Category Archives: Death of Democracy

Fascism comes to America

American Fascism, Death of Democracy, Decline of the west, Extremism, ,

 

It was not that long ago that I said, American is not fascist. That position is becoming more and more difficult to uphold.

Right now the Republicans are split between those who believe, based on plenty of evidence, that the rioters in the Capitol were guilty of sedition  and Trump’s fervent supporters, who think the riot was  justifiable as a way of denouncing Trump’s fraudulent defeat. In other words, they are split between people who believe what they saw in plain sight, and those who worship at the throne of Trump.

As Stephen Colbert said, “evidently, the only thing scarier to Republicans in Congress than a violent mob is the fear that the mob might not like you anymore.”

Perhaps the best example of impending fascism was the election of QAnon conspiracist Marjorie Taylor Greene to the American Congress in the last election. She was elected in one of the safest districts for Republicans in Georgia. It was another example of the America system that ensures the only way a person can win the Republican nomination is to move to the extremes and then when that is secured there is no contest in the safe ridings. It helps produce polarization. Republicans always win in her district in other words.  Sort of like Steinbach, that always votes Conservative, no matter what. Or at least has done so for many years.

Stephen Colbert said she has the “the homicidal vote on lockdown.” Recently it was revealed that she indicated  repeatedly on line that she  indicated support for executing Democratic politicians.  Here is a transcription of one of her engagements with a supporter on Facebook. One of her supporters asked Greene whether as follows about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama: “now do we get to hang them?” And Greene replied, “Stage is being set.  Players are being put in place. We must be patient.” Greene, like her mentor Trump, did not bother being subtle or discreet. Other posts indicated she thought Nancy Pelosi was a traitor and helpfully pointed out that treason was punishable by death.

It is little wonder that on January 27, 2021 the Department of Homeland Security, still with its acting head appointed by Trump, and  not exactly a left-wing organization, issued a bulletin for the first time of “a heightened threat environment across the United States…from homeland violent extremists.”  The extremists are driven by “objections to…the presidential transition, as well as perceived grievances fuelled by false narratives.” The Department made it clear that they see violence aimed at overturning the election of Biden as terrorism. That should not be  surprising.

Colbert asked: “will the GOP finally take a stand against the man who legitimized fascism?” Colbert has not been shy about using the F word to describe Trump. Those are strong words. Are they over blown?  In the light of what happened in the American Capitol who can say that?

That is not all. Newly elected Greene has for awhile denied the school shootings in places like Newtown. Guess what?  She was recently appointed by the Republicans to the House Education Committee. That is like the Gaddafi regime in Libya being appointed to the UN Committee on Human Rights. Only yesterday she was voted out of that post  with only 11 Republicans voting in favor of her ouster.

In 2018, before she became a Congress woman, Greene posted this on Facebook during the California wild fires that devastated that state:  “the real and hidden  culprit behind the [California fire] was a laser from space triggered by some nefarious groups of people.” Not only that but they were Jewish. Greene and other QAnon supporter are resurrecting the old Nazi conspiracy theory that the world is run by a cabal of Jewish bankers. This longtime QAnon adherent is now in Congress and Trump has said she is a “future star of the Republican Party.”

Who continues to think that saying Fascism is on the rise in America is far-fetched? Who continues to think that because Trump has left the White House all is in order?

 

When Reason sleeps tyranny follows

American Fascism, Death of Democracy, Death of Truth, Decline of the west, reason

 

Goya, the famous Spanish painter was well known for dark art.  No one ever accused him of seeing only the sunny side of life. Goya inscribed one of his works with the following words: “The sleep of reason brings forth monsters.” I find that profoundly true. If we give up reason, we open ourselves up to nightmares, and much worse.

Voltaire, the father or the child of the Enlightenment, and one might say a Fundamentalist Enlightenment thinker, said it best when he said,: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” I would put it this way, “If I can get you to believe something without any evidence it is true, I can convince you to kill your friend.” Voltaire also understood that when truth was no longer respected there was a slippery slope to tyranny. That is why reason is so important. Reason is our best defence against tyranny. Credulity is our worst enemy.

 Historian Timothy Snyder, an expert of European fascism recently said, “Post-truth is pre-fascism.”

Tyranny is one of the worst monsters born out of the sleep of reason. The tyrant knows he is safe when he can convince people to believe the absurd.

 

F bombs

American Fascism, Death of Democracy, Decline of the west, Extremism, Trumpism

F bombs

 

For quite some time I was reluctant to call Donald Trump and some of his followers fascists. That was then; this is now.

