Is Trumpism a "Cult"?

 Consider the characteristics of a cult:

According to the Cult Education Institute, there are specific warning signs to look out for when considering whether a group might be a cult. Cults are characterized by:

1. Absolute authoritarianism without accountability
2. Zero tolerance for criticism or questions
3. Lack of meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget
4. Unreasonable fears about the outside world that often involve evil conspiracies and persecutions
5. A belief that former followers are always wrong for leaving and there is never a legitimate reason for anyone else to leave
6. Abuse of members
7. Records, books, articles, or programs documenting the abuses of the leader or group
8. Followers feeling they are never able to be “good enough”
9. A belief that the leader is right at all times
10. A belief that the leader is the exclusive means of knowing “truth” or giving validation

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-cult-5078234

Here is Another one:

Cults have commonly been led by narcissists; harmful cults have been led by abusive narcissists.
The following are some common tendencies abusive narcissists share to different extents:

• They believe they are always victims and are treated unfairly.
• They consider their victims to be aggressors, and their opponents to be evil.
• In their mind they are never wrong and never apologize; they will only rectify what they said if it will earn them power.
• They consider themselves above the law.
• They manipulate the hearts and minds of their enablers and create a group of unconditional fans or codependents.
• They lie and believe their lies; whoever contradicts the lies will pay the consequences.
• They lead their loyal and strong followers to commit crimes or unethical acts; they will not get their hands dirty publicly.
• They produce codependents who will not question them or their character, since to do so would be a sign of weakness.
• They are jealous if they are not at the top of the game, and until they convince themselves and others that they are at the top.
• They are incapable of experiencing true empathy, and those at the bottom are in their mind losers; a win-win scenario is out of the picture.

https://ctmirror.org/2021/01/19/is-trump-leading-a-cult/

Does the above apply to Trump and Trump followers? Are they a Cult?

The Republican Party plan to subvert the 2022 elections is coalescing

This is another warning about the neo-fascist push by the Republican Party to kill American democracy and install a kleptocratic dictatorship. As discussed here yesterday, the GOP is focused on making fraud by Democratic voters a key part of its election subversion strategy. This post discusses another prong of attack on elections, intimidating voters at the polls and, in my opinion, that includes setting up the political infrastructure to fabricate evidence of voter fraud. The GOP is dead serious about attacking elections and Democratic and independent voters.

Politico writes:

‘It’s going to be an army’: Tapes reveal GOP plan to contest elections

Placing operatives as poll workers and building a "hotline" to friendly attorneys are among the strategies to be deployed in Michigan and other swing states.

Video recordings of Republican Party operatives meeting with grassroots activists provide an inside look at a multi-pronged strategy to target and potentially overturn votes in Democratic precincts: Install trained recruits as regular poll workers and put them in direct contact with party attorneys.

The plan, as outlined by a Republican National Committee staffer in Michigan, includes utilizing rules designed to provide political balance among poll workers to install party-trained volunteers prepared to challenge voters at Democratic-majority polling places, developing a website to connect those workers to local lawyers and establishing a network of party-friendly district attorneys who could intervene to block vote counts at certain precincts.

“Being a poll worker, you just have so many more rights and things you can do to stop something than [as] a poll challenger,” said Matthew Seifried, the RNC’s election integrity director for Michigan, stressing the importance of obtaining official designations as poll workers in a meeting with GOP activists in Wayne County last Nov. 6. It is one of a series of recordings of GOP meetings between summer of 2021 and May of this year obtained by POLITICO.

Backing up those front-line workers, “it’s going to be an army,” Seifried promised at an Oct. 5 training session. “We’re going to have more lawyers than we’ve ever recruited, because let’s be honest, that’s where it’s going to be fought, right?”

Separately, POLITICO obtained Zoom tapings of Tim Griffin, legal counsel to The Amistad Project, a self-described election-integrity group that Donald Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani once portrayed as a “partner” in the Trump campaign’s legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election, meeting with activists from multiple states and discussing plans for identifying friendly district attorneys who could stage real-time interventions in local election disputes.

On the recording, Griffin speaks of building a nationwide network of district attorney allies and how to create a legal “trap” for Winfrey.

“Remember, guys, we’re trying to build out a nationwide district attorney network. Your local district attorney, as we always say, is more powerful than your congressman,” Griffin said during a Sept. 21 meeting. “They’re the ones that can seat a grand jury. They’re the ones that can start an investigation, issue subpoenas, make sure that records are retained, etc.,” he said.  

In the introduction graphic on his training presentation, Seifried says the RNC’s goal is to “make it easy to vote and HARD TO CHEAT.” 

The recordings are among the first windows into what former Trump strategist Stephen Bannon, who’s been urging listeners to his podcast to take on election leadership positions, calls “the precinct strategy.”

But Penniman, the election watchdog, believes the strategy is designed to create enough disputes to justify intervention by GOP-controlled state legislatures, who declined to take such steps in 2020.

By now, most neutral observers can see that there are a few thin lines that still hold back Republican Party neo-fascism. One of them is crossing the line from not finding evidence to support GOP crackpottery and lies like the 2020 election was stolen. Crossing that  thin line to fabricating evidence needed to "prove" their crackpottery and lies is a huge temptation. It is just a very thin line. What harm could there possibly be in crossing it for the sake of the country?

And, once Republicans control political offices needed to pull off their crimes, that line will more likely than not be crossed for the first time (assuming it has not already been crossed). After that, it becomes easier to cross it again. Then again and again and again. The last vestige of a moral qualm will be buried under the Republican Party's overriding moral imperative: Sacred Republican Party ends justify the corrupt, immoral and/or criminal means. Republicans cannot win on the merits, so they will win on the deceit and cheat.

