Using Truck Decals to Understand Folk Fascism

Driving to Florida and back last week gave me an opportunity to see America's continued public discourse through car stickers, flags, and decals. A lot of what I see on a daily basis in New Jersey was replicated elsewhere, so this appears to be a national, rather than regional thing.

I didn't see many bumper stickers, but I did see a lot of decals in the back windows of large pickup trucks. In North Carolina as well as in New Jersey I noticed an interesting and common combo; a blue line flag decal paired with some version of the "don't tread on me" Gadsden flag. (In one case it was in the form of the Punisher skull.)

On the surface, these symbols completely contradict each other. The blue line flag expresses unwavering loyalty to the violent agents of the state, even after (or especially after) they have been criticized for killing unarmed Black people. The Gadsden snake symbol, on the other hand, is an admonition against an oppressive government, like the kind of government whose agents commit murder with impunity. 

We rarely notice the contradiction when we see these symbols put together because both are exclusively used by the exact same people. When we dig deeper, however, we should see the use of these symbols as a clear expression of the folk fascism adhered to by millions in this country. The blue line plus "don't tread on me" really means "I should be allowed to do whatever the hell I want by the government, which should be spending its resources beating down the people I don't like so my privilege is maintained." It's a harsher-edged expression of the dictum that right-wingers think there are people the law protects and does not bind, and people the law binds but does not protect.

It's important to understand this daily, folk fascism because our political media's framings make it impossible to do so. They still talk in terms of conservatives wanting "less government" as if giving more power by the police to kill and jail is in any way "less government." (Or making it illegal for women to cross state lines to get an abortion, for that matter.) It's really about conflicting ideas of what the government exists to do. The fascistic notion that the government exists to protect the Herrenvolk and to destroy its enemies is being openly expressed everyday on America's streets and highways. 

The Trump Movement

Well here we are in the midst of a coup attempt and I can't say I'm surprised. I've been expecting this since day one. I also must admit I let my guard down a little after the election thinking the fire of insurrection wasn't getting enough oxygen to burn too hot.  

It was fated to reach this point because Trump is fascistic. In the fascist imagination laws and constitutions are only important so far as they can be bent and manipulated to gain power. Trump used the electoral college and state-level voting restrictions as best he could, but once those methods were not sufficient he had to eschew them for a putsch.

He is also fascistic in that he is less a man than a movement. For a long time I have wondered how anyone could give a man who obviously cares so little for others and the truth their trust and dedication. How could someone actually take to the streets waving a banner with his name on it when he wouldn't pee on these people if they were on fire? A couple of years into this mess it dawned on me that he is not a man, but a symbol. He is the avatar of patriarchy, of white supremacy, of nativism, of petty bourgeois resentment. When his followers chant his name they themselves do not express their love for him so much as what he stands for. They want an America where people like them are on top and he is their champion.

Sometimes when we decide on deeming things fascist we are too interested in parties and institutions and not enough in personalities and their relationship with their followers. During the time of the Nazis' rise to power, people in Germany (and many Nazis themselves) referred to the party not by name, but as "the Hitler movement." The man and not the party really mattered. This carried over into Hitler's reign, as Ian Kershaw's work has shown how many ordinary Germans despised the Nazi party but still adored Hitler, considering him above it all.

Hitler himself never talked of "party," but of "Bewegung," i.e. "movement." At times Trump has done the same, which has disturbed me far more than regular people whose ears are not attuned to such rhetoric. He talks of "our movement" so much that calling the people who stormed the Capitol "Trump supporters" instead of "Republicans" might not be the dodge some accuse it of being.

Like other fascist leaders Trump does not derive his legitimacy from the usual modes of political legitimacy. He has never gained the votes of the majority and is still trying to claim power after losing an election that any objective person deems legitimate. He like other fascists derives his legitimacy merely from what Max Weber called charisma. In his time in office Trump certainly has shown little to no knowledge or even interest in his Constitutional role, duties, and limits. 

That democracy is still hanging on is only a testament to the fact that Trump has not for one day of his political career ever had the support of the majority of people in this country. However, events last week show that support for the Trump Movement run strong in the military and law enforcement. Without their members being purged from those institutions and his civilian devotees and political allies being deplatformed, the Trump Movement will present a threat to democracy in this country long after January 20th. 

