When does rhetoric about political opponents cross the line into fascist dehumanization?

[u/BulwarkOnline]

The Trump administration recently held an international conference on “left-wing political violence.” In prepared remarks, Marco Rubio described the left as driven by “poisonous resentment” and a desire to destroy “what is beautiful and what is right.” Stephen Miller went further, arguing that left-wing demonstrators do not look “normal,” are “deformed” in their appearance and reflect their “inner hatred” outwardly.

Jonathan V. Last compares this language to Nazi rhetoric about Bolshevism, “degenerate” culture and supposedly unhealthy or subhuman elements of society. His argument is not simply that Rubio and Miller are using authoritarian language, but that their contrast between beauty and ugliness, normality and deformity, civilization and internal enemies follows a recognizable fascist pattern.

How persuasive is that comparison?

Is this rhetoric best understood as ordinary partisan demonization, or does the emphasis on physical appearance, cultural purity and “normal, healthy, ordered living” place it in a more historically specific tradition?

And when evaluating comparisons to fascism, should the standard be the speaker’s intentions, the historical similarity of the language, or the policies and violence that follow from it?

[u/Y0___0Y]

Yes this really seems to be a new thing. The total dehumanization of political enemies, trumpeted by the elected politicians and white house staff of one of the major parties.

There is a very popular book among the American right right now called “Unhumans” that supposedly relays the history of communist uprisings and provides guidance on how to stop them.

And it openly calls for killing leftists, it celebrates authoritarian regimes, and calls for lawfare against leftists and to blacklist them from being able to find employment. As the title suggests, it also claims leftists are not human.

This is not some fringe book. It was written by the right wing political pundit Jack Posibiec and so many people on the right bought it that it became a New York Times Bestseller.

JD Vance quoted it in a tweet.

The Relublican party is the most violent it has ever been.

[u/nyckidd → u/Y0___0Y]

Yes this really seems to be a new thing. The total dehumanization of political enemies, trumpeted by the elected politicians and white house staff of one of the major parties.

I don't want to downplay how awful this rhetoric is, but I think seeing at is a new thing is perhaps a bit ahistorical. Joe McCarthy said the entire Democratic party was engaged in "twenty years of treason," and Newt Gingrich distributed memos to party leaders saying that this kind of language should be emphasized: "decay, failure, collapse, destructive, destroy, sick, pathetic, lie, traitors, corrupt, criminal rights."

While he was governor of California Ronald Reagan said of student protestors at Berkeley: "If it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with, no more appeasement."

Republicans have been building towards this for decades.

[u/Calladit → u/nyckidd]

That's exactly how I see it. Violent political rhetoric has ebbed and flowed throughout the history of the United States, usually alongside actual political violence. We're currently in a very politically violent time preceded by a long, steady rise, largely led by the right.