Take America Back?

When a conference promotes the slogan "Take [insert country here] Back!" there's more than a good chance we're dealing with a protofascist undertaking. And it becomes a certainty when all the rhetoric revolves around inciting fear and hatred against an imaginary and powerful enemy.

This is what fascists do: they take legitimate feelings of discontent and channel them into fear and hatred against the wrong enemies. They feed on the public's anger with elitism and economical injustices, blame it on immigration and communism, all the while being funded by the elitists they say they to oppose in the name of "the people." They shout empty and nebulous threats like "They're coming after you!," "They're coming after your children!" and "They're coming to take away your guns," instilling fear and anger in their audience, but at the same time they blame that adversary of being fearful, weak and incompetent.

People who use or fall for this rhetoric have an amazing capability of cognitive dissonance. How can "the enemy" be weak and incompetent, while at the same time controlling politics, the economy and the entire culture from "the shadows"? It's one or the other. Pick one. This strange mental schism was on full display during the latest edition of Turning Point USA's "Americafest" in December 2021 with the subtitle "Take America Back!" I mean, there you have Fox News' Tucker Carlson addressing the audience about elitists controlling and ruining the country... And the gathered masses applaud fiercely, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Tucker is an elitist, fearful weakling himself.

Four straight days this conference lasted, and there will be four more this year, but it was all fear-mongering, spreading conspiracies and devoid of any actual policy or proposal about how to make things better. The Republican Party likes to complain about the "Culture War" but, displaying the same capacity for cognitive dissonance, they are the ones waging that war. TPUSA displays on a large video-screen Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, with a voice-over spewing words that would make them both turn in their graves. They had a panel-discussion about the dangers of "Cultural Marxism" taken straight from the Nazi's playbook. Marjory Taylor Greene whipped up the audience with a passionate plea to please "Stop the Communist Takeover!" What?!?! Liberals are communists now, apparently... I'm not capable of the mental gymnastics necessary to draw that wild conclusion, so I'll never understand why such nonsense would evoke so much applause...

I've written about this unfortunate conference before, but it's still a scary thing to behold. Some of the questions from the audience were even scarier; they asked when it's time to pick up the guns and kill the enemy. One woman aven said she'd be the first to volunteer for "the firing-squad" when that day came. And of course she was applauded loudly as well. And that's the problem here: TPUSA and the speakers know exactly what kind of sentiments their rhetoric evoke, and they don't care. They see the hate, they see the violence, they see the mass shootings and they know what their role was in the January 6 insurrection, but they don't seem to care. They blame the enemy for hating their country, but I don't see love for their people coming from them at all.

Carlos Maza made a good video about the "Americafest" conference of last year, and he shares my concerns about its fascistoid tendencies. It's linked below. I'll close with a quote from a Rolling Stone Magazine article about Tucker Carlson's performance at the conference, one that encapsulates the vibe of the whole thing perfectly:

Carlson alluding to the future in his closing remarks. “And then you can wait for the dawn, which is coming,” he said. The crowd began to file out, enthused for the evening’s country concert. But just like the corny gun rights sweater with questionable math, Carlson’s speech on Saturday didn’t quite add up. It didn’t need to in front of a crowd, and a future generation of conservative Americans, for which facts were an afterthought.
_{source: Rolling Stone}

Indeed, facts are an afterthought. All feelings that don't care about the facts. What a shit-show... "Take America Back" is also the slogan for the Trump 2024 election campaign of course... He had America. Had it by the balls. And he wants it back. I'd rather not see him succeed...

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