Thoughts on MAGA, MAHA, RFK Jr., and the Importance of Gate-Keeping in Movements
If our movements for ECOLOGY, JUSTICE, REPRO- FREEDOM, LOVE, HONESTY, and DEMOCRACY—even in broad coalitions—do not have *any* boundaries, then they don't mean anything. They can't stand for anything.
Extremist Republican, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and fascist hate-, chaos-, and totalitarianism-monger, Steve Bannon, agree…
‘It was RFK Jr.’s MAHA followers who put Trump 2.0 in the White House again, and who are key to keeping the Trump Regime in power.’
As you will recall, three months before Election Day, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. approached a major-party presidential campaign. He hoped to secure a meeting with the candidate in which he would offer a deal:
Kennedy Jr. would call off his independent run for the presidency, which could well play a ‘spoiler’ role and tilt the election. And RFK Jr. would offer his full endorsement—in exchange for a significant position in the new administration.
However, …
Vice President Kamala Harris and her advisors did not respond to Kennedy Jr. “with an offer to meet or show interest in the proposal.”
A Harris campaign source said, “No one has any intention of negotiating with a MAGA-funded fringe candidate who has sought out a job with Donald Trump in exchange for an endorsement.”
At the time, a Kennedy campaign spokesperson confirmed, that, indeed, “Mr. Kennedy is willing to meet with leaders of both parties to discuss the possibility of a unity government.”
Bobby decided that since he could not join the Kamala Harris campaign and administration; he would settle for joining Donald Trump’s campaign and regime.
And now, according to a conversation between Steve Bannon and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene…
… the two extreme RightWingRepublican propaganda-pugilists agree:
this fateful decision by RFK Jr. led directly to the chaos, calamity, cruelty, crisis, callousness, and converging catastrophes of the current Trump / MAGA Fascist Power Grab (my alliterative characterization, not theirs.)
Bannon and MTG: ‘The Merger of MAGA and MAHA Is How We Won—and the Key to Forever-Rule!’
Two days ago, Republican Member of Congress from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Green, was a guest on Steve Bannon’s podcast/Group-Mind Experiment, “The War Room.”
At one point they had the following back-and-forth:
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: “A very important part of this segment is the MAHA movement. And RFK Jr. gets incredible, um, … he’s responsible—”
Steve Bannon: “Make America Healthy—”
MTG: “Yes!”
Bannon: “If you merge MAHA and MAGA—”
MTG: “That is how we won!”
Steve Bannon: “Exactly. It’s like 1932—you govern forever.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: “100 percent.”
INTERLUDE: You want to know how tender, innocent, and assuming-the-best-about-people, even in MAGA-World, I still am?
Despite my having started a hashtag, #NazisInTheWhiteHouse, in 2016 even before Trump took office…
and despite my having started that hashtag specifically when, and only when, it had been announced that Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon were joining the incoming Trump 1.0 White House (and I knew what that meant, because they were not new to me)…
(Even after the inclusion of Miller and Bannon in the Trump 1.0 regime, I remember thinking very seriously before tweeting and posting this phrase #NazisInTheWhiteHouse. I take my rhetoric seriously, and the analysis I put out in our collective cosmos very seriously. Even on (especially on?) social media. Ultimately I decided that, given Stephen Miller’s and Steve Bannon’s extensive record of nazi rhetoric and policy proposals, the statement was accurate, and the Duty-to-Warn in a fast-moving neo-fascist political climate, compelling.)
So I started warning publicly, when very few would, that Bannon and Miller in the Trump White House constituted #NazisInTheWhiteHouse.
Despite ALL OF THAT…
STILL…
Just now, when I heard Steve Bannon say in the convo quoted above, “Exactly. It’s like 1932—you govern forever.” …
My first thought was, Bannon must be talking about FDR!
He must be referring to U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s three-term, four-time-elected, Political Dominance though the 1930s.
That’s how much unwarranted / unconscious Benefit-of-the-Doubt I still give these guys.
Then it hit me—like a joke you are embarrassed to “get,” way after everyone else…
No, he’s not talking about FDR; lol!
Because these guys are never talking about FDR.
And it’s not a joke with these jokers… because these guys don’t understand humor and are not capable of jokes.
No, it’s always just Himmler and Goebbels and “The Camp of the Saints” with these guys.
So, no, Drew. Bannon is not touting the electoral dominance of FDR when he gets misty-eyed over “1932”; lol.
He’s thinking of someone an ocean away in 1932. He is invoking the chap with the Chaplin mustache.
As a MODEL for the FOREVER-POWER Bannon thinks is possible now that RFK Jr. and his campaign have been able to convince their MAHA followers to support Trump—and to, day by day, continue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the MAGA Regime.
But… momentarily thinking that Steve Bannon was talking about FDR is how much I still—even after a decade of closely watching MAGA’s Fascist Power Grab—assume basic goodness in these cowards.
*Me to My Heart*: “You sweet, summer child.”
Quick Thoughts On the Necessity of *Some* Gate-Keeping in Movements and Coalition-Building
There is a saying:
‘If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.’
This is as true for social movements as it is for individuals.
A movement by definition cannot be about everything.
And it cannot be all things to all people.
A movement that does not do *any* gate-keeping of *any* ideas is not a movement in any coherent sense.
Even the broadest coalitions must have boundaries in order to mean anything, to stand for anything.
A movement or community that tolerates intolerance is thereby intolerant—only by being intolerant of intolerance does a community stay tolerant. (A dynamic named by Karl Popper as the “paradox of intolerance.”)
The question of where, exactly, a movement’s, or a community’s, boundaries need to be drawn will inevitably be a perpetual-motion machine of debate, discourse, deliberation, and discernment.
And of course, this can be taken too far. The general orientation should lean toward bridging, linking, joining, and interconnecting. Boundaries only need to be invoked, or, in extreme cases, enforced, as necessary. The commitment is not to exclude, but to make a place for all.
But it is essential that movements and communities are able to say, collectively—through debate and discussion—‘this proposal, or position, or partnership, is antithetical to, is counter to, our fundamental collective aim, ideals, and standards.’
Or…
… ‘is counter to our basic, baseline commitment to the fundamental kinship, interconnectedness, liberty, freedom, and solidarity of all.’
That kind of gate-keeping is as necessary to a movement as a membrane to a cell.