The Nation, Jan. 18, 2021
Allegations of Fascism Distract From the Real Danger
The same system that often rendered Trump harmless fails most Americans.
By Samuel Moyn
Theabsolute height of fascism talk
<https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=fascism>in
recent US history took place at the beginning of June, in the aftermath
of George Floyd’s killing. It occurred amid America’s largest-ever
popular mobilization against white supremacy and racist police violence.
Allegations of fascism inadvertently testified to the possibility of
change; it had been generations since so many people demanded an end to
American state brutality. Those same charges of fascism, however,
provided no help in effecting that transformation.
RELATED ARTICLE
The Nation <https://www.thenation.com/article/society/trump-fascist-threat/>
POLITICAL INEPTITUDE TEMPERED TRUMP’S FASCIST BEHAVIOR
<https://www.thenation.com/article/society/trump-fascist-threat/>
Mabel Berezin
It is undeniable that Donald Trump’s presidency gave the notion of
fascism cultural prominence in American politics. In the last 15 years,
the term had entered public discourse onlythree times
<https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=fascism>before
this past summer: when Trump’s candidacy broke through among Republicans
in March 2016; after he beat Hillary Clinton and took office in January
2017; and when the disgusting Unite the Right rally was held in
Charlottesville, Va., in August of the same year.
This shows that/nothing Trump actually did/sparked the discourse—unless
one counts the rhetorical fuel he added to the fire of outrage and
violence set off in Virginia by several hundred punks. The fascism frame
was a choice that activists, commentators, and politicians made, and
June 2020 proved it again and conclusively. No comparable
talk—especially about Barack Obama—happened in response to the police
slaying of Michael Brown on the streets of Ferguson, Mo., in August
2014. So the real questions are: Why did we make that choice? And are
there better ones now?
Asking them is not to deny that America experienceda kind of fascism
<https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/06/22/american-fascism-it-has-happened-here/>during
the Jim Crow era, that fascism in one of its varieties across the world
could return, that Americacould host it
<https://newrepublic.com/article/158999/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-right-warn-fascism-united-states>,
or even that fascism islatent
<https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/adorno-aspects-new-right-wing-extremism/>so
long as injustice lasts. All true, but so what? To insist on
hypothetical possibilities or eternal fascism is to dodge the obligation
to provide a responsible inquiry into contemporary American politics.
Instead, most people who have denounced fascism over the last four years
wish to return to the status quo ante Trump and restore the failed
policies that provided him the opportunity to win the White House.
A factual approach
<https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2020/11/19/jack-goldsmith-on-why-donald-trumps-obstructionism-will-fail?utm_campaign=editorial-social&utm_medium=social-organic&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR0WdfstXhEw6lw1ea19IAPoFrLnfoon3hi4QZu5VjXtdkC7MFvrSn-Gw9Q>to
the Trump years shows that those crying “fascism” tended to rely on the
first half of every frightening news cycle. But the second half showed
Trump shying away from any fascist endgame, changing his mind under
pressure, or finding himself blocked by his own servants. And that was
before any heavier weaponry in the American system came into play.
I am more sympathetic to the claim that fascist elements in civil
society became emboldened with Trump in charge. Butracist militias are
anything but new
<https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674286078>, and the
white boys of Charlottesville and the Proud Boys hardly constitute a
fascist uprising. (In the March on Rome, Benito Mussolini had tens of
thousands of Blackshirts at his command, while in 1933, Adolf Hitler had
personal goons in the millions.) The disgusting events of January 6,
2021 illustrate frightening new potentialities for the future, while
also reinforcing the end of this presidency—assuming it even lasts until
January 20. Indeed, the culmination (so far) of Trump’s parodic coup
staged by “a mob of angry white dudes
<https://twitter.com/KeeangaYamahtta/status/1346905112468463616?s=20>”—as
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor put it—led the inevitable outcome of Joe Biden’s
installment to be even swifter and more widely supported.
We need theories that capture both the Trump years’ continuity with the
past as well as their novelty. But the allegations of fascism too often
distract us from the need and possibility for America to diverge from
the trajectory that led to them.
CURRENT ISSUE
<https://www.thenation.com/issue/january-25-february-1-2021-issue/>
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<https://www.thenation.com/issue/january-25-february-1-2021-issue/>
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The Trump administration’s most serious evils were either rhetorical and
symbolic, or came in adjusting the already obscene American immigration
regime in an even more exclusionary direction. Trump’s national security
record, based on that same unchecked executive power, is more mixed.
Under Trump, America killed fewer foreigners overall than it did when
his two predecessors were in office. Even as he extended some of their
worst choices and made grievous new mistakes, there was no resemblance
to the hyperimperialism of historical fascism.
None of this is to say that Trump wasn’t a terrible president, let alone
that “the system” worked. Just the opposite: The same system that often
rendered Trump harmless continues to fail most Americans. The most
graphic proof of this lies in the latest election returns, which
embarrass the fascism paradigm. The most shocking thing about them is
that, after four years of delegitimation, Trump increased his support
among the presumed victims of fascism, while the Democratic Party
faltered. Biden broke through, thanks to the wealthy and powerful. The
state where I live, Connecticut, is among themost unequal
<https://ctmirror.org/2018/05/29/already-deep-debt-connecticut-struggles-extremes-wealth-income/>,
with some of the country’s worst poverty. Bidenfared worse
<https://twitter.com/SenhorRaposa/status/1341115507269902344?s=20>among
urban workers, including Blacks and Hispanics in my city of New Haven,
than earlier Democrats—but far, far better among the wealthy denizens of
Greenwich and Westport.
If we are lucky, thefascism debate
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/10/books/fascism-debate-donald-trump.html>will
become a historical curio, allowing Americans who want to overcome
structural injustice and political impasse to focus where it matters.
Far from reflecting any real intellectual dilemma, it marks a missed
opportunity. It also poses a risk for a future in which too many
progressives spend their time fretting about the end of American
democracy, allowing the mainstream to shirk responsibility for its
enduring flaws and the right to keep on fooling too many of its longtime
victims.
/To read the other side of The Debate, read Mabel Berezin’s“Political
Ineptitude Tempered Trump’s Fascist Behavior.”
<https://www.thenation.com/article/society/trump-fascist-threat/>/
Samuel Moyn <https://www.thenation.com/authors/samuel-moyn/>Samuel Moyn
teaches law and history at Yale. His most recent book is/Not Enough:
Human Rights in an Unequal World/(Harvard University Press).
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