In the last article in this series, we examined the behind-the-scenes rule changes which enabled a small circle of neo-Nazi larpers to capture one half of America’s representative system.
That was just the preamble.
On July 15, 2024, the Republican Party assembled at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and made crystal clear its vision for America’s future: not merely conservatism, but fascism. The remainder of this series will be devoted to analyzing the convention transcripts in detail.
Now, if I am to make the claim that the convention was a fascist rally— that this not a matter of opinion but rather a verifiable statement of fact— then it is my responsibility to prove it to you empirically. If I cannot do this, then, professionally speaking, I cannot print it.
So it stands to reason that if we’re going to attempt qualitative analysis of fascist rhetoric, we’ll first need to agree on what we’re looking for.
Philosophy
In his 1995 essay “Ur-Fascism”, Italian philosopher Umberto Eco draws upon his experiences living under Mussolini’s National Fascist Party to identify common elements of fascist ideologies.
Ideologies is plural for a reason; Eco argues that fascism is a “fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions.” Two fascist regimes may have incompatible values or policy goals yet still be recognizable as fascist. This inconsistency is not a disqualifying feature; in fact, any single fascist ideology is likely to hold internally inconsistent beliefs all on its own.
Instead, Eco proposes a set of fourteen characteristics around which fascist ideologies are most likely to congregate. Crucially, it is not a checklist of requirements, but rather a sort of ideological and rhetorical moth-light. Per Eco:
These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.
The first handful of characteristics are expressions of anti-intellectualism. Ur-fascism holds that all that is true is already known; tradition is assumed to be morally good, and cultural change is an erosion of that innate goodness. Citizens may be urged to act according to fixed values without hesitation or reflection. Newspeak restricts vocabulary and critical thought, while places which facilitate learning are marked as corrupting influences. As Eco summarizes:
For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.
Eco says that fascists navigate contradiction through a combination of syncretism and selective populism. This means that the fascist elects themselves as the sole voice of “the Common Will”, retroactively justifying some technological and cultural advancements as consistent with traditional values, while arbitrarily excluding others. In an Ur-fascist society, the social order must never be permitted to change, because it was already perfect. When change is useful, its origin must be obfuscated.
Eco also observes that fascism requires an enemy and will invent one in its absence. That enemy will often be portrayed as both “too strong and too weak”: formidable enough to warrant constant escalation but somehow also inferior, immoral, and foolish. Fascists create a distinction of “Us” versus “Them” within society. The anxieties and economic hardships of the ingroup are then exploited in order to motivate them to police and suppress the outgroup of their own volition.
The Ur-fascist is obsessed with combat and with the humiliation of past defeats. They deploy war imagery against their own citizens, justifying future violence with imagined plots. The most common Ur-Fascist conspiracy is an “invasion” of minority saboteurs, whose existence supposedly threatens the community’s way of life despite their being active members of it.
Finally, fascism creates a cult of death; sacrifice of the lower class is not only seen as noble, but it is demanded. In this way, suffering becomes a signifier of moral purity and righteousness:
The Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.
The strict hierarchy of a fascist society inevitably skews aristocratic. Its leaders hold their own subordinates in contempt, treating them poorly despite ostensibly sharing a “superior” identity. This continues down the chain, each class despising those directly beneath them and sacrificing themselves for those above in order to prove their worth.
Eco’s work is useful because it teaches us to understand fascism as a force divorced from any particular political party. Now we can sidestep a certain amount of partisan bullshit. Hooray!
But if fascism can be any number of things yet only needs to be one of them, how can we definitively say whether it is present at the RNC? It’s all well and good to say fascists can take many shapes; we still need to agree on what doing fascism looks like.
Yale professor of philosophy Jason Stanley offers a useful framework for this in his 2018 book How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. Where Eco was primarily concerned with traits which facilitate the spread of fascism, Stanley is more interested in the tactics fascists of today are using to seize power. Despite setting out to define different things, Stanley and Eco arrive at similar conclusions about the nature of fascist movements and how to spot them in the wild.
How Fascism Works identifies ten common behaviors of contemporary fascist movements. Each one contains or complements the criteria set out by Eco, which means soon we’ll be able to stop saying shit like syncretism and have a conversation like normal people.
According to Stanley, fascists begin by constructing a mythic past. Their retelling of history is rooted in a dishonest patriotism and is by its very nature authoritarian. They argue that their nation is naturally superior and that things were great— perfect, even— before the country was corrupted by outside influences. Supposedly only a return to these original values can restore the glory and dominance owed to its people by birthright. Fascists weaponize nostalgia by inviting the listeners to first imagine Utopia, then to grieve its loss.
The primary purpose of the mythic past is to manufacture fear of national decline and to foster resentment toward those allegedly responsible. Real and imagined hardships— economic, social, and military— are twisted into a list of grievances with misattributed causes: someone made us poor; someone made us weak; someone took away our shared values.1 Whatever the harm, it is always intentionally inflicted by a malicious other.
By associating a collective grievance with one’s national identity, fascists directly assign emotional investment and a sense of loss to individuals that did not experience them. These strong emotions can later be unleashed upon acceptable targets.
The mythic past also serves as a statement of purpose. As Mussolini explains in a speech delivered to a fascist-controlled Congress in 1922:
We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, a passion. It is not necessary for it to be a reality… . Our myth is the nation, our myth is the greatness of the nation! And to this myth, this greatness, which we want to translate into a total reality, we subordinate everything.
Even when shown to be false, the mythic past continues to provide rhetorical value to fascist movements in that it is aspirational. It serves as a warning that the desired social contract will be enforced until it becomes true. In the absence of reality, it becomes a blueprint.
The second step is to construct or reinforce a social hierarchy of worth.2 The community is divided into an ingroup to whom the mythic past applies and benefits and an outgroup to whom it does not. Supposedly any difference in status reflects natural law. Common sense, if you like.
Contemporary fascist movements are typically motivated by sexual anxiety, racial purity, and a desire for religious dominance. This is reflected in their desired hierarchies: men above women, white people above people of color, straight families above queer ones, on and on down a list of identity markers.
Fascists identify their desired world order and work backwards from it, believing whatever needs to be true in order to explain discrepancies. If the innate superiority of men is not observed in reality, it must be because they have been emasculated. If white people do not flourish, their opportunity must have been stolen by people less worthy.
Fascism calls upon the population to simultaneously observe and deny these rules. Since the hierarchy reflects the will of nature or even God, mobility between classes must be eliminated. If and when it occurs, it can only be the result of foul play. Fascists frame minority gains in civil liberties as zero-sum, a harm inflicted upon the majority, in order to stoke threat and divide communities. Majority groups are made to feel as if equality were oppressive. Stanley calls this the victimhood narrative. It allows the listener to believe both that inequality does not exist and that they are the victims of it.
Another common source of division is between capital and labor. Fascists equate a subordinate’s value with their capacity to perform back-breaking labor without complaint. This manifests as the shibboleth: we are hardworking, they are lazy. Impoverished workers are invited to consider themselves a member of the former, so long as they agree to chase their carrots and/or suffer in silence.
Historically, corporations have been quite cozy with fascist regimes. It is by design that their ideologies are so compatible. Stanley observes:
Hitler saw in private enterprise principles that aligned with his own ideology. The principle of meritocracy, by which “the great man” is rewarded for excellence by a position of leadership, appealed to him; the strong should rightly rule over the weak. Meritocracy, to Hitler, supported National Socialism’s all-important leadership principle. Private workplaces are arranged hierarchically, with a command structure involving a CEO who issues orders.
The interests of the authoritarian and the CEO are neatly aligned such that the Venn diagram is practically a circle. Both seek to hoard wealth and minimize accountability. The conditions that Eco observed of the self-sacrificing fascist hero also make for productive employees.
Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of modern fascist movements are also staunchly anti-union. Organized labor represents ideological competition; in order to incentivize citizens to continue sacrificing themselves for the state, fascists must ensure they have no alternative.