After the attack on the Capitol when after Trump’s urging the mob invaded the Capitol and while chanting “Hang Mike Pence” over and over again, I started to re-think.  When CNN reported that many of the rioters were intent on catching police officers and killing them, I began to change my mind. Some of the rioters in the Capitol said, they “were invited here by the president.” Now, that I see Republican leaders in Congress sucking up to Trump again and once more endorsing his phoney claims of a stolen election in order to keep his base of supporters fired up, I think “fascist” is the right word to describe them.

It reminds me of what happened in Germany in the 1930s when the Nazis who had been elected used the fire in the Reichstag to begin hunting Jews and curtailing freedoms. We must always remember Hitler and the Nazi’s were elected.

Fascists is what they are. The only question is how many of the Trumpists would go that far. It seems to me a lot of them were willing to go that far.

Fascism with a Flag and a Cross

American Fascism, Death of Democracy, Decline of the west, Politics & Religion, religion, Trump, Trumpism

It was either Huey Long or Sinclair Lewis who said, “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.”

Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), was one of America’s many great novelists. They included, classics such as Main Street, Elmer Gantry, and Babbit. But he also wrote one about fascism coming to America. Sadly I must admit I have not read it, but I have heard it discussed so often I know a little bit about it. As faithful readers of this blog will know, ignorance on a subject has never stopped me from blogging about it. So why start now?

The book is called It Can’t Happen Here, and was published in 1935 when populist and authoritarian demagogues were achieving a lot of popularity in Europe. I intend to blog more about that era because I think it was very important for the birth of fascism. Americans, always thinking (wrongly) that this could never happen in the land of the free, were grossly overconfident that they had nothing to worry about. Until the invasion of the Capitol by rabid Trumpists that is. Now some people know better.

Sinclair Lewis showed in his persuasive book that this confidence was not justified. He believed, as do I, and as did Philip Roth in his book, the Plot to Destroy America, which I have blogged about, that the United States could easily slip into fascism.

I learned this about the book: The main character, Buzz Windrip, appeals to voters with a mix of crass language and nativist ideology. Once elected, he solidifies his power by energizing his base against immigrants, people on welfare, and the liberal press. The novel has been called “frighteningly contemporary” in the wake of the Trump campaign and election.

Does this not sound eerily familiar?

It is not easy to define fascism. Many definitions have been proposed. A friend of mine told me a number of years ago that the US was infested with fascists.  I thought he was exaggerating. I did not think Trump was a fascist. I thought he was an authoritarian—sort of a fascist light.  Now I think he was right.

As Bill Maher said on his television show, “Yes there are many definitions of fascism, but if you can’t call the people who wanted to undo an election that even a lot of judges appointed by Trump said was basically fair, then I don’t know what fascism is.” When you not only try to undo the election but encourage your supporters to storm the Capitol to overturn the election by force—that is fascism.

A while ago, I said fascism was the philosophy of the bully. You could say it is the philosophy of might is right. Is that not exactly what we saw on January 6, 2021 at the insurrection of the Capitol in Washington? People who don’t accept a democratic election. That is what all fascists have in common. A lot people forget that Adolf Hitler was originally elected, before he destroyed democracy in Germany.

And don’t get lulled into a false sense of security that this problem has gone away because Trump is ensconced in Mar-a-Lago. Right after it happened, 45% of Republicans approved of the rampage! After the riot was quelled, a large majority of Republican Senators and Congressmen and Congress women voted for exactly what the rioters were demanding—i.e. that the election be ignored!

Did you notice all the flags and signs that referred to Jesus and Trump? Maybe Sinclair Lewis or Huey Long were right? And this battle is not over.

Fascism is alive and well in America.

 

 

Left or Right extremists: who is more dangerous?

American Fascism, Death of Democracy, Extremism, terrorism

Recently some of my friends suggested that Antifa is more dangerous than White Supremacists. Is this true?

 

To some extent for each of us it depends on whom we fear. If you are a well-to-do white guy, you likely tend to fear those left wing radicals who threaten to take away stuff from you. If you are one of the poor people, especially poor people of colour, you likely fear those white supremacists. Where does the truth lie?

One of my trusted sources of information is The Guardian a newspaper or magazine (The Guardian Weekly) based in England. Most of their revenue comes from a trust fund established many decades ago.  I have been reading it since 1982 and find their journalism stellar. I think it is the best in the world. They are not perfect, but they are very good.

Recently I read a very interesting article in The Guardian Weekly by one of their respected reporters- Ed Pilkington.

First Pilkington noted that Chad Wolf the acting secretary of Homeland Security in the US released his department’s annual assessment of violent threats to the United States.  It was written before the recent riot at the Capitol. In the introduction Wolf wrote that he is:

 “particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years. [They] seek to force ideological change in the United States through violence, death, and destruction.”

 

This was also written just before the FBI in Michigan arrested 13 rightwing extremists who allegedly organized a plot to kidnap and try the Democratic Governor, Gretchen Whitmer.

