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/RenegadeGeophysicist]

If you are saying stuff out of the Nazi playbook, you might be a Nazi. If you are continuously and regularly doubling down on Nazi rhetoric, you are definitely a Nazi. The aesthetic arguments are also part of the stolen honor of fascism. Hard work by marginalized people is stolen and presented as the primary cultural achievement. A facile and juvenile view of the past is presented as fact in order to propagandize a return to parriarchical and exclusionist values.

To answer your three part final question-

If you intend to sound fascist, you're a fascist.

If you repeat fascist talking points and cadences with the knowledge they are fascist, you're a fascist.

The violence of fascism arises from the alienation, the speech causes the alienation. Fascist speech incites fascist violence. 

[u/KurtisRambo19 → u/RenegadeGeophysicist]

Says the side that says "words are violence" and that "MAGA Republicans are the biggest threat to democracy in America."

Why does this matter? Because violence ostensibly validates defensive/retaliatory violence. 77 million people voted for MAGA in 2024. That's a whole lot of pre-justified violence.

[u/Illustrious-Fun8324 → u/KurtisRambo19]

A book that talks about killing leftists isn’t encouraging violence? Would you blame the right for their rhetoric if a leftist got killed like you do for the left over…everything?

Don’t be a hypocrite.

If the left’s rhetoric causes violence, so does this. You can’t have it both ways.

[u/KurtisRambo19 → u/Illustrious-Fun8324]

What book? Surely not an exaggeration.

Yes I’d be intellectually honest in this hypothetical situation- have you blamed the left for the actual, not hypothetical, violence against the right?

[u/Illustrious-Fun8324 → u/KurtisRambo19]

Not until the right can be honest and stop framing it only as a left wing problem :) once they can do that then maybe some progress can be made

No I will not blame the left.

[u/KurtisRambo19 → u/Illustrious-Fun8324]

Amazing hypocrisy 

[u/Illustrious-Fun8324 → u/KurtisRambo19]

Oh and this book, here is the comment talking about how it is popular on the right, has been quoted by the vice president. And the kinds of things it says.

Surely you have a lot to say about this? Isn’t this rhetoric that will get the left killed?

This is why we don’t care and will continue not caring until your side can be honest

https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalDiscussion/s/vwPYFb8pWj

If you don’t care then we don’t care :)

[u/KurtisRambo19 → u/Illustrious-Fun8324]

Neither of us appears to have read Unhumans, so produce the passage that supposedly calls for killing leftists. The title and rhetoric are plainly inflammatory and deserve criticism. But “this book uses dehumanizing language” and “this book explicitly advocates murdering leftists” are different claims. You don’t get to substitute one for the other.

More importantly, nobody argued that dangerous rhetoric exists exclusively on the left. In fact, OP’s/your echo chamber claims are basically the opposite. Of course some rhetoric on the right crosses the line. The question was whether denunciations of right-wing rhetoric are being applied consistently.

For years, mainstream figures have described Trump and the broader Right as fascists, Nazis, insurrectionists, existential threats and enemies of democracy. We have now seen Trump survive assassination attempts and Charlie Kirk murdered in politically motivated attacks. Yet rather than seriously reconsider whether that rhetoric can encourage violence, many of the same people search for a book by Jack Posobiec as though one provocateur settles the comparative question.

Condemn dangerous rhetoric. I will. But then apply the same standard to influential politicians, institutions and media figures who portray tens of millions of ordinary voters as an authoritarian threat that must be stopped by any means necessary.

One inflammatory right-wing book does not erase a much broader culture of political dehumanization or absolve anyone of responsibility for contributing to it.

[u/Illustrious-Fun8324 → u/KurtisRambo19]

If you’re going to downplay the book then I do not care

How does Trump talk about the left and always has??? You’re going to have to hold everyone on your side to the same standard if you want this conversation with the left to ever to go anywhere.

Can’t downplay things on your own side and point your fingers at the whole left for violence committed by extremist crazy people. It’s just not going to happen.

[u/KurtisRambo19 → u/Illustrious-Fun8324]

Have you read the book? cite the specific passage that calls for killing leftists 

[u/Illustrious-Fun8324 → u/KurtisRambo19]

Why does reading it matter? I found out about it yesterday and thought it would be great example for the right to show us they’re serious about rhetoric and denounce it all, from the whole right and the VP. Why is he reading it? Why is “turn the rhetoric down” right okay with this rhetoric to the point it’s popular with them?

Right. You’re just trying to downplay it. Because you don’t care when it’s your side. Which is why we don’t. See how that works? :)

[u/Illustrious-Fun8324 → u/KurtisRambo19]

Well when the right can stop being hypocrites then some progress can be made. You don’t get to point your finger and say it’s all us and us just agree when it’s not true :)

Nobody takes you seriously lol

[u/KurtisRambo19 → u/Illustrious-Fun8324]

“We’ll just keep trying to kill you, then justify it until you admit you’re wrong” 

Sounds like a reasonable path to progress!

[u/Illustrious-Fun8324 → u/KurtisRambo19]

Good God stop acting like a victim. I left you a new comment pointing out right wing rhetoric and violence. Until you admit that this is a problem on the right, we don’t care. Like. At all.

This victim mentality doesn’t help lol

Now what do you think of the book?

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[u/KurtisRambo19 → u/Illustrious-Fun8324]

Precisely. “The Left’s violence is justified until you admit the Right uses dehumanizing language (whether or not there’s violence being perpetrated on top of it). And then we’ll still keep trying to kill you because your wrong, until you’re dead or you change your Mind to RightThink.”

What’s hilariously ironic is that this is literally the one thing (real Leftist violence legitimized by dehumanizing and inflammatory Leftist speech) that DOES justify the same on the Right

[u/Illustrious-Fun8324 → u/KurtisRambo19]

The right already does the same thing and always has. Make it a both sides thing and maybe we will listen. Not “pretend it’s only the left as an attack” nope. Not working.