The Desperate Despot

Paradoxically, Trump has had no greater ally in his political career than the media. His attacks on it as the "enemy of the people" energize his base as that same media keeps broadcasting Trump nonstop and allowing him to define the media narrative. All he has to do is to tweet something obnoxious and the entire news gathering apparatus will shift its focus.

Trump is best described in Brian Klaas's formulation as a wannabe despot. He has not yet completely bent the apparatus of the government to his will, but his behavior in the last two weeks shows that it is not for lack of trying. Trump has declared that he will end birthright citizenship, and is sending troops to the border to combat the threat of poor refugees that are 800 miles away. He has threatened these refugees with concentration camps and murder. After one of his supporters sent bombs to his opponents he has persisted in verbally attacking them, as well as CNN, who also received a bomb.

The media has been breathlessly reporting on all of this, implicitly burnishing Trump's image as a "tough" leader and man of action. I see something very different. I see the behavior of a man who is desperate and scared.

Because we keep chasing the shiny objects that flash before us on Twitter, we often miss the bigger perspective. Trump has not forgotten that with a Democratic Congress comes investigations into his finances and dealings, and potential impeachment. If you listen to the Trump Inc podcast (and you should) you'll know that any official lifting up of the rock of the Trump Organization is going to reveal all kinds of nastiness and crime. His own bag man, Michael Cohen, is cooperating with the Mueller investigation. Anything and everything Trump does is to protect himself. He really thinks that stoking anti-immigrant hate is going to save his skin. While his core beliefs are ethno-nationalist in nature, he being open about it at this moment because he thinks it will win the midterm.

One of the biggest myths about despotism is that it works hand in in hand with competence. Trump can't be a despot, we are told, because he is so chaotic and inept. Anyone who knows their history knows that these attributes describe a lot of autocrats. In fact, it's the norm rather than the exception for despots to be incompetent boobs. Trump is one of these boobs, flailing desperately in the face of his potential reckoning. Get out there this weekend and make sure it happens.

Fascism 2.0

I am trying and failing to get the old time religion today

Back in the year 2000 in my first year as a doctoral student I wrote a historiographical paper for one of my grad classes about the historiography of fascism, especially the discussions of its definition. After all, fascism was something so universally condemned in those days that you could not throw the epithet around without justifying yourself. Grad student me tended to think of the word as really having more of a historical than contemporary meaning. Back then I saw fascism as a moment in time after the crises brought on by World War I and the Great Depression, and less as a relevant political movement. Of course there were fascists still around, but they were on the fringiest of fringes.

Obviously, things have changed. At the same time, we lack a proper vocabulary to describe the phenomenon that includes Donald Trump, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Italy's Five Star Movement, the National Front, and Alternative for Germany. The American media uses the insipid phrase "populism," which is a political style rather than an ideology. All of these movements are made up of extreme nationalists using populist rhetoric as their vehicle. They are running campaigns for national regeneration predicated on mass action but enforced by state brutality. That sounds remarkably like, well, fascism.

I am beginning to think of this new wave as "Fascism 2.0." Why that terminology? Because fascism is a reactive phenomenon that emerges in times of crisis. What we are seeing now is less an attempt to be part of a longer fascist lineage, and more a reimagining of fascism for a new crisis in a new era. Fascism 1.0 featured paramilitaries and their leaders in uniform, an obvious influence from the Great War that birthed the movement its leaders had participated in. The nations currently getting hit by a fascist wave are not nearly so militarized, so that kind of thing doesn't make sense. People looking for fascism are looking for brownshirts, instead they should be looking at internet trolls, who are the modern day squadristi. They go around looking to do verbal violence to their opponents, to doxx and shame them instead of making them drink castor oil. The intention is the same, though: the clean the public sphere of the enemy.

Fascism 2.0 has adapted to our modern world. It knows to avoid flagrant fascist symbolism and to cling to respectability. It knows that once you deny something, i.e., "I was NOT flashing a white power symbol," the media will automatically report the controversy and give up on finding the truth. Fascism 2.0 is kicking Jean Marie Le Pen out of the party, but still espousing all of the old ideas. Fascism 2.0 uses the fringe nasties like neo-Nazis and Klansmen to pretend that it does not hold the same essential beliefs, that those hated groups are the "real fascists," not the Stephen Millers of the world (who so clearly are.) It knows not to reach for absolute dictatorship, but to leave just enough wiggle room to say "see, people here have freedoms." Orban in Hungary and Putin in Russia have perfected this sham, especially Orban. Countries where the system is rigged can avoid the fascist label by still having elections (which are manipulated) and opposition media (which is marginalized.) Old institutions are maintained, but subtly turned into tools for the regime. Just look at what's happened to the court systems of Poland and the United States. We think of fascists as totalitarians, but in our modern world where people are so atomized and cut off from each other that disconnection and apathy is a thousand times more powerful tool than propaganda posters. As Putin has learned, you can allow your opponents to speak, just make sure no one is able to hear them.

