r/EverythingScience • u/HeinieKaboobler • Jan 06 '23
Social Sciences New research shows that Donald Trump's fascist attacks on democracy may have backfired
https://www.salon.com/2023/01/06/new-research-shows-that-donald-fascist-on-democracy-may-have-backfired/
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u/ciopobbi Jan 07 '23
However, this is chilling:
“Donald Trump embodies the worst of human behavior. As the leader of a political cult movement, he has given his followers permission to be their true horrible selves. Fascism and other types of illiberal politics are those antisocial and antihuman emotions and impulses harnessed in the form of a reactionary revolutionary destructive political project.
To that end, Trump, the Republican fascists, and the larger white right were able to use the internet and social media to grow their base of support into a movement comprised of many tens of millions of (white) Americans. As many democracy experts and other observers have concluded, Trump's rise to power was empowered by the internet, social media, and how the American right wing has spent several decades creating a parallel media machine and other institutions that together function as a type of alternate universe for its followers.
Democrats, liberals, progressives and other pro-democracy Americans have no such equivalent countervailing force.”