What is facism?
27th July 2020 · 0 Comments
Donald J. Trump Sr.’s attempt to turn our democracy into a fascist state began way before he sent secret militiamen, with no identification, to arrest protesters and shove them in unmarked rental vans, into the streets of Portland, Oregon to stop peaceful Black Lives Matter protests.
In fact, Trump is close to the end of his campaign to destroy our democratic institutions and set himself up as an authoritarian dictator.
One month after Trump’s inauguration, on February 25, 2017, Steve Bannon, the then-White House chief strategist, reportedly said that Trump’s cabinet picks are aimed at “deconstruction of the administrative state,” meaning weakening regulatory agencies and other bureaucratic entities.
The week before Bannon launched that first fascist missive, Trump took a page from Hitler’s playbook when he began calling mainstream media, “fake news.”
Trump’s “fake news” mantra can be traced back to the German phrase “Lügenpresse,” (lying press) a propaganda slang used by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis to discredit independent reporting. In “Mein Kampf,” Hitler wrote that propaganda “must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”
In February 2017, Trump tweeted, “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” In October 2017, Trump took credit for discrediting the media: “It is finally sinking through. 46% OF PEOPLE BELIEVE MAJOR NATIONAL NEWS ORGS FABRICATE STORIES ABOUT ME. FAKE NEWS, even worse! Lost cred.”
Since then, Trump has repeated the catch phrase “fake news” over and over and “radical democrats” over and over. His cache of propaganda tools also includes the psychological defense mechanisms of projection and displacement. Whatever is true about Trump, he projects onto his so-called enemies, and he uses lies as propaganda to discredit political opponents. At last count, Trump has told more than 20,000 lies, according to The Washington Post.
But what exactly is fascism?
Robert O. Paxton, a professor emeritus of social science at Columbia University in New York, who is widely considered the father of fascism studies, defined fascism as “a form of political practice distinctive to the 20th century that arouses popular enthusiasm by sophisticated propaganda techniques for an anti-liberal, anti-socialist, violently exclusionary, expansionist nationalist agenda,” LiveScience reported.
Paxton, author of several books, including “The Anatomy of Fascism” (Vintage, 2005), said fascism is based more on feelings than philosophical ideas. In his 1988 essay “The Five Stages of Fascism,” published in 1998 in the Journal of Modern History, he defined seven feelings that act as “mobilizing passions” for fascist regimes. They are:
• The primacy of the group. Supporting the group feels more important than maintaining either individual or universal rights.
• Believing that one’s group is a victim. This justifies any behavior against the group’s enemies.
• The belief that individualism and liberalism enable dangerous decadence and have a negative effect on the group.
• A strong sense of community or brotherhood. This brotherhood’s “unity and purity are forged by common conviction, if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary.”
• Individual self-esteem is tied up in the grandeur of the group. Paxton called this an “enhanced sense of identity and belonging.”
• Extreme support of a “natural” leader, who is always male. This results in one man taking on the role of national savior.
• The beauty of violence and of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success in a Darwinian struggle.
The idea of a naturally superior group or, especially in Hitler’s case, biological racism, fits into a fascist interpretation of Darwinism.
Once in power, “fascist dictatorships suppressed individual liberties, imprisoned opponents, forbade strikes, authorized unlimited police power in the name of national unity and revival, and committed military aggression,” Paxton wrote.
In additional to forcing fascism down Americans’ throats, Trump is using xenophobic buzz words against Black mayors and women mayors and governors, specifically, to feed his racist base.
He tosses out racist code speak daily: “radical” “shithole countries,” “unpatriotic” “our heritage” (his defense of confederate statues), “rat infested cities” (Baltimore), “They’re going to destroy our beautiful suburbs,” “Black Lives Matter (mural) is a symbol of hate.”
Aside from his repetitive brainwashing tropes, Trump is using executive orders and the Department of Justice, under the guise of presidential power, to enact fascist policies.
His march toward fascism includes withholding funding for coronavirus testing, tracing and isolation (ethnic cleansing?); refusing to support extending funding for the unemployed; supporting funding for police departments, a concerted campaign to takeover cities run by democratic mayor, and blanket immunity for businesses, schools, hospitals, police, and his secret paramilitary troops who are operating during this viral pandemic. Trump wants to eliminate Americans’ right to sue, if they are injured or, heaven forbid, die, as a result of being forced to work without PPE during this viral pandemic.
Not only has Trump broken so-called norms, he has broken laws (emoluments, nepotism, Congressional subpoenas), disregarded science and health experts, and violated Americans’ and the states’ constitutional rights.
Fascism is here, it’s now, and our elected officials must rise up and do something to stop this 21st Century Hitler from killing us, our Constitution, and destroying our democracy.
If something is not done to stop Trump, we all will be living under a regime of martial law and a lawless dictator. Trump will stop at nothing to win re-election and his complicit Congressional Republicans and Republican governors and mayors, who fear not being reelected if they oppose him, are aiding and abetting him in his unconstitutional, illegal acts against the American people.
What can we, everyday Americans do? We have the power to agitate, protest, exert political pressure on elected officials, and most importantly, vote these anti-democratic officials out of office, flip the Senate blue, and oppose far-right wing candidates for political office and in the courts on November 3, 2020.
However, “We the People” have choices. Democracy or Dictatorship. Subjugation or Freedom. Constitutional Rights or No Rights.
If we choose democracy, freedom, and constitutional rights, we have to go out and vote in droves. Let’s not let the work of our late Civil Rights leaders Joseph Lowery, C.T. Vivian, Congressman John Lewis, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the millions who marched and died for the right to vote to be in vain. And let’s not let the sacrifices of the Black Lives Movement protesters be for naught.
As Public Enemy famously rapped, “We’ve got to fight the powers that be …” and Bob Marley advised, “Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, don’t give up the fight.”
This article originally published in the July 27, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