Stanley succinctly summarizes this philosophy with the German phrase arbeit macht frei (“work makes you free”) which was infamously welded into the gates of Nazi concentration camps from Auschwitz to Dachau. It solidifies the desired social hierarchy— the worthy naturally command the majority of society’s resources and power— while providing the public with a means to police itself which can be subjectively applied to dissatisfied members of the supposed ingroup whenever necessary.
The final phase of the fascist powergrab is to establish a state of unreality. They do this by undermining the credibility of the press, flooding the zone with propaganda, and lowering the public’s confidence that the truth can ever really be known.
The challenge of fascism is that it requires constant maintenance by targeting an oppressed class— as Eco noted, the complete eradication of an enemy only predicates the assignment of a new one. It is inevitable, then, that a substantial portion of the governed must be convinced to act against their own interests. The easiest way to achieve this is to appropriate otherwise emancipatory language. Here, Stanley evokes Eco’s observations of fascist Newspeak in all but name:
It’s hard to advance a policy that will harm a large group of people in straightforward terms… Political propaganda uses the language of virtuous ideals to unite people behind other-wise objectionable ends.
Totalitarian regimes seek to control the flow of information and to smother avenues for protest. The most common targets are universities, public schools, and newspapers; any institution which facilitates critical thought has got to go. They may be dismantled entirely or captured and restructured in order to disseminate misinformation beneficial to the state.
Next, count on the judicial system to be reformed— parodoxically under a guise of anticorruption. The very checks and balances which prevent abuses will be framed as loopholes exploited by bad actors, and supposedly the only way to fix the problem is to assign one really trustworthy person absolute power. To quote Stanley:
Fascist states focus on dismantling the rule of law, with the goal of replacing it with the dictates of individual rulers or party bosses… In the name of rooting out corruption and supposed bias, fascist politicians attack and diminish the institutions that might otherwise check their power.
It is less that the law is undone; the law is after all a useful tool for oppressing dissidents. Instead, fascists alter the law such that it can be enforced selectively and favorably to themselves. Rules for thee, but not for me.
Unreality insulates the social order from challenge by discouraging its beneficiaries from considering criticism and exhausting those tasked with fact-checking. This is equivalent to Eco’s characteristic irrationalism. If you spent the last article wondering why I was harping on the RNC’s unity framing so much, well, this is how fascists maintain the consent of the people: the elimination of alternatives from public perception.
In some ways, Eco and Stanley are at odds. Where Eco proposes that it is not necessary for fascists to adopt the same political beliefs, Stanley observes that certain kinds of assholes tend to flock together anyway, and lately they seem to be reading from similar playbooks. Both perspectives will be useful to us because we are (un)fortunate enough to be observing a movement which is both classically fascist and a modern cliche.
I sometimes imagine Eco would argue that Stanley’s thesis undermines his own, given that he explicitly avoided tying the characteristics of Ur-Fascism to specific regimes. Some tension is inevitable because the truth is there isn’t a universally agreed upon definition of fascism. That’s the annoying thing about academics! You can never get a straight answer about anything; it always depends on minutia and nuance and shit. Ugh.
The best we can do is synthesize the arguments of as many nerds as possible. So throughout this project, we’ll also refer to work by three other philosophers and historians in the field: Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism and Essays in Understanding, Robert Paxton’s The Anatomy of Fascism, and Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny.
Each author has their own take on what distinguishes a store-brand authoritarian from one that is specifically fascist, and they don’t always agree. But you’re not here to listen to me summarize a bunch of books, so I figure Eco and Stanley should be enough to get us started. We’ll unpack the rest as it becomes relevant.
Hey, remember how this article was supposed to be about the 2024 Republican National Convention? Yeah, we should probably get back to that.
Methodology
So here’s what we’re going to do: we’re going to step through each convention speaker, one at a time, and critically analyze their statements using an antifascist lens. We’ll do this by individually highlighting and color-coding any rhetoric which matches the combined criteria set out by the above scholars.
As necessary, I will provide context regarding the speaker’s claims, identity, or history which is required to fully understand their meaning. I’ll provide timestamps for each speaker, which link to footage provided by the Associated Press, so that you can see I am not misrepresenting them.
I will also provide some measure of fact-checking for particularly egregious examples of hate speech or disinformation. However, in the interests of my sanity, I am hereby releasing myself from the obligation to do so comprehensively, line-by line. I wish I could, but at the end of the day I am still a human being, complete with a human heart and human limitations. There’s an upper bound to the amount of poison I am willing or able to consume on your behalf.
When in doubt whether something qualifies, we’ll err on over-highlighting. Some statements will turn out to be harmless, and that’s okay. Merely being flagged is not necessarily indicative of authoritarian intent; concepts like “strength” and “humiliation” are common in everyday language, after all. My reasoning in capturing them is instead that their proximity to each other is a useful data point, which might change our understanding of future instances and the grace we’re willing to extend to claims of coincidence.
Finally, all of this will be sorted by speaker rather than by subject matter. If a speaker gives multiple addresses over the four-day conference, we’ll group all of that person’s speeches into a single entry. I’ll update the timestamp to let you know when this has occurred.
You may be wondering why I’ve decided to do it this way. It is, after all, going to look extremely ugly, maybe even a little silly. But I promise you, I’ve thought this through very carefully. I’ll tell you why at the end.
Highlight Key
So we’re all on the same page, here’s how I’m grading them: 3
Red: Authoritarianism. Themes of strength, weakness, combat, humiliation, fear, mythic pasts, retribution, anti-intellectualism, suppression of protest, and dismantling of democratic systems including but not limited to election integrity.
Pink: Anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment. Homophobia, transphobia, queer indoctrination theory, associations with pedophilia, erasure from public life, compulsorily nuclear families, media censorship, denial of gender-affirming health care, forced outing of students, TERF shit of any flavor really.
Yellow: White supremacy. Racism, xenophobia, great replacement theory, white birthrate anxiety, opposition to DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) programs and/or critical race theory, denial of racial inequality, mass deportations, invasion, cruelty to asylum seekers, conflating ethnicity with terrorism.
Blue: Patriarchy. Emasculation, misogyny, sexual anxiety, policing of gender roles, expectations of subservience, diminished bodily autonomy, objectification, infantilization, damsel as emotional appeal, and equivalent contrapositives (innate superiority of men, etc)
Orange: Antisemitism. Explicit and implicit distrust of or disdain for Jewish people, conspiracies of government control, puppet master imagery, misappropriation or dilution of the term antisemitism, intentionally conflating the Israeli government with the values of all Jewish people, any old school Nazi shit.
Gray: Christian Nationalism. Ending separation of church and state, establishment of a compulsory national religion, manifest destiny, deification of candidates, Islamophobia, right to discriminate, rigid family values, accusations of corruption by Satan, justification of past or future violence as authorized or otherwise demanded by god.
Green: “Arbeit Macht Frei”. Labor and suffering as virtue, hardworking us vs lazy them, destruction of social safety nets, economic and class warfare, deregulation and privatization of public resources, climate denial in pursuit of mad dosh, money as speech, corporate kickbacks and hierarchies of wealth, the LinkedIn grind™, bootstrap nonsense, being a shill for an oil baron and not even having the decency to be honest about it.
Finally, whenever a quote happens to include the word ~unity~, I’m gonna write it all goofy. This is purely for my own amusement.
You have to find your own fun in this line of work. 4
The Transcripts
Michael Whatley
Who are they?
Whatley is the Chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party. Early this year, he was appointed chair of the Republican National Comittee, as well as its general counsel.
He’s also an election denier; Whatley made false claims that the 2020 election had been stolen on Christian radio station WKRK, despite having participated in the “stop the count” movement. Specifically, he attempted to pressure his state’s board of electors to illegally discard opposition votes and declare Trump the defacto winner.
