Far-right Fascists are Mounting a Blitzkrieg Against our Basic Freedoms
Exposing the lies, racism, and oppressive, anti-American maneuvering of the fascist far right
Over the past eight years, Donald Trump, the GOP, the far right, and far-right media have successfully shifted the U.S. political landscape much, much further to the right. Sure, the far right was always a problem, and the GOP was never truly committed to “freedom and justice for all” — but now the far right has become a much bigger, much more dangerous problem, and today’s GOP is often working directly and unapologetically against “freedom and justice for all.”
Many Americans (especially Republicans) minimize the awful, traumatic impact Trump has had on our society, but to me it’s obvious that he severely undermined our national psyche and morality, and our government itself. In the process, he also normalized extreme hostility, racism, wild demagoguery, autocracy, and public “acting out.”
He embraced, or refused to condemn, white supremacy and misogyny and excelled at using racist “dog whistles” and constant attacks on the Democrats and “libtards” to whip up frenzied anger in his supporters. In a sense, we could even say that the Trump era liberated and validated many Americans’ “inner assholes” and “inner racists” (in a bizarre Trumpian twist on “inner child” psychology and pathology).
While many commentators and pundits predicted (hoped?) that the GOP would quickly move beyond Trump and Trumpism after Biden assumed office, that has decidedly not occurred. Far, far from it.
And after last November’s election, when almost all of Trump’s hand-picked, horrendous far-right candidates lost their races, most politics-watchers again expected the GOP to finally learn its lesson and move away from Trumpism and back towards the center.
Wrong.
Instead, the far right has been “doubling down” on Trumpism, and in some ways trying to ‘out-Trump’ Trump. Many powerful far-right figures, like Gov. DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Abbott of Texas, have been relentlessly ramping up their attacks on liberals, the LGBTQ+ community, voting rights, “wokeness,” and educational freedom. One of the many terrible lessons the GOP absorbed from Trump, apparently, is to keep attacking and attacking, and never back down, admit mistakes, or accept and adapt to criticism.
Today the standard GOP/far-right game plan is to never, ever back down or change course — and if criticized, to actually ramp up the exact same offensive behaviors or corrosive, divisive political positions, and “double down” (just like Trump did) in order to curry favor with Trump’s far-right base.
Thus, what we’re seeing now, in red states all around the country, is expanding, manic efforts to roll back women’s rights, voting rights for minorities, LGBTQ+ rights and freedoms, educators’ right to teach accurate, complete American history — and even librarians’ freedom to provide “dangerous” (meaning liberal or progressive-leaning) reading material.
But that’s not all. Even worse: All of these ongoing efforts, dangerous and un-American as they are, are only the tip of the iceberg.
The massive iceberg that’s wrecking America
The iceberg itself, the terrible “main event” — the huge, unseen, and deadliest part of it — is the constant, massive deluge of right-wing propaganda, insults, disinformation, and lies that has inundated our nation for decades now.
It’s created a vast army of mindless, enraged partisan fanatics — ultra-fertile ground for hateful far-right ideologies to take hold and prosper. We are now “reaping the whirlwind,” and facing the dreadful repercussions of decades of far-right indoctrination (mainly via Fox “News”, Newsmax, and other far-right radio and TV outlets).
The deadly iceberg that our ship of state already smashed into, which did vast damage and is now causing our semi-democracy to totter and increasingly disintegrate, is this: a complete, all-consuming, far-right-aligned “alternate reality” that embraces autocracy and white supremacy — and despises democracy.
This far-right “alternative reality” is a fully-formed, and extremely paranoid and hostile, total worldview. This hateful, paranoid worldview has been pounded into the minds and hearts of most right-leaning Americans for decades, to the point that fully 30–35 percent of Americans now see our nation, our laws, and life itself through entirely different eyes and belief systems than the rest of us.
Entirely, shockingly different beliefs like: Racism is OK. Misogyny is OK; antisemitism is OK. Hate and violence are OK (if they advance the far-right’s agenda). White supremacy is not only OK, but desirable.
That’s the fascist way. That’s the fascist methodology and mindset in action— and it has consumed and “programmed” many Americans.
And this is a huge, perhaps insurmountable, problem for our nation and our semi-democracy, going forward. It’s literally tearing our nation apart.
Our now-infamous divisiveness, for example, looks like it’s here to stay. Just last month, far-right nut job Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested that we need a “national divorce” in which America calls it quits, so “patriotic” red states and treasonous blue states can angrily go their separate ways. Last year, several polls showed that almost half of Americans expect a second civil war to erupt in the near future.
Clearly, our nation and our semi-democracy are not in a good place. (That’s the biggest understatement of the decade, probably.)
Manipulative “free speech” is fomenting chaos and hate
One of the main causes of all this hatefulness and chaos is our deep misunderstanding of “free speech”, and the far right’s intentional misrepresentation and abuse of our “free-speech” rights.
