America’s Fascism Problem is Much Bigger Than It Thinks

When Holocaust Survivors Compare America to Nazi Germany, It’s Time to Listen.

See that chart above? Here’s what it says, horrifyingly enough. Donald Trump’s support among Republicans rose and hardened after the attempted coup on January 6th. After the violence, the death, the mayhem. After rioters stormed through the halls of Congress shouting, “kill the infidels,” Trump’s support among the GOP…rose. Really take the magnitude of that fact in. What does that tell you? Here’s what it says to me.

America’s doesn’t just have a fascism problem — it’s got a fascism problem that’s way bigger than it thinks.

We’re going to do a few basic numbers in a moment, and then think about what it all means. First, though, here’s Irene Butter, a Holocaust survivorwho lectures to this day, in her old age, about fascist atrocities, warning that something very much like Nazism has risen in America today. Here’s Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of Holocaust studies warning that when members of Congress push anti-Semitic conspiracy theories like “space lasers,” as Marjorie Taylor Greene did, she is reminded, like so many Jews, of the path to atrocity.

So it’s hardly just little old me. Take it from those who’ve studied and lived it. Now, I have — in a different part of the world. But when Holocaust survivors and scholars are warning of Nazism? My friends, you had better listen.

America’s fascism problem, they are saying, is much bigger than it thinks. Bigger in two ways: one, in sheer scale, and two, in intensity. Now let’s talk about a few numbers, so that we can analyse it properly.

After Trump’s shameful acquittal, polls revealed that 58% of Americansthought he should have been convicted. “Wow,” you might say to yourself, “that’s pretty good!” Bzzzt. Wrong. It’s not good at all. That means 42% of Americans think that what Trump did was OK. What kind of transgression are we talking about? Jaywalking? Taking a small bribe? Plagiarism?

It seems that Trump incited a hard coup that left five people dead, with death squads roaming the halls of Congress, seeking to kill the “enemies of the people,” in order to stop the final counting and certification of the vote.There is literally nothing — nothing — graver than that. Nothing. At least in a democracy. It was, as I’ve pointed out, the worst kind of coup — a fascist coup, which left people dead. And it’s a minor miracle that there wasn’t, as we now know, a massacre, which it seems is what the terrorists who carried all this out intended.

That’s what 42% of Americans are OK with — in fact, support. Not some kind of minor-league disagreement or civil debate or competing yet perfectly well thought out position. A violent coup that seemed to be incited by a demagogue that left people dead where paramilitary death squads roamed the halls of Congress, seemingly hoping to carry out a massacre.

Stop and really think about that for a second. Americans do a great, great job at forgetting, brushing things under the rug, putting the most “positive” spin on things. But spinning “42% of Americans are ok with a violent fascist coup” is not something anyone should do.

It is a terrible, terrible number. That means millions upon millions of Americans are, let me say it again, OK with violence, a coup, death squads, stopping the vote, demagoguery. The whole repellent package and sequences of…

Wait, what’s it called when someone’s OK with all that? Is it fair to call that fascism?

When I put this question to the internet, on my Twitter feed, American pundits get really mad. They retort: “70 million people can’t be fascists!They can’t be bigots, racists, supremacists!! Get real!! You’re the problem here!” I’ve always been a problem, but that’s besides the point.

Americans pundits commit a fallacy of large numbers. They appear to think that large numbers of people cannot be anything bad, wrong, mistaken, foolish, or evil. And that is dead wrong. It is completely and flatly false. Of course large numbers of people can be and do all sorts of terrible things. Think of Nazi Germany — who the survivors and scholars are trying to warn you of. Think of the Islamic world. Think of America itself until 1971, when segregation ended— it was the world’s largest apartheid state, because that is what its (white) majority wanted it to be.

Let’s travel back in time for a moment. Until 1971, the majority of Americans — an overwhelming majority of its white majority — wanted to live in a “segregated” society. They genuinely believed in the idea of separation at a totalitarian level. Water fountains, buses, schools. Why? If you pressed them, they’d give you all kinds of justifications — but the reason was plain enough: they thought that anyone who wasn’t white was inferior, a subhuman, dirty, filthy, lazy, a threat to their American Dream.

Now. Would it be fair to say that until 1971 the majority of white Americans were racist? American pundits still don’t think so. It’s an ugly question to have to ask, I understand. But only because it’s an ugly truth. If a person voting over and over again for an apartheid state isn’t racism, then what could be? Does racism begin at leading a lynch mob? Does it begin at being a member of the KKK? That renders the whole idea absurd. Of course it’s eminently fair to say that until 1971, the majority of (white) Americans were racist.

