March 30, 2021

? JANUARY 6TH WAS TWO MONTHS AGO:

The Right Says Sorry In Advance for Going Fascist (Matt Lewis, Mar. 30th, 2021, Daily Beast)

One such example comes to us from The American Mind, a publication of the once-mainstream conservative Claremont Institute. In a recent piece that garnered some buzz, senior fellow Glenn Ellmers argues that "most people living in the United States today--certainly more than half--are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term." His level of despair can be felt when he writes that, "Practically speaking, there is almost nothing left to conserve" and concludes that we should "give up on the idea that 'conservatives' have anything useful to say. Accept the fact that what we need is a counter-revolution." Oh yeah, he also takes a shot at Joe Biden's Inaugural poet, saying, "If you are a zombie or a human rodent who wants a shadow-life of timid conformity, then put away this essay and go memorize the poetry of Amanda Gorman."

Human rodent? Sick stuff. But possibly less dangerous than my other example, which is Jesse Kelly's comments days ago on Fox News' "Tucker Carlson Tonight."

"I've said this before and I'm telling you, I'm worried that I'm right: The right is going to pick a fascist within 10 to 20... years because they're not going to be the only ones on the outs," Kelly said. "There's 60, 70 million of us. We're not a tiny minority, and if we're going to be all treated like criminals and all subject to every single law, while antifa Black Lives Matter guys go free and Hunter Biden goes free, then the right's going to take drastic measures."

Kelly wasn't lying when he said he's said this before. "The inevitable counter to communism is fascism," he tweeted in February. "We will see a monster rise on the Right in response to the Left's violence and censorship. It will be awful. But it is coming. I promise you that." Left unsaid are the illusions to Weimar Germany and the Weimarization of America. In the 1930s, many Germans were willing to give Hitler a try because they greatly feared Communism, saw their predicament as a binary choice, and chose (what they thought would be) the lesser of two evils. Kelly seems to be warning us that America (which is quite different from the Weimar Republic) is headed toward a similar fate.

Now, responsible conservatives do sometimes warn the left against pursuing radical ideas about identity politics, cancel culture, street violence, iconoclasm, etc., but our warnings are more sincere and less grandiose. If you've seen the "This is how you get Trump" tweets, you're familiar with the genre.

Kelly's playbook is much different. 

Posted by at March 30, 2021 12:00 AM

  

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