Earlier in the year in February , the FBI Director Christopher Wray  (not exactly a left-wing radical) told the American Congress

“racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists” have become the “primary source of ideologically motivated lethal incidents” in the US. The danger overshadowed the jihadist threat that has dominated the security debate since 9/11.”

White supremacists in other words.

According to the Guardian, 2018 was the deadliest year on record for domestic extremist violence (it may have been surpassed by 2020) and that year

 

“White supremacists were responsible for most of that bloodshed in 2019 – 39 out of 48 deaths, including 23 people who died at the hands of an anti-Hispanic racist in El Paso, Texas, and a Jewish worshipper murdered at Poway Synagogue in California.”

 

That means that other terrorists including Muslim Jihadis and Antifa only accounted to 9 out of 48!

 According to Vanda Felbab-Brown, whom The Guardian described as a terrorism and extremism expert from the Brookings Institute in the US, White Supremacy is “by far the most serious domestic danger in the US on many levels – the frequency of attacks, the level of recruitment, the scope of ambition of the groups and the wider political capital they are building.”

The most telling information though comes from FBI data (again not a left wing organization). This is how Pilkington described it after noting that the FBI spent much more money attacking international terrorism where it spent 80% than domestic terrorism where it spent 20%:

 

“The bureau’s own figures compiled for 2008 to 2018 indicate that the balance of threat is the exact reverse – some 73% of all extremist murders in the US in that period were by far-right terrorists, only 23% by Islamist terrorists.”

 

In other words 96% of domestic terrorist murders in the US were carried out  by what it called far right terrorists, again leaving Antifa, Islamic fundamentalists and others together being responsible for only 4%!

I think it is fair to say that the left wing terrorists are pretty small beer compared to the rightwing terrorists. And remember all these figures are before the  astounding invasion of the Capitol by Trump supporters who are hardly left-wing radicals.

Trumpism and the Unimaginable

American Fascism, Death of Democracy, Death of Truth, True Believer, Trump, Trump the Saviour, Trumpism

 

Fintan O’Toole is a wonderful political commentator who writes for the Irish Times and frequently contributes to the New York Review of Books. He was recently interviewed on Amanpour and Co. He has been studying American politics closely. Sometimes it helps to get a view from afar to see clearly what is going on.

O’Toole said this about Trump the day before the Trump Insurrection in Washington on January 6, 2021:

“Donald Trump does not hide his feelings…He has been saying for over a year that losing the election is inconceivable… This is the language of autocracy. In an autocracy is not imaginable that the great leader can be removed. And for 75 million people who voted for Trump they voted effectively for autocracy not democracy. That is the profound consequence of what Donald Trump managed to do. He has created an enormous base for anti-democratic politics in one of the world’s oldest democracies.’

 

In other words, Trump created Trumpism. Trumpers made it clear that a defeat for Trump is not possible. You can hear it when television interviewers asked the Trumpers what they would be doing the next day—January 6, 2021. Of course they were going to the Trump victory to certified by Congress after which on January 20, 2021 they were going to the inauguration of Trump. There was no question about this. The followers of Trump, just like Trump see an alternative reality. That is what Trumpism is all about. It is a window into an alternate reality that is more to the follower’s liking—a reality posited by their spiritual leader.

O’Toole wrote this in the Irish Times,

“Trump has kept his eye on the great strategic prize—the creation of a vast and impassioned base for anti-democratic politics. This is his legacy.  He has unsuccessfully fed a vast number of voters along the path from hatred of government to contempt for rational deliberation to the inevitable end point—disdain for the electoral process itself.”

 

This is exactly the movement of Trumpism—a vast and impassioned base who have hatred of government, contempt for rational deliberation and disdain for the electoral process. The death of truth leads to the death of democracy. In fact, they are both opposite sides of the same coin—they are conjoined twins with a birth defect.

O’Toole also said in the Irish Times,

“Trump has unfinished business. A republic he wants to destroy still stands.  It is for him, not a good-bye, but hasta la vista. Instead of waving him off those who want to rebuild democracy will have to put a stake through his heart.”

O’Toole, like me, takes enormous comfort from the fact that Joe Biden has won, and ordinary government officials have done their duty and not bent to the will of the president and the catastrophe of another Trump term in office has been avoided. At least temporarily it has been avoided. But this danger has not passed. The United States has millions of Trumpers left and they are resentful and believe their saviour has been robbed of a second term. Many of those supporters think their government and their country has been stolen from them. These people are passionate in their devotion to that man. To me it seems insane, but it is real. They are devoted to him. Trump might be right that he could have stood on 5th Avenue, shot a man, and not lost any of that support. Only one with religious followers could say that. Now these passionate people are hugely disappointed. Resentment is a powerful toxic force. There is no telling what can happen if it is set loose. It could explode and there is no predicting exactly how explosions will turn out, except we know it won’t be pretty. These dangers are real.