Now, they might not have been racist consciously. So what? That’s just unconscious racism, which in some ways is worse, because it just hides there in plain sight. They might not even have known they accepted a mental model of supremacy. So what? They did, which is how you get to an intense belief in an apartheid state.

Why do I bring up these old demons? Because, yes, society changed. But it’s all too plain to see that a whole lot of people’s attitudes, psychologies, beliefs, intentions didn’t.

And so America seems to be right back where it started. Fascism seems to be an ideology that has widespread support and tolerance — just like racism before it. That’s hardly a surprise, because of course we are not talking about separate things, really. The Nazis studied America’s race lawsto model their own upon. They admired America, the slave state, the apartheid state, immensely.

Racism is best seen as a kind of fascism. The lines are blurry at best. What happened at the Capitol seemed to be an attempted coup, with white supremacist death squads hunting down anyone in their way — right down to Mike Pence — seemingly looking to establish an authoritarian fascist supremacist ethno-state.

Which Americans are the 42% that think what happened at the Capitol was OK? Republicans, of course. The results break down predictably — tediously — along party lines.

Trump, meanwhile, hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s the favoured candidate for 2024, among Republicans. Why is that important? Well, think about what it means. They want to vote for him a third time. 2016, 2020, 2024. Now, in 2016, a person could have pled ignorance. “I didn’t know what he was going to do!” But in 2020, a plea of ignorance doesn’t carry any water. Republicans — which is to say conservative white Americans, who are the majority of white Americans — voted for Trump…after all the following:

Minorities scapegoated as “animals” and vermin.” Concentration camps.Kids in cages in them. “Family separations,” a policy which seems to fit the legal definition of genocide. Gestapos hunting down the hated in the streets — and beating, gassing, and disappearing the “traitors” on their side. The press and the opposition demonised as “enemies of the people.”Paramiltaries put on “stand by.” A violent, bloody hard coup attempt, aimed at stopping a democratic vote, replete with death squads.

What is all that? That’s the classical sequence of fascism. That is why Deborah Lipstadt and Irene Butter are warning you, and I am too. Having lived all this before, having studied, having tried to teach people about it — we know it when we see it. And so should you.

Republicans — meaning white Americans — voted for Trump en masse after the abuses from 2016 to 2020. Abuses which make up the classical pattern of fascism we are all taught in school. They want to do it again in 2024.

Is it fair to call such people fascists? American pundits like to personalise these issues, so as to evade thinking about them. What’s eminently fair is to call such a movement fascism. To call its mindsets and attitudes fascist and supremacist. To call its structures and institutions fascist and racist and supremacist.

Where individual people draw the line is up to them. But as a mass, as a social group, American Republicans are essentially becoming a fascist political bloc. They seem to have fascist aims and aspirations (like cleansing the country of the “impure,” such as immigrants and foreigners and even people of colour). They have openly fascist ideologies (like Qanon) and institutions (like those crackpot news channels such as OAN, and militias such as the Proud Boys). They have what seem like openly fascist rituals (like rallies whose point is hate) and eruptions (like, well, alleged coups).

American Republicanism is becoming one giant cauldron of fascism.The real thing. The hardcore variant. It’s hardly a surprise, when you consider that America was an apartheid state thanks to the GOP until 1971 — and that was backed by a majority of white Americans. Were they racist then? Are they fascist today? The party is. The structures and mindsets and attitudes are. The institutions and practices and rituals and codes couldn’t be more so.

Americans take their cue from pundits. But American pundits are not very smart people. They failed to see fascism coming, while manyof uspredicted it. Their only real job is to put a gloss on things, so Americans bury their heads in the sand. Today, they’re committing a massive fallacy of large numbers. “70 million Americans can’t be anything…bad!!” Of course huge masses of people can do and believe and want and wish terrible things. Hasn’t history proven that one truth beyond any shadow of a doubt, time and again?

That is, in a very real sense, human history’s great wheel turning — the story of the struggle for civilization. The struggle to civilise people, who are so easily tempted by the demons of hate, greed, selfishness, stupidity, violence, especially as times grow lean, turning on their neighbours, colleagues, and friends. It is in this sense that America has failed most stupendously: as a society which civilises itself, its people. American’s old demons never went anywhere. Supremacy went from wanting an apartheid state yesterday, to a fascist one today — right down to a seemingly violent coup to have it, which, again 42% of Americans are perfectly OK with.

So. Can 70 million Americans “really” be fascists? Racists? Bigots? Supremacists? You will have to tell me. What I can tell you is this. When that many people are OK with supremacist death squads…a society is in deep, deep trouble. Deeper trouble, perhaps, than it may admit.

Umair
February 2021