People that talk about Trump supporters are usually racists and classists

right wingers spent 8 years calling obama racist.

trump calls black people he doesnt like racists.

“some people who voted for Trump are racist and they voted for him for racist reasons” - trumps running mate JD vance

 

https://www.reporternews.com/story/opinion/columnists/2016/12/01/democrats-and-nazi-card/94603274/

Perhaps these quotes can jog your memory:

George Soros:

About President George W. Bush, billionaire Democratic contributor George Soros said, ‘’(He displays the) supremacist ideology of Nazi Germany,’’ and that his administration used rhetoric that echoes his childhood in occupied Hungary. ‘’When I hear Bush say, ‘You’re either with us or against us,“’ Soros said, ‘’it reminds me of the Germans.’’ He also said: ‘’The (George W.) Bush administration and the Nazi and communist regimes all engaged in the politics of fear. … Indeed, the Bush administration has been able to improve on the techniques used by the Nazi and communist propaganda machines.’’


Al Gore:

Former Vice President Al Gore said: ‘’(George W. Bush’s) executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations, from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. … And every day, they unleash squadrons of digital brown shirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the president.’’

Harry Belafonte:

Actor/singer and activist Harry Belafonte, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., called Bush a racist.

NAACP Chairman Julian Bond:

Speaking at historically black Fayetteville State University in North Carolina in 2006, Bond said, ‘’The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side.’’

https://www.reporternews.com/story/opinion/columnists/2016/12/01/democrats-and-nazi-card/94603274/

 

GWB wasn't just portrayed as a yokel - which he was - he was very much accused of being a Nazi and a racist.

The idea that we are sitting here in 2024 and people are denying that... is something. Good lord.

 

@Nook

Don't remember any of these? The idea that Democrats calling Republicans Nazis/racists during the GWB era was not common is just... like... wow. I mean, that's just so disingenuous. It was all over the place.

From January 20, 2001 to January 19, 2009—those would be the Bush years—the left was awash with celebrities comparing President George W. Bush to Hitler.

Comedian and actress Janeane Garofalo was a constant critic of Bush, once referring to the Bush administration as the "43rd Reich."

Actor David Clennon, of the television series The Agency and Ghost Whisperer, said, "I'm not comparing Bush to Adolf Hitler—because George Bush, for one thing, is not as smart as Adolf Hitler. And secondly George Bush has much more power than Adolf Hitler ever had."

Following the 2004 elections, singer Linda Ronstadt attacked not only Bush, but all newly-elected Republicans, saying, "Now we've got a new bunch of Hitlers."

During the 2008 elections, Madonna used the appropriately-titled song "Get Stupid" to display images of Sen. John McCain alongside Hitler and Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, while showing Obama alongside Mahatma Gandhi and John Lennon. And, far from receiving the same fate as Hank Williams, Jr., Madonna appears to be a shoo-in to perform at this season's Super Bowl.

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blog...tler-president-comparison-be-it-bush-or-obama

"I know liberals made a big mistake because we attacked your boy [President George W. Bush] like he was the end of the world," Maher told panelist David Frum, a former speechwriter for Bush. "He wasn't."

Maher continued: "And Mitt Romney, we attacked that way. I gave Obama a million dollars, I was so afraid of Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney wouldn't have changed my life that much, or yours. Or John McCain."

"They were honorable men who we disagreed with. And we should have kept it that way. So we cried wolf. And that was wrong," Maher said.

https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2016/11/06/bill-maher-democrats-made-big/23913240007/

 

Quite frankly the point is flying over your head.

The concept of over the top accusations towards political leaders is ubiquitous. Every national level politician in America history has had absurd level accusations hurled at them from some corner of the universe.


I couldn't give two ****s about someone calling Kamala a commie racist who hates white people. Kamala isn't a minority group that is powerless that can be targets for violence just because of a birth trait like ethnicity. She's a damn presidential candidate, not an ethnicity or religion.

The Maga movement and it's actually leaders from Trump to Vance explicitly place limeights at targeted groups like trans people, Hatians, Muslims etc make up fake stories of them doing stuff like stealing pets and eating them and then causing something like the Walmart El Paso mass shooting.

The American conservative's problem is its actual leaders will target entire ethnic and religious groups with fake accusations of them being in reality violent and "poisoning our blood".

And ya you can find some random liberal suburbanite that calls white rural conservatives "white trash" but what you will never see is a Democrat political leader insulting entire rural white populations with fake stories of them practicing something like incest or whatever stereotype that exists of rural white people in America. You won't see Democrat politicians target hate towards rural poor white people. You won't see them make blood libel claims like "rural white people have. Practice of sexually molesting their children".

But you'll have leaders of the Republican party make up claims that vile about random minority groups

 

This isn't responsive to my post. Nobody cares about your rant.

