I'm sorry, but liberal vs conservative no longer applies

[niceypoo]

Lets start calling them what they are, fascists. When I debate politics with the last couple die hard republicans at my work (the other two crossed over during the last election) and any talk of the administration or Republicans in congress arises, I refer to them as, "the fascists." Why not? It's what they are.

The fascist party hates honest discourse, AKA free speech, AKA freedom. They sink to the lowest form of debate...personal attacks. Republican fascists in chatrooms, on forums and on radio talkshows talk of, sending liberals, immigrants, and homosexuals to concentration camps. One fascist I work with never fails to mention that we should, "just drop a nuclear bomb on Iraq." It's how they think. It is what the republican party has devolved into. They are fascists.

It isn't just the Neocons and their supporters. It is also the republicans in congress. The rubber stampers, the Obstructionists. They openly support the fascist neocon agenda and repeat its blind rhetoric. The democrats in congress need to start calling them what they are and it what it is; fascists and fascism.

We don't just need to start calling them fascists on a personal level, but on a national level. When some lefty is stuck in a cable TV, "debate," with the likes of Ann Coulter or some similar right wing nut, they need to point out that the irrationality of the wing nuts position is rooted in fascism. They claim that Hitler and Mussolini were, "liberals?" Ask them to explain why right wing political parties were outlawed in Germany after world war II...

Fascism is a relic of 19th and early 20th century thinking. It no longer applies. It is doomed to fail by the fact that it is purely driven by ideology and hatred and as such is doomed to collapse under its own weight and mindlessness. Ask any elderly German what right wing fanaticism does for a country, they learned the hard way twice last century. A turd by any other name smells just as foul. Its time to start calling them what they are...FASCISTS!!

[baby_mouse]

1. Indeed. They have regressed into infantile fantasy.

The slimebucket puke politicians, cowards all of them, have returned to political thumb-sucking, comforting themselves with whatever images of grotesque suffering they can inflict on their enemies.

They are driving themselves into mentally subnormal behaviour.

We owe them nothing.

[jgraz]

2. Do I really have to start calling them "fascists"?

I mean, it's just such a come-down from "subhuman nazi baby-eaters".

[eleny]

3. Recommended

With a

[Old and In the Way]

4. They've trampled over every so-called conservative principle they used to

say they believed in. State's Rights, fiscal responsibility, individual privacy, nation building. You name it, they've trashed it. The only principle they believe in is the principal that grows in their personal financial accounts. They aren't conservative, certainly not liberal/progressive in the way I see government's role in society....they are simply criminals who front a criminal syndicate that masquerades as a political party.

[Lint Head]

5. Hooray! I've been in this midset from the beginning.

The criminals in the White House need to be removed now. We live in a theocratic facist state. The USA Supreme Cowards installed the fascist regime that has taken over our precious country. There is nothing patriotic about the incompedence that has drained the US Treasury, led us into a rideculus war and caused 10 time more human beings to die than on 9/11.

[FredStembottom]

6. Check my archive: I have never used the word "fascists"...

...to denote the Bush cabal. It ends debate and hands a huge (and handy) distraction to those you are speaking to.

BUT.... there comes a time..... this cabal has thoroughly earned that label. Traditional righties even see that now.

I agree. Let us and all in Congress begin to use that word genuinely.

It's here. It's time.

[cascadiance]

7. Now that would be a scene on CSPAN to see!

Let us and all in Congress begin to use that word genuinely.

We've already had some Dems rib them by calling them the "Republic Party" to return the salvos they've been giving us as the "Democrat" Party.

Maybe it's time for someone in congress to call them the "Facist" Party when things get ugly if they start harping on Bush's right to executive privilege. Do you think we might suddenly see a scene like the House of Commons with a lot of yelling and screaming back and forth?

[FredStembottom]

8. I would hope they would only apply Fascist to George and Dick.

...or possibly as a replacement for Neo-cons.
The Republican party wants to surgically remove them more every day. It doesn't show in impeachment vote musings, yet. But I think it will.
They want to abort.
They want to recover.
We should let them feel apart from the Neo-cons. Move them towards helping in more concrete terms.
All help in defeating the evil men at the top should be encouraged.
We'll get back to everything else later.

