It’s Time For Americans to Start Thinking the Unthinkable
The White House turned into a fortress by a lunatic President. Protestors being gassed with chemical agents in front of it. Police beating people — old, young, black, white — in city after city. Tough guys who assault little girls for posting protest signs calling for…justice. Soldiers in the streets of the nation’s capitol. Military vehicles roaring through it. New York Times op-eds by major political figures calling for people to be…shot.
America’sauthoritarian nightmareis coming true.
All of that raises a question forpeople like us— those of us who saw it coming.
The last four years have unfoldedaccording to our worst fears. So what if the next six months do too? *Shudder*.
Let me begin with the first part.
The last four years have unfolded to according to our worst fears.By “our,” I mean people like me. Those of us who’ve studied how societies collapse — and lived in survived authoritarianism, too. Of course, you don’t have to be either of these things, scholar or survivor, to have harbored those worst fears. Maybe you just knew, the day Trump crowed “grab ’em by the pussy!” Or when he called refugees “vermin.” Or, or, or.
How precisely? Trump was elected in 2015. By 2016, the Trump Administration’s first priorities weren’t giving Americans the healthcare, retirement, education, and raises they desperately needed. It was…building his dumb wall, the one made of bricks, and the other one, by banning minorities. Both walls went up.
By 2017, America had a network ofconcentration camps.By 2018, it was “separating families” — tearing kids away from their mothers and fathers. And putting them in cages. That, by the way, the last living Nuremberg Prosecutor, Ben Ferencz, calleda crime against humanity. By 2019, raids in towns and cities across America were commonplace, and America had something very much like a Gestapo, checking papers, putting people in camps, disappearing them.
(Those of us who tried to warn of all this, by the way, were either marginalized, erased, or mocked. But I digress.)
And so here we are today. 2020. Do you like what you see?Soldiers on the streets. Protestors being gassed. Politicians calling for state violence in the pages of top newspapers. The White House fenced off, surrounded by men with machine guns, in body armour, who nobody can really figure out even are.
Where does America go from here?Those of who’ve studied authoritarian collapses, lived through them, or both, like me, will tell you: America is in grave, grave danger right about now.
Let me crystallize the lesson of the last four years. Authoritarianism proceeds according to the worst case scenario. The one you don’t expect, consider, or reflect upon much.The worst fears of all were realized, faster, harder, and more terribly than most ever thought possible in America. Especially it’s pundits and intellectuals and so forth — the “wise men” who failed to anticipate, and thus prevent, authoritarianism from hardening. The worst case scenario is the most likely one when it comes to authoritarianism and fascism. That is how America sleepwalked into collapse, right off the edge of a cliff.
Everyone — and I mean everyone — should take a moment to understand that lesson.Just how badly wrong the rosy-cheeked, optimistic predictions were. When Trump was elected, pundit after pundit, intellectual after intellectual proclaimed something between: “Everything will be fine!” to “There’s nothing to worry about!” to “Lol!” And yet, just a few short years later, all those wise men are now histrionic and breathless, wailing about authoritarian-fascism. But not a one has the guts to admit they werewrong.
That’s not a jeremiad or condemnation, by the way. It’s a note of caution. Maybe you were wrong, too.The point is that we need to learn from the past, and quick.
So. If we should expect the worst when it comes to collapses like this, then what will the next few months bring? Just ask yourself: what are your worst fears?
They probably go something like this.
Trump uses the civil unrest spreading across America to declare the martial law he’s already threatened to.Soldiers line the streets of major American cities. Real violence begins to break out. Then, Trump declares a state of emergency. Using emergency powers, he postpones the election. Until when? Nobody…knows.
Or maybe the election proceeds. Trump’s margin of loss is close enough to contest, thanks to Facebook and Twitter mostly looking the other way, when it comes to disinformation and propaganda. The case goes to the Supreme Court. Guess who they — leaning heavily Republican — decide it for?
Or maybe Trump loses. And he simply refuses to concede to a peaceful transfer of power.His lawyers cook up some cockamamie case — they excel at those — and it’s sent to the Supreme Court. They dither and dally. The country’s left in limbo. There is no leadership. If you think this is chaos…what about that?
Or maybe Trump wins outright, with a little help from his friends in the Kremlin.Another four years…of this? America’s already way, way past camps, bans, raids, and cages. It’s at soldiers in the nation’s capitol, and people being beaten in the streets.
