Oh.. a joke, yes, ha ha.
MrSmiley
That speaks more to your ideological fantasy than anything else.
In the chapter “The Rise of Factions,” Walter describes how aspiring autocrats cultivated racial and ethnic resentments that culminated in brutal ethnic violence in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda. In “The Dark Consequence of Losing Status,” she describes how a sudden change in the power of a specific ethnic group can be more inflammatory than a sustained structural imbalance.
https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2022/10/13/review-walter-jacobs-civil-war-243912/
Fascism is a tool his Dark Enlightenment financial backers adopted, Trump is just a vehicle for dismantling democracy and Balkanizing America so their mythical utopia can rise like a phoenix from the ashes of destruction. Trump will be scapegoated and discarded once he has served his purpose.
Reading Luke Kemp’s Goliath’s Curse has a statement referencing Barbara Walter’s How Civil Wars Start And How to Stop Them: A dominant ethnic group losing status within a country is the single best predictor of civil war today.
It is a mechanism that can be used as a propaganda technique. Although this is closer to milieu control, Vance is using the terminology to signal his affinity to a particular segment of ice.
For context, this theory is a central belief of the Dark Enlightenment oligarchs who financed Trump’s election. He is a useful tool, to be scapegoated and replaced by Vance when he has served his purpose of dismantling democracy.
They do in so far as understanding motives and anticipating actions, it’s like any science, you want to be as accurate and precise as possible to avoid errors in making decisions.
His narcissistic personality disorder and deteriorating mental condition leaves him increasingly vulnerable to manipulation by advisors. The fascist elements within the party are prone to factionalization without competent leadership, these elements are a legitimate threat to his rule. It’s beneficial to know that while these parties all share a version of a palingenetic myth, the utopian visions differ considerably after America’s destruction, which can be used as a wedge to promote infighting and schisms between them.
For instance, the Dark Enlightenment oligarchs and JD Vance are working to scapegoat and get rid of Trump, (see mimetic theory of desire). Normal conservatives would be put off by the idea and their public support would wane, and the MAGA diehards possibly turn rabid to defend Dear Leader against Trump’s financial backers.
Edit:
Or push stories equating Trump/MAGA with Marxism/communism to sow division among the pure capitalist conservative types against his agenda.
https://fortune.com/2025/08/12/maga-marxist-maoist-trump-assault-free-market-capitalism-socialism/
Yes, but for the sake of accuracy the president is a vulgar conventionalist and parafascist. Factions within the Republican party, such as the Christian nationalists, meet academic definitions of fascism but Trump has no ideology. He uses fascism as a tool to gain more wealth and power, he’s not a “true believer” like many of his followers.
Vulgar conventionalism is … that the life according to nature is the preserve of a small minority, of the natural elite, of those who are truly men and not [born] to be slaves. To be more precise, the summit of happiness is the life of the tyrant, of the man who has successfully committed the greatest crime by subordinating the city as a whole to his private good and who can afford to drop the appearance of justice or legality.
Natural Right and History, Leo Strauss.
para-fascism – a form of authoritarian and ultra-nationalist conservatism which adopts the external trappings of fascism while rejecting its call for genuine social and ethical revolution (see pp. 120–4)
Nature of Fascism, R Griffin
I would recommend some PlasticPills but only certain videos, and def not immediately.
Also, introduce them to Le Bon’s The Crowd, and explain how this is used as a weapon against them.
https://archive.org/details/gustave-le-bon-the-crowd/Gustave%20Le%20Bon%20-%20The%20Crowd
And maybe Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, he defines socialism as totalitarianism regardless of left/right. I have my criticisms about Hayek and neoliberalism, but it is effective comparing far right to communism, especially for old conservatives.
Vance was handpicked by the dark enlightenment to destroy America for their neofeudal utopia, grinding undesirables into biofuel and enslaving the rest.
“The masses have never thirsted after truth... . Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.”
The Crowd, Le Bon
Propaganda must be continuous and lasting—continuous in that it must not leave any gaps, but must fill the citizen’s whole day and all his days; lasting in that it must function over a very long period of time.’ Propaganda tends to make the individual live in a separate world; he must not have outside points of reference. He must not be allowed a moment of meditation or reflection in which to see himself vis-a-vis the propagandist, as happens when the propaganda is not continuous.
Propaganda, Ellul
Words and symbols have no real meaning to these people. They are more like mantras, or incantations, to elicit conditioned feelings and demonstrate whether one belongs to the group or not. Fascist has no emotional meaning tied to the term, it’s just a meaningless noise “the others” make.