NEW YORK — Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.
They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.
I’d love to say this surprises me, but it does not in the slightest.
Fascism seems to require an “other” to work. Once you’ve destroyed all of the existing “others”, the only thing left to do is to look inward and see whether those people who seemed like they were on your side were actually “others” all along.
And this is why fascism is inherently untenable in the long term - it becomes an ouroboros. It’s always a short-lived political philosophy as the reins keep getting tightened on who qualifies for the in-group until, eventually, those who supported it become part of the out-groups.