Trump’s base was vocally divided over the prospects of direct U.S. attacks up until the moment they happened.
The MAGA movement’s top influencers were divided over bombing Iran until Donald Trump did just that Saturday night.
Now, at least for the time being, the lay leaders in Trump’s base appear to be rallying around a position that spares Trump criticism: Direct attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities are justified, as long as American troops aren’t sent into a third full war halfway around the world in the last quarter of a century.
That’s the kind of attitude towards fascists that leads to complacency and a belief that it couldn’t happen here or we’re better than that. The most important thing to understand about a fascist is that they’re a person like you. No one is immune to the risk of falling into it. All it takes is the right circumstances to incentivize a person, and there’s a decent chance they will take up fascism.
If we hold that Nazis were monsters, or subhumans, or some other kind of beast entirely unlike us, we will never dig deep to understand what makes fascism appealing or what needs it serves, and we will miss the warning signs in ourselves and those around us should we start sliding towards it. I think most Americans missed their own country’s capacity for fascism until it was right on top of them, because they had spent decades imagining the Nazis as some special kind of inhuman monster. That attitude is dangerous. Fascists are ordinary people like us.
You got it all wrong, pal. Tolerance is what lead to complacency. They need the same treatment thrown back at them ten fold.
If they lose a job, cheer. If they are homeless, tell them to ask daddy Trump for help. If they are isolated from family, play the small violin.
And why the fuck should we keep trying to understand them?
I’m not saying we should tolerate fascists, or expend all our energies trying to understand why a hateful person is hateful. But we have to recognize that they’re not monsters or subhumans, they’re people. Cruel and hateful people, but people like us. Those tendencies are in us all, but in some people they become totally dominant and in other people they shrink until they’re almost not there. But they’re there.