Make no mistake, Fascism 2.0 has the same worldview as the old version. It is based on redemptive nationalism, misogyny, anti-intellectualism, racism, xenophobia, contempt for international peace, and naked power over the rule of law. What scares me is that is able to work its way into power much more seamlessly than before.

I greatly fear that the future holds even worse things. Fascism 1.0 was an inherently self-destructive phenomenon. Its leaders lusted for the wars that would enlarge those borders, and it was war that brought those regimes down. The current crop of fascists is not so eager for a new conflagration (yet.) They also have in-built advantages the old fascists didn't have. The left is incredibly weak. Labor unions have been losing power and socialist parties are often the ones bleeding out their members into the National Front and Alternative For Germany. As Macron has demonstrated, the liberal center is ineffectual and compromised. Today's fascists have far less opposition than the old ones did, and their ability to grab power without resorting to totalitarian means makes opposing them even harder.

The global climate crisis will only increase their appeal. As David Astin Walsh wrote about on Twitter this morning, fascists are obsessed with scarcity and borders. They will use ever-growing refugee crises and battles over resources to make fascism even more appealing.

With each day I get more and more hopeless for the future. Fascism 2.0 is much bigger and more powerful than I initially thought. What's worse is that so many people don't even see it, and corporate media, refusing to break their bothsidesism, will never name the problem. Because there aren't brownshirts in the streets and Hitler salutes that doesn't mean that fascism isn't winning.

I hope I'm overreacting, but right now it looks like what little democracy we ever had is going to end not with a bang but with a whimper.

"Blood and Soil" Is The Story The Media Missed In Charlottesville

The German-American Bund filled Madison Square Garden in 1939. Nazis like Richard Spencer are nothing new in America.

The neo-fascist (don’t call it alt-right) movement made some waves this weekend with their torch-lit rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was ostensibly in response to the removal of Confederate monuments in public spaces, but was obviously intended as a kind of neo-fascist show of strength. I have found the reporting of this rally rather curious, though. I’ve been hearing a lot about the crowd chanting “Russia is our friend,” but little about chants of “blood and soil.”

The latter is much more alarming and significant, and needs greater attention. In case you don’t know, “blood and soil” is translated from the original German phrase “Blut und Boden.” That phrase is a kind of bumper sticker slogan for Nazism. At its base Nazism contained a very particular idea of what constituted German identity and belonging, summed up in that phrase. Only those of German blood could ever be German, and those not of German blood needed to be expelled from German soil. Hence German Jews, who had strongly identified with and assimilated to German culture after their emancipation, found themselves murdered and exiled.

“Blut und Boden” is farcical concept, of course, because there is no such thing as “German blood,” and what constituted “German soil” was historically widely variant. That concept is equally, if not more farcical in the American context. The only reason to invoke “blood and soil” is if you are the kind of person who admires Hitler and wants to incorporate his ideas into American politics. Those people chanting it in Charlottesville are basically Nazis if they buy into it, and ought to be labeled as such. Richard Spencer, the leader of this rally, is himself essentially a Nazi as well.

So why are news outlets calling this a “protest” about Confederate monuments? This might be mostly due to not understanding what these monuments actually mean. They were erected after the violent death of Reconstruction, and are thus monuments to the glory of white supremacy. Many of the monuments themselves are direct enough to even say so. Some try to defend their continued presence as evidence of the past, but we certainly never had that feeling about the statues of Lenin that were toppled in the Communist bloc after 1989. We understood that toppling to be a symbolic blow against a repressive regime, and the removal of Confederate statues ought to be seen in the same light.

The neo-fascists following Spencer understand this meaning, too. They too perceive the statues as monuments to white supremacy, hence why they would be chanting “blood and soil” rather than singing “Dixie.” They are using the opposition to the removal of these statues to recruit garden variety racists and resentful white people to be full fledged fascists. (I am sure that they are also aware that in Germany, where Nazi symbols like the swastika are banned, white supremacists fly the Confederate flag.)

