Are Americans really so right-wing nowadays that fascists and anti-fascists are equivalent?

I'm really confused. I mean, I know that the Cold War had a major impact on American politics, shifting it to the right slowly as the fear/hatred of communism took hold in a big way throughout the 1950s and 1960s. It's just hard to imagine that someone like Obama would be considered "socialist" or "communist" when in most of the world he'd be a regular conservative. And now they seem to defend fascists, the thing their grandparents fought an entire war against and witnessed the horrors of first hand.

WTF, America?

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »

Xuan12 · 36-40, M

It's a political strategy, to conflate terms and ideas so badly that they lose meaning. When the people don't have a clear and coherent language to express themselves, they lose the ability to organize effectively and form educated opinions. That's why politicos spend so much time and energy to engineer and manipulate words.

SW-User

@Xuan12 US is a special case,where generalisations aren't useful imho

Xuan12 · 36-40, M

@SW-User A nation of this size will naturally produce a wide array of opinions and potential affiliations, but due to the structure of power, we only have 2 major parties to represent it all, so everything gets boiled down into this or that. The parties simply can't serve everyone, not even everyone who already supports them. So they have to appeal, manipulate, conflate, etc, until they can win, even though they know full well some will be left behind.

SW-User

@Xuan12 No
Too rational an explanation
The US is in a mess, in crisis. And propaganda and manipulation are the mainstay: it all begins in US classrooms