But please, answer my question: do you disagree that the discourse of Trump's administration, where immigrants and minorities are "the enemy" and every measure is allowed against them, is not fascism?
To quote one of their golden boys Pete Hegseth's book *first* chapter:
> The other side—the Left—is not our friend. We are not “esteemed colleagues,” nor mere political opponents. We are foes. Either we win, or they win—we agree on nothing else.
> The United States has the top economy and military in the world, but our cultural and educational institutions—America’s soul—have succumbed to leftist rot.
Sure, let's examine this. Do you disagree that most organisations are extremely dominated by the left? Something like 90% of people in academia, media, schools, (until recently) corporate leadership, various government institutions etc vote democrat. Do you disagree that in the past 20 years or so, the right has been heavily censored online and in the work place by the left? These are all facts, he is not wrong here. When one side has spent 20 years pushing out the other, taking over institutions, censoring them and calling them fascist/nazi, don't be surprised when they are viewed as the enemy.
I also know exactly what you're thinking, the reasoning you use to justify this:
1. It's not censorship, it's preventing disinformation and "hate". This argument doesn't hold when "disinformation" is political opinions of roughly 50% of the country
2. Academia and institutions lean left because Republicans are simply less intelligent than Democrats. "Truth has a liberal bias". You think kind of arrogance from the left is conductive to a good dialogue and friendly relations?
I am of the opinion that Trump is nowhere near bad enough to choose the latter option; we should preserve democracy I think and allow that the majority of voters are not wrong or "too far" right. Yet a whole lot of people seem to be of the opposite opinion.
It’s like people haven’t even touched a history book sometimes.
You can also look at the parallels to Trump and his continued assault on the democratic norms in the US government. For example assuming powers that are those of Congress, trying to control what states can do via executive order, a thankfully rebuffed attempt at gerrymandering even the Republicans shied away from and so on.
If one believes democracy is important one must also believe that we need checks and balances within government such that democracy is maintained in the face of bad actors. Trump is not the only elected person in government after all and democracy requires free and fair elections to continue when his presidency ends.
Also nothing about a democratic result means that any side needs to be happy about it or that anyone is or should be protected from criticism.
It wasn't, but as I said, if the majority of voters do wish to commit mass murder, that is actually not trivially ignorable.
> You can also look at the parallels to Trump and his continued assault on the democratic norms in the US government. For example assuming powers that are those of Congress, trying to control what states can do via executive order, a thankfully rebuffed attempt at gerrymandering even the Republicans shied away from and so on.
Congress is our representatives. They are philosophically us. The majority of them do not want to impeach Trump for these things. Also the majority of voters reelected Trump knowing how he is. The way things are going is how the people want it (if you believe in democracy and the philosophy of representatives).
> If one believes democracy is important one must also believe that we need checks and balances within government such that democracy is maintained in the face of bad actors. Trump is not the only elected person in government after all and democracy requires free and fair elections to continue when his presidency ends.
There has been absolutely nothing to suggest that democracy, as in the literal sense of voting to determine representation, is at risk from inside the political apparatus. I don't consider Jan6 anything of that sort btw.
> Also nothing about a democratic result means that any side needs to be happy about it or that anyone is or should be protected from criticism
Sure, but the crux of the issue is that the left is going beyond criticism. The vocal left continuously claims that the elected government, and crucially those people who voted for it, are in some outgroup (nazis, fascists, bigots et al) that does not deserve to have democratic power in the country by their very nature. They weild the 'paradox of tolerance' as a bludgeon to disenfranchise half the country. It's unhealthy for democracy, both in itself and because when a group feels under (politically) existential attack they will do heinous things to survive.