What did they say?
Whatley’s role is to provide a framing device, setting expectations for future speakers.
He begins by clumsily connecting the Butler rally shooting to the convention’s “unity” branding. He stumbles magnificently over the victim’s name, but, you know, thoughts and prayers.
[5:05:43] Just days ago, we witnessed a horrifying assassination attempt against President Trump at his rally in Pennsylvania. We are praying for President Trump. We are praying for the injured. We are praying for the family of… [Corey Comperatore].
We must ~unite~ as a party, and we must ~unite~ as a nation. We must show the same strength and resilience as President Trump, and lead this nation to a greater future.
Next he compares the state of the country under Biden today to the one that Trump supposedly left for him. He foreshadows the theme of national humiliation and introduces a conspiracy theory that future speakers will lean into heavily in order to justify ethnic cleansing (we’ll get to that):
Four years ago, Europe and the Middle East were at peace. Our southern border was secure, and our military was stronger than ever. Four years ago, America was respected abroad, and Americans could afford groceries at home.
Tonight, everything is different. Russia has invaded Ukraine. Iran and its proxies have openly attacked Israel, and China is threatening Taiwan.
More than 10 million illegal immigrants have flooded across our border, posing a direct threat to our communities, and inflation is crushing families from coast to coast…
…Only President Trump can ~unite~ us and restore our economy, rebuild our southern border, and regain our standing in the world.
Note that Whatley is suggesting both that America is responsible for the relationships of other countries and that Trump did a good job doing so. Please remember this for later. We’re not going to do anything with this observation just yet, but I want you to keep it in your pocket.
He continues:
When I became chairman of the RNC, I pledged to do three things. To make that happen, first we are going to get out the vote. Second, we are going to protect the ballot. And third, we are going to hold a world class convention. As long as I am your chairman these will be the RNC’s only priorities, because our number one objective is to win this election.
I am pleased to say that tonight we are kicking off the biggest and best convention in the history of the Republican party, and we are ~united~. This election is not just about the next four years. It’s about future generations of Americans to come.
At the time, I was unsure why Whatley bothered to specify that he would be focused only on these three things. It suggests an expectation or concern that he would be focused on something other than winning the election. Well, now we have the context to understand it.
We learned in the previous article that Whatley is freshly appointed as chair— replacing McDaniel— and that his predecessor was pressured out of the RNC for (only occasionally) declining to favor Donald Trump. Whatley is assuring the audience that he will follow Trump’s directions; he considers impartiality of process to be a conflicting priority.
Also, just to be clear: when Whatley says “protect the ballot”, he means “intimidate voters” and “disregard results we don’t like”. We know this because Trump has confirmed it on the record. I’d like to take a quick detour in order to demonstrate this conclusively.
At multiple points throughout the convention, the RNC runs a prerecorded campaign ad by Donald Trump. In it, Trump explicitly instructs his supporters to “protect the vote” by surveilling voters:
[7:25:51] I will once and for all secure our elections. We’re going to go to paper ballots, we’re going to have same-day voting, voter ID. We’re gonna do it properly! We’re going to have good, secure, beautiful elections. We never want what happened in 2020 to happen again.
But until then, Republicans must win, and we must use every appropriate tool available to beat the Democrats. They are destroying our country.
Whether you vote early, absentee, by mail, or in person, we are going to protect the vote. That’s the most important thing we have to do, is protect the vote. Keep your eyes open because these people want to cheat, and they do cheat, and frankly its the only thing they do well.
We will make sure your ballot is secure and your voice is heard.
Gobs of spit fly out of Trump’s mouth during this next line. I’m honestly astounded that they didn’t think to edit it out, given the production value of the rest of the convention:
Many Republicans like to vote on Election Day, and we must swamp the radical Democrats with massive turnout on Tuesday, November 5th. The way you win is to swamp them. If we swamp them they can’t cheat. It just doesn’t work out.
Okay. The word “secure” isn’t one of Eco’s or Stanley’s characteristics, so why am I flagging it as authoritarian? Because he is using it as a euphemism. Let’s unpack our first dogwhistle of the night.
When Trump alludes to “what happened in 2020”, he is referring to The Big Lie, his thoroughly debunked claim that the result of the 2020 election was fraudulent. In order to prevent that thing that didn’t happen from not-happening again, he is ordering his infamously compliant fans to surveil opposition voters en masse.
Voter intimidation is defined in 18 U.S. Code § 594. Rather than listing specific actions which are prohibited, this subsection is evaluated according to its outcome. Did your behavior create an environment which discouraged someone from voting freely? If so, go to jail. This allows it to be applied flexibly as we innovate exciting new ways to torture each other.
By deputizing private citizens to “watch” their opponents for voter fraud, Trump is encouraging them to create such an environment.5 He has every reason to believe that they will do so enthusiastically, even violently, given that they were already willing to attempt an insurrection and/or hang the Vice President on similar instructions. Trump is merely using the word “appropriate” here to reduce his own criminal liability.
In short, Trump is encouraging his supporters to commit another federal crime. The MAGA crowd obviously thinks so too because they’re already doing it by following people around, shouting at them, and filming them without their consent. I can remember a point within my own lifetime in which this would be unfathomable, but here we are.
So when speakers such as Whatley use the phrase “secure the election”, that is code for “undermine democratic elections”. I will be flagging it as such for the remainder of the convention.
Whatley has little else to contribute after this point. We certainly see a lot of him, but he’s mostly there to move the program along.
There is one last statement that I want to draw attention to, though. He repeats his immigration claim on day three but is slightly more specific this time:
10 million illegal immigrants have come across our Southern border, and we don’t know who they are, where they are, or what they’re doing…
Now that he’s clarified6 which border and what timeframe he means, we can confidently identify the original source for his claim. This “flood of ten million immigrants” talking point is going to come up a lot, so we can save ourselves a lot of headache by addressing it now. And, uh, spoiler, but no.
Whatley is amplifying disinformation which was originally published by Bethany Blankley on conservative news network The Center Square in late 2023. The article misrepresents transparency data released by Customs and Border Patrol in order to imply that America’s total population of unauthorized immigrants has suddenly increased by ten million people. This is false, and it strains plausibility that any serious reporter could make such an error unintentionally, much less that a lawyer would repeat it.
First, let’s talk about what is being measured: encounters by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). Not convictions, not deportations, but apprehensions. If CBP detains someone they suspect to be an undocumented immigrant and they turn out to be mistaken, that interaction is still recorded as an encounter. It’s also not a representation of unique individuals. The same person can be encountered multiple times. If ten people were encountered a million times each, we’d get the same output. So, not useful for that purpose, either.
This statistic isn’t even indicative of the activity of the southern border, because it includes encounters on the Canadian border, as well as airports and other ports of entry. This is explained on the chart The Center Square is citing. Even more granular definitions are available in a glossary a single click away.
Now that we understand the limitations of this metric, let’s consider just how many ways it could be influenced. Imagine that CBP’s budget or staffing were restricted next year; in that scenario, you might see the rates of encounters drop even if immigration increased. Alternatively, imagine legislation introducing new offenses which could be policed, or lowering the standard of evidence required to apprehend someone, or a change in leadership simply incentivizing more interventions. In each of those cases, you might see the number of encounters increase even if immigration rates were in fact decreasing.
This metric doesn’t necessarily correlate with increased need or urgency. The only thing that it tells us on its own is how busy CBP has been recently. Don’t get me wrong, that could potentially be valuable to know; my point is that statistical analysis of immigration is extremely complex. One metric isn’t going to be enough, and picking this metric in particular is just silly.
Ten months later, Blankley’s article still has not been amended. You might be interested to know that her profile on Muck Rack— a portfolio and pitch management platform for journalists and public relations staff— lists InfoWars among her contributions. An anti-credential if there’s ever been one.
