"History will judge the complicit"
"It takes time to persuade people to abandon their existing value systems. The process usually begins slowly, with small changes."
This article from The Atlantic (back in 2020!) is behind a paywall, but worth the read if you can access it. It does a good job of contrasting the last few decades of Republicans abandoning any pretence of adherence to the ideals of anything beyond power at all costs with similar examples of exuberant support of fascism throughout history.
"In the 1950s, when an insect known as the Colorado potato beetle appeared in Eastern European potato fields, Soviet-backed governments in the region triumphantly claimed that it had been dropped from the sky by American pilots, as a deliberate form of biological sabotage. Posters featuring vicious red-white-and-blue beetles went up all across Poland, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia. No one really believed the charge, including the people making it, as archives have subsequently shown. But that didn’t matter. The point of the posters was not to convince people of a falsehood. The point was to demonstrate the party’s power to proclaim and promulgate a falsehood. Sometimes the point isn’t to make people believe a lie—it’s to make people fear the liar."
