The racism and bigotry was always there. But the enlightenment values that inspired the US noted that if we could collectively agree to set aside our xenophobia to form a (relatively) equal, pluralistic society (all that diversity, equity and inclusion stuff) that it would make for a strong nation, featuring stuff we now associate with liberal democracies: an educated, literate public, strong infrastructure, robust artistic culture, a strong science and technology sector, and so on.

And it took us a few steps. Our Constitutional framers believed slavery was wrong, but they didn't want to free their own slaves, and had to negotiate with the plantation owners. Postbellum reconstruction extended rights and liberties to all men regardless of race, but not to women. Women's suffrage extended those rights to women, but not to children. In the meantime the Jim Crow era (redemption) black rights slipped and were strengthened during the civil rights movement.

There were a lot of steps towards the decline and fall we're seeing today:

The industrialists that supported Hoover really resented FDR's New Deal, and immediately started plotting to reverse the process, to re-instill the fear of socialism in the US. The propaganda machine that became PragerU and FOX News started there.

James Fifield Jr. (The Apostle to Millionaires) invented conservative (pro-wealth) Christianity that informs modern Protestant Evangelism, and the white Christian nationalist movement that dominates ministries today.

The Powell Memorandum was written in response to the postwar policies that built out the middle class in the US, and was an explicit plan to make government anti-regulation and anti-worker so that large corporations could thrive and amass wealth.

Jerry Falwell resented integration and wanted his college to stay white-only, and formed the Moral Majority, a single-issue voting bloc that only cared to restrict or eliminate abortion access. And that helped Reagan's 1980 landslide victory.

Reagan deregulated, crushed unions and let lobbyists and special interest groups into Washington to gain access to elected officials, and bribery in government became essentially legal. It's at this point the K-shaped economy began.

Manufacturing moved overseas. The dotcom bubble burst. The subprime mortgage crisis wrecked the economy. By then companies were hiring women not because they were DEI but because women were paid less by default. Young men didn't get the traditional position of dominance as breadwinner that Greatests and Boomers had. And the older generations failed to acknowledge that shit was more difficult for each succeeding generation.

So by the time Trump took over the Republican party in 2015, there was already an instant army of war boys ready for him in the alt-right. The Republicans had been racist since Nixon, but coached it in dog whistles. Trump gave them permission to be openly racist, to bring their banter from 4Chan/b and /pol out in the open. He's just saying what we all are thinking. I heard it over and over and over again.

Liberal democracy works only when the public collectively agrees to set aside its predispositions for prejudice and xenophobia. But the wealth and corporate interests captured our government (and our culture and our religion and our courts) a little at a time, using their gains to hedge additional gains until the system didn't work anymore, and it became easy to just let all the racism fall out in the open.

It doesn't hurt that since xenophobia distracts the common uneducated masses from the shenanigans of the wealthy, they pump a lot of money into amplifying the racist rhetoric. the MAGA propaganda machine is huge.

a guy I know posted on Facebook about the overuse of the term Nazi

and like, seriously, what the fuck is your problem, dude. it's not overuse to call someone a Nazi when they act exactly like a fucking Nazi.

I think it speaks more to his character that he apparently requires people to be burned in ovens to start using the term Nazi and not all of the other shit that precedes it

Context - far, far worse than the comic would lead you to believe:

Leaked Telegram messages contained over 28,000 exchanges from January to August 2025 among leaders of Young Republican chapters in Arizona, Vermont, Kansas, and New York, including at least one member from the Trump administration.

The chat discussed votes, social media strategies, and logistics. It also included racist and antisemitic slurs, white supremacist slogans and symbols, comments encouraging rape of political opponents to drive them to suicide, praise for Adolf Hitler, promotion of gas chambers, and enthusiasm for Republicans believed to support slavery. Giunta and its members referred to Black people as monkeys and "the watermelon people". One member stated "I'd go to the zoo if I wanted to watch monkey play ball" about an invitation to an NBA game. The slurs f#ggot, r#tard, and n#gger appeared over 251 times. In discussing Giunta's defeat in an election for chair of the Young Republicans National Federation, Walker called for the winner to be raped. When referring to a colleague's girlfriend, Walker stated she was a "stinky, obese Indian woman". He said would "love to see" an opponent get raped, and described the colonial sexual violence perpetrated by Spanish explorers in the 1700s as "epic".

I never understood the black people watermelon and fried chicken racist stereotype.

Everyone likes those things. Everyone. What’s next, calling them water drinking air breathers?!

And obligatory, fuck nazis.

When did we start thinking "fuck Nazis" was a good thing? I much prefer "shoot Nazis".

The prejudice was,

Always there behind the flag,

Now they’re glad to show

Almost like there's multiple factions of the Republican party. Y'all don't like being grouped with the tankies either