Tomorrow Americans vote in an historic referendum. The proposition: should the United States install a neo-Fascist autocracy in place of its present Constitutional Republic? There is no obscurity about the choices. The latter we know first-hand from 240 years of experience. The latter has been starkly drawn for us by Trumpian demagoguery, by the unhinged criminal conduct of this psychopath over 8 years, by an array of specific threats against persons and the law – including calls for the murder of opponents, by the violent insurrection on the Capitol on January 6, by a series of criminal actions aimed at subverting the results of the 2020 election, by the detailed prescriptions of the Project 2025, by repeated admiring references to Hitler, by his characterization as a “Fascist” by two 4-Star Generals (Kelly, McMaster) who held the most senior positions in the Trump presidency, by slanderous slurs against racial minorities ad infinitum, by the behavior of Trumpian officeholders in the states – and, last week, by the primal hate-fest at Madison Square Garden which Trump has praised as a “beautiful – a love feast.” What we saw was Fascism incarnate – Fascism in the raw. There is no room for “they’re just playing to the base,” or “the sober people will be in charge,” or “this is what you get in a passionately divided country,” or “what are you talking about, this is America!” What we see is what we will get – even if its exact, final form is unknown. Those mental filters, like the protective glasses you put on when looking at a solar eclipse, cannot shade some stark truths about the state of the American polity. Roughly half the country is choosing the neo-Fascist option – whatever the exact tally. They all may not be fully aware of the full consequences; they might not agree with all parts of the MAGA program. However, in light of what is manifest, they are ready to abandon America’s democratic political institutions and its practices for something drastically different that defines itself in terms of destroying what now exists. The nation’s public institutions and a wide swath of the political class already are demonstrating their acceptance of the transformation. Welcome mats are out in Silicon Valley, in high finance, at the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, among the dark stars of the billionaire galaxy, at the social media giants who long have shown their obedience to commands from whomever is in charge in Washington, in academia where university leaders habitually act as willing satraps for the powers above them, at the mute churches where the pious hunker behind their pulpits, and at the Supreme Court. The last has cleared away the Constitutional hurdles by declaring that Trump could do anything without fear of criminal accountability. By implication, therefore, anybody who executes his orders is similarly immune. Non-criminal civil suits might be brought by states and other interested parties, in principle, but they are destined to be mired in the maze of intimidated officialdom or ultimately thrown out by the Trump-leaning courts. Moreover, the Court majority has demonstrated through a variety of decisions that it treats the Constitution the way that a potter treats clay.
Tuesday’s ballot will be an historic landmark representing the first occasion when a majority of a democratic electorate opted for Fascism. Look at the record. Germany’s Nazis polled 33% in the final election that won Hitler the Chancellery – a slight dip from the previous election. Mussolini’s Black Shirts never contested an election. The Falange in Spain registered the high of 37% - in a losing cause – in 1936. A survey elsewhere – Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania – shows Fascist parties receiving between 15 – 30% of the vote. Admittedly, circumstances vary. No Fascist movement seized control of a pre-existing dominant party as MAGA has cannibalized the Republicans.
Another noteworthy feature of the MAGA/Trump phenomenon is that its dramatic rise is not associated with any traumatic developments in the country’s life. No ruinous, humiliating wartime defeat and occupation. No economic crash. No civil war. No deeply rooted conflicts between Church and secular forces. Think of inter-war Europe: by comparison, the United States has been living in a benign environment. American exceptionalism. A unique case of an auto-immune political cataclysm. The body politique’s instinctive attack against a threatening invader becomes disoriented and begins to attack itself. A unique case of self-generated – if unintended - iatrogenic suicide. What was the perceived/felt threat triggering the initial response? 9/11 – 23 years ago? There’s the puzzle.
In truth, there are no tangible, overt threats to the American body politique which, by any reasonable measure, should cause such an extreme reaction. We must look elsewhere – into the minds and emotions of a disturbed society. One with a defective gyroscope. It is a turbid stew of insecurities, status anxieties, obsessions over uncertain identity and diminished self-esteem. One where nihilism has blurred cultural and social reference marks, fostering a cult of selfishness - one of whose manifestations is the fashioning of fantasy worlds wherein delusional imaginings have no consequences (backing Trump as a sort of projected wish fulfillment). Those are the conditions that have generated the perversions, and the infirmities, that have led to the present parlous state of affairs.
To be clear, we are not dealing with flaws of structure or procedure that could be remedied, mistaken policies that could be corrected, or sins that could be atoned. Rather, it is a pervasive corruption of our country’s societal software. *
If this interpretation is correct, there is little chance of rectifying the situation. Societies are incapable of close critical self-examination except, with extreme rarity, under the most extreme circumstances. A complete breakdown as Germany and Japan experienced in WW II. In those cases, it was made possible by the guiding hand of a relatively benevolent external party. We Americans are on our own – and we lack the self-awareness to ward off disaster and to regenerate a measure of collective health.
The one example of ‘unassisted’ self-regeneration is Russia post-2000. That is an instructive case. The Soviet Union’s collapse was iatrogenic insofar as Gorbachev tried to administer a drastic cure for a seriously infirmed body politique which eventually killed the patient. Its resuscitation constitutes a remarkable case of socio/political regime building.
· *How far has American public life degenerated? Imagine that a climactic Nazi rally in 1933 had featured a German Hulk Hogan or Rudi Giuliani; it’s likely that revulsion on the part of many of the party’s less militant sympathizers would have cut deeply into their vote. Not here.
Michael Brenner