"[we spent] 15 months of not leaving the house because of covid....at no point in that time was I ever in any danger of getting conned into becoming a white supremacist by Donald fucking Trump. Because it doesn’t work that way. I know dozens of Trumpeters. Dozens. They were ALL right- wing assholes with reactionary socio cultural values before Trump came along. He just activated them even more so or made them even more proud to showcase them. None of these people needed an economic excuse to rationalize a fascist in the White House. They’d all shown signs of horrid bigotry since childhood. Using the N-word in jokes, being misogynists, homophobes, Islamophobes etc. Here is an actual quote from one of those cops I told you about earlier, who is the father of my childhood friend who voted Trump to ‘fuck over the Mexicans “in his workplace and help get him a pay raise: his dad said this to me at my friend’s bachelor party: ‘we just gotta wipe out all these fucking Muslims in this country and then we’ll be good to go.’ This guy and my dad (and my friends dad’s wife) have been racist pricks, hating on black people, using the N-word openly in front of their kids, since we were all kids. My childhood friend’s mother routinely puts up Confederate flags on Facebook with memes that say, paraphrasing, “celebrate America’s glorious history or get out.” I shit you not. These people are sick fascists and have always been so. Trump just gave them a permission slip to let their freak flags fly. They’re fascists because their parents were hater fascists. And their friends were/are closet hater bigots/fascists. It’s not complicated. Most of this is about upbringing, values, peer networks, and socialization. There are no mysteries here. No magic Donald trump cons. He didn’t magically turn tens of millions of people fascist overnight."
-- a social scientist
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