As in this March 13, 2016 post, I have been calling out fascism on this blog for some time now. That said, I do appreciate Umair Haque's correct acknowledgement of the ways in which this administration has been fascist from the very beginning and asking aloud why this wasn't noticed, meaning truly noticed until Trump's Bible stunt in front of St. John's Episcopal Church this week.
The difference over time is its intensification and elaboration into new forms of distortion and domination that continue to threaten our country if we do not vote this president and his party out of office. As expressed this week in The Atlantic by Anne Applebaum, history will most certainly judge the complicit of this administration.
My observation is that the protesters are not only sophisticated in this regard, but undeterred such that they are already judging the complicit.
My observation is that the protesters are not only sophisticated in this regard, but undeterred such that they are already judging the complicit.
Way to go, Millennials. Our country is in excellent hands.
Godspeed!
Godspeed!
-Angela Valenzuela
by Umair Haque | Medium | June 4, 2020
See that pic above? Americans woke up to soldiers and fencing surrounding the White House. An op-ed in the New York Times calling for the use of domestic military force, aka, soldiers shooting people in the streets. Major cities under curfew. A phalanx of mysterious men in body armour carrying machine guns, only without badges, who wouldn’t respond to questions — like Trump’s new personal secret police. Or maybe SS.
Finally — finally — the general understanding seemed to dawn that this was fascism. Pundits and intellectuals used the word “fascism” for the first time. They were horrified and shocked. The idea seems to be, right about now, that America’s in danger of having a fascist collapse.
Wrong.
There’s not some kind of vague remote danger, or imminent threat, of fascism breaking out in America. What planet have you been living on? The last four years have been America’s collapse into fascism.
The American pundit and intellectual and even well-meaning white liberal are suddenly using the word “fascism,” now, in shock and horror. Now that troops are on white streets. Wait, you mean it wasn’t fascism when brown kids were put…in cages…in camps? What the?
Well-meaning white America is saying suddenly now that soldiers are on its streets, “But Oh My God! This is fascism!” It doesn’t see the shattering hypocrisy, the devastating irony, therein. Do you mean that all of the following weren’t really fascism to you: Camps, cages, bans, raids, purges, violence, hate at minorities emanating from the head of state, institutional dehumanization? What the? Are you serious? It’s the kind of thing that makes literally everyone else in the world at this point gnash their teeth at the American Idiot, and not know whether to laugh or cry maniacally.
America’s had a fascist meltdown. Over the last four years. The next six months are merely the end stages. In which we find out if America goes full-on fascist the whole way, irrevocably, or not. Can that be staved off?
If you really want to know, then is nothing more crucial right about now than not erasing the last four years of history, but really understanding them. How, precisely, they have been grade-school textbook fascism. The real thing. Not a drill. Bona fide, actual fascism. That everyone should have recognized, and most of the world did. Only America didn’t get this point, it seems.
It was always fascism. From day one of the Trump administration. That was the explicit goal and objective. From day one.
Remember how his advisors advanced the ideas of ethnic cleansing and purification? How he began his campaign by calling immigrants and refugees “vermin” and “animals”? Blaming them for the economic woes of the average American, who suddenly found themselves downwardly mobile, poor, and desperate? Trump blamed a certain hated minority — Latinos, mostly, but also blacks and Muslims and Jews — a demagogue scapegoating them for all a nation’s problems, from poverty to social disintegration to hopelessness to a lack of good jobs to crime. Just like Hitler had in the 1930s to Jews, too. Yes, really. Ask your Jewish friends. 99.9% of them will agree.
That was fascism.
Remember when Trump got elected? His first major priority wasn’t to give Americans the healthcare they lacked. The retirement they needed. The raises they hadn’t had in generations. It wasn’t to improve their lives in any way at all, with a better social contract. What was it? To build a wall. And then it was to build a network of concentration camps. Concentration camps.
That was fascism.
