America’s Fascism Problem Isn’t Going Away

Connect the following dots. Tucker Carlson recently agreed with a guest — a famous Republican — that they’d have to “elect a fascist” soon, or else. Stephen Miller, the architect behind “separating families” and putting kids in cages is now a Fox News pundit and a right wing darling. Kayleigh McEnany is now a regular host on Fox News. A white supremacist massacred Asians in cold blood.

Shall I go on?

Scratch the surface of the zeitgeist — what you might call American liberals’ triumphant Bidenism, which means that we must all accept the fiction that Biden is a new FDR, and cheer and applaud obediently — and an ugly reality glints beneath.

America’s fascism problem isn’t going away.

If anything, it’s getting worse. The most you could say, and that’s if you wanted to be really generous, is that it’s not getting any better.

Why is America’s fascism problem not moving an inch? There are several reasons, all intertwined — political, social, cultural, and economic. Let’s start with the first one, which determines the rest.

The architect of a plan like the “Family Separation Policy,” in any sane world, should probably be behind bars. That’s not just some idle opinion — the last living Nuremberg Prosecutor has called what happened during the Trump years literal crimes against humanity. Who would know better than the man who prosecuted the Nazis? He’s 90 some years old. Don’t you think we should listen to him before it’s too late?

In a just world, what would have happened was this. The architect and middle managers and enforcers of the Trump regime’s alleged crimes against humanity — let’s call them what they are like intelligent people for once, instead of American Idiots — would have been tried. Either America would have had its own Nuremberg Trials, or these key figures from the Trump Years would have been tried by the International Criminal Court.

Neither of those things has happened. And that’s not fate or destiny. It’s a political choice.

In case you think “Nuremberg Trials” are some kind of hyperbole, then let me remind you of a few facts. Kids were “separated” from their families, many never to be reunited. There were allegations of mass sexual abuse. Who knows what other abuses of power took place? Don’t you think it’s a decent society’s responsibility to find out, which is what a trial is for?

Not holding the Trumpists responsible for fascist crimes against humanity is, again, a political choice. By the Biden Administration. The very one that liberals applaud vehemently — and get really, really angry if you question for even a moment. But what kind of political choice is it not to try fascist abuses of power?

The Biden Administration has settled. On a softly-softly approach. Better not to poke the hornets’ nest. Better to let sleeping dogs lie. The problem is that we know this approach doesn’t work when it comes to fascism. How do we know it? Well, it’s called appeasement, to put it bluntly, and history tells us so. The history of Nazi Germany. The recent history of the Islamic World. American history itself, and its endless compromises with its own supremacists. Appeasement does not solve the problem of fascism. At best, it just festers, like an open wound.

And that is what’s happening in America right now. America’s fascist problem isn’t going anywhere because a political choice has been made not to prosecute it, pursue justice for it in any way. You might say: “But Umair, the rioters at the coup are being prosecuted!” Sure they are. But they’re foot soldiers, and many of them likely won’t serve jail time. You don’t break the back of a fascist movement by putting a few foot soldiers in prison. There are hundreds more where they came from, if not thousands. You break the back of a fascist movement by dismantling it ideologically, culturally, socially, and that begins by putting its leaders behind bars.

What happens, though, when the fatal choice the Biden Administration is making happens? The calculation goes like this: “It’s more trouble for us to put these bad guys away. Let’s just ignore it and hope things settle down.” But that choice has a steep, steep price. A set of them, in fact.

What happens is that fascism is licensed. Socially and culturally. If fascists face no consequences politically, well, then, fascism must be OK, more or less, as a social norm and a cultural ideology.

That is how you get to Stephen Miller on Fox News every night, gaslighting the Democrats, calling them the barbaric ones. If he was being vigorously prosecuted, you can bet that Fox News wouldn’t touch him with a bargepole. It might be good for ratings, sure — but it’d be a huge liability legally. Corporate HQ would run away screaming. But because figures like Miller aren’t being prosecuted, the message goes out, loud and clear, to power centres and figures across the country. These guys can get away with it.

