The dictator who took over the GOP is out of office and unlikely to return to power, but he leaves behind a party whose transformation to fascism is almost complete, and apparently unstoppable.
Not every Republican member of Congress is fully onboard, and a handful are actually openly opposed, but as any student of history will tell you, universal fanaticism in fascist societies is always a staged illusion and is in any case not necessary for the triumph of this malevolent force. Cowardice and opportunism serve it just as well.
That is the inescapable meaning of 199 Republican members of the House of Representatives voting this week against sanctioning the crazed antisemite Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has openly called for the assassination of the Speaker of the House and other Democratic elected officials. That some of them offered pro-forma condemnations of her words at the same time means nothing, especially when several gave her a standing ovation in private.
The fascist conquest of the GOP is also the inescapable meaning of next week’s expected vote by the great majority of Republican Senators not to support the dictator’s impeachment and not to bar him from holding federal office in the future, even after he loosed a rampaging mob that would doubtless have lynched most of them had it had its way. No doubt future historians, if any, will be debating all the causes and reasons for this, and the individual culpability of such figures as Mitch McConnell, just as fiercely as we do now. But the dire consequences for the American state, the American polity, and American society have only just begun.
Emanuel Goldstein 