbert as a comic (and Racistbert as a creator) in the late 90s, early 00s, when he turned out to be an under-wise misogynist with in general (to me) troubling views.

[solarbird]

Yeah, that's when I bailed too. It was like, "Oh."

[vatine]

Oh, my. Apparently, they're trying to be sneaky and not mentioning the Democratic Party by name, and instead going for "any party that supports, or has previously advocated for, slavery or indentured servitude". And I fail to see how this manages to apply to the Democrats and not to the Republicans.

My hazy (since I am not now, nor have ever, been domiciled on that side of the Atlantic, even if I have visited, multiple times) recollection is that if you go back to the 1820s-1830s, all parties basically went "yeah, that shit's just fine", then eventually the Republicans were the first that shifted to "maybe not?" and once the Democrats did that, then the Republicans started sliding WELL back into "yeah. that shit's just fine".

But, then, we only get US political history in extremely sparse drips and drabs here.

[rmd]

Yeah, the Republicans definitely had platform planks saying "yeah, we're good, it's important that states be able to do that"

[solarbird]

noooooo... it really didn't. I really don't see that as a reasonable reading of those platforms.

Yeah, the first couple - before the war - don't immediately call for ending slavery in states where it exists, but they are walking a damn fine line there and are extremely clear and in very strong words against it anywhere else, and the terms they use are not gracious. It is at worst a "we have to live with it but not one mile more" set of opinions.

I mean... go read them.

[solarbird]

The Republican Party didn't exist back in the 1820s and 30s. Genuinely.

The major opposition party in that era were the Whigs, formed after the Federalist Party dissolved. The Republican Party, in turn, didn't form until after the Whigs fell apart - and it was founded as a party specifically dedicated to opposing any expansion of slavery. It didn't advocate explicitly against slavery in the South until the Civil War, but... I mean... read the first platform. It's a real reach to call that "okay with slavery" when they call it a relic of barbarism.

The Republican Party of then is very much not the Republican Party of today.

[vatine]

Huh, cool, I learned something.

I did know that the Republican party was the first with an explicit "no slavery", and that the Reps and Dems swapped positions on that sometime in the 20th century. But, I genuinely thought it was a change within an existing party, not a new party. So, cool.

[solarbird]

It was a little less clean than a pure swap; in the 1910s, the Democratic Party, mostly on urging from north democrats, started moving away from nativist anti-Catholicism, which culminated in them not just abandoning it but nominating a Catholic politician for president in 1928. (Al Smith, who lost to Herbert Hoover.)

That was the beginning of a long slow move of the Democratic Party away from nativist positions - at least, outside of the South. White southerners reacted predictably, forming the States Rights Democratic Party, a.k.a. the Dixiecrats, a fairly short-lived Southern party.

But every time the Democrats outside the south moved further away from nativism, you had another upswing of discontent in the funcitonally-one-party south. In 1960, the segregationist Byrd/Thurman democratic pairing got 16 electoral votes. In 1964, Republican Barry Goldwater carried the "deep south" states, because of his opposition to the civil rights act - not on the basis of civil rights, in theory, but on the basis of Federalism.

And that's when Richard Nixon saw his way forward.

The South, you see, has been a one-party block for a very, very, very long time, because you have whoever the White People's Party is today, and then you have everyone else, and the White People's Party makes it as difficult as possible if not impossible for anyone to get anywhere, and as Johnson said after signing the civil rights act, "We've just lost the South for three generations."

So in 1968, you got the American Independent Party - the Dixiecrats Part 2, far-right segregationists - won five states, all again in the deep south, and the Southern Strategy, wherein Republicans started wooing the far-right on wink-and-nod not-explicitly-racist grounds.

What that did over time was bring the solid south over to them, as they became the Southern White People's Party, and that's how it's been ever since. It hasn't been as solid as it was for the Democrats, as they've been less good at keeping their states completely single-party - but as I imagine you've noticed, they're working real fucking hard these days on that.

And that's the story, in rough terms, of how the Democrats stopped being the Southern White People's Party, and how the Republicans took that mantel upon themselves. The real party, regardless of whatever label they're using in any given year, is the SWPP.

(And it's not just the south, but it is particularly in the south, and the south is where it's genuinely most clear.)