Anyway, we’re finally done with Whatley. I promise this goes faster once they start repeating each other. In the meantime, keep an eye out for escalating military invasion and even vermin language as the convention continues.
Marsha Blackburn
Who are they?
Blackburn is a Senator from Tennessee, the first to be elected in the state. She opposes the right to birth control. # girlboss
In 2022, she attended the Supreme Court confirmation hearing of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Rather than asking Jackson about her experience or qualifications, Blackburn instead used her allotted time to amplify Republican grievances about abortion, critical race theory, and transgender people on national television. Her performance, particularly clips demanding that Jackson “provide a definition for the word ‘woman’”, briefly went viral. She rarely permitted Jackson to complete a sentence, and mostly just made statements for the camera.7
Equally performative is her reverence for the Constitution, which she apparently cannot distinguish from the Declaration of Independence. Also— and I’m not making this up— Blackburn is a known member of the C Street Family, a fundamentalist secret society which entered the public spotlight after a 2009 sex scandal. It operates today as a nonprofit, classifies itself as a church, and actively works toward “reshaping American politics and the military” without oversight. How lovely.
What did they say?
Blackburn speaks twice. Her first job is to present a report on the party’s new platform, and her summary of its contents manages to hit almost every one of our categories at least once in the span of just a few seconds.
[0:36:10] This platform is built on the values of our Founders and great Republicans from Lincoln and Reagan to Trump, who are committed to freedom, restrained government and peace through strength. The platform contains 20 promises, including securing our border, getting inflation under control, restoring our energy dominance, defending our constitution, protecting our 2nd amendment rights, securing our country, restoring our military strength, and keeping boys out of girls sports! And protecting life for the born and unborn.
She breaks for applause between those last two lines, as the audience celebrates their shared disgust of transgender people. 🎉 yaaaaay
The timing of this delivery is interesting for another reason: this platform specifically avoids taking a stance on abortion. Blackburn is lying. Here’s the relevant section of the 2024 platform (page 15, emphasis added):
4. Republicans Will Protect and Defend a Vote of the People, from within the States, on the Issue of Life.
We proudly stand for families and Life. We believe that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees that no person can be denied Life or Liberty without Due Process, and that the States are, therefore, free to pass Laws protecting those Rights. After 51 years, because of us, that power has been given to the States and to a vote of the People. We will oppose Late Term Abortion, while supporting mothers and policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to Birth Control, and IVF (fertility treatments).
The party’s official policy is not to interfere with States setting their own laws, but there is zero mention of a national ban. In fact, this language has specifically been removed since Trump’s last go around, and that subsequently pissed some of his supporters off.
Fun fact: “late term abortion” is not a medical term anyway. It has no federal or medical definition at all. There’s a word game being played here.
According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, neonatal care was inconsistent before 2012 due to lack of standardized language. A work group of professional medical societies proposed that the umbrella descriptor “term” be split into early term, full term, late term, and postterm in order to provide more specificity during treatment. Term simply describes gestational age; it is not and has never been a viability standard.
No doctor performs “late term abortions”— that’s the switcheroo. Anti-abortion activists appropriated this language in order to stigmatize as broad a range as possible under the veneer of science. At best, “Late term abortion” is a feeling, a phrase which invites the listener to fill in the blanks on when you, personally, think “too late” is.
Therefore, the RNC’s platform does not have an explicit position on abortion. It defers all responsibility at a federal level, and weakly states a nonbinding opposition to a procedure that does not exist. So Blackburn is fibbing about the contents of her own party’s platform. Given her status on the committee, and what we know about the platform’s creation, she absolutely understands the controversy within her own party surrounding its removal. She knows what the audience expects to hear and has to balance optics against the party’s obvious intentions. I do wonder if this influenced her decision to tack it on the end there after a crowd-pleaser.
Let’s keep going. Blackburn switches to the topic of America’s supposed national decline. This doesn’t even require interpretation because she uses the term herself:
Our nation is in serious decline, taken there by the Biden-Harris policies that have put government first and the people last. The Democrats have forgotten who they serve. We are here this week to remind them and America that we Republicans serve the people and we will not forget them.
That’s why our platform is dedicated to the forgotten men and women8 of America, and it will ~unite~ all Americans. It is of, by, and for the people. Our platform reflects the agenda of Donald Trump, and the timeless values that have defined Republicans for generations. So let’s ~unite~ and support our platform, and our next President Donald Trump.
We all know President Trump will keep his promises, as he did in his first term as president, and restore American greatness. That is why we must return Donald Trump to the White House.
Here we get our first taste of a new mythic past. The values of the modern Republican party are associated with the country’s founding and subsequently with the “true” will of the people. This is an example of selective populism; there is no evidence to support the argument that Lincoln cared about transgender people at all, much less that he had opinions on which facilities they must use in order for society to function properly.9 According to Blackburn, this platform represents the true feelings and true interests of all Americans. She is presenting it as natural law, or common sense.
Blackburn is also widening the canon of “patron saints” to include Trump. For now, I mean this figuratively, but as the convention progresses his sainthood status becomes literal. In either case the listener is encouraged to associate the will of Donald Trump with that of their most esteemed Republican presidents, regardless of whether their policies are consistent or their impacts positive. Basically, they’re trying to make “fetch” a thing.
You may also be wondering why I’ve flagged the “defending our Constitution” bit. It may seem ambiguous enough to pass as neutral in this context… until you ask: “defend it from what”? In this specific speech, Blackburn does not say one way or the other, but future speakers will clarify that they feel the biggest threat to the Constitution is failure to respect their “religious right to discriminate”. Else it is the ability to weaponize textualist interpretations of the document in order to roll back civil rights. Both positions are rooted in Christian nationalism.
Maybe you disagree with me on this one right now; that’s fair. You won’t later.
Blackburn returns to the stage once more before the evening’s end, to talk about taxation and racial equity:
[7:29:53] Joe Biden and Kamala Harris also think that small business owners are wealthy and should pay their fair share. We all know that’s leftwing code for you got to pay more taxes. Well, in Tennessee I led the fight against a proposed state income tax. We killed that thing. We are income tax free in Tennessee.
So when Donald Trump was President, I helped him spread economic prosperity with the largest tax cut in American history. Now, President Trump will make those tax cuts permanent. But if Joe and Kamala are re-elected they say they’re going to let them expire. That will be the biggest tax increase in American history…
Under Biden and Harris, people are also crushed by more regulations than at any time since Jimmy Carter. Their regulations aren’t just burdensome. Often, they include racist DEI requirements. Many small businesses are going bankrupt. Some are throwing their hands up in disgust.
Our party’s platform pledges seven times to cut regulations that are killing jobs and costing you thousands of dollars. Now you know who will slash that red tape and return this country to economic greatness? Donald Trump.
Quick fact check here. Trump’s tax cuts were not the largest in American history. Depending on how you control for percentage of GDP and/or inflation, they fall somewhere between the fourth and the twelfth largest. Nor would allowing those cuts to expire correspond with the largest tax increase— especially if you mean for the “middle class” Americans that Blackburn is appealing to. Trump’s 2017 cuts primarily benefited corporations and the ultra wealthy families that own them. Even Harris’s latest proposals to increase capital gains taxes would not impact small businesses or private citizens in the way Blackburn claims.
Engaging with this argument on its own terms is absurd because taxation is, in most cases, a good thing. Taxes fund public services and infrastructure that we all rely on. If you are experiencing economic strain right now, that has nothing to do with tax rates and everything to do with corporations suppressing your wages in the pursuit of profit.
Next, diversity, equity, and inclusion policies are by definition in opposition to racism. They also do not “bankrupt” businesses. Most corporate DEI programs are voluntary rather than mandated by regulation, and the majority of regulations that do exist to protect employees from discrimination have existed since the 1960’s.
