Can an Idiocracy Save Itself From Fascism?
Jun 28, 2020
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I was greeted by the news today thatDonald Trump retweeted a supporter crying “white power!”You might think this is insignificant, just another little ugliness, but I don’t. Trump later deleted his tweet. But of course the damage to democracy had been done, because the signal had been sent. What is it when a President explicitly supports “white power”?
Here’s what it’s not.It’s not just racism.Racism is whenyour idiot uncledoes it. He says something hateful, something bigoted, against minorities of a certain ethnicity or color. He says such things over and over again. You can’t take it after a while. Your uncle is racist. We all have an uncle like that, I think.
But whenthe President of the United Statesdoes it— showsa pattern of increasingly evident bigotry, hate, and prejudice— it’snotjust racism. It’s something else entirely. Why?
The President of the United States controls, among other things, the world’s largest military.The institutions of the state, from justice to foreign policy to domestic policy. The President of a country is its head of state, and has control — not absolute control, but still, control — over its government.
A head of state can do things that your racist uncle can’t.
He can make all that hate and bigotryreal.Suddenly, in shocking and terrible ways. What kinds of ways am I talking about?
He can build camps.He can put kids in cages in those camps.He can raid towns, looking for “illegals.” He canpurge the institutions of the state, until they are full of people who support doing just such things. He can build paramilitaries, to carry out all these strange and terrible things. He can place them above the law, and beholden only to him.
He caninstitutionalize dehumanization, by taking personhood away from entire groups, not just legally, butculturally, socially, economically.
He can weaponize the law as a mechanism toenforce hate and bigotryand prejudice against hated minorities, who are scapegoated for a nation’s economic woes —just like Jews were in Nazi Germany.
That’s why it’s not just racism when the President does it.
When the head of a state is a racist, that’sfascism.When your idiot uncle does, it’s racism. When the President does it — and means it —it’s fascism.
There’s a growing understanding that American democracy is now in real danger.But there’s not a general understanding in American culture, society, or politics, that it’s in danger from fascism. Which is the most poisonous enemy of civilization, freedom, and justice that there is. The scale and scope and depth of the problem American democracy really faces are not yet understood properly. Given all that, do you really think Americans are going to be able to save their democracy?
Now, if the President justsaidterrible and hateful things, maybe, just maybe, there’d be room to say: “Well, he’s just a racist.”But that is not this American President.He has actually used the powers of the head of state to make hate and bigotry and violence everyday features of American life. This American President hasenacted racismthrough the mechanisms of the institutions of government, as a policy — andthat is called fascism.
I bring this up for a very simple reason. Everyone, more or less, in the rest of the world, understands this. But Americans don’t.
Americans are still doing something amazingly foolish. They’re playing dumb.Nobody’s really dumb enough to not know fascism when they see it.
Like the rest of us, Americans are taught the basic checklist of fascism.Over and over again. First in grade school, then in high school, then in college. Camps, raids, bans, purges, demonization, the incitement of violence by a demagogue, hate, the perversion of the law, paramilitaries, institutionalized dehumanization, the scapegoating of hated minorities for a nation’s woes.
We are all taughtthis.All of us. Nobody doesn’t know it.
There are only really two ways that someone in this day and age can see a society turning fascist, and pretend it’s not happening here.One, they support that transformation. Or two,they’re playing dumb.
Of course, another key feature of a fascist society is indifference to mass death.Which is precisely what America has felt towards125,000 needlessly dead and counting.
Americans, most of them, are playing dumb. They know it’s fascism, deep down,but they won’t say it, still, at this late juncture.
The problem is thatthey have about 120 days leftto stop this President fromstealing the next election— and completing America’s transformation to a fascist society. And preventing that is not something that is likely to happen when most Americans can’t even admit the transformation is occurring in the first place.You can’t fight what you can’t admit exists.
Americans, in other words,are in denial, still, even though there American democracy now has about 120 days left. You’d think at this juncture — a President openly supporting “white power!” — that America would be realizing that it now has to either fight its own fascists,or be ruled by them. But nobody, so far as I can see, still is even acknowledging the truth of this: the scale, scope, and depth of the problem.