Then his advisors had the idea to put kids in cages in those camps, and “separate them” from their families — translation: rip them from their mothers’ arms. In those camps, in those cages, those kids weren’t even allowed to hug each other. They didn’t have adequate food, water, or medicine. International observers classed this as torture, because that is exactly what it was, properly speaking.
That was fascism.
What was the next major priority of the Trump administration? Now that it had its camps, and its first hated minority in them — when would they come for us, the Muslims and Jews and blacks wondered — would Trump finally do something for the “real” American, his base of fanatical whites? Nope. Still, he didn’t give them healthcare, retirement, jobs, education.
What did he do instead? He began to “raid” towns. Have papers checked on public transport. Immigrants and refugees were hunted like desperate things — the “vermin” he and his base thought they were. Some cities proudly called themselves “sanctuaries.” But you don’t need sanctuaries if there aren’t fascists hunting the hated.
That was fascism.
The raids soon enough became just another feature of daily American life. And as they intensified, mass deportations became another priority. Guess what the “forcible removal” of populations is called? Genocide. That came after the first genocide, which was child separation, because taking the kids of one kind of people is a form of genocide, too.
Don’t take my word for it. The last living Nuremberg Prosecutor warned around this time that the Trump Administration was now committing crimes against humanity. Think about that. The man who put…the Nazis…away…warning America was now doing the same category of things they did. He would know. He helped invent the idea, Ben Ferencz, that brave and noble soul.
Do you know who listened to him? Nobody.
To this day, nobody in America’s major media has interviewed…the last living Nuremberg Prosecutor…saying crimes against humanity were happening all over again, this time in America. I think I’m one of a handful of people who wrote about this point at all. What the?
That part was fascism, too. How so?
Well, because it meant that Americans didn’t get what all this really was — who was teaching them any of this? America’s major media, at this point, wasn’t warning that all this was a serious and real fascist collapse. They were warning against saying just that. And then, they were interviewing…neo-Nazis…doing fawning profiles of them. Instead of Ben Ferencz.
What the?
It’s no wonder that the average American was bewildered. This might have felt like fascism. But surely it wasn’t. Nobody said you could call it that! Chris Hayes, Robert Reich, and so on, even the nation’s self-described liberal pundits, didn’t say it. Neither did the political opposition.
There was a word for all this. Denial. America was now a society in denial as deep as an ocean. The Trump administration’s priorities had all been the stuff of textbook fascism: one, demonization, two, camps and raids, three, ethnic cleansing. In magazines and newspapers around the world, questions began to be asked. German ones explicitly began referring to Trump as an aspiring fascist. One put Trump doing a Nazi salute on its cover. Only in America was there any question: no, this couldn’t be fascism, could it?
When the Germans are telling you he’s a fascist, he’s a fascist.
In the 1930s, too, denial had been key to the rise of the Nazis. The good German wouldn’t have believed it if you told him the Nazis were about to murder 6 million Jews. They were doing great things for the Germans! Some Americans will object to that parallel. Nonetheless, denial played a key role in the rise of American fascism, too.
No major institution in America admitted it was now having a fascist collapse: media, intellectuals, opposition, or the people themselves. Those who thought it couldn’t say it, and those who hadn’t been educated to think it, who’d been cautioned away from it, by the failure of America’s intellectuals and media, genuinely appeared to have no clue.
That was fascism, too. The atmosphere of denial as deep as an ocean, that America was now drowning in. Life went on as usual.
Why do we warn of fascism? Remember that old quote? “First they came for this hated minority, then they came for that hated minority, and finally they came for me?” We warn of fascism to prevent it’s slippery slope, it’s ruinous decline, it’s shattering spiral of self-destruction.
White Americans didn’t get it. Fascism was coming for them, too. But as hard as anyone tried to teach them that — they seemed incapable of listening. Sure, maybe you did. But there was no widespread understanding in America whatsoever that it was having a fascist collapse.
So America took an even more dangerous step.
