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spinachpaneerlover's avatar

“Heritage’s policy has always been that the entire organization speaks with ‘one voice’ - those working inside Heritage should not ever criticize the work Heritage puts out, or publicly disagree with their colleagues or the institution.”

It boils my blood that Republican men are so conformist and consensus obsessed, and yet they’ve all been sharing that “feminization” article about how women are ruining everything with their groupthink.

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Andrew Orillion's avatar

There's an old saying when it comes to politics, especially when it comes to candidate selection, "Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line."

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Matthew S.'s avatar

I maintain that one of the main reasons there's been an explosion of outspoken and proud Nazi worshipers is because there's barely any World War II veterans left..

I'm 42, when I was a kid and a young person, the World War II veterans were old, of course, even then, but they were like your friends grandparents, or your grandparents. They were present, and vital, and cogent. And they're almost gone.

It would have been unthinkable when I was a kid to be openly proud of having Nazi tendencies when you also had to share a Thanksgiving dinner with a relative or two who were proud of the fact that they stacked German bodies waist high in France.

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Neural Foundry's avatar

Your four-category framwork for understanding the conservative response is brilliant. The Cowards are particularly fascinating because they know exactly what's happening but calculated that silence costs less than taking a stand. Preston Brashers's 'NAZIS ARE BAD' tweet was clearly a test balloon, and when Roberts crushed it, everyone else got the message about what dissent costs. The Fuentes threat to mobilize 10,000 Groypers against Vance shows the real power dynamic here, the inmates aren't just running the asylum, they're deciding who gets to stay.

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gnashy's avatar

It’s really not that brilliant. Of all the conservative trump supporters who are opposed to Fuentes, are they all simply grifters? It’s telling he barely talked about them.

Also, Ross Douthat and the bulwark are not the same. The dispatch and the bulwark aren’t even the same.

I should say: relative to typical Bluesky discourse, it’s very brilliant. But that’s not good enough if you want to be accurate or even effective in the long run.

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KH's avatar

I mean I kinda get why but it is still wild that a movement identified as Christian White *Nationalist* movement centers around worshipping a leader of a party in other country who was the enemy of US and not that Christian (iirc many of Nazi were consciously non Christian?).

And while Dems affiliated activists often get (pretty valid) criticism of small tentism, it’s just remarkable how intentionally and proudly small tent they are.

like refusing women, any non white ppl, any Jewish or non Christian ig and that’s already removing more than 2/3 of the entire population. Like not even Nazi themselves were that hateful to women (even though they def forced racist pronatalism) and this should say something.

Like if your identity is that you hate 70% of ppl out there, you probably need to rethink about yourself…

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Shaun McGonigal's avatar

except that many int he German army of the time wore belts that claimed "Gott mit uns" (God with us), particularly the Wehrmacht. The NZAIs were not anti-Christian, even if some officers got involved in some weird cultish things here and there. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gott_mit_uns

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Rob W's avatar

As a Dispatch conservative, it's hard to argue with this, except maybe at the margins. I'm curious where you come up with the 10-15% stat. On the Central Air podcast today, they were talking about this and there were different opinions what the Nazi and Nazi-adjacent portion of the Right really is.

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Jeremiah Johnson's avatar

Conservatives like Rod Dreher (who is VERY right wing and out to sea in many ways, but not a groyper-level antisemite) say that they think 30-40% of GOP staffers in congressional offices are groypers or groyper-lite. I move downwards from there to account for the fact that most people are more normie and disconnected than DC people, but 10-15% feels very reasonable to me.

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Rob W's avatar

Thanks. I'd heard about Dreher's estimate and have no reason to doubt it. I think it depends on which members of the Right you are including when you extrapolate to the broader group. I hope it is closer to 5% but my hopes have not often come to fruition in the last 10 years or so.

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Mike Kidwell's avatar

Is it too much to hope that they burn the GOP house down and force a reasonable party to drag itself out of the ashes?

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Jimmy Yang's avatar

No, because they’ve also played a role in audience capture at FOX News and the general conservative media network.

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Brian's avatar

I just listened to Eli Lake on his "Breaking History" podcast talking about the Democratic Socialists of America grudgingly accepting the communists into the fold. It is the mirror image of what this post is describing on the right. If you want spooky re-read this after listening to that.

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Elizabeth Herosy's avatar

Tucker has to do this. Nick is obviously his illegitimate son. Just look at the photo! 🤣

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TM's avatar

Why would the Leopards leave the tent? It's theirs now.

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