This is from FaceBook, written by David Gerrold. It's about the history of the fascist takeover of The USA.
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The conversion of the Republican party into a neo-fascist institution began in the 50s when Fred Koch, father of Charles and David, funded the creation of the John Birch Society.
You can still find copies of the Birch Society Blue Book and Black Book. They read like the English translation of Mein Kampf. They contain specific plans for taking over the government one step at a time -- by taking over school boards, by appointing conservative judges, by working from the ground up. They called democracy "mobocracy," and insisted that it was a form of government that didn't work. What was needed was "a strong leader." Ohell, Hitler said the same thing in many of his speeches as he climbed toward power.
In the fifties, the Birch Society supported Joe McCarthy and claimed that Eisenhower was "soft on Communism." They started attacking the liberal members of the party. By the 70s, the fanatics of the radical right were openly booing Vice President Nelson Rockefeller at the Republican National Convention.
Nixon's downfall created a vacuum in the Republican party. The radical right moved in. By now, they were calling themselves "the new right," but it was the same playbook. While the Birch Society had done its best to avoid publicity, they (and related groups) had formed a powerful behind-the-scenes alliance. By the end of the 70s, they pretty much controlled the party.
Larry Kramer addressed this in one of his last books, writing that nine powerful Republican families had united to ensure that "the sixties would never happen again."
BTW, Nixon remained a powerful behind-the-scenes operator for many years, teaching Republican candidates how to smear their opponents, a trick he had mastered in his first campaign for congress when he smeared Democratic representative Jerry Voorhis, and again in 1950 when he smeared Democratic Senatorial candidate, Helen Gahagan Douglas.
The election of Ronald Reagan was seen as a comeback for the party, but it was not. Reagan was a figurehead. The behind-the-scenes cabal had learned an important lesson when they pushed him into the governorship of CA. A popular figurehead would make the voters think they had a leader, while the people he appointed would go to work implementing their radical agenda. In CA, they shut down the mental health care system and thousands of mentally disabled people were pushed out onto the streets. That's where the homeless problem started in the state.
As president, Reagan was popular -- ohell, he'd learned how to play popular heroes in front of the camera, the presidency wasn't much different. (But his history as president of the Screen Actors Guild was near-disastrous. He cooperated with the House Unamerican Activities Committee, helped establish the blacklist -- and that was why the Academy never gave him an honorary Oscar.)
So while Reagan pretended to be a good president, the people in his cabinet set about their real task of ripping out the government machinery they hated. Watt and Butz, Agriculture and Interior, pretty much destroyed their departments.
This was a radical departure from the past. In the past, when a bill was signed into law, both parties assumed the responsibility of making that law work. The new game plan for the Republican party was to undo the advances of past Democratic administrations, doing as much damage as they could.
The Reagan administration's damage to the country was to give citizenship to Rupert Murdoch for the creation of Fox News. They also ended the Equal Time rule for broadcasters, so Fox News could become a propaganda outlet. (Fox News was a predatory corporation, but that's a whole other rant.)
Reagan also promised "trickle-down" economics, which gave massive tax breaks to the wealthy and paid for them by taxing Social Security income. (Income which had already been taxed.)
Reagan said that government was the problem, and set out to make it so. His administration also gave us Oliver North and the Iran-Contra scandal.
And not to put too fine a point on it, Reagan's descent into Alzheimer's was noticeable even during his campaign for a second term. This gave the manipulators in his administration the opportunity to do even more damage. Oh, and along the way, they started to polarize the country by describing liberals as their enemy.
The radical right worked to make the Republican party a monolithic structure. In the 90s, Newt Gingrich sent out his infamous GOPAC memo, instructing fellow Republicans to use adjectives like "reckless" and "socialist" when campaigning against liberals and moderates.
Approaching the end of the century, the Republican party had even purged itself of most of its moderate members. Somewhere in there, Speaker Dennis Hastert (later convicted of child-molesting) established the Hastert rule for Republican members of the House of Representatives -- ie, the Republicans would vote as a block, and that vote would be determined by what a majority of the Republicans wanted. So when the tea party had 51% of the Republican representatives, they could control the entire Republican vote. This was when obstructionism
became a party policy. They fought Bill Clinton on every advance, even when it was good for the country. Bill Clinton's administration was deliberately hobbled by a party that no longer focused on the good of the nation. The Lewinsky scandal gave them an opportunity to impeach Clinton -- widely seen among the party members as payback for Nixon.
The Republican party no longer has a vision for the future of America -- they wanted power, and to get power they were going to demonize liberals and moderates. That has been the underlying theme of all their most recent campaigns.
By 2016, the Republican party had been consolidated as a monolithic neo-fascist organization. Republican candidates were specifically trained (brainwashed) into what would be expected of them in congress. Any Republican who did not agree ended up with a primary challenge from a more compliant fanatic.
So once that transformation was complete, it was a simple matter for Vladimir Putin to push the candidacy of a mentally unstable reality show grifter, a man who put into practice many of the same techniques that had worked so well for Hitler: "Exhaust the opposition. Suck the air out of the room so there's nothing for anyone else. Demonize, rabble-rouse, and claim an arrogant authority." (Donald Trump admired Hitler, this is no secret.)
So while Trump enjoyed the perks of the office, the people who installed him did their best to rip out the wiring of the American government. Trump's goal was to undo Obama's legacy, and to a great extent, he succeeded.
There are people who want to believe that the Republican party is still a viable American institution. Perhaps on a local level it is.
But the events of January 6th were an opportunity for the Republican party to show its true colors. And they have. The insurrection was a coup attempt -- and the failure of the Republican party to act to protect American democracy is as clear a signal as one could ask for that the Republican party is no longer an American institution, but a neo-fascist conspiracy.
There are still a few Republicans who are willing to speak out against Trump and the people who put him in power -- but they are not the leaders of the party. They are outliers. When they speak up, they get trashed as disloyal. Not to America, but to the party.
The Republican party is in a demographic death spiral, but until they are purged from their offices, they will use every legislative trick they can create to prevent the majority of Americans from voting them out.
This is why it is imperative for all Americans to do whatever is necessary to vote and make sure their vote is fairly counted. We did not win in 2020 as much as we bought ourselves time to gear up for the next big battles.
The neo-fascists who run the Republican party have been playing the long game for 70 years, they are still playing their long game. The rest of us have our work cut out for us.
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