Newly elected House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) claims he does not remember “some of” the many, many anti-LGBTQ+ comments he’s made over the course of his career.
Johnson’s history of opposing LGBTQ+ rights has been well documented and stretches back to the early 2000s, when he worked as a senior attorney and national media spokesman for anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom (then called the Alliance Defense Fund). Between 2003 and 2005, Johnson also wrote several editorials for Shreveport, Louisiana, paper The Times, criticizing the Supreme Court for striking down anti-sodomy laws, opposing same-sex marriage, and arguing against non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people.
Guy was in his 80s, and this was a few years ago. It’s not inconceivable that he started associating with the Republican Party in the days of Dewey and Ike, when liberal republicanism was still a thing.
In any case, I don’t disagree with your broader point about modern Republicans being literal fascists.
My dad is 88 and was a staunch Republican until Reagan. I remember the Reagan/Carter election – even the date, 6 November 1980, stuck in my little ten-year-old mind. It was my dad’s birthday, and he voted for Reagan.
That was the last Republican he voted for, and he’s liberal AF now. They say people get more conservative as they grow older, and that may be true for boomers (I’m lucky to have no boomers in my family; we skipped from the Silent Generation straight to GenX), but everyone I know old enough to have any real memory of WWII or its aftermath have swung pretty left.
I remember bringing up an article to him before the 2016* election where Holocaust survivors had released an open letter saying they’d experienced real fascism and trump’s rhetoric was Capital F Fascism, and how the general reaction to the letter was that it was hyperbole. He said he agreed with the letter 100%.
It’s only got worse since. This was never about trump; he’s just their carnival barker, and will be replaced if he goes down. This is a bona fide fascist movement, and ignoring it only makes it stronger.
Tldr: totally agree.
e: clarified with year.
e2: If this were 1932 and you were in Weimar Germany, knowing what you know now, what would you do? We should be asking ourselves and everyone this question.