"Target’s surrender — which came after concerted attacks from MAGA media personalities — points to a bigger story: The anti-woke right is increasingly wielding heavy-handed tactics — including state power and violent threats — to block corporations from making their own decisions about how to adapt to social change. Though the right is losing this battle at large, it is innovating and having some success..." -- Greg Sargent in the Washington Post, leading off a column "Target's surrender to MAGA rage shows how anti-wokeness really works." Sargent discusses how the revanchist culture war the MAGAts are engaged in targets (no pun) corporations and institutions that are simply responding to shifts in the culture at large, toward more tolerance and inclusion (yes, propelled by profit considerations). Expect more heavy- handed, violent tactics. Why? Read on.
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“When authoritarian leaders lose office, they come back, like, 10 times worse — they never get less extreme, they always get more extreme. January 6 was a profoundly radicalizing event for the base, for the GOP and for Trump himself, because even assaulting the Capitol you could get away with. His campaign events have to be seen as that of an extremist radicalizing people and emotionally reeducating people to hate people.”... -- Ruth Ben-Ghiat, historian at New York University and scholar on authoritarianism, quoted in another Washington Post article, "The deepening radicalization of Donald J. Trump." The "reeducation" of people to employ violent acts against people they've been taught to hate is a method used by fascists throughout history to gain or maintain power. What we've seen in the Republican /Seditionist/ Shooters Party is this "reeducation" has been part and parcel of the radicalization of the party and its base for more than half a century, culminating in its lizard id, the Malignant Loser. It preceded him and will outlast him.
