So....there's been a lot of discussion about the whole Groyper phenomenon since Nick Fuentes went on Tucker Carlson's show the other day, and we can very obviously see that Nick Fuentes is one of the sources of the growing fascism in the republican party. The "Groypers" are his followers, and those guys seem to be leading the charge with the expression of fascist and even nazi sentiment within the GOP. And quite frankly, this scares me. I used to be a republican, and even a bit of what became "Christian nationalism" for a while, but outright nazi sentiment was basically not discussed, even in private. We hated the nazis. Of course, we called them atheists and socialists, and we kinda still believed in the limited government stuff back then, but in the 2020s, I'm seeing the rise of these open fascist types, especially among younger people, and again, this scares the crap out of me. As such, I wanted to discuss this a bit and why we're seeing this now.
1) Growing GOP extremism
The growing extremism in the GOP is NOT a new problem. It's been a problem since the 1980s. The Reagan revolution happened, heralding in an era of ascendant conservatism. And...by the end of the 1980s, the fairness doctrine was shot down, and we started seeing the rise of Rush Limbaugh and then Fox News in the 1990s. The GOP began retreating from the shared reality that we all live in, and began building alternative media structures. Politically, we saw these shifts manifest electorally, with the contract with America in 1994 where the GOP started being more politically hostile and aggressive. Through the 90s and 2000s this growing extremism continued, which is what initially shaped my political values as a teenager. However, in the later 2000s and early 2010s, I distanced myself from that over time while the extremism continued. Even the 2011 era Tea party got too extreme for me, causing me to have a hard look at myself and my values, which in turn caused me to reject those values and become a progressive instead. I got out BACK THEN. They were getting too extreme BACK THEN. And I understood that it wasn't just their implementation of ideas that was bad, it was the ideas. Fast forward to 2016, we got Trump, Trump started pushing us toward fascism. We had charlottesville. We had the big lie when Trump won in 2020. January 6th. And now in 2025, we got the GOP pushing project 2025 and we are literally descending into fascism.
2) The post truth world
This polarization in American politics has led to the GOP living in their own world. This isn't new. I mean, I was taught creationism and biblical literalism in high school. But yeah, that's why I keep saying it. The battle for American politics is a battle over WORLDVIEW, and the GOP has been distorting reality for the American people for a while. And at this point, half the country isnt living in reality. THis not only is the source of conservative politics becoming so scary, but in recent years it's getting so bad we're questioning basic facts like the efficacy of vaccines, and even the holocaust. Holocaust denialism is on the rise, especially among younger generations too. People can't agree on facts any more. And to make it worse...
3) The loss of the greatest generation and the holocaust survivors
I've been thinking about this for a while lately, and it's not really surprising, when one thinks about it, why this stuff is happening now. It's been 80 years since WWII. The people who remember it and fascism are now dead. And quite frankly, we didn't do a good enough job teaching people (at least in America) about the root causes of it. We just learned "it happened, it was bad", but we don't really teach people WHY it happened and what triggered people psychologically to accept it. And it is complicated but part of it is authoritarianism. We learned this with the milgram experiment and the stanford prison experiment, which taught us that a lot of the population has a predisposition to authoritarianism, and Germany isn't really unique in this sense, and it can happen here.
A lot of it is also racism and xenophobia taken to unthinkable extremes. Like the term "final solution" came from the "Jewish question" of "what should Christian European societies do with the Jewish people?" And there was a lot of anti semitism at the same, and debates and for some, the answer was "extermination", hence, the "FINAL solution."
We have our own analogues to this in America. What do we do with the massive black population that used to be freed? What do we do with the growing latino population coming here through immigration? What do we do with the 11 million illegal immigrants who are already here? And...a lot of the current answers are chillingly looking like what the nazis did. You see they didnt start with the gas chambers. They started with deportations. They deported immigrants to poland, etc., and then when they expanded their empire through military action and got into WWII, then they started thinking darker. They never START with the gas chambers. They build up to that.
And...quite frankly, we never properly dealt with the latent racism that was underlying American politics. We had the civil war, the south lost, and reconstruction never really purged that sentiment. Jim crow existed for another hundred years until the federal government said "no more" to that too. And then the stuff went under the surface, where quite frankly, I was never really introduced to the full brunt of it, being a northerner, but that stuff RUNS DEEP with these people. So I kinda didnt see the dog whistle until I was older and realize holy crap these people still exist, but yeah, they still exist. They were just kinda pushed out of the spotlight. To be fair, a lot of nations in Europe are seeing a surge in this stuff too due to immigration. To some extent, I think that some level of racism and xenophobia probably is natural among humans and it really does take a lot of philosophical spring cleaning to throw that stuff out entirely. But yeah. The point is, it's kinda reaching that fever pitch again. And that radicalization isn't good.
There are other concerns but I would like to address those separately.
