Professor Jason Stanley, an authority on fascism at the University of Toronto, appeared on MSNBC yesterday and explained how we're in a new phase of the authoritarian / fascist playbook:
“Scholars of authoritarianism have been warning about this for years. Every authoritarian ever waits for an atrocity to happen, a terrorist attack, and they have planned how they’re going to use it. They’re going to use it to target the political opposition. [snip]
It’s what you would do if you were scripting this. You would wait for some atrocity to happen that shocks the nation, and then you would blame it on the political opposition and use the levers of the state to target the political opposition. This is the next phase. This is the U.S. citizen phase — the targeting of U.S. citizens.” (our emphasis)
For those familiar with the rise of Nazi Germany, the attack came in the form of the 1933 Reichstag fire, set by Nazi officials and blamed on the opposition Communists, which led to the suspension of civil liberties and the consolidation of power by Hitler. The killing of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk has inflamed the right, and has led the Malignant Fascist and regime officials like the odious Stephen Miller to call for the destruction of "leftist organizations." They've been given a dark moment in which to incite their followers, clamp down on dissent -- and distract from the Epstein files and poor economic trends -- after this gruesome killing, and be assured that they'll use it to the fullest.
