In Illinois, there was a press conference led by some leaders of the state-- governor, representatives, senators etc. The ideological war is being viewed more as a war by a lot of democrats esp. on the lower level. In this press conference, you could damn near feel like billionaire Pritzker was about to go full tankie mode and call for re-education facilities to be built, I mean it was wild. It’s become difficult to parse the reasoning for this, as democrat rhetoric, especially among the state level (as opposed to the federal) leaders, is becoming more and more fiery. They said the Supreme Court was undemocratic and “run by right-wing extremists”, that Illinois would protect the right to abortion by “any means necessary”, that the Republican party is overrun with women-hating white supremacists. It’s nuts.

Two possibilities I see:

• democratic leadership has a better grip on the pulse of the Amerikan psyche than they have previously and understand now that most Amerikans are against fascism. They’re only using this rhetoric opportunistically to get more votes and still don’t have any actual plans to defend women’s rights, or do anything besides preserve private property as they always have.
• democratic state leadership is getting younger, more female, blacker, and gayer. More than a couple of the speakers at this event were gay women, and more than a couple were in their 30s rather than the geriatrics that usually hold these conferences. Left-liberal or social democratic “radicals” like the squad are more and more successful at “infiltrating” the democratic party than they have been in the past, and perhaps they really do believe these things and haven’t been consigned to vote and act based on lobbyists’ interests like the squad proper as it’s considerably easier to win state elections than federal ones without corporate funding.

This potential ideological shift from the bottom may also be influencing the rhetoric of those at the top like the White House speaker. Anything correct that comes out of the mouth of someone who represents the federal government, I would immediately consider as almost certainly an oppprtunistic bid against people leaving the democrats in droves once they figure out democratic leadership and republican leadership are on the same side. Biden is saying shit like “the Republicans thought they knew the power of women. (insert state) proved them wrong” whenever a state votes against outlawing abortion. Biden obviously did absolutely fuckall in preventing the overturn of Roe V Wade, and he has a penchant for exerting his own power over women thru sexual assault – he doesn’t believe a word he says, he just knows that embracing feminist talking points will keep him popular with an increasingly more radical democratic base. This is likely true for anyone at the top calling Republicans fascists, I think.

When liberals talk about fascism, they mean the material base. Once I realized that, I was able to understand so much of the crap they regularly spout. “Fascism” for them is the material, concrete world (especially the world of labor) that moves by its own laws and can’t be reduced to their moralistic bullshit.

Right now, the Democrats have gotten it into their heads that the Republicans are channeling working-class anger (which is only very partially true). So of course, the Republicans are now “fascist.” It’s really as simple as that.