Today is the International Day of Holocaust Remembrance which marks the day that the Red Army liberated Auschwitz in 1945, and I am saddened to see in the news that it appears as if the machine of liberalism is set to again allow the Trump regime to avoid the consequences of their actions. The Republican party has gradually taken the role of open promoters of fascism since the Tea Party movement first appeared in 2009, and today Republicans in the US Senate are taking the absurd position that Donald Trump cannot be punished for the sedition he incited while he was in office, because he is no longer in office.
I might ask if I punch a Nazi in the face while I’m at work, but then quit my job immediately thereafter, does that stop the law from convicting me of assault? Can I just wait four years and go back to the same job without consequences? Seems like the answers to those questions as it applies to me is no. It seems like the implicit purpose of resistance to impeachment is to facilitate the next round of fascism.
During Trump’s time in office, we weren’t just heading “towards” fascism; the United States attained actual clear-cut fascism when we built concentration camps (complete with purposefully inadequate healthcare and torturous living conditions that actually killed people) and separated immigrant children permanently from their parents (a total of over 5400 children were separated from their families, over 500 permanently).
Not only were immigrants coming from south of the US on the list of people to be the victims of genocide, but also Muslims, LGBTQ people, anyone on the left, and yes, Jewish people (declaring a group a “nationality” is a first step toward declaring them an enemy, and attacks against Jewish people increased markedly during Trump’s time in office). The ongoing low-grade genocide against Black America was ratcheted up a bit, and women weren’t subjected to genocide, but instead marginalized via Trump’s Supreme Court appointments. In the long term, I expect that Democrats and even moderate Republicans would have been added to that list. (Apologies to all the groups I’ve likely left out.)
Thank goodness our democratic institutions held, right? No, that’s not what happened at all. Rather, the Trump regime was able to demonstrate over and over again that America’s political bureaucracy was powerless to stop them — and that trend continues today with the resistance to impeachment by fascists in the Republican party. Make no mistake — any politician opposing the (wholly inadequate) impeachment of Donald Trump is a fascist.
The things that stopped the Trump regime from instituting a fully-functioning fascist state and genocide were two things: Incompetence and cowardice.
The incompetence of Trump was truly breathtaking, but shouldn’t be surprising. Fascism and a narcissistic culture go hand-in-hand, and the problem with a narcissistic leader is that they know very little and think they know everything. It’s the Dunning-Kruger Effect on steroids. Not only did he constantly make bad decisions, but he fired most of the experts on his staff that could have helped him succeed. In particular, firing Steve Bannon was a monumental mistake. And, of course, we saw the incompetence of Trump’s cult on January 6 when they tried to overthrow the government in a truly idiotic way.
The cowardice manifested in Trump refusing to commit to overthrowing the government. Had he done so — had he ever actually clearly given the explicit order that his followers were so desperate to receive — the outcome might have been very, very different. And, again, his followers also demonstrated a great deal of cowardice. We can attribute all this cowardice to narcissism as well.
What we are looking at, then, is a coup that killed itself while the established order was powerless to do anything about it. On the Holocaust Day of Remembrance, it’s popular to say “Never Again” but that’s a wish that requires material action to manifest. In the meantime, there’s every indication that it will happen again, and next time their leader will be more competent than Donald Trump.