It Has a Name: Fascism
Fascism must be recognized and called by name. Meaning in the headlines. Regarding it simply as a weakening of democracy, as so many are quick to concede, is a recipe for doing nothing.
This is an attempt to answer the question, "What’s going on in the world," in the broadest possible terms. To do so, two sides, or two viewpoints, must be clearly and fundamentally separated. This will necessarily eliminate our national political parochialism of Democrat-Republican, woke-antiwoke, even liberal-illiberal.
The premise here is that the answer to the posed question lies in finding a form of opposition that underlies the others, namely, progress-regress. We identify it politically as radical-reactionary, revolution-counterrevolution, leftwing-rightwing.
The rightwing worldview holds that things are the way they are because at all times society has tested itself and found alternatives to be lacking. The present arrangement—the current state of society—is regarded as the natural order of things. Change is therefore to be resisted.
By the time the European fascisms of the previous century were fully recognized, it was already to late.
The leftwing worldview holds that societies, however formed, are, in each state, imperfect. Therefore, the present arrangement merely reflects the biases that formed it—one part of society gaining at the expense of another—an injustice that must be changed.
We look around the world and see a lot of looking back, not much looking forward. This tells us the rightwing worldview is presently dominating. We see it throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Germany is a particular cause for concern because of the recent regional successes of the far-right AfD, built upon remnants of National Socialism, or Nazism.
At the limits is ultra-right Israel. It commits a genocide and says it was only a response. The other side started it. Started what? Nobody starts a genocide except its perpetrator. From a leftist’s perspective, October 7 was a prison break, and, yes, prison breaks can involve atrocities. A question to consider: Are prison breaks illegal? They are if the prison was legal, but the Palestine prison has been illegal since 1967. Take away the United States, and Israel’s high officials would be in front of the dock.
How did we get to living under fascism? And how did it happen so fast? For example and perspective, let’s go back a few years and note a time when great change failed to come, even when it was dangled before the large majorities that had been clamoring for it.
Before he was a presidential candidate, Barack Obama was a strong critic of our public healthcare system. He favored single-payer universal healthcare. Shortly after being elected, President Obama met with leaders from the insurance-hospital-pharmaceutical complex that makes up our healthcare industry. What was missing? No single-payer representatives were present.
A moment aside about that term, “single-payer”: It is an industry term of obfuscation, confusing Americans about how the system works. How many people really know what it means? Contrast it with the simpler term, “universal,” or the even simpler and more direct, “national.” National healthcare. We have it for older people. It’s called Medicare.
By now, though, President Obama had tempered the “change you can believe in.” His new idea was that if we were starting from scratch, single-payer would be the way to go, but since we are not starting from scratch, the change would be too “disruptive.”
Logical thinkers, scratch your heads. Every change is disruptive. That’s the point! To disrupt the old. Medicare started from scratch, and national healthcare could as well, if the will was there.
Back to our fascist life, and here’s where you have to give credit to President Donald Trump. The rightward drift of our country began decades ago, and not just under Ronald Reagan. John Mitchell, appointed Richard Nixon’s attorney general in 1969, at the time infamously said, “This country is going to go so far to the right you won’t recognize it.” Yeah, that’s right. Both parties have become business parties. Wall Street clearly won the class war.
Trump came into the present rightward drift and accelerated it to a full fascism. He did it just like that, and he didn’t start from scratch. He caught it in the middle. Tell people that you are returning the nation to its rightful place, and pretty soon masked federal police are shooting people in the streets. Blasting speedboats on the high seas out of existence because we can. Placing people in detention-concentration camps under horrible and humiliating conditions, with or without proof of criminality. The federal government was not drowned in a bathtub. It survived to mask itself, clothed in riot gear.
And, just recently, Trump threatened to “annihilate” Iran at the United Nations General Assembly, flaunting in the forum of its creation his own criminality for the “supreme international crime” enshrined in the UN Charter, Chapter VII: Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression.
Billions of words have been written about Trump’s character deficiencies. Okay, we get it by now. Only it’s not about what he is. It’s what he’s doing, and what his heel-clicking order takers do for him. Trump is a political malignancy. In this case, it’s not cancer. It’s fascism, as far right as you can go. Like any malignancy, you remove it, and this removal can’t come too soon. Can you remove the fascism without removing Trump? You can, because he’s only a figurehead.
But first fascism must be recognized and called by name. Meaning in the headlines. Regarding it simply as a weakening of democracy, as so many are quick to concede, is a recipe for doing nothing. Waiting for the next election.
Some recent editorials from respected media have gone a little further, describing the situation as “alarming,” which fails to alarm on two counts. They don’t specifically state that we’re living under a fascism, and they don’t attempt to rally people for a remedy. Because it’s getting late.
By the time the European fascisms of the previous century were fully recognized, it was already to late. National pride is fascism’s selling point. Presently, we have entirely too many buyers.