And if you can get away with something in America, you attain a kind of notoriety, a certain level of status and respect. Hence, Trumpists becoming pundits and authors and so on. Many are moving onto fine and well paid jobs. Why? Because when fascism isn’t politically prosecuted, then of course it’s socially legitimated. There’s little reason to shun hiring a Trumpist, really — they’re well connected in DC by now, they’re intimate with the workings of power. There’s every reason to hire them, whether as lobbyists or consultants or so on. They don’t bear, really the full social stigma they should, because the cloud of prosecution isn’t hanging over them, which would make that stigma undeniable.

At this juncture, you might interject. “But we have to make peace with fascists!” Do we? We don’t. This is a big, big mistake in thought — and Biden is leading a nation to making it, collectively.

You can’t make peace with fascists because they don’t want to make peace with you. They want you annihilated. If you’re a minority, they want you not to exist, whether as an unperson, or in a camp, and if you’re one of the true and pure on the side of the minorities, you’re a traitor to your race, and an enemy of the people. The goal of the fascist project is an ethnically pure homeland of the true blooded — and that hasn’t changed one iota as far as American politics goes. It is what the GOP is dedicated to more than ever in modern times.

You can’t make peace with the GOP. A political faction so extreme that they want people to have assault rifles — but not healthcare. Who thinks “education” is being able to recite the Bible. Who thinks women shouldn’t have rights. Who believes that minorities are subhumans. The GOP has become America’s equivalent of the Taliban or ISIS. It is transforming into a full-blown Nazi Party now. You can see that easily in the rise of figures like Madison Cawthorn and Josh Hawley, whose overtly flaunt their extremism, their supremacism, their hate, their willingness to permit brutality — not even bothering to hide it anymore behind code words.

The GOP is becoming America’s Nazi Party because the Democrats are letting it. The Democrats have all the power it’s possible to have in America’s political system. If they wanted to hold Nuremberg Trials, they could begin tomorrow. If they wanted to send Trumpists to be tried by the International Criminal Court, it could happen next week.

It is not happening, and it’s not going to happen, because the political choice has been made not to hold Trumpists accountable for their abuses of power. But that choice also licenses the GOP to move ever further right. It was already off the charts — but it’s becoming a Taliban or ISIS now, openly violent, ideologically fascist, overtly theocratic. That is because the Democrats have adopted the stance that punishing the Republicans is a step too far. They are not willing to do it.

So of course a social norm has been created — or more accurately, continues to exist — that being a fascist in America is perfectly OK. All the pundits who supported the Trump Administration are still right where they were. They’re making millions, tens of millions. Life is good for them. It’s never been better. That’s not some kind of anecdotal observation — it’s a “tell”, as we’d say in a poker game.

The power structures behind Trumpism haven’t moved an inch. Why would they? There’s no real political cost, so there’s no social price, to hiring, befriending, becoming a Trumpist — and so of course American fascism is still growing.

Let me put that more sharply to you. Being a supremacist has long been acceptable in American life. Too long. You might say something like: “Oh, my neighbours are just idiot rednecks. You know, Trumpists.” The social norm that it’s alright for white Americans to support violence in the cause of ethnic power and purity has long existed, for centuries. This was a moment to change it.

But the Biden Administration, by not punishing Trumpists, is failing that test, and failing it badly. The country is not learning a lesson socially — because, well, why would it? There is no case being made politically that what happened during the Trump years wasn’t just some kind of small-time mistake, that’s gone away, phew — but an historic shame and stain on the moral conscience of a nation, its reputation, its power and purpose and raison d’etre.

So the ugly old social norm — “Ah, you’re a racist? A fascist? I don’t like it, but I guess that’s OK, because it’s permitted in our society” — still exists. And the power structures built on that norm — law firms, lobbyists, pressure groups, and so on, have not changed one iota.

