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| Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images |
The ‘traditional’ crowd on Twitter and across social media. Ultra-right-wing, ultra-nationalist (some even adopting the ‘Fascist’ label), openly racist, misogynist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and basically calling for anyone who doesn’t think like them to be made to conform - always implicitly suggested, but the language now is becoming more direct and blatant. Yearning for a glorious past that was never as glorious or as simple as they imagine. So willing to wage hell on earth in order to enforce this return to antiquity. So zealous of their ‘free speech,’ yet so eager and willing to impose ideological purity on all. In whole, more than a tad scary that all these fringe groups on the extremes are more influential than they've, perhaps, ever been in America. At least since the 1930s, and there were periods of extremism throughout the 19th and early 20th Centuries. The stakes have never been higher, and one who downplays the threat of political extremism does so at our peril.
Extremism is coming from all directions in the U.S. today, but the nationalist populist/neo-Fascist contingent is the most numerous of these fringe factions, all of whom are dangerous; after the insurrection of January 6, 2021, they have become the most dangerous and most serious in their intentions. Without question, they are the most conspiracy-minded, and the ones most given to cultism. And ask any of them, and every single one will say we’re all the crazy ones and they are sane. How is greater society ever going to reason with these people, especially as they become a greater percentage of the overall population? How are we going to even continue to have a civil society when everybody hates each other and nobody can agree on what reality is? We’re doomed, and it’s the very people who believe they are saving us - populists, religious zealots, cable TV talking heads, white supremacists, black nationalists, neo-Marxists, etc. - and their many acolytes that are showing themselves to be our undoing.
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| Steve Benson/Detroit Free Press |
Brooklyn teens jump Hasidic man as police report hate crimes against Jews skyrocket across NYC - Hate crimes are soaring all over the United States, particularly against Jews. Can it be a coincidence this is happening at the same time as the radical left and the nationalist populist right have grown more comfortable attacking Zionism, and as Holocaust denial has grown more mainstream? (New York Daily News 4/02)