Four more years? They’d bring something like this.Leading journalists and critics and opposition party members being put on sham trial, on Trumped-up charges (see what I did there?), and thrown in jail. Those camps being filled up with even more minorities — this time, probably citizens. Widespread — even more widespread — brutality from law enforcement. The construction of an Iron Curtain, to keep people in. The rise and triumph of the final and late stages of fascism: institutional dehumanization, state violence, and genocide.
Think that sounds improbable? Maybe, maybe not.It’s about your worst fears, remember? In the situation that America is in right now — a proper authoritarian-fascist collapse — the worst-case scenario is themost probable one.
When you understand that, then you can really begin to fight authoritarian-fascism.Until you do, you’re like America over the last four years: impotent, helpless, and deluded.
Right now, the most likely case out of all of thoseisall of those. That Trump somehow manages to win, steal, commandeer, or simply cancel the next election.That there’s some kind of grey area, where the next election is contestable, or not quite fully determined, and as a result, Trump manages to cling to power. And another four years somehow come to pass. In other words…
The unthinkable happens.
Hasn’t that been the story of America over the last four years?If I asked you a decade ago — do you think that America will have a wall by 2016, concentration camps by 2017, be putting kids in cages in them by 2018, be sending Gestapos to raid towns and cities by 2019…and by 2020, people would be being gassed in front of the White House, which now looked like a military installation, as soldiers poured into Washington DC, and military vehicles roared through it, while President…Donald Trump…threatened to declare martial law…
Be honest. You would’ve laughed, and either slapped me, or asked me to go for a beer, because anyone who can spin a yarn like that must be fun to hang out with.
The unthinkable has happened in America over the last four years.That is the lesson of every authoritarian collapse — and unfortunately, most nations don’t learn it until too late. Iranis didn’t think their urbane and cultured nation was going to implode into a fundamentalist Islamic state. Lahore, Pakistan used to be called the Paris of the subcontinent, so literate and artistic was it. Russians, too, on the eve of Soviet Collapse, didn’t dream that one day in the near future, Putin would rule them with an iron fist. The story is as old as time.
Nobody thinks their society can collapse.That is precisely why and how societies collapse faster and harder than anyone much really expects them to.
Especiallyin situations like America’s.A wrecked economy. A society that doesn’t seem to cohere anymore. A culture of idiocy. All these things predict further, and harder, authoritarian-fascism — not less.
In times like these, you must think the unthinkable, and guard against it.That is the only — the only — defense against authoritarianism going all the way, and seizing power for generations.
What’s even more unthinkable than the cases I sketched out above. How about President Ivanka? Jared? Little Donald? How about a Trump Dynasty ruling over a ravaged America, looting it, for decades? Sound like science fiction?So would 2020…in 2015. The lesson is: think the unthinkable.
America’s authoritarian nightmare is coming true.Because society was in deep denial that the unthinkable was already happening.How is America to stop it’s authoritarian nightmare from coming all the way true — its democracy dying, for good, this time?
The answer to that goes like this. Every remaining functioning institution in society — and there aren’t many — has to think the unthinkable.The military. The people. The opposition. The media. The intellectuals. All of them have to learn, right now, to anticipate the worst-case scenario, as the most likely one. Then they have to work together, to stop it.
That means civil disobedience. It means military disobedience, from leaders who understand that soon enough, a President might be ordering them to open fire on American citizens.It means media finally taking fascism and authoritarianism seriously, andeducating Americansthat it’s been happening here — and owning up their mistakes in not recognizing it, either. It means the opposition beginning to genuinely oppose fascist-authoritarianism in America, by being serious about trials for crimes against humanity and so forth.
That’s just a small list of beginnings.But they all have one thing in common. The unthinkable.
The unthinkable became real precisely because nobody much in America took the possibility of fascist-authoritarianism seriously. America now has five crucial months which will decide its fate for generations to come. More than likely, permanently. Now is the time to take the unthinkable lethally seriously.
Because a democracy has never needed to be on a higher alert than America does right about now.Do you really think Trump doesn’t want to corrode, steal, or thwart the next election — and make his kids the strutting, preening Gadhafis and Saddams and Putins of a broken, cowed America? Don’t kid yourself.
Think the unthinkable.
UmairJune 2020
