We live in strange times. Dangerous times. Despite the fact that there are no large-scale shooting wars at present, there still exist several ‘hot spots’ of contention between the United States and its many adversaries, most prominent of which is the Persian Gulf where Iran has recently shot down a US drone and seized a British ship, among other flareups. And of course, there are the residual ‘hot spots’ in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Libya while others in the south China Sea, India and Pakistan and North Korea percolate merrily. Not to mention the always roiling occupation of Palestinian lands by Israel, where the temperature is raised periodically by Israeli air strikes to demonstrate its dominance in the region.
But perhaps the strangest and most dangerous sign of our times is the fact that the most powerful nation on earth is headed by a lunatic. I am speaking, obviously, of Donald Trump, who last week sent the political world into spasms with his racist comment (followed up by “doubling down” and then exploding the whole thing at a political rally of rabid supporters in North Carolina) that the “squad” as he calls Representatives Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Occasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Presley, should ‘go back to where they came from.’ Of course, this ignores the stubborn fact that three of the four are American-born (is Presley supposed to go back to Boston?), and all, including the Somalia-born Omar, are American citizens. But facts have never stopped Trump. What he wants to do, always, is rile up his base (and they are among the most base, i.e. lowly and ignorant, of Americans—though, thanks to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, they think they’re quite smart!) by invoking the basic idea that some people—and those of a darker hue are the most prominent of examples—just don’t belong here. Hitler did this successfully, to the world’s horror. Now Trump is following the same playbook in the United States, having first won the presidency in 2016, and now seeking to win re-election using the same scare-and-scapegoat tactics so dear to all fascists.
The punditry in America has reacted more or less predictably, though this time the restraints seem to be put aside, with almost everyone from the PBS Newshour to CNN to the entire press of the left to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling Trump’s words “racist.” And despite the pathetic attempts of Republicans like Mitch McConnell to turn the tables and call those who call out “racism” (or “fascism”) the “real racists,” the alarm has kept building—especially after the Nuremberg-style rally Trump held in North Carolina where his minions took up the chant, “send her back.” Among the commentaries has been this one from Sarah Abramsky in Truthout:
The most powerful man on Earth is now using his platform to unreservedly preach the gutter politics of the purge, of the pogrom, of the race war. We cannot let Trump and his supporters enact his fascistic gospel. We cannot let history repeat itself. (Truthout.org, 7.19.19)
Others, though, have tried to moderate the reaction, observing that Trump is notHitler and Trumpism is notNazism. Which is very true. It is also true that history does not repeat itself, though it often rhymes. And so the question becomes, does the current mode of fear-based populism which some have called “illiberalism” rhyme well enough with fascism to set off alarm bells, and more? Are we really entering an age where the fascist leader will be perceived by frightened masses (either racist whites in America terrified that they are becoming a minority, or Europeans fearful of being overrun by refugees from Syria and north Africa, or nationalists everywhere anxious that global warming is making so many places on earth uninhabitable that no nation will be able to accommodate all the refugees streaming from them) as the only safeguard against inundation? It is certainly possible—witness the proto-fascist leaders in India, Hungary, the Philippines, and countless Middle-East nations where leaders like Al Sisi and Mohammad bin Salman are our ‘good friends.’ But what I am concerned with here is the near-term situation in this country. How seriously are we Americans to take the ravings of the lunatic we now have in charge? Is it time to activate the big guns to combat creeping fascism in the United States? Should we on the left be thinking of mass demonstrations and other mass actions that go beyond organizing for the next presidential election? Or has the situation gotten even worse, gotten beyond conventional politics?