The media doesn’t know what to do with this, because, as Kelly Baker so rightfully pointed out, they have a misbegotten notion that racists and Klansters look like the characters in Deliverance, not well-dressed, well-educated people like Spencer. They also seem to be under the misconception that Nazis are fictional beings or somehow not part of America’s social history.

Sadly, out and out Nazis have been present in this country practically ever since Nazism existed. There was the German-American Bund back in the 1930s, which dressed up in brownshirts and swastikas and managed to fill Madison Square Garden. Openly declared Nazis also fought to keep Atlanta and Los Angeles segregated after World War II and threatened to attack the March on Washington in 1963. Gerald Carlson, an ex-Nazi, managed to get the Republican nomination in Michigan's 4th District in the early 1980s. (I only just discovered this insane fact.) David Duke (who sported a swastika in the 1970s) almost won the governorship of Louisiana in 1991.

There’s a crucial difference today, however, that ought to make us more, not less concerned. Namely, the president of the United States has people affiliated with the circles that Nazis travel in as his close advisors. Steve Bannon, a man openly inspired by fascist intellectuals, still has the president's ear. The president also came to power with the support of Nazis like Spencer, who the president has been unwilling to disavow. These fascists have always been on the fringe, now they are actually getting traction in the political mainstream.

Seen in this light, pro-Russia chants are meaningless compared to the open embrace of Nazi “blood and soil” language. We are in a very dangerous moment, and anyone who urges “dialogue” with these people or laughs them off or gives them a public platform is sorely misguided. Combat and only combat is the sole response necessary.

Trumpist Politics As Spectacle

I just finished teaching a class on World War I last week, and we ended with the last chapter of Modris Eksteins' Rites of Spring, wherein he connects the cultural modernism unleashed by the conflict to Nazism. Eksteins shows how fascism was politics as theater. Outside of its upper echelons its followers were drawn less by ideology and more by membership in a massive spectacle. In those torchlit parades and glittering rituals giving oneself over and turning off one's mind became a whole lot easier. The Triumph Of The Will is to this day a horrifying document in its ability to make evil seem attractive.

As I read that chapter I realized that a lot of people (myself included) who have discussed Trump in the context of fascism have missed the boat when it comes to this particular issue. I was suddenly reminded of the point when I realized that Trump's candidacy stood a good chance of succeeding. It was in September of 2015, when he gave a speech on the deck of the decommissioned battleship  USS Iowa. He did not speak for very long, and he did not seem all that coherent in what he said. The optics, however, were very good. He was positioned right below the massive guns of the ship, leaning over the podium with a red Make America Great Again cap pulled low. This man who dodged the draft bloviated about veterans, the subject of what he was saying, as always, more important than the actual content. Most importantly, he was shot from below, giving this ridiculous figure an air of command. In that moment I realized that the inchoate longings for an authoritarian ruler that have long lurked beneath the surface of American society could be called forth by this man.

Trump is described as a real estate developer, but he is in reality a television personality. His ability to manipulate the levers of television was his huge tactical advantage. He made himself into the spectacle that got the ratings, and so the news stations just aired his rantings unfiltered and unmediated. Too many journalists, happy to cash their checks, failed to take him seriously. I remember watching that speech in September, and Rachel Maddow cutting back in and laughing bemusedly at what she had just witnessed. Too many realized too late that, in the words of Morrissey, that joke wasn't funny anymore.

Trump's obsession with spectacle continues. He still attacks "fake news" even in interviews with the AP and other mainstream news outlets that give him a platform. In his most recent interview he has infamously gloated about how his ratings on cable news were the highest since 9/11. He has defended Sean Spicer's ineptitude by citing his "ratings" as well. He dropped the much-promoted "Mother Of All Bombs" in a military operation that was more spectacle that war. He has called the entire Senate to come be briefed by him in what is likely a photo-op rather than a national security summit.

However, I see signs of hope in all of this. Trump's main avenue of spectacle is indeed cable news, which would have been much more effective in the 1990s. Outside of a campaign, his rallies are only preaching to the converted. Trump may be trying to utilize politics as spectacle, but their effectiveness may have hit their peak in November of 2016. He has built a house on shaky ground, and it is our duty to provide the earthquake.