4) The 2016 social split and the loss of shame
While freedom of speech is a cornerstone of American politics, shaming has often been an effective informal measure of social control and keeping people from extremist opinions. You're not going to be arrested if you have extreme opinions, but people may also not want to associate with you either. Unfortunately, America has lost that as a measure of social control in the modern political era.
It all goes back to Trevor's Axiom, trolling, and SJW culture. In 2016, our politics functionally realigned along the stupidest of battle lines. The left embraced this brand of milquetoast corporate centrism, and the right started embracing "alt right" politics, which was just repackaged fascism. For the right, this was just a continuation of their downward spiral since the 1980s. THere had been this dynamic in American politics before. The left would always been seen as too sensitive and politically correct and the right would be like F YOUR FEELINGS and developed an "own the libs" mentality. Owning the libs is seen as a form of virtue signalling itself, or anti virtue signalling. I've seen a lot of terms for it recently, "based signalling", vice signalling, etc. Basically, the whole point is to piss the libs off. So when the libs get offended and say you can't say that, they'll double down and say it. Because F your feelings lib. On the left, we have forms of this too, and I use them. For example, I can be quite blasphemous toward Christianity and I do tend to reject a lot of right wing ideas, openly. But the way things unfolded in 2016, we got the democrats go all in with wokeness, offense toward anything even remotely "racist" or controversial, and cancel culture, which is basically trying to ruin the life of people expressing sentiments they disapprove of. Meanwhile, the right would be all "what about free speech?" and start doubling down on the offense. They'd say increasingly offensive things to own the libs, and as the libs kept screaming "fascist" back in 2016, 2017, 2018, etc., if anything the overplaying of the mechanisms of shame and social unacceptability to the point that they lost all power. And the right just got emboldened to dial up the offense.
Well, you can see where this is going. A decade of this and now you got people like Nick Fuentes and his Groypers being like YOUR BODY MY CHOICE, advocating for women to be back in the kitchen, arguing for like tradcath autocracy a la Mussolini or Franco, or flat out saying things like "Hitler was based" and joking about the holocaust. Heck, due to the loss of the WWII generation and the increasingly post truth world, the right is just starting to dispute the holocaust and act like "well maybe it wasn't that bad" or "maybe it didn't happen", believing it all to be an elaborate hoax. And because the people who lived it are now dead, no one can really dispute that as well, despite the mountains of historical evidence in that regard.
Also add into the fact that young people are particularly immature. So this offense culture is especially funny to them, and they end up getting sucked up into this whole "own the libs" "based signalling" thing. Hence why the young republicans these days are full of people making holocaust jokes. But they are just jokes, right, right?
Well...I'm not sure. The fact is, I do think people are being attracted to genuinely authoritarian and autocratic ideologies, and that the whole JUST KIDDING thing is giving cover for the actual authoritarians to influence the population, gain power. While pre 2016, these people literally werent allowed in polite society, now they're climbing the ranks of the republican party, and it's unclear how much of this fascism stuff they endorse is an elaborate joke to piss off liberals and leftists, and how much they're serious about.
5) Political implications of the modern era
The 2016 realignment (which may still be undergoing, it's hard to say) has had, and will continue to have long term political implications as it continues to evolve.
a) Economic
The economy doesn't work for people any more. That was what drove a lot of the 2016 changes in the first place. Originally, Trump and Sanders arose as a political revolution by the people as a backlash against the status quo. The most healthy resolution of this push for change would have been the democratic party moving left economically and embracing a progressive platform aimed at addressing the root causes of these problems.
However, instead, they embraced wokeism and centrist establishment politics that actually ended up being very unpopular. They fumbled the ball they got in 2008 with Obama, and gave it back to the republicans. And the republicans RAN with it. They don't offer anything new, but they at least have the aesthetics of populism, which the dems don't even have. The dems have "the economy is fine actually and if you're suffering that's on you", which is what you'd expect from republicans. When people demand change, the democrats tell them no relief will come and they better vote for them anyway. And when they DO offer change, its often incrementalism around the edges and not anything that amounts to actual useful changes for the public.
This has caused a generation of young people to become distrustful of the democratic party, where many will vote for republicans instead. Even among those who see through Trump's grift, they've become so hopeless at ever living a normal life and having the things previous generations have had that they've developed a "burn it all down" mentality. I see this a lot among young people and you see this with the likes of asmongold too. It's sad because I can sympathize with their plight, but rather than get out that frustration in useful ways, they end up voting for these fascist types instead.
