Summary
Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell claims Republicans fear criticizing Donald Trump due to threats against them and their families.
He says Trump’s social media attacks provoke harassment, forcing lawmakers to consider costly security measures. This fear, he argues, is eroding GOP support for Ukraine and discouraging opposition to Trump’s policies.
Other figures, including Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney, have echoed these concerns. Elon Musk has also pressured Republicans by funding primary challenges.
Some GOP lawmakers reportedly faced FBI warnings of credible death threats for opposing Trump-backed nominees.
Historically, the problem of “this is just like Hitler!!!” has been the way in which it numbs people to the invocation.
That is, in no small part, the appeal among conservatives of calling everyone from Hegel to Whole Foods a form of creeping fascism. Putting every liberal politician (and a fair number of conservatives) in Hitler Cosplay helped diminish the idea of an authoritarian police state to seat belt laws and smoking bans.
The flip side is that stodgy NYT Op-Ed Writers who casually reject that any fascist impulse exists at all. Everyone from Fransisco Franco to Sheriff Joe Arpaio was just interested in Law & Order. The game of explaining why a given genocidal policy or nakedly fascist aesthetic is actually something different, you idiot, you imbecile, goes right up to the point of denying migrant detention camps along the border and mass extermination of Semitic people in the Middle East and trillionaires doing the “Roman” salute are what they clearly appear to be.
In the end
gets you coming and going.
It becomes a casual invective to describe even the most mildly distasteful political views and a “you’re just being hysterical” rebuttal to any policy that is quite literally adopting mass extermination.