Skip to main content

Call It By Its Name

I hesitate to label anything “fascist,” a word so overused and misunderstood it’s been leeched of all meaning. But it’s a hard word to avoid these days.

I no longer want to hear of Trump’s “authoritarian tendencies.” They’re no longer tendencies, they’re naked power grabs, and Trump is grabbing as much as he can before Election Day, possibly for use afterwards.

That’s classic fascism, so let’s call it by its name.

Fascism, we’re taught, is the concentration of all levers of power in the hands of an oligarchy of wealthy and corporate interests, headed by an absolute leader.

We’ve long speculated about whether it could truly take hold in this country, and if it did, what it would look like.

Well, this is what it looks like. Minus some of the bells and whistles, which could be on the way.

So far, the concentration camps are still largely on the southern border — at least the ones we know about. So far, the police haven’t quite descended to Gestapo level — but the protests aren’t over, and Trump is encouraging their worst impulses. So far, the mass execution of undesirable ethnics is still, apparently, on the back burner — but would it surprise us?

So let’s look at those levers of power and consider, briefly, what we are now up against.

The Executive Branch is largely in the hands of the industries it’s supposed to regulate. The inspectors general — the watchdogs in the federal agencies — are being systematically purged and replaced with copy-and-paste Trump loyalists. Unqualified hacks occupy all the leadership roles, and it shows. Their catastrophic response to the pandemic, leaving 100,000 dead, is a fitting testament to their incompetence. And to fascism in action.

Half the Legislative Branch — the House — has been effectively neutered, mostly by Bill Barr. As long as he’s in charge, oversight is a non-starter and subpoenas might as well be toilet paper. In a way, he’s the scariest of them all, because he’s a true believer — a rarity in an administration that’s mostly in it for the grift — and he’s been working toward this moment his whole life. He truly believes in the “unitary executive” — a cute euphemism for dictator — though I’m guessing Trump wouldn’t have been his first choice. Fascist dictators really need an attention span.

The Senate, for its part, is still a rubber stamp for Trump. Mitch McConnell is the only senator who matters, and he could end this madness tomorrow. He alone has the clout — and the votes — to remove Trump from office if he so chooses. But we know he can’t take the chance. His connections to China, through his wife’s family, are suspicious enough to warrant investigation by a new administration. And there are still plenty of questions about Oleg Deripaska’s business interests in Kentucky. Other skeletons shouldn’t be hard to find, which has to make McConnell queasy. But for now, he’s content to undermine the recovery, withholding desperately needed relief funding, all in lockstep with the unitary executive. A pliable legislature is one of fascism’s greatest hits.

The Judicial branch also has McConnell’s fingerprints all over it. If another Supreme Court seat opens between now and next January — right up to midnight of the Inauguration — he will effectively put SCOTUS out of reach for 30 years. But that’s not nearly the extent of his damage. His only mission these days, besides obstructing legislation, is stocking the federal court system with as many unqualified, far-right judges as he can ram through the confirmation process.

As for the current line-up of SCOTUS, let’s just say we’re placing a lot of faith in the sanity and humanity of John Roberts, even as we totally write off the other four nuts to his right. Does this fill you with confidence? If ever there was a Supreme Court built for fascism, this is it.

So yes, we’re all set up for a fascist state. The only piece missing is the military. If they get aboard, it’s game over.

But I don’t think Trump controls the military, at least not yet. He’d love to, but he’s burned a lot of those bridges, from the generals on down. You don’t win them over by pardoning war criminals, abandoning the Kurds, blackmailing Ukraine, or firing the captain of a Covid-ridden ship. And most of them were fans of John McCain.

Even the top brass, authoritarian by nature, can’t be comfortable with what’s going on. The thought of turning their own troops on their own countrymen — which Trump would gleefully have them do — has got to keep them up at night.

Even so, you have to wonder what they’re saying to themselves. Are they expecting Trump to declare martial law? Have they thought through which orders they’re prepared to carry out? If he tells them to shoot peaceful protesters on Fifth Avenue, will they give that order?

And let’s not forget that the virus gets a say. The most ruthless fascist of all, it lives to punish those who break the rules, especially the rules of social distancing. The one thing the rallies have in common — protesters and police alike — is a visible disregard for masks and the six-foot rule. The virus will no doubt weigh in on this in the next week or two.

I hope I’m wrong about all of this. I hope this infection, this rash on the body politic, will go away by itself. I hope our system has enough antibodies to fight it off. I hope it isn’t fascism at all.

But if it looks, walks, and quacks like fascism, what else would you call it?


Berkley MI

Friday, 06/05/20

Comments

  1. Only time will tell. Everything rides on November. If the current situation doesn't get the Democratic vote to defeat this situation, it is game over.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Andrea Mitchel interviewed Bill Cohen, former defense secretary under Clinton, today. He seems to think Trump is already escalating the military to the next level. Gulp.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Superb. I tweeted about it.
    https://twitter.com/Shoq/status/1269660328750694400

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blackmail for Fun and Profit

Once in a while, I like to use this space to indulge in some idle speculation, taking a few what-ifs and seeing where they lead. I tend to do this in response to some stimulus, some ping to my brain. Which is just what Keith Olbermann provided in one of his podcasts last week. He was talking about Jeff Bezos’ upcoming wedding to Lauren Sanchez, the woman with whom Bezos had been having the affair that ultimately ended his marriage. You'll recall that in 2019, Trump operators had a heavy hand in that breakup, having attempted to blackmail Bezos into coercing The Washington Post, which he owns, into covering Trump more obsequiously. It's rare to see such an instance of high-level blackmail surface in public, and we only know about it because Bezos didn't bite. He outed himself, he went public about the whole affair, thereby ending his marriage, which was apparently on the ropes anyway. An unusually happy postscript to this otherwise routine multi-bill

The Mainstream Media Continues to Disappoint

The awkward term "both-siderism" has, at long last, stepped into the limelight, thanks to the graceful gravitas of CNN icon Christiane Amanpour (full disclosure: our dog used to play with her dog). In one brilliant commencement address , to the Columbia School of Journalism, she dope-slapped her own profession and, indeed, her own boss, both of whom richly deserved it. That takes guts, not to mention a reputation for integrity. Both of which she has in abundance. What she said about the "both sides" problem in journalism is nothing new. But to those of us who've been screaming about it for years, it's refreshing to hear it denounced by a mainstream journalist of her stature, in a venue that serves as an incubator of mainstream journalism. While she declined to mention names, there was no doubt about the targets of her irritation. CNN and its chairman, Chris Licht, were still licking their wounds from their treacherous but buffoonish

The Definition of Defamation is Up in the Air

Underlying all the recent commotion surrounding Fox, Tucker Carlson, and the mess they've created for themselves, there's an important legal issue that has flown largely under the radar, but may soon be ready for its closeup. It's a First Amendment issue concerning the meaning of defamation, and the standard that must be met to prove it. The constitutionality of the existing standard was expected to be tested in the Fox-Dominion case, had that case come to trial. But since that didn't happen, I figured it would go back to the back burner. But then, last week, Ron DeSantis had it blow up in his face , giving the whole issue new momentum, and from a surprising direction. His own people took him down. DeSantis had talked his pet legislature into launching an outrageous assault on freedom of the press, eviscerating existing libel laws, and making it easier for public figures — like, say, DeSantis himself— to sue for defamation. One can just imagine DeSantis cackling