The Fascistic Tendencies Of The New Regime (And Some Tentative Reasons For Hope)

Now that Donald Trump has been in power for three weeks, it is becoming obvious that his decision-making is being driven by ideological considerations. I think Trump's personal ideology is rather soft, but his general proclivities align well with the Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, who are converting those general notions into hardened directives. Trump is obviously an instinctual ethnic nationalist (it's the one thing he's never compromised on) and in favor of scrapping the international order in favor of making America a free agent. Bannon the self-described Leninist is using this golden opportunity to advance his obsessions, which overlap enough with Trump. It is getting harder for me to deny that it is an inherently fascistic regime that we are dealing with. (Not sure I can say it's pure fascism due to lack of paramilitary arm or abrogation of the constitution, but it definitely rhymes.)

Based on earlier statements and his intellectual interests, it seems that Bannon differs from others on the nationalist right with his interest in religion. He truly believes in a Christian West eternally at war with the Other, especially the Muslim world. His assumption, which is also held by Miller and Trump, is that all Muslims are inherently America's enemy. Based on what I've gleaned from articles about Bannon and the circles he runs in, he is a believer in "organic" notions of society, which fits with his emphasis on religion. And yes, this worldview tends to overlap very heavily with fascism. Fascist movements in Hungary and Greece (like Golden Dawn) are firmly rooted in organicism. For the new organic society to grow, the forest of the current political order be clear cut and the stumps burned. This new regime is not conservative or reactionary, but revolutionary. In that respect, as an ideology of right wing revolution and transformation, it is fascistic.

As with fascism, it all boils down to the nation. Jeff Sessions has been reading all the same articles we all have about how America will become a nation without a white majority in the coming years, and decided to stop that. Trump's regime isn't just going after undocumented immigrants, it is planning to severely curtail legal immigration, too. It is hardly surprising that the first sweeping actions by Trump have been to bar Muslims and deport Hispanics and to build a border wall. The regime's goal behind all of this is to maintain a white majority nation, and to keep white people in charge. Hence the very fast-moving effort to root out "voter fraud." This practice has been used to essentially make it harder for people of color to vote, but now will be tried out at the national level. Trump will need no Enabling Act, by barring enough of his opponents from voting he will be able to maintain his position.

Of course, the fascistic nature of this regime is especially apparent when it comes to the way it wields power. Trump has shown a staggering and unprecedented contempt for the legal system. Today on television Stephen Miller basically said that Trump was above the judges, meaning that he is above the law or constitution. Fascists pride action and conflict over all else, and that has been the hallmark of this administration. Witness ill-fated raid in Yemen, or Kellyanne Conway's touting of Trump as "a man of action." Miller claimed today that Trump had accomplished more in his three weeks than most other presidents had in their entire administrations. That claim is patently false, but Miller needs it to be true to burnish the image of Trump as that man of action.

Ultimately, fascists believe there is no truth except for the nation, the leader, and power. Already we are seeing how feeble it is to "fact check" the current regime. They have no regard at all for the truth, They lie and lie and lie and lie about crime rates and made-up terror attacks. And these aren't just lies, they are lies intended to justify the use of state power and violence. Accordingly, this regime has made war on the press in unprecedented ways. Just remember the day after the inauguration, when Trump sent out Sean Spicer to scream at reporters and peddle the lie that attendance at the inauguration had been underestimated. That was, in many respects, Trump's first real act as president.

Amidst this fascistic onslaught, there are reasons for hope, though. Successful authoritarians rely on mass popularity, which Trump does not have. They also rely on total control of the state, but Trump has been stymied by the courts. They can close the gap by destroying civil society, but civil society, from Twitter to SNL to the Washington Post, has not been forced to bow. The day after inauguration saw the biggest mass protest in this nation's history. Trump is deeply unpopular, opposed by the courts and elements of the deep state, and dogged by scandal.

My reasons for hope are tentative because Congress is in his hands, he will get the swing vote on the Supreme Court, and he has a major ace up his sleeve. If there is a terror attack by Muslims on American soil and/or the United States goes to war, all opponents will be called traitors. I think Bannon is counting on this. I remember well how the hapless Bush regime exploited 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. Fascists see war as a positive good rather than a necessary evil, and if this regime continues in its fascistic ways and the general posture of America in the 21st century, war is sure to come soon. Without war, I can see this regime imploding. With war, all bets are off.