The political refusal of the Democrats to pursue justice from the Trumpists, though, doesn’t just legitimise the old toxic social norms of racism, supremacy, and hate. It has a more poisonous effect still, and that’s cultural. American culture is still a battleground. A place of bizarre, backwards warfare. It shouldn’t be.

The rest of the world finds it both odious and bizarre that in America, it’s still a question whether if a white cop kills an innocent black guy, he might actually get convicted for once or not. It’s an indication of how culturally backwards America still is. Minorities have to “debate” whether they should have the rights to exist, still. Whether they are “real” Americans, who deserve the same respect and dignity and freedoms that the rest have.

To live that way is to be dehumanized. It’s incredibly insulting and painful. To have your personhood “debated” over and over again is like watching people debate, in the abstract, taking away your life savings — it’s a form of theft. The theft of the freedom to just exist in peace. If you think I’m kidding, think about those Asians who got massacred, or how many Asians have been attacked since then.

American culture is a battleground because these foolish “debates” go and on and on. We could simplify all those dumb fake debates with one observation. In America, whether or not fascism is wrong and bad and evil is still “debatable.” American pundits will “debate” whether the same people who believe in an ethnically pure racialized apartheid state should have assault rifles…after all, it’s not exactly Asian grandmas carrying them. They’ll “debate” whether minorities have brought this on themselves. They’ll bicker over the idea that immigrants and refugees are dangerous, violent fanatics — not, say, the white supremacists responsible for vast, vast majority of domestic terrorism. They’ll stroke their chins, and ponder whether women deserve equality, and if the LGBT should be able to just love the way they want to.

What on earth? The entire planet shudders at this nonsense. The only people who sympathise with mainstream American “debates” are the Taliban, ISIS, Muslim fanatical groups, and extremist parties in Eastern Europe, who are actual Nazis. Everyone else recognized long ago the principle of live and let live, more or less. Nobody’s murdering you in France for being an Asian grandma. Nobody in Germany is saying you shouldn’t have the right to exist as a gay person — or at least if they are, nobody gives them airtime.

America’s cultural backwardness goes on because it hasn’t had a true political reckoning yet. One that forces society to take a hard look at itself culturally. One that draws bright red cultural lines which are impossible to ignore. Which says, in stark terms, that even a racist idiot can understand, things like “hate is not OK. It leads to violence”, or “dehumanizing others is not OK. It leads to supremacism”, and “We do not permit these things in our society. These values are anathema to us. Those who express them will face the full fury of the law.”

A real political reckoning that teaches a whole society where the line between good and bad, permissible and not, right and wrong, really is, and cannot be crossed, or else. Like a Nuremberg Trials.

Do you see what I mean? Fascists are bullies and thugs, and such minds only understand reward and punishment. In societies like America, where idiocy seems to rule, maybe that’s the majority of people. Who knows? Either way, not to punish fascism is a massive, massive mistake. It creates the cultural room for the fascists to go on making existence a debate. Should minorities be allowed to exist in peace? Should women be allowed to exist on the same plane as men?

America’s fascism problem isn’t going away. Not because it won’t, or can’t. But because a political choice has been made. Or maybe, to put it more accurately, a fatal mistake is being made. The fascists are being allowed to get away with it.

What do you think that teaches them? Says to them? Tells them? That the rest of us are weak, laughable, and pathetic enough that we can be had.

Joe Biden’s not a saint, and he’s not a superhero. He’s just a man. Men make mistakes. Not punishing fascists isn’t just any old mistake. It’s one with terrible consequences. Liberals would do better to hold him to account for it, instead of cheering obediently, pretending, in a foolish game of groupthink, that, magically, as if overnight, Saint Joe waved a wand — and American fascism has just — poof!! — gone away. Tell that to all the minorities you know, and see what they have to say about it.

Umair
March 2021