[cascadiance]

10. Maybe every time we have a "choice" vote to support Bushco's transgressions...

The Dems could pose the following question:

"All you in this body have a choice. Join the side of the Fascist Party on the one side, or join us Republicans and Democrats who want to have our American system and its constitution back."

or something of the like, to like you said, divide and isolate the more fascist elements, and to give those on the fence the opportunity to "become" Republicans again in the traditional sense of the word.

[FredStembottom]

11. Excellent!

I really like your idea of tying it to some critical vote or other.

Very good advice, cali.

[cascadiance]

13. And then we can call Lieberman for what he is if he chooses wrong too!

[niceypoo]

12. They arent apart from the neocons

They are the rubber stampers and they take their marching orders from Rove

[TheBaldyMan]

19. I think the more politically astute among them figured this out way back.

if not in congress then at the grass roots of the party.

The Eisenhower Republicans must despise the Bush admin more than Democrats do.

We've always seen Bushco for what it is; a greedy, crooked bunch of criminals with imperial ambitions. It's the moderate republicans that are the only hope for their party. The religious right and the neo-cons hi-jacked an existing party, that's why they are doing so badly today.

The pResident will be getting a visit from Republicans on the Hill soon, sooner than you think. Bush will have to resign along with Cheney. Since the Dems began to exercise real oversight there has been too much serious crime uncovered, coupled with King George's royal behaviour - it's unstoppable now.

The Republican controlled Congress gave the Bush administration enough rope to hang themselves several times over.

[FredStembottom]

20. I believe the same as you - but......

,,, as a blue collar worker, it sure has been hard to ever run into the old style Repub.! It has seemed like Village of the Damned for so long. Such rabid right-wing extremism from the very people that have been getting absolutely screwed economically by this bunch!
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I have always thought that this whole thing would end with a Nixon-style "visit". But I started predicting that a couple years ago.

Sure is getting late............................

[lumberjack_jeff]

9. I avoid the term fascist. The term is too squishy.

In general it's used by us to mean "right wing authoritarian" but in broader usage it only means "bad".

[Recursion]

14. Because using the word "fascist" is usually counterproductive

When I hear the words "fascist" (or "socialist") I immediately kind of shut off and relegate what the person is saying to college-freshman-rant status, and a lot of people do that too, I think.

[niceypoo]

16. I am sorry that the reality of fascism isn't fluffy enough ...

...but we are in dire straits here. Glossing it over or sweeping it under the rug under the banner of, "healing," or, "when I hear A: I think B:," is political cowering. They ARE fascists and I refuse to pretend otherwise.

[Recursion]

17. Except they aren't, really

Fascism was a set of ideologies from the early 20th-century that combined militant nationalism, maintenance of a wartime economy, economic socialism, and creation of a national/racial mythology. You call these guys fascists because they are right-wing, power-hungry assholes. But being a right-wing power-hungry asshole doesn't make you a fascist; it's hard even to call fascists "right-wing" by today's standards (reflected, obviously, in the title of the OP). Fascists opposed the sort of global market that today's right is hell-bent on strengthening, and would never seek to do wars "on the cheap"; rather, they wanted as many people involved in the war effort as possible. Fascist parties universally had eloquent, charismatic leaders with lower-class or petit-bourgeois creds, not bumbling ex-CEO's.

And, of course, we shouldn't forget that fascists were very statist (and for that matter, were socialists by today's economic standards) and would not have privatized every state function -- rather, they sought to take private holdings back into the state. Der Fuhrer or Il Duce would have been appalled at ideas like privatizing social security, or having privately-run, for-profit health care and health insurance.

[Name removed]

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[BornagainDUer]

15. FD Roosevelt defined fascism as the private power of

corporations reach the extent where they threaten he government (democracy) itself. He fought it and defeated it, or at least most of it, and that's why I rank his definition as definitive.

[gulliver]

21. I like "crazies, yahoos, and idiots."

Fascist is too dignified a term for the kind of knee-jerk, dimwit posing you usually get from faux-conservatives. They are basically Cliff Clavens with rabies.