The dirty truth is that the Real Social Consequences of supporting fascism have, historically, been the full throated support of US business, media, and military.

Germany was the exception, not the rule. Spain, Chile, the Philippines, South Vietnam, Israel, Apartheid South Africa, Bolsanaro's Brazil, Modi's India, Trump's America... That's the rule.

It's a dumb line anyway. There's no obligation for us to tolerate their antisocial behavior in the first place. All that line does is betray that the fascist treats liberalist ideals as a game or a weakness, only a fool would humor their insincere appeals to liberalism.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Réflexions sur la question juive (1946)

"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."

I will tolerate anyone but the intolerant

Or, less generously, they enjoy the cruelty and hate.

I own a business, and I wouldn’t hire someone who is openly MAGA.

I work in the O&G industry. Quite a few of the rank and file office folks are vanilla liberals. The senior execs are all Christian MAGA.

Silicon Valley has the same problem. The professional working class is liberal, while the senior sex pest corporate ice chewers are all in the same insane Scientology cults and Mormon tabernacle choirs and Longtermist Transhuman Collectives.

I've seen the same dynamic in health care, professional sports, Big Law, finance, heavy industry...

Great that you managed to break into the club as a Normal. But I don't see a future where I'm sitting on the board of a Fortune 500 corporation. A notable reason why is that I'm not working my way up the chain at Opus Dei.

it's like returning the shopping cart: you don't have to punch nazis, but if you don't do it you're a bit of a dick

I mean, it should be socially acceptable to punch Nazis.

Yes, it should be that way everywhere. In plenty of societies, it already is.

An international friend of mine in the UK was let off lightly by a judge for punching a Nazi, because the victim was a Nazi. Obviously judges can be a game of luck so I'm not claiming this is a low-risk action, but law isn't set in stone.

If you think back before that, weren't those the most self-centered and selfish ones?

I remember a situation with a friend of mine from back in my Uni days (not a case of him turning out to be a Trumpist but a case of him having drifted away from his family, rather than "facing it like a man" he just kept deceiving them and living a double life until things inevitably blew up) and looking back from my by then far more mature and adult point of view than when he and I became friends I could spot how he was always the guy who put himself ahead of the rest of the group.

I get the impression that Trumpists are those who are a mix of being the most "what's in it for me" types (to the point of putting the satisfaction of petty and even mean personal psychological wants ahead of other people's actual lives) and useful idiot, and those would have a track record of putting themselves first even in situations were one wouldn't act like that with friends.

Im 50 and Im not straight. A lot of the guys my-age didn't grow and become accepting of people they just learned to shut the fuck up about their opinion in public in the early 1990s. Those guys didn't raise their kids to be any different they were just quiet about it.

COVID broke people's brains too. don't know about your timeline but in my opinion while some people started showing their true colors, some people actually changed during that time.

That seems to be his superpower. He is so blatantly and unashamedly despicable that he emboldens every asshole on Earth to stop holding back on their assholery, but instead flaunt it like never before.

"If he can do it, why shouldn't I do it as well?"

the tricky thing has been sorting real fascists from those just so grossly misinformed by the propaganda network that they're basically decent but brainwashed.

Unfortunately, we are at a point in human history where there is no functional distinction between smart fascists and stupid fascists. The end result is still propagation of unbridled evil and it cannot be tolerated regardless of the origin.

Nah, way earlier than 2024. In fact ever since the "grab them by the pussy" tape was released before the election in 2016, these miserable bastards knew what he was about and still chose to support him. No decency to be found among them from that point on.

I've boycotted Republicans/Conservatives since at least 2000, when they decided that it was perfectly acceptable to steal the presidency.

Once they fully adopted the "ends justify the means" approach, I considered Conservatism to be a character flaw. I wouldn't be friends with people who physically abuse their spouses or their children, and by the same logic, I won't be friends with people who abuse our society, our government, or our citizens.

Is the problem Harvard, or that rich and powerful people send their kids to the most prestigious schools in the world?

Yes yes harvard sniffs its own farts and is pretentious yada yada but the fact is if you graduate harvard, your life is way fucking easier because of the respect it commands and the hands you shake while you're there. Plain and simple.

What I will find interesting in 20-30 years is if this rejection of "liberal indoctrination" will lead to more conservatives not sending their kids to the most prestigious schools that don't capitulate to their culture war. Conservative universities of any quality debatably exist as it is, they're hardly investing in them currently either. So Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc. still hold the keys to the US's upper echelon.

TL;DR: rich and powerful people will send their kids to the schools that allow their kids to more easily be rich and powerful. For all their talk of how college is a scam and dominated by liberals, they still keep sending their kids there.

They're talking about 'affiliating with' too. The plain truth is that people who aren't fascists themselves still enable fascism. (Yes, I know, the whole "1 fascist sitting at a table of 10 is just 10 fascists" line is a great slogan, but at the end of the day, there's no point wasting time flaming someone by calling them a fascist when they don't think they are one, it's semantics, the critical point is they're a fascist-enabler regardless and therefore responsible for and complicit in fascism)