Elvis Costello and the Attractions, "Night Rally"

As I always do in times of depression and stress, I have turned to music these past trying weeks. I remembered last night the late 70s-early 80s Elvis Costello tunes referencing fascism. There was a rise of racist nationalism in the late 70s akin to what we're seeing in the world now, which he decried, along with the rise of Thatcherism. His songs drew a straight line from the history of the 1930s and 1940s to his time, forcing the listener out of their complacency.

"Night Rally," which closed out 1978's This Year's Model, was a reaction to the fascistic National Front, which was then brazenly parading down the city streets England. Unlike the rest of the album, which is dynamic and rhythmic, "Night Rally" starts as a slow, dirge-like march with Costello's vocals foregrounded. It is a grim start, the first verse ending with the lines: "They're putting all the names in the forbidden book/ I know what they're doing but I don't want to look." The chorus lifts the song upward, the intensity increasing: "You think they're so dumb/ You think they're so funny/ Wait until they got you running to the night rally." It's a warning: these ridiculous people marching in the streets could just win. As the song rises and rises, Costello's voice getting louder, he tosses off a line about "a melody to get you singing in the showers" which I've taken to be a clear death camp reference. The dirge becomes a rousing jeremiad against complacency in the face of evil, but then goes into a strange echo at the end, a sign that resistance may indeed be futile.

Most people think this is a minor Costello song, but it's always been one of my favorites. The vocal has such passion, the passion of a man crazed by the thought that others fail to see the heinous threat right in front of their faces, and frightened that the soft ones will get swept up with the fascist mob. It's a feeling that I've had a lot lately.

What I Saw On The Long Island Railroad

Imagine what happens when these drunk assholes get politicized

Last night I went to the Mets-Cubs game with my dad and an old friend I've known since my grad school days. The game was a lot of fun (well, at least for the Mets fans in attendance), and we were seated around reasonably polite people. The mood drastically changed when we got onto the Long Island Railroad train to take us to Penn Station. The car ahead of us was full of some insanely loud preppies evidently having a full on party on the LIRR. If this was the subway and these kids weren't white they'd probably be cuffed by the NYPD.

As bad as they were, a group in our car was worse. At first they looked like the usual drunken louts who show up to sporting events, and who I've had the displeasure to share trains home from Citi Field before. However, I noticed one of them wearing a red Trump cap and one of those camo baseball jerseys. Next to him were a much more obnoxious group, chanting "USA USA USA" for no reason. Whenever I hear that chant something inside of me tenses, since I know I am in the presence of a mob. Soon enough, while staggering about openly drinking beers and screaming obscenities in front of kids who'd gone to the game with their parents, chants of "Let's Go Mets!" and "USA" faded into "Build the wall! Build the wall!" I so badly wanted to say something, but this brand of Long Island shithead would've used it as an opportunity for a beatdown. With zero police or conductor presence, I wasn't about to risk it.

I did, however, get to thinking about the Trump phenomenon. These white men from the notoriously segregated Long Island (wearing Jose Reyes jerseys in two cases*) were asserting their dominance and privilege on the train. These were the same kind of assholes I had encountered after Mets games before. However, Trumpism had politicized them. I felt like I was watching American brown shirts in their natural habitat.

This incident is evidence of the larger effect that Trump's candidacy is having. Even if he goes down in flames in the general election, he has brought white supremacist nationalism into the political mainstream. He has enabled the forces of bigotry and intolerance in ways I have never seen in my lifetime. The only solution is to go out into the open where these people have emerged from their caves and sewers, and destroy them. It is not enough to defeat Trump; Trumpism must be ripped out root and branch. If not, new demagogues will come and more hate will flow.

*Reyes brutally battered his wife last year, but despite that was just re-acquired by the Mets. Anyone wearing his jersey has some soul-searching to do.

Making Fascism Respectable Again

Super Tuesday could well be Trump's electoral equivalent of the March on Rome.  The show of popular force may well push the old guard elites to pledge fealty to a demagogue.

Just when I thought that this current political situation couldn't be crazier or more depressing, last week brought news of two very curious and very telling official endorsements of Donald Trump.  The first came from David Duke, America's most well-known white supremacist.  (Since that endorsement white nationalist groups have been making calls on his behalf.)  Now it had been pretty obvious that Trump was appealing to white nationalists, but it was something else that those connections were now completely out in the open and laid bare for all to see. (And now this weekend Trump was unwilling to disavow the endorsement of the KKK.)