The impetus of this talking point is likely the collapse of Silicon Valley’s bank in 2023, which was misrepresented by right-wing networks at the time as having been caused by the existence of industry-standard antidiscrimination policies rather than, you know, the bank run. This is patently insane. The purpose of regulation is to protect American citizens from corporate malfeasance. Citizens are not “crushed” by regulations imposed upon corporations any more than they receive trickle-down benefits from their tax cuts.
With that established, here’s my argument for why some of this section qualifies for our corporate oligarchy category. Blackburn’s comments on taxation are, without question, propaganda; she is fostering unreality by misrepresenting the impact of egalitarian policy; she is stoking class division and sensations of victimhood by falsely asserting that racial or socioeconomic equity will take something away from an otherwise majority class; and the end result of her preferred policies will be cementing a social hierarchy— in this case the capital class over labor. In summation, she is manipulating the public to continue toiling in the hopes that someday arbeit macht frei.
Undoubtedly some portion of you will not be receptive to that argument, and are jumping up and down calling bullshit on the basis that I am just describing modern capitalism. By this logic couldn’t you say capitalism itself is inherently fascistic? To which I would say: yes, good job.
Next!
Ron Johnson
Who are they?
Johnson is a Senator from Wisconsin. In 2020, he participated in the plot to overturn the election by failing to deliver the fake slate of electors to Mike Pence. Johnson initially pledged to vote against certification of the results, but he backed out at the last minute.
He’s also a COVID misinformation spreader; Johnson has repeatedly questioned the efficacy of vaccines. In 2022, he suggested that it is hubris to “think that we can create something better than God”. At another point he suggested that just using mouthwash was sufficient to prevent the disease.
Johnson frequently amplifies conspiracy theories, couched in the form of “just asking questions”. In March of this year, Lev Parnas testified before the House Oversight Committee that Ron Johnson knowingly spreads Russian disinformation. Johnson has dismissed FBI warnings about this and has since argued that the United States should facilitate Russian annexation of Ukraine in order to appease Putin and prevent nuclear war. 10
What did they say?
Johnson’s time at the podium is uniquely informative because he makes a mistake that no other speaker makes: he reads the wrong speech — a version prepared before the Butler rally shooting— due to a teleprompter error. Today we have both versions, and we can learn a lot from the delta.
Let’s begin just before that speech. In a supplemental interview with the Wall Street Journal, Johnson says the biggest threat to America is that it is “horribly divided, politically”. He suggests that the convention’s “unity” branding is a recent and deliberate pivot by Trump:
JOHNSON: Trump narrowly escaping death, I mean that’s a life changing event. I don’t care what you think of Trump. He’s a human being. That has to have an impact on him and I think we’re already seeing it. He’s saying he’s going to change his speech. He’s calling for national ~unity~.
President Biden went on TV last night calling for ~unity~. Now eight times in his inaugural address he said that was the number one goal, I’d argue he’s done the exact opposite, but okay. Now they’re both saying the same thing, and I welcome it. I hope we can accomplish it.
Johnson confirms his intent to make a similar change to his own speech, although he refuses to elaborate and wriggles when pressed for specifics:
INTERVIEWER: Do you feel the temperature coming down a little bit this week? Are you revising your script? Do you get the sense that your colleagues are revisiting how they message—
JOHNSON: Again, I am going to point out the differences. That’s perfectly legitimate. I will say I’ve taken out a couple lines. Okay?
[Silence]
INTERVIEWER: Can you tell me more? What motivated those changes?JOHNSON: No. No. Because I’ve taken the lines out. So I’m not going to say them.
INTERVIEWER: But it suggests that certain hyperbole maybe isn’t necessary to draw contrast.
JOHNSON: [shrugs] I guess it suggests that. You know, it’s all in the same— again, I have been saying this for a couple years. This isn’t new to me. I really appreciate the fact that President Trump will now lead the effort. He’s obviously got a much larger voice than I have. So I’ve been saying it for a couple years, I welcome him joining in and saying we have to ~unify~ and heal this nation.
In this interview, Johnson attributes violence like the Butler rally shooting to unnecessarily “heated” language and polarized media coverage. He sidesteps acknowledging that any such rhetoric might have originated in his party, with him, or with his preferred candidate.
The solution, he claims, is for the American people to unify under a set of shared values, which he obviously believes are the Republican ones.
At this point, he is on-brand. The speech he intends to give in just a few moments is, in theory, consistent with the convention’s revised tone. But here’s the speech he actually delivered:
[5:11:25] 170 years ago, the Republican party was born here, founded on the principle of freedom and dedicated to the fight to end slavery. It is an honor and privilege to represent the good, decent, hardworking, and very nice people of Wisconsin in the US Senate.
Like most Americans, they believe the purpose of government is to help improve lives, not make them more difficult. Unfortunately, Vice president Harris and President Biden have made our lives less safe and far more expensive. In other words: a lot more difficult.
Back in 2008, Joe Biden ran on a ticket promising to quote, “fundamentally transform America”, unquote. They weren’t joking. That was the Democrats new, radical, far-left agenda.
Today’s Democrat Party is not the party of our parents and grandparents. That party cared about workers and people struggling to get by. Now they are the party of open borders, reckless spending, weaponized government, and weakness on the world stage. This fringe agenda includes biological males competing against girls and the sexualization and indoctrination of our children. Today’s Democrat agenda, their policies are a clear and present danger to America, to our institutions, our values, and our people.
Democrats have forgotten American families. They have abandoned the hardworking middle class. But with President Trump and Republicans, those forgotten Americans are forgotten no more.
Republicans are the party of opportunity, liberty, and prosperity for all. We proved we know how to make life better for all Americans and we can do it again with a secure border, smaller government, less regulation, and lower taxes.
Republicans understand that Americans don’t want welfare, they want work. They don’t want woke “equity”, they want God-given equality. They want the promise of our founding documents; the right to pursue happiness. That’s what Republicans will deliver. We’ve repaired the damage caused by Democrats before, and we will do it again. We will complete the mission President Trump first articulated in 2016 to Make America Great Again.
Thank you, and God bless you.
Johnson immediately sits down for a second interview, this time with PBS News. Approximately thirty minutes have elapsed; we know this because Texas congressman Wesley Hunt is now presenting in the background.
Co-anchors Amna Nawaz and Geof Bennett press on one of Johnson’s pleas for unity, contrasting it with his performance moments ago. Johnson is quick to correct them:
NAWAZ: You just delivered your remarks on stage here, and as part of your remarks, you said that Democrats are a “clear and present danger to the country”—
JOHNSON: Democratic policies.
NAWAZ: —Democratic policies—
JOHNSON: Now, I’ll also give you a little inside scoop. That speech was written last week. They literally loaded the wrong speech.
NAWAZ: Did you not mean to say that, then?
JOHNSON: I had taken that out. And instead I loaded that we “needed a somber moment in history”. We should heed President Trump’s call to ~unite~, to be strong, to be determined. We must heal and ~unify~ this nation. I didn’t know how to get that in without screwing up the teleprompter. So I’m sorry that you— [unintelligible]— I was not happy about that. But again I— 11
NAWAZ: That is a very different message to the one you delivered to the delegates in the room and people at home, I will say.
JOHNSON: First of all, understand it is completely legitimate to talk about the difference in vision, the difference in policies. I will absolutely stand by the fact that Democrat policies are destroying this country. Open borders, forty-year high inflation, a dollar is now worth eighty-three cents, a war on fossil fuels, the weakness encouraging our adversaries. It’s destroying this country. I’ll stand by that. We have to [unintelligible] at those truths, those realities, but we also have to try and ~unify~ and heal this nation. Again, I didn’t attack an individual. I was talking about their policies.
