There's nothing "conservative" about the fascist movement. It's regressive / reactionary (to use Yarvin's own label).
we're living in the utter pinnacle of unfettered conservatism today.
Imagine for a minute, if you will, that there are reasonable people who believe in some conservative values, but don't examine the rest of the party platform (or its results) all too hard. Now imagine that by pointing out where Trump falls short or is even directly opposed to those values (eg 2nd amendment), you might actually make them come around to seeing that we need to oust this autocratic child-raping anti-American scumbag. That would be a good thing, right?
I do get that Trump is just the tip of the Party's spear, and the whole pantheon of corrupt congresscritters / supreme council members / corporate backers really needs to go down with the ship. But that didn't work for 2024, and I'd say at this point we're losing our society and our country faster at a faster rate that those enablers' reputations are being damaged, so that seems like a terrible strategy. First and foremost, we need to stop the hemorrhaging.
> (which would mean they actually did not vote for Trump)
There is a difference between these two things, no? I've talked to people who voted for Trump subsequently regretted it after they saw what he is actually doing. Low. Information. Voters.
Our goal should be to leverage this difference. It's self-defeating to simply assume everyone that voted for Trump in 2024 continues to support cozying up to middle eastern autocrats, covering up the Epstein case, bully pulpit led cryptocurrency fraud, middle of the night raids on entire apartment buildings, deploying National Guards to occupy American cities and attack protestors, deliberately inhumane treatment of deportees while mostly letting businesses continue on as usual, etc. Or even that they support things that Trump did in his first term, like attacking the second amendment (eg his leadership around Kenneth Walker / Breonna Taylor).
Of course some of these topics are more subtle and lend themselves to propaganda bubbles. Like dwelling on the concentration camps probably isn't the best idea, since it's so easy to shut off one's empathy. But these are the angles of engagement we need to be looking for - unless we're just going to watch our Constitutional Republic being destroyed for four years, while hoping there might be some pieces left to pick up at the end.
Is there any evidence that there is any significant group of people who voted for Trump but are opposed to any of those things?
Because the evidence I've seen suggests that each of those things increased support for Trump anong his base, and the only open question is "By how much?"
> I've talked to people who voted for Trump subsequently regretted it after they saw what he is actually doing.
Don't focus on his "base". They're demented slobs like him, or foreign AI-bots boosting destructive messages to harm our country.
Focus on the people who were misled into thinking the grass would be greener on the other side, as they were frustrated with the status quo and believed Trump's word salad implied some actual reform.
But yes, in general, I agree with your point, in a colloquial sense, the Venn diagram is usually a circle.
Yes, exactly! They are lying to themselves, and as a group. They're not conserving our society, but rather throwing it away. I'm not doing a rhetorical trick - they are doing a rhetorical trick, and I am calling it out.
Yes. I keep saying - we need to stop doing this. "Conservative" makes it sound like what they are doing is gradual, measured, and familiar. Maybe not in narrow progressive circles where "conservative" has gathered strong negative connotations, but still in the wider general world. Using "conservative" as a synonym for Republicans/reactionaries/fascists is helping to support their movement.
Are they? MAGA has made it a point to purge the former GOP of conservatives.
In any case, we have polling around non-MAGA Republicans [1]. And contrasting Trump 1 and 2 seems to show how having non-MAGA Republicans, many of whom identified as conservative and didn’t endorse the 2020 coup attempt, makes a difference.
[1] https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/econtoplines...
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply no conservatives are MAGA. Just that I would be surprised if a majority of self-identifying conservatives identify with MAGA. (I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of former conservatives were now MAGA.)
The difference is meaningful, because by unifying MAGA and conservatives one loses resolution on a powerful breakaway faction. (The main reason we had a free and fair election in 2020 is because some Republicans upheld their oaths to the Constitution.)
Good comparison. One of the victims of the Night of the Long Knives were the Strasserists [1][2]. It’s absolutely legitimate to point out when the German Socialist movement was coöpted by Hitler.
You’re really going to reduce a historical event to platitudes?
What people call themselves matters. It may not be strictly correct. But it’s an identity, and that predicts how they’ll align in a crisis or movement.
I know. A platitude is a trite and obvious remark.
Whether the Nazis are true socialists is a red herring. The point is the people who called themselves socialist before the Nazis were systematically purged by the Nazis once they coöpted their party. It would be incorrect to say self-identified socialists were responsible for everything the Nazis did; it would be correct to say they enabled them to rise to power.
Most importantly, however, would be observing that right before the Nazis consolidated power, it was the former socialists who could have been peeled away, potentially to huge consequence.