Then democracy and truth will die. The kleptocrat tyrant will rise, hiding behind the false claim that the effort was selfless and just for the sake and welfare of us and democracy.

Republican Party training materials in voter intimidation

The next phase in the march of neo-fascism: Demagoguing a survivalist mode mindset

The warnings need to be repeated 24/7/365. There's no denying the Republican Party is trying to achieve its goal of installing a corrupt, bigoted tyranny in the US. They are doling it by demagoguery, crime and any other tactics that might work. The GOP close to achieving its evil goal. Warnings must now be constant. Maybe a few minds can still be shaken awake to help defend democracy. Maybe.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes at Lucid: 

When polarization shifts into survivalist mode, democracy is in danger

“I went to Congress as a collaborator, and now I'm in an environment where the Republicans want to rule or ruin-- that's the mindset,” Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA) told me in January. “There's no room for collaboration…Do you believe in rule of law or do you believe in violence? That's the battle in Washington right now.”

Rep. Swalwell’s comment, which reflects a political class that is deeply divided, prompts thoughts on polarization. We often hear about polarization as a fixed state of affairs, rather than as a process that can deepen if there is a political will driving it, as there is in the US today.

Disaffection with liberal democracy, rising economic inequality, and social media’s exposure of billions to disinformation are among the factors that have contributed to the spread of polarization around the world, as studies show. Polarization is likely here to stay, and democracies need to find ways to contain and reverse it.

History is clear on who benefits from polarization: It’s never democracies. For a century, anti-democratic movements and parties have encouraged it. When it is joined to an illiberal political design, polarization can become “energized,” shading into survivalist states of mind.

In the hands of authoritarians, the low-level rancor of me vs. you can become me or you –the idea that only one of us can survive the encounter – leading to violence and other lawless behaviors. It is deeply worrying that in the US, Republicans are not just accelerating polarization, but shifting into survivalist mode.

Polarization, like propaganda, feeds on existing biases and tribalist impulses that are continually refreshed as we do research on line or scroll through the news, absorbing algorithmically-selected ads and friend/follow suggestions.

Illiberal [Germaine’s label: neo-fascist] politicians and their media allies build on this, feeding us images and rhetoric designed to encourage anti-democratic behaviors and outcomes. Media disinformation and conspiracy theories that undermine shared assumptions and truths act in harmony with political polarization, creating enemies and scapegoats that further foment division, suspicion and hostility.

The global right’s exploitation of the pandemic to destroy accepted scientific and public health practices is one example. Schools, town councils, hospitals and clinics become sites of conflict. Anti-science aggression (to use Peter Hotez’s term) and hostility to education have turned previously respected community members, like teachers, health officials, and nurses, into enemies. 

How rank and file republicans see reality --

His opinion is worse than worthless and insulting, it’s neo-fascist

Polarization is just the start of a process that aims to get people into a state of fear about losing everything, preparing them to accept authoritarian solutions to democratic issues of free speech and coexistence with diversity.

The crystallized Republican strategy and tactics on fraudulent elections

The GOP propaganda and sleaze Leviathan appears to have settled on a strategy to appear rational about an argument that is pure partisan vaporware. Here's the secret: Argue vehemently that Democrats commit vote fraud, but Republicans do not.

It's not true, but it is brilliant. Sheer brilliance.

A Washington Post opinion piece comments:

You might have noticed that many of the same Republicans who insisted that “voter fraud” cast doubt on Donald Trump’s 2020 loss mysteriously don’t see fraud at play in elections that they win. This is routinely described as “hypocrisy.”

But the “hypocrisy” charge doesn’t do this justice. Because embedded in this tactic is something more than mere political double talk. It embodies an actual principle of sorts: that when Republicans lose elections, the voting can be presumed illegitimate or suspect, and when Republicans win them, the voting can be presumed legitimate and above suspicion entirely.

Usefully enough, Rep. Mo Brooks has now stepped forward to confirm this. And the Alabama Republican’s corroboration is noteworthy in light of emerging details about a complex new GOP plan to make this principle actionable in future elections.

Brooks’s latest comes in a New York Times piece that reports on the selective approach that Republicans take with charges of voter fraud. As the Times notes, this exposes a “fundamental contradiction,” in which those charges are used to challenge GOP losses but not GOP wins.

Pressed further by the Times, Brooks blithely suggested that in Alabama, the fraud took place “in predominantly Democrat parts of the state.”

You see, in primaries decided by Republican voters in red areas, the voting is pure and unsullied. By contrast, in general elections that Democrats are trying to steal from Republicans, the voting in blue areas is marred by widespread fraud.

That form of fraud alleged by Brooks happens to be virtually nonexistent. But the point is that the mere assertion that something illicit happened is the coin of the realm here. It’s meant to give some kind of patina of a public rationale for naked efforts to subvert election losses.

I raised the question here before of who is disrespecting whom. I raise it again. This is another reason to raise it again. 

Republican elites and their propaganda and slanders Leviathan claiming that Republican voters are honest citizens, while claiming that Democratic Party voters are evil criminal socialist-communist tyrant pedophiles, and cannibal baby killers, or whatever other bullshit lies and slanders that (i) GOP elites choose to use, and (ii) most of its rank and file (~97% ?) indefensibly and unjustifiably believe.

It is past time to be outraged by corrupt, incompetent, lying neo-fascist Republican elites and their complicit rank and file. They are evil criminals and human scum, not the political opposition.

Questions: 

1. Is that rant over the top, or is there at least a non-trivial basis in fact to support most of that blunt harshness? 

2. Is it OK for Republican elites to call Democrats criminals on the basis of zero evidence because it is just politics?

This insulting stupidity is about what passes for mainstream 

Republican elite propaganda reasoning