"How the Alt-Right is Warping The US Imagination"

I read this book last week. It's a good book, but after you read it, you feel this uneasy scared feeling. I kept thinking about the insanity of what led up to World War II, and how humanity keeps making the same stupid and evil mistakes. The march of right wing jerks from Boris Johnson in the UK, to "Mr. Burn Down the Amazon" Bolsonaro makes me wonder if Trump is installing puppets world-wide. Whose voting for these people? Are there that many rich sociopathic people out there?

I see 2020 as make it or break it time. We either get Bernie or Warren, I prefer Bernie and march on to something known as progress and facing global warming and other planetary issues head on or we get Trump and more fascism and hell. One can tell the right wing is impacting the globe in very insidious ways where instead of humanity working together to solve problems, the lines are being drawn, and the same eugenic bullshit that took over the world in the 1920s and 1930s is being resold and repackaged.  This time we aren't just gambling with World War but environmental devastation.

I'm hoping the reasonable people will win, and people are waking up from the extreme racism, cruelty--such as kids in camps and we will see a brighter future. This book exposes a lot of the problem though, the growing alt-right movement has brought a lot of pain and insanity to our country. The uber-racists have come out of the closet and feel safe to do their evils with no censure.

This is the best article I have ever seen on the alt right, which I posted here some years ago. "The Skeleton Key to the Alt Right" sums up what the movement was all about.  During my years in fundamentalism, I was exposed to a lot of the alt right. While I refused the racism and some of the worse of it, just being in those churches I was swimming in the alt-right pools. They focused on an idyllic past that never existed. and taught that women should obey and that "father [god and man] knows best".  The subjugation of women also remains one of their central platforms along with the rejection of everyone who is not middle class plus and white.

Reading this book scared me though, the parallels with Nazi Germany could not be ignored. People forget Nazism was a YOUNG movement at it's start and got the people to march for fascism and the "motherland" and did so via the Hitler Youth and indoctrinating them too into "god" and "country". "God and Country" are two central themes the United States alt-right which is religion fueled. People who would have been written off as crazy racist extremists just 20 years ago have gotten a platform in America.

Don't forget economic problems fueled the Nazis in Germany and are fueling the alt-right here though oddly the poor conservatives vote for more of their own demise, as they are trained to worship the ultra rich, as being their "betters". The same formula of reaching out to economic disenfranchised people by telling them to blame the "undesirables" has been done before.  The same eugenic themes are touted, I have noticed, with the same extreme racism in both movements, though the USA flavored Alt-right focuses on African Americans and Hispanic people negatively rather then Jews in Germany. This is one reason that America is now locking up little Hispanic kids in cages and nothing is being done about it.  Hitler focused on ousted all the "degenerates" and used terms like that for people of other races and religions and oppressed gay people too.

It's is obvious that the alt-right has scapegoated other races in America and promised it's white dupes a 1950s [well a 1950s Utopia that never was] to sell their oppression. Where every family could live like "Leave it to Beaver" with a housewife in heels and pearls and a father with a good job wearing his suit everyday, giving out his daily doses of morality and wisdom with an obedient wife and children. The anti-intellectualism and hatred for science is also a problem, but this is also a foundational point for religious driven right wing movements that have taken over before. They always kick out the "intellectuals" and silence any dissenters.

If this movement keeps growing and Trump gets another 4 years, we are going to see more trouble and hell unleashed in this country. I have noticed the "might makes right" misogynic clan, are very alike on their lack of empathy or care for other human beings. It's scary. In 2017, Charlottesville was the warning shot but it seems things just get worse and worse. I live in a conservative enough area to see the Proud Boy flags and insignia and MAGA bumper stickers on cars. Those are people I know to stay away from.

One thing too, we are not in the days where one can "compromise" in the mistaken belief that these brands of Republican and/or libertarian extremists are harmless people, they preach oppression against multiple groups from other races to immigrants, gay and disabled people. They are a danger to us all. Sadly history repeats itself all too readily.

In my old small town, due to it's rural place and religiosity, the place was alt-right headquarters where bibles ruled and homeschooling prevailed. They bought into more and more of the teachings of the alt-right, even people who once renounced racism as disgusting, now posted Confederate flags on their Facebook walls. I want to cry even remembering the alt-right sermons I heard in my then fundie and evangelical churches which to be frank are dominionist homes to the alt right gospel. They preached that pluralism was "bad", that "multiculturalism is bad"--the "West is best" sums that up which is now a logo saying for the Proud Boys. Peaceful society is in danger from this movement.