It is terrifying. These Republican guys are now being confronted with being the bad guys. I don’t see how they can back off. There is this huge mass of heavily armed, easily maneuvered, delusional people… it’s like sitting on a crate of dynamite.
And Britain is the same.
How Italy “resolved” post-WW2 polarization (4 million card-carrying members of the fascist party):
- Symbolic revenge on Mussolini (no trial – he got captured by a band of partisans in Milan, trying to get to Germany. He was shot on the spot, and his corpse hung from a butcher’s hook in a public square).
- Exemplary punishment of a few hierarchs (some handed over to the Nurnberg court, others simply dragged out of their homes and shot).
- Amnesty for everybody else, enacted by the minister of Justice of the provisional government, who also happened to be the leader of the Communist Party of Italy. It was considered that the communists, who among the political forces had suffered the most at the hands of the fascists, were the only ones who could lead on forgiveness for the fascists.
- A permanent ban on reconstituting the fascist party.
It was messy business. But it kind of worked for several decades, and then everyone who had a part in it was dead or very old.