Asked what responsibility Trump has to adjust his rhetoric in order to “turn down the temperature”, Johnson avoids answering directly, repeating his responses to the Wall Street Journal almost verbatim. Faced with specific examples— calling his enemies vermin, comparing immigrants to animals, promising a bloodbath if he is not elected— Johnson can only speculate that Trump is probably a changed man after an attempted assassination. He says that “both presidents have recognized the error of their ways”. 12
He has a similarly evasive answer about whether he intends to do another coup in the event that Trump loses again:
NAWAZ: I hear you saying it’s incumbent upon politicians such as yourself—
JOHNSON: —it is.
NAWAZ: — to call for unity and to deliver that message. As part of that, can you say that regardless of how this 2024 election comes out, you will accept the results?
JOHNSON: So, you’re asking me to say something that I can’t guarantee because I don’t know what I’m going to see. There were irregularities in the 2020 election, there’s no doubt about that. And quite honestly, right here in Wisconsin we passed reforms to restore confidence in our election system. That’s the goal. Every Wisconsinite, every American should have confidence in the results—
NAWAZ: Absolutely—
JOHNSON: —So you need controls. You can’t loosen the controls, and we’ve done that.13 And again, I want— I absolutely want to believe it’s a legitimate result, and we’ve made progress in 2022 by the way. We had observers, we had poll workers. We had results in Milwaukee during my election, closed the election by 11 o’clock that night. That restores confidence. It wasn’t just cause I won—
Both reporters make this face:
JOHNSON: —We didn’t have the vote holding out there til 3 o’clock in the morning, just raising suspicion. So, we need greater control, I wanna have confidence, I wanna accept the result, but I can’t guarantee that.
NAWAZ: Senator, I just want to say for the record there were no irregularities or any kind of administrative fraud that led to any—
JOHNSON: There absolutely were—
BENNET & NAWAZ IN STEREO: —Not at the scale that would have changed the outcome of the election.
JOHNSON: —We don’t know. It’s impossible to prove but there were all kinds of irregularities.
NAWAZ: Senator, this was widely investigated and litigated and no evidence of fraud was found that would have changed the election results.
JOHNSON: I didn’t say that. I said there were irregularities.
[painful silence]
NAWAZ: Senator Ron Johnson, we thank you so much for—
JOHNSON: Thank you for having me—
NAWAZ: —for hosting us here in Wisconsin—
JOHNSON: —I like to argue, by the way.
BENNET: That’s why you’re in the US Senate.
NAWAZ: Thank you for joining us here at the table, please come back and join us again soon.
Pictured: Bennet’s soul leaving his body.
Johnson followed up by sending an amended version of his speech to PBS News, which they published. Personally, I love that we have day-one patches for our perception now.
The new speech contains exactly four changes, a few of which I have yet to see anyone else report. The first is the addition of this brief introduction, which is consistent with both of Johnson’s interviews:
We meet at a somber moment in history. We should all heed President Trump’s call for ~unity~, strength, and determination.
The second is the removal of the claim that Democratic policies are a “clear and present danger” to American people and values. Note that this is also the only line that specifies Democratic policies. If he had delivered the speech he intended, that would not have been present.
Third, he removes the claim that Democrats “weaponize government”, leaving the rest of that statement intact.
The last change is quite subtle. In the original, he attributes his sum observations to “this fringe agenda”; in the new one, it’s “their fringe agenda”. This makes the distinction between Democrats and their policies slightly more explicit, which would have been necessary since the only other sentence which specifies the target of his critique has been removed.
When Johnson says he intended to revise the speech, I believe him. He clearly signaled that in advance. I even believe that he always intended to specify Democratic policies in some way, because I found a clip of him workshopping an identical talking point on Fox News back in November 2023. But when he claims that absolves him of responsibility for the impact of his rhetoric, which he knows will spill over onto human beings, I call bullshit. Because that’s a smokescreen, and he’s doing damage control.
Johnson’s favorite phrase is “I never said that”. He likes to play word games like this, and does so constantly. Instead of claiming X, he will claim a similar but unfalsifiable Y, separated only by semantics. If the listener ever attempts to hold him accountable for the intended message, he’ll play dumb. It’s the verbal equivalent of holding your finger an inch from your sibling’s face and insisting, I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you…
This effect is easily achieved by using ambiguous subject markers or by deploying “escape hatches” that can be leveraged later (like Trump’s earlier use of “appropriate” tools to intimidate voters). You would be hard pressed to find an interview in which Johnson does not use this strategy. But let’s look at the facts. Even in the “amended” version of the speech he pretended he gave, Johnson is primarily talking about people; see “Biden and Harris”; “the Democrat’s far-left mission”; “today’s Democrat party”; “damage caused by Democrats”.
Another reason we can disregard his claim that he is only talking about policies is because there’s another group of human beings that he is actively demonizing and inciting violence toward, even in the new version of his speech: transgender people.
Their fringe agenda includes biological males competing against girls and the sexualization and indoctrination of our children.
When Johnson says this, he is explicitly stating that transgender people are pedophiles, and they’re coming for your girls. He is counting on imagined sexual violence toward the listener’s children to provoke outrage, and that’s exactly what he gets.
One thing that I cannot emphasize enough for historians, something which will be lost in my transcription, is that during this convention the audience responds angrily to every statement about transgender people. Each speaker has to pause and let them boo it out before continuing. This happens before Johnson speaks, and it will happen many, many other times throughout the convention.
Johnson is actively leveraging disgust of a minority in order to work up the audience, and I simply could not ask for a better example of Stanley’s characteristic of sexual anxiety or Eco’s assertion that fascism must always have an enemy.
Transgender people are not a “Democrat policy”; we are people. Yet for some reason we do not count in Johnson’s professed “talk about policy and don’t hurt each other” worldview. In his speech, we function as objects. Acceptable targets.
I had low expectations of Johnson anyway, so no surprises there. I’m much more disappointed that zero (0) of my peers from any outlet bothered to call him out on this during or even in the three months since the convention. Apparently they do not see this as a contradiction. It’s really disturbing to know that my colleagues are predisposed to agreeing that I am a nonsentient matter of policy whose safety does not count.14
Even if Johnson had not explicitly incited violence against a minority group, the context in which he is giving the speech alone should make it clear to whom the listener is meant to direct their anger and disgust. Media literacy allows us to look deeper than the literal words someone uses in order to understand their intended meaning. The I’m not touching you defense has diminishing returns past the age of five or so.
In short, Johnson is full of shit. He made a mistake and contradicted the party’s “unity” image, which was embarrassing for his boss. Johnson is trying to save face, and his argument only works if you do not consider transgender people human, which apparently a lot of people don’t. Whatever. Setting the speech mix-up aside, what else can we learn from its content? Let’s talk fash.
When Johnson talks about “weaponized government”, he is alluding to Trump’s claims that the many indictments he is facing, which range from business fraud to treason, are politically motivated.
This relates to one of Stanley’s principle behaviors of unreality:
Fascist politicians know that their supporters will turn a blind eye to their own, true corruption since in their own case it is just a matter of members of the chosen nation taking what is rightfully theirs… Masking corruption under the guise of anticorruption is a hallmark strategy in fascist propaganda.
Johnson is attempting to seed these conditions. Fascists thrive when trust in democratic systems is low; if the listener believes that the courts are compromised in the way he is describing, they will give themselves permission to disregard what they see and hear.
This is helpful because we all saw and heard Trump attempt a coup on national television, and then saw and heard a multiday hearing full of extremely compelling and credible evidence about his long-term plan to commit that crime.
On a related note, I honestly think the “clear and present danger” line was pretty clever. This is likely an attempt by Johnson to reappropriate one of the most damning pieces of testimony given to the January 6th committee, by former Judge Michael Luttig. It’s an actual legal term, but this is by far its highest profile use, and the one which the average citizen will associate with it.
The line “Americans don’t want welfare, they want work” is a pretty clear example of arbeit macht frei. On this, Stanley and Eco would agree. Per Eco:
For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare.
In an ideal world, people would work on things that bring them fulfillment because their needs are taken care of. But according to Johnson, the act of toil is the point. Hardship is glorified, suffering valorized.