Honestly, this does have historical parallels to the 1930s. When the great depression hit, people were attracted to the fascism of the far right at the time. All this talk of democracy goes out the window when the political parties don't seem to give a crap about you anyway, and you can't afford to eat. Desperate times creates desperate people, and desperate people act more like Scar's hyenas from the Lion King than upstanding citizens.
b) Social
Things aren't working for people socially either, especially among younger people. Remember, young voters were born in the 2000s these days. They were born around the time that I became an adult myself. An 18 year old was born in 2007. A 21 year old was born in 2004. A 25 year old was a Y2K baby. Now you probably feel old. But yeah. We're just as far from the 2000s now as we were from the 1980s in the 2000s. And uh...these younger people aren't all right. They inherited the same economic crapshow that I was calling out for relief from 10-15 years ago, for one, but instead, we got wokeness. And what does wokeness do? It divides people. Girls and women since then have become far more left wing, feminist, etc., while men are disgruntled and sucked into the alt right ecosystem. While porn is omnipresent, many are pushing back against it, believing womens' liberation was a mistake and women are sluts because of egirls and only fans and crap, while simultaneously wondering why they themselves can't get a girlfriend. Just as they're disaffected economically, they're also disaffected socially. THe lack of jobs and economic stability puts demands on them they can't meet with dating because let's face it, most changes have been one sided. Women have gotten more demanding with partners, and men just fail to meet their standards. Some of this is the traditional dream of a steady job and a spouse. No job, no spouse. You need economic success to attract women since that traditional aspect of gender has never changed (and I, quite frankly, represent a more radical progressive response of abandoning traditional expectations in the first place). However, most people arne't me and instead long for the past, and wishing to go back to the 1950s when men just did what they wanted, women were kept barefoot, pregnant, and economically dependent, and yeah. They've become traditionalist. So a lot of them find relief in religion, believing the loss of traditional values and gender roles was a mistake, and wanting to enforce those in society. Even though they weren't that great. But yeah. That's where a lot of the weird tradcath authoritarianism a la fuentes is coming from. Fascism is the highest form of social conservatism, ie, the most extreme form, and a lot of people are embracing views that just reject all modernity and believe the answer is to go back to the past. This is also why conservative men keep harping on the democrats and claiming they never have an answer for men on stuff. Because these young men aren't just longing for economic relief any more, like I was, they want this full monte of going back to traditional gender roles and traditional expectations of what makes men men. And this is why the dems struggle, even as they now sometimes try to offer the progressive economics I wanted a decade ago. They don't just want success, they want meaning, and they want a society that affirms them as men within the confines of all this traditionalist crap.
As such, the boys are not okay. Combine that political polarization between the genders with COVID screwing up their teenage years (an 18 year old today was 13 when COVID hit, a 23 year old today was 18 when COVID hit) and yeah, a lot of these are coming out into this world and they aren't exactly well adjusted. We got basically a generation of incels, and they're all embracing incel ideology and radicalizing that way. It's actually really scary.
Conclusion
Our society is kinda screwed. We still dont know what the full implications of all of this is, as history regarding it is being written. We dont know if fascism is the future, or just a temporary manifestation brought by the rot of woke neoliberalism and the ineffectiveness of the left to offer real solutions, but it seems clear that a lot of historical forces are coming together, giving rise to increasing fascist ideologies, among younger people. This COULD be THE realignment into the 7th party system. Surprise! It's fascism! We're screwed! It could also be an awkward end game manifestation of the 6th party system and its flaws that we need to purge from our society to fully go into a 7th yet to come. Remember, the transition between party systems isn't really clean sometimes. For example, we saw the fall of the new deal coalition in 1968, but we didn't see reagan fully replace it until 1980. We did start seeing outlines of the direction the GOP was going with nixon though.
Likewise, we don't know where THIS is going yet. Maybe 2024 is the 1980 moment, or maybe it's more like a 1976 moment that needs to happen so the left can REALLY have its 1980 moment. Either way, I will say this. I really do not believe that things had to go this way. I believe, in an alternate timeline, that bernie could have won 2016, and none of this nightmare would have happened. People debate what about Hillary winning, but eh...I have mixed thoughts on that. I honestly believe clinton would have realigned the country along its current lines as well, and while her beating trump in 2016 might have served as a temporary respite from the trends we've seen since then, I believe that some iteration of the conservatives coming back in the 2020s was inevitable. Just as, in a way, Biden being a temporary respite, leading to the rise of more open fascism in 2024 was a thing. The point is, the centrist democrats did not have the ideas, or ideology, or solutions to our problems that were needed to actually get us to a more positive realignment. The right would have come back anyway. Still, would things have looked differently if we had a Clinton -> someone else timeline? maybe. It's hard to know how though. Point is, I believe some iteration of this trend would have happened regardless. It might have even been Trump again in 2020. He would've done his big lie stuff anyway if he lost in 2016 and wouldnt have taken no for an answer. It just isnt in his nature to do so.
So...idk. As long as the same forces were present, weak and feckless democrats and increasingly extreme republicans, I believe the end result of this realignment was going to be the same. If anything, maybe the repeated losses of democrats will give rise to a more aggressively progressive left who will actually fight for things in 2028. Maybe this is the only way to have the good outcome happen. Or maybe im just an old bernie bro who is still trying to do wishful thinking for "this is how bernie can still win". Who knows? Either way, the left needs to get their crap together fast, or democracy is done. Unless the left can pull off a stunning upset that reverses everything that happened, and FAST, fascism is the future of the GOP, and the democrats will be powerless to stop it.