Our Constitution never supported total freedom of speech, and in fact only guarantees this freedom in regard to peoples’ ability to criticize the government. The First Amendment makes it illegal for the government to crack down on verbal or written dissent and ensures that people can speak out publicly against government policies they disagree with. That’s it. And even here, there are some exceptions, such as deliberate inciting of violence or insurrection.
Tellingly, private companies and entities are not included in this restriction, and can enforce limits on free speech and action at will, as long as they don’t injure or directly harm anyone.
That’s why companies can forbid certain speech or activity and can fire people who transgress. That’s also why restaurants can insist on certain kinds of dress, behavior, and speech in their establishments — and can forcibly remove patrons who don’t respect these rules.
In truth, there is not — and never has been — any Constitutional “right” to total “free speech”. Yet you’d never know this is the case, listening to the many far-right politicians, pundits, and agitators who are constantly yelling about conservatives’ “free-speech rights” being trampled, and about being “canceled” by the “liberal media.”
These folks want to be able to say, do, and threaten anything they want — without any repercussions or consequences. They’ve successfully hijacked and now own this issue of “free speech.” They want total freedom for their speech and for them — which, unfortunately for the rest of us, usually entails them having the “right” to attack and restrict any “others” (and others’ rights) not to their liking. You know, like Blacks, or Hispanics, or liberals, or gay people, or transgender people, or women seeking abortions.
When are “patriots” not really patriots?
Weirdly, despite its distinctly un-American attitudes and values, the far right has also owned the crucial territory of “patriotism” and has very successfully portrayed itself — in the minds of many Americans — as the ardent defender of Americans’ “freedom” and the fierce opponent of all things “woke.”
Imagine: Suddenly being awake, socially aware, and “woke” is seen as a vexing political annoyance to be attacked and brutally vanquished. It’s now seen as both a nasty, politically-correct “libtard” imposition and an extreme, anti-American excuse for restricting “our God-given freedoms.” According to the far right (using Orwellian doublespeak), “Wokeness is Slavery!”
The far right has turned “wokeness” into a caricature (and some progressives haven’t helped matters when they carry it to extremes). But the fundamental, basic meaning of “wokeness” reflects something very valuable, and indeed irreplaceable: social conscience and awareness. Which is something the far right wants to squash and suppress at all costs.
The horrific truth that’s emerging is that the far right is really interested only in its own unfettered freedom — the freedom to impose its malign will and values on the rest of us.
If American media were on the ball, and not subservient to the far right and/or kowtowing to the GOP and its loud apologists, our media environment and our public square would not be inundated by constant far-right lies, distortions, insults, threats, and outright incitement of violence.
If our media and government were on the ball, the far right would never have gotten this far and could never have succeeded in its massive re-branding campaign: portraying itself as the ultimate American “good guy” and defender of freedom and liberty. What a total crock!
The far-right “anger/resentment industrial complex”
Another potent aspect of the far right’s grim “success” is the way they have also owned the emotional territory of anger and resentment. The far right has always had an intense, rageful persecution complex: namely (so the storyline goes), that we poor, hapless, well-intentioned whites are always being maligned, attacked, limited, and “replaced” by greedy, aggressive minorities.
In defense of its long-standing, white supremacist “great replacement” theory, the far right has been incredibly effective at inciting or inflating peoples’ anger and resentment about perceived injustices or demeaning slights that whites have supposedly “endured” at the hands of Blacks, Hispanics, immigrants, etc. (and now far-right paranoia has been extended to include gays, unions, women, transgender folks, etc.).
Some commentators I greatly respect have even referred to today’s far-right media and ideology as the “far-right anger/resentment industrial complex.”
Of course, this socially-destructive “anger/resentment industrial complex” is entirely dependent on the blatant, intentional misrepresentation and abuse of our “free speech” ideals and laws mentioned above — because without such intentional misrepresentation and abuse, most of the far right’s hateful agenda would never make it onto our public airwaves or be allowed to dominate and contaminate our public discourse.
We’ve poisoned our bed — and now we’re lying in it
In any sane society, strict limits on hate speech and public incitement of violence would quickly be imposed, and the situation would never have gotten this far out of hand.
But that’s not where we are. At all. In a nutshell, we’ve allowed — quite shamefully — the racists, far-right ideologues, and white Christian nationalists to take over our airwaves and completely dominate the public discourse. As this article’s title puts it, the GOP and the far right are mounting a blitzkrieg attack against our foundational freedoms — and so far, it’s a strikingly successful blitzkrieg.
And we are doing very, very little to stop them.
The clock is ticking, people — counting down, if we don’t do something effective very soon, to the complete annihilation of our American experiment. And our remaining freedom(s).
Tick-tock.
