From my POV, you are pissed that your people lost, and can't get over it. Remember that democracy is a pendulum. Swinging from side to side is a necessary ingredient of democracy. You can't always win, and, you shouldn't. But I guess you are unable to listen to this simple principle, because you and your people railed yourself up so much that you are unable to calm down. That is weird to me, as I believe that is a skill we all learn when moving from childhood to adulthood. Throwing tantrums isn't very useful.
The difference between right and far right is, in a nutshell, endorsement of insurrection and militarism.
The GOP was a right-wing party. MAGA is bona fide far right. There are plenty of conservatives (or pissed-off idiots) who voted for Trump but aren’t MAGA. There are also lots of folks who believe in MAGA to the core. The latter are far right, probably fascists.
> democracy is a pendulum. Swinging from side to side is a necessary ingredient of democracy
It’s a multidimensional pendulum. There is no natural partisan swing to group dynamics; it’s why parties fail and are remade or replaced, even in two-party systems.
Also, Democrats should embrace Trump’s precedents next cycle. But the results will uglier than before for those on the other side. (To port prior policy goals, you’d cancel student debts by literally shredding the documents, thereby undermining the government’s ability to collect even if it wants to. And you’d pursue environmental policy by dismantling coal power plants and mines. The courts may get mad later. But it wouldn’t be rebuilt.)
Do the multiple elections contested not count any more? MAGA clearly don't endorse insurrection, their basic strategy to control the government is to win lots of votes and come back to try again a few years later if it doesn't work (they're impressively persistent). Which has involved broadening their support base into low-wage minorities in US society and trying to prise the Black and Hispanic votes away from the Democrats, I note. Might be seeing the fruits of that starting to turn up in the 2024 presidential elections. Or might be a fluke and just Trump's charisma, the Republicans are hard to support.
Yeah but not the riots, the standards in US politics generally demand that people separate mostly peaceful political protesters from smaller numbers of rioters who happen to be involved. The Democrats identified the riots as a major tactical blunder (although realistically I think they badly overplayed their hand, they seemed to spend a lot more time talking about J6 than developing compelling policy positions, and managed to get democracy voted out which is quite impressive - I'm hoping they disband and let someone else contest the next election) and MAGA as a whole seems to agree with them given the lack of any reoccurrences.
If you want to put that the dividing line between right and far-right as militantism for today then that makes sense. But the MAGA movement hasn't been using militant tactics, and they'd be more alt-right than far-right under that standard. They've been pretty consistent at working to win power through increasing their vote share and base of popular support. They've been dumping vast amounts of time, money and effort into it.
For the sake of argument, say that J6 riot was a planned thing. Compare the logistic efforts to get a crowd settled at a major Trump rally to the organisational support that resulted in an insurrection with less than 100 armed people. The oomph just isn't there.
