Fascists have been running in every Republican Primary since my Grandfather’s time. They never used to get any traction outside of the fringiest of the fringe.
The reasons Trump did gain traction are twofold:
The biggest one is that bipartisan neoliberalism has pushed the working class to such desperation that the standard fascist tactics of blaming the internal contradictions of capitalism on immigrants and queer people started working on enough of the working class to move the needle.
Secondarily, and the reason the dam broke in 2016 when it could have held for another decade or two is that Hillary Clinton and her campaign had their friends in the media start treating Trump as a legitimate candidate to use him as a “pied piper”, and it backfired spectacularly.
Fascists have been running in every Republican Primary since my Grandfather’s time. They never used to get any traction outside of the fringiest of the fringe.
The reasons Trump did gain traction are twofold:
The biggest one is that bipartisan neoliberalism has pushed the working class to such desperation that the standard fascist tactics of blaming the internal contradictions of capitalism on immigrants and queer people started working on enough of the working class to move the needle.
Secondarily, and the reason the dam broke in 2016 when it could have held for another decade or two is that Hillary Clinton and her campaign had their friends in the media start treating Trump as a legitimate candidate to use him as a “pied piper”, and it backfired spectacularly.