Rachel Maddow explained the tactics that Republicans are using to try to destroy American democracy.
Video of Maddow:
Rachel Maddow said:
But still, make the claim. Find a threat, invent a threat or find one somewhere. And hype it beyond comprehension. Neutralized the bizarreness of that supposed overhype, supposed and overhyped threat. Neutralize the bizarreness of it through propagandistic mass repetition.
And then bingo. Lock her up. Press is the enemy of the people. Ukrainians to be demilitarized and deNazified. Take, invent a threat out of whole cloth or take the smallest thing in the world and blow it up into something incomprehensibly massive. And bingo, you have the pretext for anything that you want to do.
The time that we are in is the overlap in the Venn diagram between stupid and scary. You are here. This kind of tactic that we are seeing against the press, against voting, against political opponents. It is a tactic that is not new. It’s a tactic that we did not invent in this country. But if we can see it more clearly, if we can get more fluent about it, and talking about amongst ourselves. One of the things we will quickly learn is that we can turn to our advantage the learned experience of the people who have gone before us and faced it and fought it before we had to.
Rachel Maddow laid out the whole game plan for Republicans with ease because these are the same tactics that authoritarian movements around the world have used for generations.
When a political party or an individual can’t win a free and fair democratic election, they try to seize power by destroying democracy. As the nation’s demographics change and the Republican Party increasingly faces becoming a primarily rural and white male minority party, Republicans have been attacking the institutions of democracy.
The authoritarian movement on the right pre-dates Trump, but he was the gasoline that made the anti-democracy fervor party consuming.
Rachel Maddow was right. History is the guide, and there is time to fight it, but it is a battle that necessitates putting political parties aside and the unity of all forces that believe in democracy being willing to stand together and fight.
Mr. Easley is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
