America Needs to Break the Back of its Fascist Movement Now

Umair Haque has another great article in Medium this month.

America Needs to Break the Back of its Fascist Movement Now — Or Else

America needs to break the back of this fascist movement, now, severely — or it will pay an even more severe price in years and decades to come. A price in violence, rage, blood, and unrest. The highest of prices. No, I’m not kidding — and though you might feel a chill, I think you know it, too. It’s us or them.

Like us, Haque realized that Trump was dangerous before he won the electoral college in 2016, and he knows that Trumpism will remain dangerous long after he is gone. The whole article is great, but I’d like to put an emphasis on these 3 points that he makes:

  1. You can’t compromise with fascists because they are totalitarians to begin with
  2. You shouldn’t compromise with fascists and terrorists because it creates a norm with a very special name all its own: appeasement.
  3. You give terrorists no mercy because when you do, they have succeeded at terrorizing

Haque eludes to this, but let’s look at how the Biden administration is handling this.

Biden’s [inauguration] address will seek to bridge the nation’s deepening political divide by summoning support from people who didn’t vote for him as well as those who did, according to advisers and allies. To do that, he’ll have to move beyond his penchant for saying what’s on his mind — such as remarks Friday in which he told Republican lawmakers who refuse to wear masks to “grow up.”

“He believes that we have to bring this country together,” incoming White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “You can expect that this will be a moment where President-elect Biden will really work to try to turn the page on the divisiveness and the hatred of the last four years.”

The wording is vague — probably intentionally — but the implication is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing: Breaking the back of this fascist movement, now, severely. That 40% of American adults who are fascists must either be reformed or neutralized. Appeasing them is not going to make that happen.

From a practical perspective, this would mean rooting out the fascists in our police and military, using existing laws to destroy fascism wherever it hides within our country, and providing accurate political education without coercion. We know this would work because the same strategy was used against the left and now there is no significant leftist movement in the US. Most Americans no longer even understand what “the left” is, erroneously thinking that the Democratic party is left of center (it’s actually near right). America has repeatedly chosen to support or appease fascism instead of destroying it.

The Biden administration is choosing the path of appeasement and compromise because they, their base, and their constituents are cowards that are not up to a protracted fight against fascism. They think — falsely — that if they throw a steak to the monster it won’t try to eat them. They are also more afraid of democracy than they are of fascism — this was true of liberals during the Weimar republic as well.

Biden is also — as we predicted — giving even greater power to law enforcement. This is either complete idiocy or a move toward totalitarianism on the part of Bidenists because we already know that more than half of the police are fascists, and we know that current laws are sufficient to put down a movement. My guess is that this is a move toward totalitarianism because even though Biden himself shows signs of cognitive impairment, his crew (unlike Trump’s) is extremely competent. It all makes sense once you accept that the DNC, the Democratic party base, and the majority of Democratic party voters are conservatives; the only reason that idea seems peculiar is because of the elaborate disinformation campaign driving wedges between Republican conservatives and Democratic conservatives, with the purpose of moving the whole country to the right.

This article by Akin Olla explains what’s at stake:

Following the fascist riot at the US Capitol, progressives and liberals have begun to mimic the calls for “law and order” of their conservative counterparts, even going as far as threatening to expand the “war on terror”. While this may be well-intentioned, it fits neatly within the trajectory of attacks against civil liberties over the last two decades. A Biden administration with a 50-50 Senate will seek unity and compromise wherever it can find it, and oppressing political dissidents will be the glue that holds together Biden’s ability to govern.

We are in a country where almost no one wants freedom. We few who do are caught in the middle of an epic struggle between two dystopian visions for the future. The trajectory of Bidenism is not one of progress, unless that means progress toward a different kind of fascism.

Related: You can’t fight fascism by expanding the police state by Evan Greer

2021

I know it’s fun to think of a bad year, like 2020, as special, unique and finite. I just watched “Death to 2020” and it was pretty darn funny. It would really be great if all the things that made a year bad would just magically end at midnight on December 31. However, we are all adults and we know that the difference between one year and the next is an arbitrary point, and that events and trends don’t really care what year it is.

