Whatever the GOP is now, conservative has vanished
Eugene Robinson ponders whether what remains of the Grand Old Party is “a cult of personality or a seditious conspiracy.” Is there anything, really, to ponder?
It is now the party of Doug “Big Lie” Mastriano, the GOP’s candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, a Jan. 6 insurrection attendee. Other lunatic fringe candidates are still vying for the cult’s nomination for U.S. Senate there.
In North Carolina, the GOP is the party of Ted “Monster Truck” Budd who won the Republican nomination for Senate, and the defeated Madison “Gentile Politics” Cawthorn. The young Hitler tourist lost his reelection bid on Tuesday and vowed last night that Dark MAGA* would exact its revenge, crush its enemies, see them fly before them, etc. “Their days are numbered. We are coming.”
The key element behind this cult/seditious conspiracy, writes Robinson, is devotion to Donald Trump and “a willingness to betray democracy.” Robinson continues:
The Republican Party is shaping itself in Trump’s image, and Trump has shown nothing but contempt for the traditions of fair play and good will that allow our democracy to function. Refusing to accept the will of the voters is authoritarianism. Today’s GOP, increasingly, is just fine with that.
Robinson urges voters this fall to “reject Trumpism, both for its cultishness and for its proto-fascism.” But Robinson is soft-selling the threat to his Washington Post audience. Cultish? Proto?
Business Insider offers a primer on the Republican descent into darkness:
“A big part of the [Dark MAGA] aesthetic involves memes of a God-like, authoritarian Trump getting revenge on perceived opponents,” Dr. Caroline Orr Bueno, a behavioral scientist researching far-right extremism, told Insider.
“It’s an aggrieved movement centered around the idea of a vengeful return to power. They’re embracing the role of the villain and stripping away any facade of decency or political correctness.”
This is what Cawthorn referenced in his Thursday Instagram post. It inspired last weekend’s white-supremacist mass murder in Buffalo, suggests Jeff Sharlet.
According to Orr, the Dark MAGA aesthetic is inspired by accelerationist/neo-Nazi movements and iconography, including fashwave, terrorwave, and the so-called “skull mask network.“
With Marjorie Taylor Greene, an elected congresswoman, and other prominent Trump supporters engaging with and amplifying Dark MAGA, it is bringing a previously fringe movement into the mainstream.
MAGA fascists got their movement rolling by questioning Barack Obama’s Americanness and his birth certificate. Now there’s nothing left of their Americanness except their birth certificates.
* Ben Collins of NBC News cautions:
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