You gotta give it to Chairman Matt Schlapp and the rest of the wannabe Nazis at the Conservative Political Action Conference, scheduled to convene in Dallas from Aug. 4-7; they really know how to thrill their attendees with guest appearances from fellow authoritarians.
Case in point will be the headlining speech of the nascent Hungarian Dictator Viktor Orbán, whose own political advisor, last week (after resigning), compared Orbán to Nazi Propagandist Joseph Goebbles.
“Ahead of a planned visit to Texas to address the largest conservative conference in the U.S., Hungary’s far-right leader Viktor Orbán insisted that his country must maintain racial purity. “This is why we have always fought: We are willing to mix with one another, but we do not want to become peoples of mixed-race,” said Orbán during a Saturday speech in Romania, adding that Hungary will not join in with Western Europe’s “mixed-race world.” During a Thursday press conference, Orbán issued a follow-up statement saying that he openly supports “anti-immigration policy,” before also claiming that it “is not a race issue for us, this is a cultural issue.”
Such comments, which led to the resignation of a longtime Orbán adviser who likened them to “a pure Nazi speech worthy of Goebbels,” apparently have not impacted Orbán’s relationship with the American Conservative Union, which will host next week’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas. “When we silence people we skip the chance to learn why [we] agree or disagree [with] their POV,” tweeted ACU chairman Matt Schlapp on Thursday, following a backlash over Orbán’s upcoming CPAC appearance. “Cancel culture is the judge and jury of speech. The most tragic part is that the left is guilty of the fascism they always charge. The more free speech the sooner we find the truth.” (CPAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Orbán’s appearance).“
Sure, Matt, let’s hear from the Nazi. After all, your political party has been working overtime since Richard Nixon to replace our pluralistic democracy with a white ethno state…
(From the New York Times)
“We aren’t living in Franklin Roosevelt’s America, or Lyndon Johnson’s, or Donald Trump’s, or even Joe Biden’s. We’re living in Richard Nixon’s…
… In a February (1968) speech in New Hampshire, he (Nixon) said: “When a nation with the greatest tradition of the rule of law is torn apart by lawlessness,” he said, “when a nation which has been the symbol of equality of opportunity is torn apart by racial strife … then I say it’s time for new leadership in the United States of America.”
There it is — the fusion of crime, race and fear that Nixon believed would carry him to the presidency.
Fifty plus years is a long time to wait, isn’t it Matt?
But then you Conservatives have proven to be nothing if not patient, after all, the process of reshaping the Supreme Court to fit your authoritarian mold that began under Nixon…
“Nixon’s new order reached into the Supreme Court, too, just as he said it would. His predecessors had made their first nominations to the court by the fluid standards presidents tended to apply to the process: Dwight Eisenhower wanted a moderate Republican who seemed like a statesman, John Kennedy someone with the vigor of a New Frontiersman, Johnson an old Washington hand who understood where his loyalties lay. For his first appointment, in May 1969, Nixon chose a little-known federal judge, Warren Burger, with an extensive record supporting prosecutorial and police power over the rights of the accused.
When a second seat opened a few months later, he followed the same pattern, twice nominating judges who had at one point either expressed opposition to the integration of the races or whose rulings were regarded as favoring segregation. Only when the Senate rejected both of them did Nixon fall back on Harry Blackmun, the sort of centrist Ike would have loved.
Two more justices stepped down in September 1971. Again Nixon picked nominees who he knew would be tough on crime and soft on civil rights — and by then, he had a more expansive agenda in mind. It included an aversion to government regulation of the private sector — and so one pick was the courtly corporate lawyer Lewis Powell, who had written an influential memo that year to the director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce advocating a robust corporate defense of the free enterprise system. Another item on Nixon’s agenda was to devolve federal power down to the states. William Rehnquist, an assistant attorney general committed to that view, was his other pick. The two foundational principles of an increasingly energized conservatism were set into the court by Nixon’s determination to select his nominees through a precisely defined litmus test previous presidents hadn’t imagined applying.”
…just came to fruition in the last two years when Mitch McConnell used stolen SCOTUS picks and classic fascist tactics such as blatant lying about imaginary precedents and Mitch-splaining the Calendar, to cement a SCOTUS majority that threatens to rule over us like tyrants for the next thirty years no matter what direction future elections take.
Indeed, you have much to celebrate later this week in Dallas, Matt.
Why not invite your preferred model for our future to wish you and your fellow fascists the best?
It’s too obvious to say – but that whole area needs to be plastered with signs and posters with Obran’s face, that GOP elephant AND the letters KKKPAC.
If the democrats get real power in november…the court needs expansion to neutralize the 3 judges traitor tot rammed through & Thomas, who is part of the cover up for his nazi wife. Otherwise, WE ARE FUCKED just like Jon Stewart said we are.