 

Then let my replies to you be a place for me to rant and you can block me. I think it's relevant to your talking points so I'll continue.

I think you want people to feel bad about calling the MAGA movement fascist and I'm telling you why it's fascist. A large aspect of fascism is targeted hate at ethnic and minority groups to make the small business owner class and working class of the ethnic and religious majority to feel like there is a group of people below them that are ruining things for them. That is a central aspect of fascist propaganda and how it proliferates.

Fascist leaders find "out groups" as in groups that aren't traditionally seen as part of the "in group" such as in Germany with Romani and Jewish people and spam anecdotes and rhetoric that paint these groups as why your small business is failing or why your wages don't reflect the cost of living.

 

And this reactionary scapegoating of powerless minority groups is why fascism is essentially a reactionary ideology where you can't really attach any economic theory to. There is no backbone ideological thought behind fascism that would formulate any type of coherent economic theory because it's true backbone is a ideology of reactionary scapegoating

 

Really? An Al Gore quote referencing “digital brown shirts”?

As for George Soros… a Jew that lived in Europe during Nazi occupation and the Holocaust? If he is calling someone a Nazi, maybe his opinion should be listened to.

Same with Belafonte - a black man that lived through the Civil Rights Movement, that was close friends with MLK and was involved in Marches? Again - if he labels someone as racist, then his opinion holds weight.

I don’t think what you posted helps your position at all… Holocaust Jews and Civil Rights Leaders? Julian Bond - again someone that was heavily involved in the Civil Rights Marches.

None of this really helps your point

 

You’re deflecting. You’re not addressing the point.

You took the position that you "didn't remember" Democrats in the 2000s calling establishment Republicans like GWB and John McCain racists.

I then provided you with nine (9) prominent Democrats from that time period where they did. Obviously, regular Democrats were doing that as well but those quotes aren't going to be memorialized in articles for us to look at.

You're now taking the position that, "maybe they are right" - so, that's a shift, before it was "I don't remember it happening" and now it's "maybe they are right" - so now you're agreeing it was proper to describe GWB and John McCains as Nazis and racists.

I provided a direct quote from Bill Maher stating that liberals used Nazi/Racist rhetoric concerning establishment Republicans in the early and mid 2000s and that it was misplaced...

*edited substantially once I sat down at my P.C. to better develop what I was trying to convey.

 

Do you realize this thread is titled “People that talk about Trump supporters are usually racists”

 

First - that isn’t what I said. What I said is that I mostly remember Bush being called an idiot.

I never said that Republican candidates haven’t been called racist or been compared to Hitler.

The point I was making - and a point that is still valid is that you can complain about Democrats calling Republican candidates racist or Nazi’s all you want - but Democrat candidates have been called equally horrendous names - from pedophile (Biden), to killing political enemies (Clinton), to claiming that the first black President was born in Africa while also claiming that he wasn’t black- and Harris is getting the same with Trump claiming she isn’t black and also having right wing social media call her a w****.

Deal with it - in this century it has gotten nasty politically and to pout and arbitrarily settle on “racist” and “nazi” as the end all be all while ignoring what Democrats are called is disingenuous.

As for Bush - never said he was never called a Nazi. I said he was mostly called an idiot - and that is true.

I forgot but do remember Garofalo hating Bush a Nazi. I have no memory of Madonna doing it (don’t even know if she is a Democrat)…. as for Romney and Dole, they were portrayed as out of touch and in the case of Romney he was labeled as weird because of his faith and family history.

As for Bill Maher - I don’t really care what his opinion is. He is entitled to his opinion but it doesn’t really mean much. He has said many things, often contradicting himself and his views and opinions have changed over time.

You seem to take my posts as an attack on you or not done in good faith. I would engage with you if I wasn’t going to participate in good faith - If I were to troll someone, it wouldn’t be you in a political forum… too much work and not any real payoff.

 

What Democrats were called in the early to mid 2000s wasn't even in the same universe of charged rhetoric.

Were Republicans in the early to mid 2000s calling Al Gore, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama Nazis or racists? I don't seem to recall that particularly. If you can provide some quotes that would be interesting.

1. Being called a Nazi is in no way similar to someone claiming you weren't born in the United States. WTF are you talking about?

One conveys you weren't born in a geographical place and the other conveys that you are or aspire to be a totalitarian dictator whose name is synonymous with the most evil person in human history who is a racist, white-supremacist, anti-Semite, anti-lgbtq, anti-disabled person, anti-slav etc etc who would promote and endorse the genocide of those groups of persons and countless other 10s or hundreds of millions. It's not even the same universe of charged.

The claim Barack Obama was born in Kenya is equivalent to that ^^^? Are you serious? Saying someone was born in Kenya isn't even in an insult. I don't think its true and I don't think it should have been said but it's not in the same category of rhetoric.

