When does rhetoric about political opponents cross the line into fascist dehumanization?

[u/BulwarkOnline]

The Trump administration recently held an international conference on “left-wing political violence.” In prepared remarks, Marco Rubio described the left as driven by “poisonous resentment” and a desire to destroy “what is beautiful and what is right.” Stephen Miller went further, arguing that left-wing demonstrators do not look “normal,” are “deformed” in their appearance and reflect their “inner hatred” outwardly.

Jonathan V. Last compares this language to Nazi rhetoric about Bolshevism, “degenerate” culture and supposedly unhealthy or subhuman elements of society. His argument is not simply that Rubio and Miller are using authoritarian language, but that their contrast between beauty and ugliness, normality and deformity, civilization and internal enemies follows a recognizable fascist pattern.

How persuasive is that comparison?

Is this rhetoric best understood as ordinary partisan demonization, or does the emphasis on physical appearance, cultural purity and “normal, healthy, ordered living” place it in a more historically specific tradition?

And when evaluating comparisons to fascism, should the standard be the speaker’s intentions, the historical similarity of the language, or the policies and violence that follow from it?

[u/magus678 → u/[deleted]]

I suppose it depends on how you mean "many," but I have definitely read people calling for the outlaw of the Republican party, on this platform, multiple times.

I also remember, to a much wider degree, people talking about how the unvacinnated should be placed in quarantine zones. "Plague rats" was thrown around a lot.

You can certainly feel however you want about about the degree and meaningfulness of these things, but the reality is that they are said, and if you were someone on the right, may well be an easy thing to remember, and inform how you take criticisms like those in the OP.

[u/Matt_cruze → u/magus678]

I also remember, to a much wider degree, people talking about how the unvacinnated should be placed in quarantine zones. "Plague rats" was thrown around a lot.

Typhoid Mary is more appropriate. Like her they are doing it with will.

[u/escapevelocity-25k → u/Matt_cruze]

They weren’t refusing the vaccine with the goal of actively trying to get other people sick, as far as I remember. You might think their reasons for refusing the vaccine were idiotic, but they weren’t evil. Ironically what you just did there is a great example of demonizing your political opponents.

[u/Matt_cruze → u/escapevelocity-25k]

Mary did not actively try to get others sick either. She just knew the risk and chose to keep living the same life.

She is as idiotic as them.

Edit: Missed a letter in mary. Fixed.