Fascism festers in US as pivotal vote looms
Trump’s MAGA army poses dire threat to democracy
Mid-term national elections in the US are usually sleepy, low-turnout rituals.
Not this year!
Experts from the president down are using that once taboo "F" word — fascism — to describe the red-alarm fire that is raging throughout the country.
Ex-President Donald Trump is leading a MAGA army of millions who both deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election and vow not to let their opponents win another one. If they lose, they threaten to steal it.
This ultra-radical right wing is espousing violent rhetoric, interfering with local elections officials and trying to subvert trust in elections on multiple fronts.
The threat these combined forces pose to the democratic process is a clear and present danger to the American experiment in self-governance.
It must be confronted and vanquished, or this may be the last free and fair election ever held in the US.
Since President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, state legislators around the country have used the false claim of election fraud to tighten voting laws, making it more difficult to participate.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice Voting Law Roundup, in just the first half of this year six state legislatures – Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, and Oklahoma – passed nine election “interference” laws.
“Election interference laws do two primary things,” the Brennan report says. “They open the door to partisan interference in elections, or they threaten the people and processes that make elections work.”
It's the basic plumbing of the decentralized voting system in America that has been one of its strengths for over 200 years.
Now it has become one of its weaknesses, having been relentlessly attacked by the MAGA army since 2020.
“As of May 4, at least 34 bills with restrictive provisions are moving through 11 state legislatures. Overall, lawmakers in 39 states have considered at least 393 restrictive bills for the 2022 legislative session. Since the beginning of 2021, 18 states have passed 34 restrictive voting laws.”
It is the most anti-democratic development in recent American history and it's happening in real time right before our very eyes.
The drift towards fascism was highlighted by President Biden in a major speech on August 24 when he actually used the “F” word for the first time.
Biden said Trump and his party “have made their choice to go backwards, full of anger, violence, hate and division.
“It’s not just Trump,” he added. “It’s the entire philosophy that underpins it … It’s like semi-fascism.”
This phenomenon has been evident for months, as I first reported in May.
But it’s reaching a crescendo as the clock ticks down to the November balloting.
If millions of voters cast their ballots based on the “big lie” of a stolen election and vote for candidates who hold the same belief, the outcome of this election could plausibly result in a constitutional crisis akin to a fascist takeover.
Few have captured the essence of the moment better than MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow.
Maddow began her Sept. 26 broadcast with a historical overview of fascism in Europe spanning 100 years from the election of Benito Mussolini in 1922 to his 2022 incarnation, Giorgia Meloni – a fascist whose party won Italy’s election last month and is set to become its next Prime Minister.
Maddow took pains to emphasize that both Mussolini and Hitler were first voted into public office in legitimate elections. Both then set about deliberately dismantling their democratic institutions and finally becoming dictators. It didn’t end well for either of them – as we all know.
She included in her summary other fascists now in power – Viktor Orban in Hungary, Vladimir Putin in Russia, the Law and Justice Party in Poland – and those close to it like the Sweden Democrats and Marine Le Pen in France.
Maddow’s purpose was two-fold: It’s often easier to make sense of what happens from a distance, and we ignore their history at our peril.
“This is a thing that is easier to see in other countries than in our own,” she said.
“It’s a simple thing. It’s about separating power from the preferences of the people, and instead just ruling over them by force – for [the leaders’] own purposes and to meet their own needs instead of the needs of the people.”
The big takeaway from the history lesson is that fascist dictatorships arising from democracies seem to do so after a pivot point when the party in power starts demonizing its opponents as ‘enemies of the state’ and delegitimizing any election victories they may have. In fact, they delegitimize the entire democratic process.
Which brings us to the “capital ‘H’ Historic moment right now in America,” Maddow said.
“We are [just] weeks out from our first big national election since the party of the defeated right wing president tried to maintain him in power by force by a mass assault on the US Capitol by his supporters,” she said.
“It was just two years ago in the run-up to that 2020 election that Trump started saying outright that he would not accept the results of that election. Unless he won.
“That was a crazy benchmark for American politics at the time, but it's now the new normal – not just for him, but for political candidates of his party.”
Maddow pointed out that hundreds of Republican candidates running for office in 2022 deny the legitimacy of the 2020 results.
“[They’re running] on the premise that the last election result from 2020 shouldn't have counted and maybe the next one shouldn't either,” she warned.
This is the essence of the anti-democratic forces afoot in Europe and the US: Total disregard for the results of legitimate elections and disparaging the entire election process to make large swaths of the population lack trust in the outcome.
“No longer respecting election results isn't just about messing with elections themselves,” Maddow warned. “It's about a different kind of governance, a different kind of power.
“If they do not want your vote to determine who is in power, that means they don't want to have to use power to try to meet your needs.”
At its simplest level, she said, it is about minority rule instead of majority rule.
“In a very practical everyday sense, a party that’s trying to cast doubt on elections as the way we choose who's in power means they want to stay in power regardless of elections.
“They want to stay in power without your consent and without your ability to remove them, which means they do not want to serve you.
“This is a flashing red siren about the abandonment of that task.”
Also appearing on the Maddow show that day was David Corn, Washington Bureau Chief for Mother Jones magazine who has just published a new book called “American psychosis” – “A historical investigation of how the Republican party went crazy.”
Riffing on Maddow’s 20-minute exposition on fascism and it’s consequences, Corn said: “I appreciate your respect for history.
“You see the patterns, you see the rhymes of history. In doing this book, “American psychosis” I saw the same thing in American history. We see patterns again and again.”
The history buff pointed out that this is not a new phenomenon in America.
“We're now having a debate about whether MAGA extremism is something akin to fascism, but the Republican Party for 70 years keeps having this dance with extremism, encouraging and exploiting extremism. It's happened all the time.
“What we see now with Donald Trump and the Republican Party is not a case, not an aberration. It's a continuation.”
Corn went through a laundry list that includes McCarthyism, John Birchers, white segregationists and even the Tea Party of 2010 and the Obama “birthers” conspiracy theory – which gave Trump his start in national politics.
“We have seen the expansion of the influence of these extremists within the Republican party – the party taking them in to get power and juice to the extent that we even see Trump in recent days welcoming the QAnon (conspiracy theory) movement into his Trumpist Republican Party.
“It's always been part of the Republican playbook,” Corn said.
Danger looms in historic election
If millions of voters in November cast their ballots based on the false belief that the last election was “stolen” from the loser, there is a strong possibility that at least a few candidates for pivotal state level offices could win based on the same false premise.
There is a plausible scenario whereby one successful 2022 candidate for governor or Secretary of State could refuse to certify the 2024 presidential election and throw the entire US into an unprecedented constitutional crisis.
If this official is in a pivotal swing state, it could cast doubt on the Electoral College results. Then, the Congress will have to decide the winner, irrespective of the will of the people.
This could be the beginning of minority rule in America: The presidential candidate who lost the popular vote could be declared the winner by the majority party in Congress.
Minority rule, of course, is the essence of fascism and the end of democracy. Already fragile, trust in the democratic process will be ruined forever.
It’s a slippery slope, and we’re already part way down the hill. The outcome of the November mid-term elections could either put a brake on our slide into fascism – or speed up the decline until it is irreversible.
It’s a pivotal moment for the great American experiment.
very interesting Warren, but definitely scary stuff!
Seems like we lose either way. If their candidates win, we lose. If our candidates win, they deny the election and we lose.