America, You’re Having a Fascist Collapse

What Does It Feel Like When Your Society Collapses? Like This.

Image Credit: Metro

By now, America’s approaching what can only really be described as a state of free-fall. Massacres are now regular events. One side of politics is openly authoritarian, and incites them. Social bonds have collapsed. Neighbor kills neighbor. The existence of social groups isn’t to be tolerated, and books are to be banned. The other side opposes this — but all too weakly. And in between them sits a majority, bewildered, in shock, traumatized, confused. What’s happening to our country?

Let me not mince words. America, you’re having a fascist collapse. This is what it is. 

Let’s take just a few examples.

CNN’s being excoriated for holding a “town hall” with Donald Trump — who was found guilty, yesterday, of sexual assault. Why is CNN doing this so execrable?

It’s all too predictable to say: being found guilty of sexual assault is going to endear Trump to his base. It will. It has. But that’s a dead giveaway of what we’re dealing with. To a normal, sane, decent person? A sexual assault offense isn’t something to admire. So why is it for…MAGA…the GOP…none of whom have come out to say how humiliating and obscene it is? Because to a certain mindset, sexual violence is power. It’s a good thing, a desirable thing. Men should have the power to assault women, because a) men are inherently superior to women b) the democratic rule of law, which is based on the corresponding values of equality and justice, is an obstacle to c) the rule of the strong who d) prove their strength through violence.

Get all that? That mindset is, of course, fascism. Who else might we think about that’d admire someone for sexual assault? Various militant factions who’ve taken over governments and societies in the name of religion and purity spring to mind, don’t they? That is because the mindset at work here is precisely the same. Violence isn’t something to abjure and reject. It’s what a real man does. A strong man. And a strong man proves his strength by dominating and hurting and harming the weak.

This is all society is, to the fascist mind. Just this — an eternal conflict between strong and weak. The weak’s only purpose is to be assaulted. Annihilated. Abused. And the strong’s purpose is to enact just that, through various forms of violence. The violence of sexual assault. The legislative violence of taking the rights of entire social groups away, and if you don’t think that’s violence, go ahead and look at any number of stories about forced birth already. The violent rhetoric of annihilationism, which of course incites massacres.

This is all society is. And when you come across people preaching this kind of attitude, this mentality, these anti-values? Those who say that violence is acceptable, that abuse is to be admired, that the purpose of life to demonstrate the inherent “strength” of some by dominating the “weak,” that democratic values of truth, justice, liberty, and equality don’t just not exist in a state of nature, but are morally wrong and undesirable and shouldn’t be enacted by institutions — and that is all the point of society is? You are dealing with fascism. With fascists.

When CNN decides to give Trump his very own Town Hall — in 2023 — it’s normalizing all that. It is literally changing social norms, to say that hey, this kind of mindset, this attitude — it’s just another one to have in a society. Perfectly legitimate. Not profoundly dangerous, and worse, a lie in itself — because, well, at this point in history, only an idiot doesn’t know where fascism ends. That is why it’s all so execrable. We know what Trump is going to say: he’s going to sit there and preach against the basic values of democracy and modernity, while painting himself as a victim, not a sexual predator, and downplaying horrors like…massacres. He’s going to pretend that, no, he didn’t incite a violent army of militants to storm the Capitol. That nope, none of this is…fascism. It’s just…politics as usual! And the chaos enveloping America, that way, only worsens.

Let me make that even more concrete. Think about what else just happened. A neo-Nazi just massacred people in Texas. He literally had SS tattoos. And so of course all kinds of conspiracy theories emanated from the lunatics and fanatics — hey, he was just a history buff!! None of it really happened — it was just a hoax!! So what, you can have an SS tattoo and be a perfectly nice person!!! 

This, too, is fascism. It’s a textbook sign you’re dealing with fascists. What’s one of the hallmarks of it? Bad faith. Saying that what you saw happen before your eyes — it didn’t really happen that way. Jan 6th was, famously, just a “tourist visit.” The massacre in Texas didn’t have anything to do with fascism. Just because the killer had SS tattoos…so what? LOL. These are stunning examples of bad faith.