A more shocking endorsement came days later from Chris Christie, the first powerful Republican to endorse Trump, who did so despite the recent Duke endorsement.  Other Republican politicians, not wanting to be Johnny-come-lately to the now probable Trump nomination jumped on the bandwagon, including Maine governor Paul LePage, former Arizona governor Jan Brewer and Alabama senator Jeff Sessions.  Thus a man who endorses the deportation of eleven million American residents, coercing Mexico into building a border wall, colonizing Iraq to take its oil, banning Muslims from America, and murdering the relatives of accused terrorists, is now getting the backing of powerful, established figures in one of the country's major parties.  After Super Tuesday, expect more to follow.

Trump has been unleashing nascent forces in American life that right wing politicians have gestured towards, but have never totally embraced.  The essence of fascism is redemptive nationalism wedded to militarism and authoritarianism centered around a charismatic leader.  Trump is the first American politician to embody that essence to achieve the heights that he has climbed.  Like all good fascists, he has few specific ideas, but acts as if he can achieve what he wants through pure force of will.  He treats any political obstacles as illegitimate, and removing them as more important that following the rule of law.  For instance, this week he pledged to change libel laws (which don't exist on the federal level) so that he could sue hostile media outlets out of existence.

Fascists have been able to take power historically once old-line conservative elites are willing to make a deal with them, since fascists are fringe enough that they usually can't quite make it to the top on their own.  The old conservatives elites make these deals once they realize that the masses are sick of them, and thus think they can keep power by allying with, or even controlling, a populist demagogue.  We seem to be on the cusp of entering that phase.  I think the next month will pretty much decide it.  If Trump keeps winning primary election, I doubt many in the Republican party will have the decency to stand in his way.

Crossing the Rubicon?

The past two weeks in American political life have been insane.  White supremacist terrorists shot black protestors in Minnesota. A Christian fundamentalist shot up a Planned Parenthood clinic in a terror attack in Colorado.  Two ISIS supporters in San Bernardino murdered 14 people in a mass shooting.  Evidence seems to show that the mayor of Chicago tried to cover up a murder committed by one of his police officers.  The leading presidential candidate for one of the major parties is making fascist appeals to bar Muslims from the country, a day after the president's call for calm evidently fell on deaf ears.

The United States appears to be in uncharted territory these days.   Having studied the history of Europe, current events seem more in line with crises in fledging democracies in that continent in the late 19th and early 20th century rather than echoes in American history.  

I am thinking in particular of France under the Third Republic and Weimar Germany.  (Although I know the second metaphor is fraught with peril.)  In both cases the political middle disappeared, and society found itself divided between competing political forces, one that supported a democratic society, and the other willing to compromise democracy in the name of nationalism and the preservation of tradition and its traditional power.  For example, in the 1890s, the French Right called their opponents the "Anti-France," and aimed to protect the church and military while attacking Jews and the Left.  While they were dealt a defeat during the Dreyfus Affair, they came back in the 1930s and reacted to the Popular Front government of Leon Blum by proclaiming "Better Hitler Than Blum."  During the occupation in World War II, they got their wish.  I shy away from Weimar metaphors, but seeing the increased visibility of armed gangs with assault weapons at mosques and attacking Black Lives Matter protestors reminded me of nothing else than how politics in the Weimar era was literally fought in the streets.  

For the first time in my life I am questioning whether America's democratic form of government will endure.  The state now has a surveillance and carceral mechanism unparalleled in American history, just sitting around to be used by the powers that be against political dissenters.  The police and military are routinely named the most trusted institutions in American life.  The constant shutdowns and gridlock in DC make it easy to denounce regular politics, and for a "man of action" to get broad support.  Donald Trump has jumped ahead in the Republican presidential race by attacking immigrants and Muslims, and promising to expunge them from the body politic.  The leaders of the Republican party have been so weak that Trump insulted the military service of John McCain, one of their most venerable members, and were basically too chickenshit to call him out directly.  They have a choice between standing up to the demagogue, pretending he will go away, or trying to co-opt him.  They have tried choice #2, but #3 looks like it might be happening very soon in the future.  I doubt he'd win, but it would be a sign now that all bets are off when it comes to whipping up the forces of nationalism and politicized racism.  

Like the Third Republic, it might take decades of low-grade political civil war, but the result could very well be the same.  In my darker moments, like today, I fear we may have crossed the Rubicon without even realizing it.