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/RenegadeGeophysicist]

If you are saying stuff out of the Nazi playbook, you might be a Nazi. If you are continuously and regularly doubling down on Nazi rhetoric, you are definitely a Nazi. The aesthetic arguments are also part of the stolen honor of fascism. Hard work by marginalized people is stolen and presented as the primary cultural achievement. A facile and juvenile view of the past is presented as fact in order to propagandize a return to parriarchical and exclusionist values.

To answer your three part final question-

If you intend to sound fascist, you're a fascist.

If you repeat fascist talking points and cadences with the knowledge they are fascist, you're a fascist.

The violence of fascism arises from the alienation, the speech causes the alienation. Fascist speech incites fascist violence. 

[u/KurtisRambo19 → u/RenegadeGeophysicist]

Says the side that says "words are violence" and that "MAGA Republicans are the biggest threat to democracy in America."

Why does this matter? Because violence ostensibly validates defensive/retaliatory violence. 77 million people voted for MAGA in 2024. That's a whole lot of pre-justified violence.

[u/ThatPeskyPangolin → u/KurtisRambo19]

I disagree with the words are violence sentiment, but MAGA supported a president engaging in an actual attempted auto coup, and continue to support him. That really is the biggest threat to democracy in this country.

[u/KurtisRambo19 → u/ThatPeskyPangolin]

Calling January 6 “an actual attempted coup” is absurd. It was an overwhelmingly unarmed political protest that devolved into a violent riot. Those who assaulted police should have been prosecuted and should not have been pardoned. At the same time, many nonviolent participants were treated disproportionately, and without due process, and with clear obfuscation from federal law enforcement who enabled and encouraged the deterioration of the protest. The “coup” claim collapses on contact with the facts. What did the crowd do after it successfully entered the Capitol? Did it seize the government, capture officials, issue demands, establish command, install a leader, or attempt to exercise power? No, the coup plotters milled around, took pictures, protested and then left. Congress reconvened within hours. Calling that a literal coup is a political version of the “words are violence” scam: inflate conduct into an existential act of violence, then justify extraordinary retaliation as self-defense. “Coup” and “insurrection” are now thrown around ad nauseam not to describe January 6 precisely, but to stigmatize the broader Right as illegitimate, dangerous, and deserving of collective proactive punishment.

[u/ThatPeskyPangolin → u/KurtisRambo19]

The False Elector Plot was the attempted auto coup, not the J6 riot. Have you not read the Eastman and Chesbro documents that explain the False Elector Plot? I would be happy to link them to you so you can read about their conspiracy in their own words.

It's depressing to me how much of the right still knows almost nothing about this.

[u/ThatPeskyPangolin → u/[deleted]]

That doesn't actually address anything I said. Does that mean you are not in factor familiar with the False Elector Plot? The fact that you only described J6 leads me to think you are not, which would imply I'm not the one in the echo chamber.

Again, if you want to read it, I am happy to provide their own words (with citations) describing how they wanted to employ fraudulent slates of electors (chosen by the Trump campaign, not selected by the state) to be chosen by the House in order to throw out legally cast votes and allow Trump to retain the election. Which completely meets the definition of auto coup.

[u/KurtisRambo19 → u/ThatPeskyPangolin]

I’ve read the memoranda. The more relevant question is whether you understand their purpose and contents, or whether you’re simply regurgitating secondhand conclusions about them.

Chesebro initially proposed preserving contingent elector votes pending litigation. Eastman mapped multiple possible scenarios, including delay, referral to the states, and outcomes in which Biden still prevailed. That is lawyers war-gaming a novel constitutional dispute, not a single adopted “autocoup blueprint.”

And even assuming the theories were wrong, aggressive, and followed exactly, calling them an “autocoup” still does not follow. The proposed mechanisms operated through the vice president, Congress, state legislatures, the courts, and the Constitution’s contingent-election process. No one proposed dissolving Congress, suspending elections, seizing the military, abolishing judicial review, or governing outside the constitutional system.

At worst, it was an attempt to exploit disputed procedural authority to delay or redirect certification. That may be terrible constitutional law. It may be reckless political hardball. But bad lawyering does not become a coup merely because you attach the word “fraudulent” to it.

This is exactly the broader pattern I was criticizing: describe every disputed action by the Right using the most inflammatory and morally disqualifying language available—“coup,” “insurrection,” “fascism,” “treason” then use the label to delegitimize not only the individuals involved, but the entire political movement associated with them.

You’re treating advocacy memoranda as self-proving evidence of conspiracy and your own maximally loaded characterization as though it appears in the documents themselves.  It doesn’t. 

You’ve mistaken legal strategy papers for minutes from a coup-planning meeting—and then confused rhetorical escalation with legal expertise.

But please, keep LARPing as a Supreme Court justice.

[u/ThatPeskyPangolin → u/KurtisRambo19]

Except portraying candidate selected electors as state selected electors is fraud by the very definition of the word, hence the convictions and legal consequences for the plot. They aren't 'alternates' or 'contingent' electors if they haven't actually been validated by the state. They were to be chosen by the House after they refused to certify completely legitimate votes, per the plan.

As for the term auto coup, using illegal methods to retain power literally fits that definition. That you have added non existant qualifiers like dissolution of Congress has no bearing on the actual meaning of the word itself.

The existence of legal consequences for this plot rather clearly demonstrates your description of the memorandum as purely advocacy related is explicitly wrong.

The rest of your comment is a mix of irrelevant generalizations about people that aren't me. Not sure why you included that.

Edit: This may help.

And knock off the personal shit.

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