Years ago, I had a neighbor who was a political scientist, and one of his projects involved looking at the situation in Nazi Germany as Hitler was rising to power. And his question was: at what point does a target population have to conclude that the situation is beyond repair and thus so dangerous that it is time to leave? In short, when should a German Jew have concluded that all hopes for amelioration of the political situation were gone, and that the only means of survival was to get out fast? Though the situation has not reached that point in the United States, and the alternatives are not flight but rather how serious the political fight should become, the question remains. When should one conclude that conventional modes of opposition will no longer work, that the established ruler and his party have too powerful a grip on the electoral reins and the support of a fanatic base, and that the time has come for truly serious counter-measures?
The problem is always that we don’t know. And what we don’t know, primarily, is how seriously we should take Trump’s increasingly fascist rhetoric. This is always the dilemma that citizens of a democracy face. Are Trump’s tweets just racist bombast from an ignorant narcissist? Or is there a calculating mind whose intentions are leading to actual violence? Or even further, does the expression of such destructive language lead, inevitably and regardless of intent, to violent actions to back it up? This is what we don’t yet know. The record, for Trump at least, is that he often seems to enjoy making threats, but then, when he sees the reaction, backs down. In short, he’s the coward that usually lurks beneath the surface bully. Even with the racist remark about the four Representatives, he has doubled down and backed up, and insisted that he didn’t really like what his minions in North Carolina were shouting and tried to talk over it (until the videotape of the rally showed him preening in the glory of it for at least 15 long seconds while the ugly chant went on), but then came back to saying he really liked it, though it wasn’t that he was a racist (he hadn’t a racist bone in his body, the president insisted), it was that Ihan Omar had criticized Jews and Israel and if she didn’t like them or like it here, she should go back to her own country. And take her hijab-wearing, terrorist-supporting compatriots with her. Which, as anyone could see, was classic racism and xenophobia.
Of course, if it were only racism at issue, we might get by that, since it’s an old story in this country. But we have the international antics and use of intemperate language (some have called those “fascist”) as well. Consider the case of North Korea. There, early on, Trump actually did use very harsh language, talking about raining down ‘fire and fury’ upon the North Koreans, and prompting many people to expect a shooting war very soon. But then he reversed course completely and began a wooing of the North Korean leader that has continued to this very day, to the disgust of many experienced observers who wonder about his apparent affection for absolute dictators like Kim Jong Un. Who could like such guys? Must it not be that Trump sees himself (if only the American system would allow it) as a kindred spirit? someone who could really make some advances in the world if only it weren’t for that pesky thing called democracy, for constitutional separation of powers? One has to think so. Because even after several putative ‘red lines’ were crossed by the North Korean nuclear program, Trump kept insisting that he and Kim had a real personal relationship, and would come to an agreement eventually. And the world could only hope and hold its breath. The same situation holds with Iran. In spite of Trump’s violent rhetoric promising that Iran would soon be regretting its rash action in shooting down a U.S. drone, our Fuhrer is said to have recalled planes that were already in the air on a bombing mission to Iran. And we are left wondering: what prompted him to reverse course and call off the mission everyone expected? Was it a failure of nerve? A reversion to type (i.e. Trump fits the type found in many bullies—being all talk and no action, being, in fact, when confronted by someone of strength, a coward at heart.) And this is not to even mention his groveling before his pal, Vladimir Putin, at Helsinki.
All of this, then, makes it difficult to decide just how dangerous this faux-president really is, or might be. He loves violent rhetoric, to be sure. A narcissistic braggart, most definitely. Threatener-in-chief: no doubt about it. But does he actually doanything? Will he actuallydo anything? Is he threatening just to uphold some image of himself that he’s been taught to revere and maintains to prop up his always shaky and often collapsing self-image? Or is he threatening to goad an adversary into some rash action that he can then use to justify a punitive and perhaps nuclear strike? We don’t know yet.
And so we’re left with this seriously defective man—defective intellectually, defective emotionally, defective psychologically—with a seriously defective base of supporters just dying for something to rescue their ruined and empty lives, and an equally defective Republican party behind him cynically willing, for reasons of maintaining their flimsy grip on power, to either remain silent in the face of his idiocies or provide rationales for their ‘sensible patriotism,’ propped up by a right-wing media juggernaut that maintains that all his rational opponents constitute an empire of “fake news”—all of which empowers this lunatic in the White House, against all odds and reason, to keep up his lunatic antics and drag his country and the world to no one really knows where or how far.