2. Being called a pedophile without proof is horrible - I agree - provide proof of prominent Republicans claiming that about Biden - I would denounce them but also, we were talking about how the rhetoric of the the early to mid 2000s brought us to the polarized place we are today. Rhetoric post-Romney wasn't really the subject. So, what examples of rhetoric do you have from prominent Republicans concerning Democrats cerca 2000-2016? I'm all ears to the "Nazi" "Racist" equivalents guys like GWB, McCain and others were getting. Please tell me about them.

3. If prominent Republicans were calling the Clintons murderers in the early to mid 2000s I don't have any awareness of it. Happy for you to provide some quotes. That's still not calling someone a Nazi... nor would that claim have been used commonly at all levels of the Republican party on a daily basis like the accusations GWB, McCain etc etc were Nazis/Racists which was a daily occurrence with Democrats for years and years and you very well know it.

4. Huge deflection on the Maher quote Nook.

"I know liberals made a big mistake because we attacked your boy [President George W. Bush] like he was the end of the world," Maher told panelist David Frum, a former speechwriter for Bush. "He wasn't."

Maher continued: "And Mitt Romney, we attacked that way. I gave Obama a million dollars, I was so afraid of Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney wouldn't have changed my life that much, or yours. Or John McCain."

"They were honorable men who we disagreed with. And we should have kept it that way. So we cried wolf. And that was wrong," Maher said.

Please address Maher directly stating here that Democrats viciously attacked establishment Republicans calling them nazis and racists and that it was wrong to do so.

5. Would you denounce people calling GWB or John McCain Nazis and racists?

 

The Democratic establishment spent the entire early to mid 2000s calling every prominent establishment Republican a racist or a Nazi or both.

Yet, people want to sit in this thread and say Democrats played no role in the polarized America we sit in in 2024.

When you use that type of rhetoric in social media, in print media and in the 24 television news cycle for 15+ years... what kind of dialogue/civil discourse/rapprochement do you think you're going to have?

You're going to have a toxic stew. Congratulations. That's what you made.

 

Trump depends on his voters being low-information, racist, and sexist - that's why he appeals to many of them.

 

This isn’t what people you are arguing with are saying in this thread. You are just getting very agitated over people expressing the idea that Republicans have contributed equally or more to the divided society we are at right now.

Yes, people on the left are more likely to call people racist, because they (a) have a much more expansive idea of what it means to be racist, and (b) defending racial minorities against individual or systemic prejudices is something they tend to care more deeply about.

It can go over the top and there are undoubtedly many instances where someone saying an off-color remark deemed overly “racial” was accused of racism and ended up suffering more for it than they might have 30 or 40 years ago. Hard to argue whether a given accusation is justified or not without looking at those cases individually.

As for someone like Bush or Romney being accused of being a racist — since you keep bringing that up — how have they personally suffered as a result of this? Left-leaning activists have been calling rich and powerful white men in power with conservative politics “racist” for a long, long while. By and large, these people continue to do just fine. It’s not the personal and reputation-damaging smear you’re making it out to be, because most people see it as a political statement. If someone calls George Bush “racist” because his politics negatively impact black people, his professional and social circle are not going to outcast him over it. He is not losing any sleep over it.

 

I don’t deny at all the Democrats have called republicans harsh names. The difference between then and now is that members of Trump’s own admiration who are lifelong republicans are saying he meets the definition of a Fascist and it was his own current VP who once called him a Nazi.

 

Now you're the one that is being unresponsive to the argument you're responding to. I said you would be able to find examples of people calling McCain racist. I'm saying your allegation that the mere accusation of racism by some talking head results in professional and social ostracization is some pearl-clutching bs. Romney, McCain and even Bush are doing just fine, reputationally -- at least outside of MAGAland.

 

That's not what I said.

I said:

I didn't apply or limit it to public figures. It was a commentary on the use of "racist" or "nazi" at all levels of society. Obviously, it can bounce off GWB or McCain differently then if such an accusation is leveled at a non-public figure. That doesn't make it ok either though and you should denounce it and you should have at the time.

Plenty of non-famous people have had these accusations leveled at them and the resulting fall out is often professional/social damage that irreparably harms them even if the charges are never substantiated in the same way that someone is damaged forever if they are accused of being a pedophile whether its ever substantiated or not.

Mere accusations of things so repulsive can follow and damage people forever.

 

Don't soften it. Call it what it was. Establishment Republicans like GWB and John McCain were called Nazis and racists.

The claim was made they were a continuation of the most evil organization/people that ever existed who were bigoted in almost every way and responsible for the murder of 10s of millions of persons inspired by bigotry.

That's how Democrats portrayed establishment Republicans.