Why are Americans playing dumb? Because their pundits and intellectuals are complicit.I saw Chris Hayes, the MSNBC personality call for Trump to resign over COVID. But the concentration camps were apparently OK with Chris.This is complicity.You won’t like me saying it, but what else is it called when a nation’s power figures look the other way when a Presidentbuilds concentration camps, puts kids in them, raids towns, purges the government? What else is it called when they refuse to connect the dots we’re all taught in sixth grade, then ninth grade, then freshman year?
Why will no one much admit: it happened here?
The entire world at this point understands thatDonald Trump is a fascist, and his supporters are essentially Nazis. Why won’t Americans get it?
Of course, some do.Ask your minority friends.The black ones, the ones from authoritarian countries. They get it and always have.
But the good American — the well-meaning white liberal — is still afraid ofsaying the word fascism.He thinks words like that don’t matter. He is a fool.
Words like that are not just words.They’re lessons, tragedies, epochs, eras. When I say “fascism,” instantly, you’re reminded. Of mass death. Of hatred, camps, ruin, trains to gas chambers. Of a nation plunging into poverty, and scapegoating hated minorities for it. You understand, implicitly, vast and great lessons from history.
Those lessons have never mattered more.
America is repeating history — the history of Nazi Germany, to be precise — because Americans aretoo foolishto learn a damned thing from history.They are still too busy playing dumb.
They think that not saying fascism will save their democracy. They’re like little children, or superstitious old men, who imagine that saying a thing makes it real. Quite the opposite.Saying a thing gives you the power to fight it.
When your house is burning down, you don’t say: “My, I wonder if someone has a glass of water?” You shout: “my house is on fire!” Then, perhaps, the neighborhood comes together, or someone calls the fire department, and your home is saved from the flames. But if you go on pretending, politely, that your house isn’t on fire, then of course,it will burn right down into embers.
That’swhere America is today.
It’slosing the war against fascism, badly.In the last four years, America’s fascists have made inroads that have shocked the world. They have taken over American democracy wholesale, to the point that camps, bans, raids, and purges became everyday events, to the point thathated minorities are now hunted things, who shelter in “sanctuary cities.”
The fascists have won everything they wanted to win.Nobody stopped them from doing a single they intended to do, which are the things fascists always do — build camps, ban minorities, torture kids, incite violence, and so forth. The fasicsts won on every score imaginable.
Now they are going to try to steal the election.Will they succeed, at that, too?
Why wouldn’t they — when Americans are still playing dumb?About the stakes, the reality, the truth? Of what this is?
It happened here. It is happening here.It is going to keep happening until there issome level of acknowledgementthat it happened here.
Americans play dumb. They don’t understand: their democracy has 120 days left. They don’t understand their President is still pushing the lines, transgressing the norms of a civilized society, every day, for one reason:to destroy it.They don’t even understand their silence: not saying “fascism is happening here,” thinking that saying anything else counts as opposing it. It doesn’t. They don’t seem to understand a damned thing anymore. Maybe they never did.
Do you really think a society ofwillful dummiescan stop itself from imploding?Especially at the hands of fascists who know exactly what they’re doing — and have won every single time, because nobody has really challenged themaboutfascism? Why does nobody much say, even now: it happened here?
Are Americans reallythisdumb?They can’t see fascism staring them in the face…and then kicking them in the teeth, over and over again…andthenlaughing at themfor walking away, clutching their bruised, bloody, broken jaws, muttering, “I got kicked in the teeth! But this stillisn’tfascism!” What the?What the hell is wrong with Americans? The entire world wonders, by now.
Good work, man. Go on, playing the fools’ game. The fascists’ greatest ally isn’t the one who cries out in hate.It’s the one who stays silent, never understanding the bottomless depths of their own complicity.Because in that deafening silence, anything is possible, andevery kind of hate can flourish.
UmairJune 2020
