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The left debate over whether the Republican party is weak or strong addresses the wrong question. The far-right takeover of the GOP might hurt it electorally, but our assessment should not just be the prospects of traditional party competition within bourgeois democracy. 1/7
The GOP has now morphed into an entity no longer controlled by elite managers, and openly authoritarian, political entrepreneurs at the county, state, and national level vie to represent a massive base of tens of millions who believe Biden was installed illegally. 2/7
Their ties to armed paramilitaries are open in some places, only slightly veiled in others. This then is a historic shift in the US party system itself, the institutional effects of which are as yet unclear. 3/7
The GOP will increasingly compete through institutional vote suppression and extra-institutional intimidation, street violence, and direct action - enacting repressive rule where they can win, and sabotaging governance where they can't. 4/7
The related debate, whether the GOP any more racist, antidemocratic, etc. then it has been across the long Reagan era is also the wrong question. The GOP has been moving rightward since 1964, with periodic cycles of internal insurgency followed by consolidation and stasis. 5/7
But this dynamic is developmental as well as cyclical, with both its populist right and caesarist tendencies gaining ground over time, culminating in Trump's 2016 victory. 6/7
Political science theories of realignment, even Skowronek's important heuristic model of political time may no longer do us any good. Fascism may not be the right term. Perhaps something like Geiselberger's "liquid authoritarianism" may be of more use. 7/7
