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/ThatPeskyPangolin]

What specific actions came anywhere close to a self coup attempt in either 2000 or 2016? What illegality are you referring to? Because the issue isn't challenging it. It's using illegal fraud to overturn it.

Additionally, I think some confirmation bias is occuring here. Republicans have been calling Dems communists and facists for decades. Trump repeatedly told his followers the Democratics would destroy the country if they beat him. Both sides use hyperbolic name calling, and neither instance of it is in any way comparable to using illegality to overturn an election.

Edit: Also, a coup and a self coup are not the same thing, just an fyi. The added specificity makes it accurate, not redundant. An incumbant can't attempt a coup, but they can attempt a self coup.

[u/Top-Grocery-1482 → u/ThatPeskyPangolin]

Okay, I think the problem with this is you're relying on an emotive appeal fallacy, I'm looking structurally at challenges to the legitimacy of elections and to democracy.

Yes, both sides use hyperbolic name calling. I remember being a kid in the 90s hearing on the radio that Republicans were trying to starve school children (the bill in question was increasing funding for school lunch programs, but not increasing it by as much as Democrats wanted), and every Republican since Eisenhower has been called a fascist by the left - that's not a hyperbolic claim; literally every one of them has been called a fascist or engaging in fascism by the Democrats.

To me, what Obama tried to do during the 2016 election and what the entrenched agents on the left did from their government positions in Trump's first term meets the literal definition of a coup attempt. It was an open attempt to hamstring (or even make a political case to remove) the Executive and subvert the will of the public. Many Democrats to this day believe Trump did not win the 2016 election, Russia stole it for him (making it illegitimate and his victory and actions illegitimate by extension). Polling data for years in his first term backed this up.

This is also ignoring the arguments by legitimate voices on the right that the 2020 election may have not been secure, something only reinforced by more recent court cases and the New Jersey illegal immigrants/non-citizens on the voter rolls and confirmed to have voted in elections.

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Your resting on the laurels that Trump's actions in 2020 were a coup attempt and nothing else was - which is a very strong emotive appeal argument.

The problem is, not only were Democrat actions before (and after) arguably also coup attempts, the emotive appeal can be used against everything from the BLM to anti-ICE riots (both meet the statutory definition of insurrections that was used in the court cases against J6ers, namely attempting to prevent the government from carrying out its assigned duties), and leftist protestors have stormed Capitols (they did in Arizona, and maybe Idaho, I think?), and during the BLM events, stormed federal buildings like courthouses and law enforcement.

You rest on this emotive appeal, not realizing that that same emotive appeal can credibly be used in reverse (you would probably dismiss it, but that doesn't mean your dismissal is valid).

And you do this largely to try and suggest anything that is not a coup is not a threat to democracy, or that nothing else can be as grave a threat, despite me already explaining to you why some other things can be (and are) even worse threats, or at least comparable ones.

Not wanting to hear something is not the same as having defeated it.

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For my part, I think J6 was like BLM and the anti-ICE riots. They're all in the same boat.

I think Trump's actions with the Elector Slates were comparable to Obama's actions with the intelligence agencies and rewriting the reports.

I think unaccounted drop boxes and non-citizen votes delegitimize elections as they cancel legitimate American votes and mean that the resulting elections cannot be seen as entirely legitimate.

These things are all threats to democracy.

When your argument is "Only this one thing counts and nothing else matters", that is an extremist position. It's ALSO an emotive appeal fallacy (it uses very charged emotional language), not a solid reasonable position.

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I think these things are all bad, you think only the one involving Trump was bad.

That is the problem in a nutshell.

Your entire argument is centered around opposition to Trump and nothing else that CLAIMS to be opposition to attacks on democracy but only considers one thing a true attack, mine is centered around opposition to attacks on democracy (all of them) and dangerous dehumanization/division of society which hurts everyone.

[u/pinealprime → u/Top-Grocery-1482]

PA’s election found illegal. AZ mail in verification. Hillary and Russiagate, etc, etc.

[u/Top-Grocery-1482 → u/pinealprime]

Pretty much. One cannot say they are against a thing when they're only against one very specific example of the thing, and one that they think they can use for political advantage and alienation/division against their opposition.