Keep this framing in mind when Johnson, or any other RNC speaker for that matter, invokes the right to pursue happiness. In this close a proximity to appeals of arbeit macht frei, the phrase takes on a different meaning— albeit accidentally. The Republican vision for America is one in which its citizens are constantly pursuing but never attaining happiness, through unrequited labor. If happiness itself were the goal, social safety nets would be celebrated. But no, Americans want work, you see.
The convention’s philosophy is that one’s happiness must be earned. It is necessary for some folks to never achieve it, in order to sweeten the sensation for those that do.
Finally, Johnson sets a record for the most red flags packed into a single sentence (at least, so far). Just look at this gem:
They don’t want woke “equity”, they want God-given equality.
The “woke equity” clause refers simultaneously to three different grievances: advancements in women’s rights, LGBTQ+ acceptance, and racial equity. Johnson is evoking a sense of victimhood in his audience, which skews straight, white, and male. Very efficient, very straightforward.
But I think the second clause is just as remarkable. He doesn’t just say equality, but God-given equality.
What’s offensive to Republican values is the idea that one’s station in the hierarchy can ever be wrong. If you don’t have something, you don’t deserve it. When Johnson says “God-given equality”, it’s safe to assume he doesn’t mean everyone has access to the same things. After all, his party opposes gay marriage. What he really means is, you stay where god put you.
On one hand, this is classic fash, bog-standard Christian nationalism. Here’s the hierarchy, don’t touch it. On the other it is genuinely impressive Newspeak. Equality, in this specific context, means managed inequality. I honestly don’t think I could have crafted a better example. It’s been months and I still think about it. Let it be said that I give credit where credit is due.
The weirdest part of Johnson’s speech is that he closes it with a swipe at LGBTQ+ rights… and then the convention staff play him off with the song “YMCA”. It’s accompanied by a video of Trump dancing to it. Y’all are aware that song is gay af, right? It’s sort of like playing HOT TO GO! in a church. What are you even doing.
Hey Look Ma We Made It [Partway]!
This concludes our first set of transcripts; about a third of the presentations given on day one of the convention.
Each of these articles takes about a month to research, write, illustrate, and fact-check. I suspect I’ll be chipping away at this task beyond the conclusion of the election, which sucks because that’s when it would have been maximally useful.
But I know my limits. I have a few other investigative pieces I’m cooking in the background in addition to this; I am overworked and I will die if I attempt to power through all of it in one sitting.
You’ll have to forgive me; and by that I mean I do not care if you do not forgive me.
See you in the next one.
Notes
- I’m emphasizing grievance here in order to build a shared vocabulary we can use while analyzing transcripts. Stanley only uses the word once in passing, but it is a succinct name for the phenomena he spends most of the book describing. To the best of my knowledge, the original author of the term in relation to alt-right movements is not known. ↩︎
- Actually, Stanley’s book presents these tactics in no particular order. He does not directly argue for the existence of a three-step fascist tango; this is just the most efficient way to summarize the text. ↩︎
- I’ve endeavored to choose highlight colors which meet or exceed WCAG AAA contrast guidelines (which as of writing is a 7:1 ratio for small text). I confess I’m unsure how this will display on RSS readers, though- especially ones that have been heavily personalized- or whether these shades will be distinct enough for colorblind folks. If you have trouble reading any of this, shoot me an email and I’ll do my best to fix it! ↩︎
- For the optimal viewing experience, please feel free to fire an airhorn whenever you see it. I do not recommend playing any drinking games with this word because you will die. ↩︎
- [EN: In 1898 Wilmington the Democrats straight up hijacked polling stations to stuff ballot boxes. Also the armed white militias that discouraged black men from voting. Their version of “secure elections” was not letting black men be used as “tools” of the Republicans and Fusionists to, uh, be represented in government. And the myth of dead people voting was present even then. -Galatéa] ↩︎
- Well, for some version of clarified. “We don’t know who they are, or where they are, or anything about them really, but we know they definitely exist! Trust us.” ↩︎
- Jackson had to endure 13 hours of this. Good lord, I’d have thrown a chair. ↩︎
- [EN: This could be mythic past/humiliation or imagined class warfare. (It feels important to note that actual poor people vote Democrat or are at least registered Democrat; also the renter/homeowner partisan divide is even greater.) -Galatéa] ↩︎
- I will grant you that Reagan definitely hated anyone queer ↩︎
- In fact, the WaPo interview in which he makes this argument was conducted from the convention floor this year. ↩︎
- That unintelligible bit sounds like the first half of the word “perceived”. If so, Johnson was wise to abandon that sentence. ↩︎
- Remember— when Trump does something wrong, it’s Biden’s fault. This could be the new slogan for the New York Times. ↩︎
- And there’s a candidate for the Republican party’s slogan: “You can’t loosen the controls.” ↩︎
- Ostensibly, reporters spend their entire careers carefully honing their ability to spot falsehoods, yet even professionals in my field nod along to the assertion that transgender people are subhuman. They do not notice that they have done this until it is pointed out to them, and even then it’s a coin flip whether they work on themselves or just get defensive. Whenever I entertain the idea of applying for a big-girl reporting gig at a mainstream news organization, I remember that these same people would be my peers, and ultimately decide against it. This is not my loss; it is yours. ↩︎
Citations
Primary
Associated Press. “RNC LIVE: Day 1 at Republican National Convention.” YouTube, 15 July 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_t0bhqHUdFg.
Eco, Umberto. “Ur-Fascism”. The New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995. https://archive.org/details/eco_ur-fascism
Stanley, Jason. “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them”. Random House, 4 September 2018.