I hope you’re ready to focus back on what’s going on in the world.

The Half-assed Coup

First off, the half-assed coup continues. It looked like Trump had gone to Florida for good, but on New Year’s Eve he flew back to DC, and fascist politicos are at least pretending that they’re going to really try to derail congressional approval of the electoral college vote. I’ve seen commentary from the political press saying that the situation is “shocking”. It isn’t. We could just let the people vote and then whoever won the vote would be the next President. The whole reason why we have an electoral college, and the whole reason why the electoral college vote has to be approved by Congress is specifically so the votes of the people can be ignored if political elites feel they should be.

I do think that Trump will ultimately be dethroned, but people — liberals in particular — absolutely do not appreciate how entirely possible it is for Trump Republicans to end American democracy.

COVID-19

COVID-19 will still be with us for a while, and although the vaccine development process was truly amazing, it may not have been fast enough — thanks to anti-mask conservatives and upper-class frequent flyers. There are now at least 2 variants in the world — thankfully, the current vaccines appear to work against both. If the protein key on any new variant of COVID-19 does not match the original version, that will mean an additional vaccine will have to be produced and distributed. The estimate for when COVID-19 will be under control globally is already at around 2023.

US Inequality

Inequality in the US remains dramatic — it is the highest among the G7 nations. It is closer to the levels found in what Trump calls “shithole countries” than what is found in whatever the opposite of that is.

Related: 6 facts about economic inequality in the U.S.

None of the political class has yet to address a real solution to the economic distress happening in America — it was there before, but COVID made things a lot worse. They just keep sending out checks that will be paid for later by hiking up our taxes or cutting government services; they might even steal our Social Security to pay for it. A real solution would be for a national rent freeze to be accompanied by a national mortgage freeze, but for some reason, the banks are untouchable. The Biden tax plan is a nice idea (if it can make it into law) but it is still weaker than what is required. It seems pretty unlikely that they’d go after the real inequity problem — billionaire wealth. The upshot is that working class Americans are going to continue to struggle financially.

Climate

The climate-change-exacerbated disasters that we saw in 2020 are likely to be worse this year, and worse still the year after. A government controlled by the mega-rich donor class will not be capable of creating and enforcing laws that get us to negative emissions, which is what is required to save humanity.

Joe Biden

Joe Biden’s cognitive functioning is going to be problematic. At the very least, he’s going to be seen as a joke, much like Trump was. At the worst, he will indeed be a puppet for capital (much like how Trump often served as a puppet for fascists), which will only make things worse.

Fascists

America still has over 75 million fascists, many of whom are heavily armed. One of the interesting things that were brought to our attention over the last 4 years is that this includes most of our law enforcement officers. America’s cult of radical individualism has eaten away at our ethics to the point where most of us (yes, even Democratic voters) believe that any community good is secretly an evil plot by communists.

CONCLUSION

My conclusion is that 2021 could definitely be worse than 2020. Instead of having a “gee, I sure am glad that’s over LOL” kind of attitude about it, we need to commit to continuing to work hard. And I see you heading for the liquor cabinet, but we all need you coherent and awake for what’s coming next. We all need to pay attention and think.

To that end, let me suggest a couple of people to you.

The first is Heather Cox Richardson. Her “Letters from America” series of semi-daily updates is the best single summary of US news available, in my opinion. She is a Democrat, and so you have those familiar blind spots (like unwavering faith in our democratic institutions, despite their ongoing failures) and yet I haven’t seen anything better. You can find her on Facebook, or if you’ve been banned like me, you can subscribe to Letters from America in email form.

Second is Chris Hedges. If you’re familiar with him, you know his shtick is a bit tiring and you might have discovered (like I did) that he has quite a few stances you strongly disagree with. However, he also has amazing clarity in some areas that I have not seen anywhere else. For example: The Collective Suicide of the Liberal Class