Only in America
Mark Robinson's Politics of National Psychosis
When Republican candidate for North Carolina governor Mark Robinson declared at a June event—at a Church, no less—that “Some folks need killing!” one might have wondered if might be something a little off with him. He went on to say the following:
…It’s not a matter of vengeance. It’s not a matter of being mean or spiteful. It’s a matter of necessity! When you have wicked people doing wicked things, torturing and murdering and raping. It’s time to call out, uh, those guys in green and go have them handled. Or those boys in blue and have them go handle it.…
Now, just to be clear, this a candidate for a major, statewide office from one of the two major national political parties calling for extrajudicial killings. One also might venture to say that this was sounded just a teensy weensy bit…fascist? But according to both some left-wing academics and J.D. Vance such rhetoric is out of bounds: it’s grossly propagandistic if not contributing to violence itself. Well, okay, let’s see what Mark Robinson thinks of himself… “I’m a black NAZI!” he wrote on an online forum according to a CNN report that also turned up some other choice comments, some of them on porn sites. And you know what, good for him! This is America! You can be whatever you want. This is the land of the free, the land of opportunity. Don’t let anybody tell you can’t be black and a Nazi. Before you shake your head at what Donald Trump has turned the Republicans into consider for a moment his contribution to civil rights here: who else could have integrated National Socialism. Sounds impossible, right? They said it couldn’t be done. But he did it. This must be what he means when he says, “Make America Great Again!”
Robinson also might seem a little too…eccentric for a presidential candidate to want to get close to. Of course, that’s unless you’re a political genius like Trump. He praised Robinson to high heaven, calling him, “Martin Luther King on steroids” and “Martin Luther King times two.” But Robinson might not have taken that as a compliment. He called MLK Jr. a “fucking commie bastard” and regretted that he could not join the KKK as a black man or he “would have called him Martin Lucifer Koon!”
“Wow, this guy sounds really nuts!” Yes, and these are the Republicans today. This is it. For the billionth time, this who they are. They are lunatics who post racist stuff on porn sites. This is not a fringe, these are not lone whackos: This is the essence of the party; they are the Porn site Nazi guys. When Tim Walz just called them “weird” he was being extremely kind, or, at least, Midwest nice.
What really seems crazy to me now is that there was ever a “fascism debate” at all. While we have Robinson and Vance accusing the Haitian migrants in Springfield of spreading disease while openly admitting that the stories are lies, what else can you possibly call it? Okay, maybe you still don’t want to say that word. Can we at least agree it all sounds totally psychotic? I used to say it was the politics of national despair, but the politics of national psychosis might be more accurate. In 1933, the British ambassador to Berlin, Sir Horace Rumbold, cabled back to London the following warning: "I have the impression that the persons directing the policy of the Hitler government are not normal." We are not in 1933 by any means, but these people certainly give the same impression.
from one perspective fascism can be perversely ecumenical--a union of selfish bastards, hateful pricks, and gross perverts looking past each others differences to recognize their shared humanity as irredeemable pieces of shit
I sort of want to share this with some friends, but it's scary. It's scary because it's real.
Sometimes when something pops up in the news about Republicans threatening to kill people, I think that my neighbor across the creek might stop shooting for one day, just to prove he's not really one of the people who are planning to kill people. I also think maybe, when there's a mass shooting, that he might stop for one day. But no. He never stops.
I think most Democrats think that the threat to kill people is just rhetoric. It is not. They are practicing every day for it. If they don't win, they are going to kill people. I am not sure whom they will target, though. It may not be like Jan 6 2020. It probably won't be. It may be something more like stochastic terror.