Secondary
Andrea, Lawrence. “Ron Johnson Expresses Concern Over Same-Sex Marriage Bill As Senators Consider Changes for GOP Support”. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 4 August 2022. https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2022/08/03/ron-johnson-expresses-concerns-over-same-sex-marriage-bill/10227411002/
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “Definition of Term Pregnancy”. November 2013. https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/committee-opinion/articles/2013/11/definition-of-term-pregnancy
Armstrong, Vanessa. “When White Supremacists Staged the Only Successful Coup in U.S. History”. Smithsonian Magazine, 8 November 2024. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-white-supremacists-staged-the-only-successful-coup-in-us-history-180985400/
Associated Press & PBS News. “WATCH: Former Judge Michael Luttig Says There’s Still ‘Clear, Present Danger’ During Jan 6. Hearing”. 16 June, 2022. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-former-judge-michael-luttig-says-theres-still-clear-present-danger-during-jan-6-hearing
Bauer, Scott. “Sen. Johnson, Barnes Get Personal in Final Wisconsin Debate”. Associated Press, 13 October 2022. https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-wisconsin-campaigns-congress-9642479425ea1b0039817333d6faac28
BBC. “Tax Bill: Trump Victory as Senate Backs Tax Overhaul”. 2 December 2017. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42205181
Blankley, Bethany. Muckrack Profile via Wayback Machine, 13 July 2024. https://web.archive.org/web/20240713015000/https://muckrack.com/bethany-blankley
Brown, Melissa. “Sen. Marsha Blackburn Criticizes 1965 Supreme Court Ruling on Birth Control Access”. The Tennessean, 21 March 2022. https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2022/03/21/marsha-blackburn-criticizes-1965-supreme-court-ruling-birth-control/7120236001/
Cha, Ariana Eunjung. “Tough Questions—and Answers—on ‘Late-Term’ Abortions, the Law, and the Women Who Get Them”. Washington Post, 6 February 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/02/06/tough-questions-answers-late-term-abortions-law-women-who-get-them/
Cornell Law School. “18 U.S. Code § 594 – Intimidation of voters”. Legal Information Institute, accessed 8 October 2024. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/594
Dukes, Tyler & Morrill, Jim. “NC’s Two Biggest Races Unlikely to Change as Officials Continue to Count Ballots”. The News and Observer, 6 November 2020. https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article246984372.html
Glauber, Bill. “U.S. Sen. Ron Jonson from Wisconsin to Join 10 Others from GOP in Refusing to Certify Electoral College Results”. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 2 January 2021. https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2021/01/02/ron-johnson-oppose-certifying-joe-bidens-electoral-college-win/4113042001/
Glauber, Bill. “Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson Uses God in One of Multiple Attempts at Sowing Doubt Over the Efficacy of the COVID-19 Vaccines”. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 7 January 2022. https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2022/01/07/wisconsin-sen-ron-johnson-again-questions-proven-success-vaccines/9129753002/
Glenza, Jessica. “Republicans Omit National Abortion Ban from Platform for First Time in 40 Years”. The Guardian, 9 July 2024. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/09/republican-abortion-ban-policy-platform-trump
Gold, Alexa & Finnegan, Molly. “WATCH: Sen. Ron Johnson Said He Delivered ‘Wrong Speech’ at RNC Due to Teleprompter Error”. PBS News, 15 July 2024. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-sen-ron-johnson-said-he-delivered-wrong-speech-at-rnc-due-to-teleprompter-error
Gold, Alexa & Finnegan, Molly. “Sen. Ron Johnson Says He Gave the Wrong Speech at the RNC. Here’s the One He Meant to Give”. PBS News, 15 July 2024. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/sen-ron-johnson-says-he-gave-the-wrong-speech-at-the-rnc-heres-the-one-he-meant-to-give
Grisales, Claudia. “Blackburn Unleashes Final Wave of GOP Attacks in Long Day of Questions”. NPR, 22 March 2022. https://www.npr.org/live-updates/ketanji-brown-jackson-supreme-court-confirmation-hearing-day-2#blackburn-unleashes-final-wave-of-gop-attacks-in-long-day-of-questions
Horton, Jake. “Crime, Immigration and Tax Cuts- Trump’s Speech Fact-Checked”. BBC, 19 July 2024. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cglk87d817zo
Lybrand, Holmes. “Fact-Checking Sen. Ron Johnson’s Continued Efforts to Mislead on COVID-19 and January 6 Insurrection”. CNN, 14 June 2021. https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/14/politics/ron-johnson-coronavirus-capitol-insurrection-fact-check/index.html
Mackey, Robert. “Playing Dumb: Sen. Ron Johnson’s Role in Jan. 6 Plot is Hiding in Plain Sight”. The Intercept. 23 August 2022. https://theintercept.com/2022/08/23/ron-johnson-january-6-fake-electors/
Marley, Patrick. “Ron Johnson Says FBI Warned Him Russia Could be Trying to Use Him to Spread Disinformation”. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 30 April 2021. https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2021/04/30/wisconsin-sen-ron-johnson-says-fbi-warned-him-russia-could-trying-use-him/7409242002/
Montanaro, Domenico. “Congress Takes Reins of Prayer Breakfast from Secretive Christian Evangelical Group”. NPR, 2 February 2023. https://www.npr.org/2023/02/02/1153705297/congress-takes-reins-of-prayer-breakfast-from-secretive-christian-evangelical-gr
Oliphant, James & Coster, Helen. “Trump-Backed Republican Platform Tempers Language on Abortion”. Reuters, 8 July 2024. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-backed-republican-platform-tempers-language-abortion-2024-07-08/
Parker, Ned & So, Linda & Warburton, Moira. “Insight: ‘Stop the Steal’ Supporters Train Thousands of U.S. Poll Observers”. Reuters, 13 October 2022. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/stop-steal-supporters-train-thousands-us-poll-observers-2022-10-13/
Parker, Ned & Lynch, Sarah N. “Arizona Asks Federal Prosecutors to Probe Possible Voter Intimidation”. Reuters, 20 October 2022. https://www.reuters.com/legal/arizona-asks-federal-prosecutors-probe-possible-voter-intimidation-2022-10-20/
Parnas, Lev. Written Statement to House Oversight Committee, 19 March 2024. https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Parnas-Lev-Written-Statement.pdf
PBS NewsHour. “WATCH: Sen. Marsha Blackburn Questions Jackson in Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings”. Via Youtube, 22 March 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbXttwr5Umo
PBS NewsHour. “Sen. Ron Johnson Delivered ‘Wrong Speech’ at RNC Due to Teleprompter Error | 2024 RNC Night 1”. Via Youtube, 15 July 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5HZmK7bRq0
Pew Research Center. “Party Affiliation of US Voters by Income, Home Ownership, Union and Veteran Status”. 9 April 2024. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/partisanship-by-family-income-home-ownership-union-membership-and-veteran-status/
Qui, Linda. “No, ‘Wokeness’ Did Not Cause Silicon Valley Bank’s Collapse”. The New York Times, 15 March 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20240411142204/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/us/politics/silicon-valley-bank-collapse-woke-fact-check.html
Rahman, Khaleda. “Marsha Blackburn Mocked for Constitution, Declaration of Independence Mixup”. Newsweek, 24 March 2022. https://www.newsweek.com/marsha-blackburn-mocked-mixing-constitution-declaration-independence-1691365
Reuters. “Fact Check: Harris-Endorsed Tax Measures for Wealthiest Americans Misinterpreted as Policy for All”. 6 September 2024. https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/harris-endorsed-tax-measures-wealthiest-americans-misinterpreted-policy-all-2024-09-06/
Sharlet, Jeff. “Sex and Power Inside ‘The C Street House’”. Salon, 21 July 2009. https://www.salon.com/2009/07/21/c_street/
U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “Nationwide Encounters”. Accessed 8 October 2024. https://web.archive.org/web/20241002012528/https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/nationwide-encounters
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “What Laws Does EEOC Enforce?”. Accessed 26 August 2024. https://web.archive.org/web/20240826212029/https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/laws-enforced-eeoc
Wall Street Journal. “Sen. Ron Johnson at RNC: ‘We Are Horribly Divided Politically’”. 15 July 2024. https://www.wsj.com/video/sen-ron-johnson-at-rnc-we-are-horribly-divided-politically/3F6E86A6-4B91-478E-BA97-8DD3F6A4C03D
Warburton, Moira & Lange, Jason. “Exclusive: Two in Five U.S. Voters Worry About Intimidation at Polls”. Reuters, 26 October 2022. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-two-five-us-voters-worry-about-intimidation-polls-reutersipsos-2022-10-26/
Washington Post Live. “Transcript: Republican National Convention with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.)”. The Washington Post, 17 July 2024. https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2024/07/17/transcript-republican-national-convention-with-sen-ron-johnson-r-wis/
Wolf, Zachary B. “The 5 Key Elements of Trumps Big Lie and How it Came to Be”. CNN, 19 May 2021. https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/19/politics/donald-trump-big-lie-explainer/index.html
Anti-citations?
The following disinformation is debunked or otherwise set on fire in this article, in case you’d like to double check my work. I didn’t want to lend them legitimacy by including them alongside respectable sources.
Blankley, Bethany. “Illegal Border Crossers Total Over 10 Million Since Biden Inauguration”. The Center Square, 27 October 2023. https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_9d841124-7449-11ee-af4a-af115ad29337.html
Fox Business. “Sen. Johnson: This is a Clear, Present Danger to America”. Via Youtube, 27 November 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXYazrYlopI
Johnson, Ron. “What I Said, What the Newspaper Imagined, and What the Facts Are”. Campaign website, 13 August 2014. https://www.ronjohnson.senate.gov/2014/8/what-i-said-what-the-newspaper-imagined-and-what-the-facts-are
Phillips, Leo. “Mountain Voice With Leo Phillips – Airs 112820”. Radio, WKRK 105.5FM. 28 November 2020. Recording via Soundcloud, https://soundcloud.com/wkrk/mountain-voice-with-leo-phillips-airs-112820