Trump the Saviour

American Fascism, Death of Democracy, Death of Truth, Evangelical Christianity, True Believer, Trump, Trumpism

Some people are now saying Trumpism is a cult. There is some substance to this claim. Trump said that he could stand on 5th Avenue in New York, shoot someone, and he would not lose any support! That is theological support. Trumpers are accustomed to believing without evidence. As a result, the lack of evidence for Trump’s claims, such as his claim that he won the presidential election by a landslide, for example, can readily be believed by the Trumpers. That is why, I believe, Evangelicals in general have had such fondness for Trump. They find it easy to believe in him. That is why I have been saying beliefs have consequences.

Rick Wilson the co-founder of the Lincoln project had some interesting things to say about Trumpism:

“Trumpism is a cultural problem. That culture is defiant of reality and tradition and morality. It is a fundamentally unconservative culture.  They are not believers in limited government, the rule of law or the constitution. They believe in Trump. If he says something, that’s what they believe. If he said tomorrow ‘I am in favour of child sacrifice,’ they would say, ‘we ought to reconsider child sacrifice,’ because that is the power he has over them. It’s the most astounding diversion from what American politicians have traditionally been.  Traditionally, even powerful and charismatic American politicians have been in response to people.  These are in response to a leader.  He is a perfect authoritarian figure in terms of the charisma, the control, and almost religious devotion to him.”

 

The only thing that rings false in that statement is the word “almost.”  It is in fact religious devotion. The word “almost’ waters it down too much.

Trump is the saviour of Trumpers. As a result, Trump does not have to worry about his supporters being disappointed in. It does not matter. It is unlikely to vanish. It is possible it will vanish but unlikely. Other politicians can only envy Trump.

The Essence of Trumpism

American Fascism, Death of Democracy, Death of Truth, Trump, Trumpism

One of the most insightful commentators on modern international politics is Anne Applebaum. She was interviewed recently on Amanpour & Co. She talked about  something new she called Trumpism:

“Trumpism is not as it was advertised. It’s not what it has been analyzed as.  It isn’t anything to do with economics. It has nothing to do with foreign policy or bringing home the troops. It isn’t anything to do with the issues it is attached to. The essence of Trumpism, the deepest meaning of Trumpism, is that it is a rejection of reality. It is a projection of victory for Trump by his followers no matter if that victory is real or not. The essence is the president declaring victory where he has lost…  So we have the Vice-president, the United States Secretary of State, also following the same pattern. They aren’t contradicting the president. They know he has lost, but because they too are vying for the same mantle, hoping to someday lead the same political movement. They need to keep telling their followers that they’ve won even though they’ve not. And that is actually the essence of the movement.  That is the piece of it that will carry on. We are now seeing the political successors to Trump   who are trying to create that same feeling…We triumph over reality no matter what happens.”

Anne Applebaum is an expert on the undemocratic movements in Europe that have been expanding in the past few years. She lives in Poland and writes for The Atlantic. Europe and other parts of the world that have political leaders that want to follow the lead of Donald Trump from democracy to some form of autocracy. This Applebaum says is very important. They see how America has done it. They will likely want to use the same methods to achieve the same goal even though it looks like Trump, so far at least, has failed to achieve his goal. But he clearly showed it could be done. As Applebaum said, “the great power of American politics was always its example…that 250 years of peaceful change of power that inspired people, and this will now inspire in the opposite direction.”

As Applebaum reminded us, “We now live in an era when rumour and conspiracy theories travel much faster than real news.” According to the fascinating film “The Social Dilemma” lies travel 7 times as fast as truth, because lies are amplified by social media while truth is boring and ignored.   We are in a highly volatile situation. Anything can happen. Explosions are hardly unlikely. We had better beware. All of us.

As Applebaum said,

“Distrust” is an insufficient word. People don’t have faith any more in so called mainstream media that involves going down with fact-checking, conversation, and research. They are willing to believe material they find on Facebook. The essence of Trumpism is also based on that. It’s developed out of that world in which rumour, imaginary victories, and the imaginary world is much stronger and more appealing than the real world.      How do you deal with people who believe that Donald Trump will be inaugurated on January 21, 2021? Or that believe there is a cabal of pedophiles that is trying to rob the country? None of us have thought through the implications of this new world view It is all over the world.”

 

That is the problem. We have a world in which millions  of people have given up on believing things based on evidence and prefer to believe what is convenient to their world view. They have lost respect for the truth. Such people can be convinced by their leaders of any conceivable lie. Such people can be convinced to do unimaginable things. Such people are dangerous. And we have to live with them. And we don’t know how we can do that.