Trump was impeached. For what? For camps? Purges? Raids? Bans? Hate? Genocide? Nope. For offering…a bribe. So the man who the last living Nuremberg Prosecutor said was committing crimes against humanity was impeached for…a bribe…not for crimes against humanity. What the?
The Democrats impeached Trump. For the wrong thing, not the right thing. They gave all that fascism a free pass, legitimized it by turning a blind eye, showed that no justice could be had for it. That is why impeachment had no effect on Trump’s fortunes. It didn’t matter because, well, it didn’t matter. And they did that calculatedly. “We can’t impeach him for that, because, well, there’s no fascism here! There can’t be!”
That’s called appeasement. And it’s another key step in any fascist collapse. Because a demagogue is a bully, and when he knows he can get away with abusing a whole society, that is exactly what he’ll go on doing.
At this point, any decent observer of fascism could have predicted: now it’s going to be white America’s turn.
Today, it is.
Soldiers surround the White House. The President calls for Americans to be shot on the streets. His party supports him. That phalanx of secret police guards the demagogue, accountable to no one but him.
Suddenly, white America’s crying — now that it’s on their doorstep — “but this is fascism!”
Hello. It was always fascism. From the day of the camps, raids, bans, purges, cages. From the denial, through the appeasement, to the complicity.
Remember the old quote? In America, it goes like this. “First, they came for the Mexicans, and I did nothing. Then, they came for the Latinos, and I did nothing. Then they came for the Muslims, and I did nothing. Then they came for me.”
White America’s figured out that it’s fascism…too late. Far too late.
How does a nation grow this ignorant? Didn’t they teach white Americans in grade school — like they taught the rest of us — that camps, bans, raids, purges, hate, are what fascism is?
That when a head of state says that hated minorities are “animals” and “vermin”…and acts upon it…that’s fascism?
How can white America be this selfish? This blind?
I have never — ever — seen another country like it. Never. And neither has the world.
The American Idiot has become a figure of global renown precisely because the world is shocked and horrified that Americans didn’t know fascism when it was literally putting kids in cages before their very eyes. What the? No wonder everyone I meet that’s not American laughs at Americans for being hopelessly foolish now.
That is hopelessly foolish. It’s blindingly idiotic. They teach us what fascism is in grade school — all of us, everywhere around the globe — for a reason.
So we can see it coming, before it’s too late.
America didn’t.
America’s not on the brink of a fascist collapse. It’s not in danger of having one. The last four years have been one. During those four years, a demagogue and his army of American Idiots built all the nascent institutions of a fascist society — camps, bans, raids, purges, and so forth. All that is now just everyday American life. And everyday American life now feels so scary, horrifying, brutal, violent, and dystopian precisely because Americans are living in a fascist society.
Only the final steps of fascist collapse are now left to take. A demagogue seizing power for life, declaring martial law, calling a state of emergency, postponing elections, cancelling them. Who’s going to stop him? Why do you think that phalanx of men in body armor who nobody can recognize or account for is there?
Only the final steps now remain. The final seizure of power.
Then the transformation of a society is complete. What do you think will happen if Trump isn’t removed from power by November? Do you think another four years will end in anything but even more tragedy? Do you think that there would be another election after that? Do you think America as we know it would survive?
Don’t kid yourself. Wake up. Wise up. Open your goddamned eyes.
The last four years were America’s fascist collapse. This is just what finishes the job.
Americans, like so many before them, didn’t get it, until it was too late, even while the alarms were blaring in their very eyes, their house was burning down, and the smoke was in their nostrils. Nope, no fascism here! Those kids in cages? Those towns being raided? That President scapegoating whole minorities and banning them? That’s not fascism? No wonder they came for you in the end, too, finally, occupying your streets. Who was left, after the Latino, Mexican, Muslim, black, Jew, but the well-meaning, oblivious white American? The last one still in denial?
It was always fascism.
That, my friends, is why, and how, history repeats itself. Through cowardice, through folly, through ignorance, but most of all, through blindness, deafness, and silence.
Umair
June 2020
June 2020
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