The Gathering Storm

Fascism in America

(Sheathed Sword comes a bit late this week. I am on travel, slowing everything down.)

I was going to write something in the creative/poetic sphere this week. Then I watched the stock market crater, inflation balloon, the war in Ukraine turn even uglier, the planet boil, and children slaughtered while armed men quivered outside. 

As the January 6 hearings are demonstrating, we dodged a bullet 17 months ago. But the door is now wide open to an active, burgeoning fascist movement.

The Republican Party has become a cult. Linked to the far right, the cult’s assault on American democracy is operating at full steam. Nineteen states have passed 33 bills that restrict voting, aimed at suppressing the constituency of the Democratic Party. The detailed planning that was missing January 6 has been transformed into an organized effort to take over the US electoral machinery at the precinct level so the “right” results can be reported in November 2022 and 2024. 

Yeats said it more than 100 years ago; every word is prophetic:  

                            Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

At 80, I have been active in American politics for 70 years. This moment is chilling to me, unlike anything I have seen in seven decades. I know I have written in Sheathed Sword that contradictory tendencies can and will emerge; I am hoping it is not too late.

The system I once knew is completely broken. It has become part of the problem, enabling the current crisis, instead of preventing it. Federalism, once a tool to disperse power, has become  the enemy of democracy. Through gerrymandering and voter suppression, it has created an open invitation to authoritarians at the local and state level.

The federal legislature (Congress) is distorted by manipulated districts and money; its rules now stand in the way of any meaningful legislation, leading to political stalemate with the Executive branch (President). The highest court and many lower ones are now in the hands of justices who play to the cult’s prejudices.

This institutional crisis is exacerbated by television and social media. Although FOX is only watched by 3 million people (one percent of the population), it has become the megaphone for the far right, the place where the truth goes to die. Its authoritarian message is amplified by social media. Twitter has reduced political discussion to an exchange of epithets.

Fascism is a tough word. It seems foreign, something that can’t happen here. Many of you may not like to use it.  So I was struck reading a new piece by Thom Hartmann about what fascism might look like in America. It is happening; it is today’s news. It is a specific American version, but rooted in familiar techniques used across history. 

Fascism, as Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley has described, is not a set of policy goals.  Those will differ from country to country. Fascism is a set of political techniques aimed at acquiring power and keeping it in authoritarian hands, sweeping aside the political rules in place, brainwashing the people to one system of belief.

The technique, Stanley explains, is rooted in creating the “myth” about a glorious past from which the nation has declined. The myth is clear, simple, and compelling (German greatness, MAGA). It appeals to nationalism (symbols like flags and hats, and hostility toward difference) and a return to greatness.  

The myth creates an enemy who is responsible for national decline and threatens restoration of the mythical order. Jews, leftists, trade unions in Germany. Rioting Blacks, Queers, socialists in America. The enemy is demonized; violence is the only solution.   

Most important, as Hartmann makes clear, the myth and the restoration are personified in the leader on whom all depends (Hitler, Mussolini, Trump). The leader becomes the focus; all attention turns to him (gender intended).

The myth often contains a very big lie. Communists want to steal Germany. Biden stole the election. The internal message is consistent; it explains everything; it sweeps away any alternative; it is impervious to evidence. The lie is repeated over and over; fed to the cult.

As Hartmann warns, the progress of fascism is gradual. Like the proverbial frog in the pot of cool water, it is too late once the water has reached a boil.

In the 1930s, Pastor Martin Niemöller described our dilemma and response well:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

We are the frogs. The tsunami of authoritarian intentions is overwhelming the Biden administration. They seem, asleep, out of phase, move to the beat of a drummer from another age. They are stuck in the rhetoric of a return to something called “normal.”

There is no normal. We are sleepwalking while our norms disappear. Bipartisanship, reasonableness, compromise are not going to return us to some halcyon day before the cult.

A friend challenged me the other day, “so, what do you propose?” It is the right question and it is deucedly hard to answer in a clear, persuasive way. But she caused me to reflect a bit. 

The first step, I think, is to call the challenge what it is, instead of hoping it will go away and normality will return. The Democratic Party in all its flavors is the only core institution able to take on this challenge. This means ending the war between the center and the left of the party.

A second step is to build the barrier to fascism over on the center-right, not just on the center-left. Use every means possible to pry anti-Trump Republicans away from the cult, at every level.  Make the fight for democracy something we all have a stake in.

Third element: take this fight to the local level - school boards, mayors and town councils, county boards, election officials. It is what the cult is doing; they must be confronted.

Fourth element: craft the message to reach as widely as possible. This is where the January 6 hearings could be important: they expose the big lie over and over. We need an emotionally compelling message to defend democracy.  

Division is what the German center and left did in the 1930s, leading to a world war and tremendous cost to millions. Each of us loses, divided from the other. Mine is not a complete answer. But maybe it is a start.