Though what we do know is that the behind-the-headlines actions he has already taken could have far more serious consequences than the ones indicated by his surface posturing and rhetoric. And here may be the area of most danger represented by this racist-fascist lunatic. Global warming, for example. He keeps insisting, in the face of scientific and even mounting public opinion, that it’s all a hoax. Opposing his idiocy regarding global warming, in fact, seems to be what he most holds against the “squad”—they’re all heavily promoting the Green New Deal to take climate change seriously and fight vigorously against it. And that would sink all of Trump’s attempts to maintain a carbon-spewing, record-setting economy. So his appointments, to the EPA, for instance, have resulted in the scuttling of most EPA regulations instituted by his hated predecessor, to the joy of his corporate cronies. The damage, if this continues for much longer, will be unimaginable. The countless judges he’s appointed represent a parallel and comparable threat, judges who can be expected to render some of the most destructive decisions this nation has ever seen. Add this to the encouraging of his fanatic and violent minions—many of whom would be happily fascist in their thuggery if they’re given half a chance to at some point break out of chanting and sign waving to become literal stormtroopers breaking the heads of those hated ‘coastal elites.’
Well, you know the story. So we come back to the original premise. Just how dangerous is the situation we’re in, just how dangerous is this maniac who now lords it over us like some wannabe Mussolini? I mention the latter because for all the damage the Italian leader did to his nation and its people, he seemed basically reluctant to get into a realworld war until Hitler made it impossible for him to avoid it. So the inventor of fascism, a nasty thug to be sure, wasn’t, on his own, fully committed to implementing that viciousness we attribute to fascist rule. For his domestic enemies, in fact, Mussolini instituted the practice of force-feeding them castor oil; but giving one’s enemies debilitating diarrhea is somewhat different from roasting millions of them in specially-built ovens. And when it comes to Trump, though his actions may ultimately cause more damage than all the fascists combined (I’m referring to the planet-destructive consequences of ignoring global warming), it is my guess that he doesn’t really have enough intelligence to understand these consequences. And that’s where we end up, I think. The one saving grace for our fascist moment may be that Donald Trump isn’t smart enough to be an evil genius. Deep down, he actually wants to be liked, adored. And though I think Bandy Lee is correct in pointing out that this makes him quite dangerous, it’s not clear whether he represents the ultimate danger he, or his fanatic, out of control minions, may blunder us into.
And therein may lie our best hope. Trump might soon be blundered, or mocked, or voted out of office. Made to endure that which he can least tolerate: mockery, and laughter, and ridicule, and failure. He uses these weapons often, we notice, and the reason is that he knows these are the areas where he himself is most vulnerable. I think the term that applies here is projection: we project onto others that which we fear most in ourselves. And so that is what might be done at the highest levels. Confront this asshole with what he actually is: a fool and a buffoon and a loser who has stumbled into his position by a combination of blunders (he actually expected that he had lost the election as it was happening) and fortuitous interferences by the Russians, and the Republican party’s Machiavellian manipulations and gerrymandering in those swing states, and Hillary Clinton’s blunders and overconfidence, and make him what he (and most dictators) fears most to be—what he actually already is—the failed laughingstock of the world. And, thereby, be rid of him before the damage he does becomes lethal.
If we are lucky, this will happen. If we are not, all bets are off. Because as has been pointed out before, even with a lunatic, things can, of their own momentum, get so out of control that we could all be plunged into a conflict or a protracted dissolution of all government safeguards that could take us to Armageddon. And it would be an even bigger shame if the one who leads us there were to be this fraud, this idiot huckster who pollutes and degrades and debauches everything he touches.
Lawrence DiStasi
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