BRATTLEBORO — Scholars have debated fascism's definition and contours since its inception in 1919. All agree that it is a form of radical nationalist authoritarianism.
As I peruse various interpretations, accounts, and analyses of fascism, the view that speaks most persuasively is that of Robert Paxton. In his 2004 book The Anatomy of Fascism, Paxton offers a definition:
Fascism, he writes, is “a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.''
Paxton advises that when keeping alert for emerging fascism, we should ''not look for exact replicas, in which fascist veterans dust off their swastikas,'' nor should we look for hate crimes and extreme nationalist propaganda.
Rather, writes Samantha Power in a review of Paxton's book published in The New York Times, “we should address the conditions and the enablers - political deadlocks in times of crises, and conservatives who want tougher allies and elicit support through nationalist and racist demagogy.”
As she discusses Paxton's writing, Power warns most pointedly “that fascism, if it returns, will do so not simply because of a rousing leader, but because of his timid accomplices.”
Let's begin there.
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“Timid accomplices” we have aplenty. They are the Republican Congress and its so-called leaders, cabinet officers, and White House staff. Examples are too plentiful.
Bob Woodward's new book, Fear, portrays a White House so toxic, volatile, and irrational that advisers and cabinet members work around the back of President Donald J. Trump. (It's important to note that Woodward has written 18 books on presidents and, contrary to many allegations, has never once been found to have falsified information.)
According to Woodward, Chief of Staff John Kelly calls the place “crazytown” and describes Trump as “off the rails.” Yet Kelly hangs in there. Why?
Nearly every day, Trump pillories Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He's a “dumb Southerner...who couldn't even be a one-person country lawyer down in Alabama.” But he, too, soldiers on.
Meanwhile, for months, Trump referred to Paul Ryan as “Boy Scout.” In an Aug. 7 interview with The New York Times, Ryan commented that he “thought it was a compliment.”
“I didn't realize,” he said.
Is Ryan that dumb, or is he dumb like a fox?
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Trump is undeniably a “rousing leader” to the Twitter mass of followers who like to think of themselves as “nationalist militants.” Trump's singular campaign rhetoric, now morphed into daily presidential language, is obsessed with “community decline, humiliation, or victimhood.”
“Make America Great Again,” he shouts, in defiance of Deep State conspiracies, immigrant rapists, and fake news.
Meanwhile, millions - perhaps 40 or more million - of Americans embrace every rant as if by repetition they conjure a tempest strong enough to “drain the swamp.”
The vitriol is purifying. Followers share feelings of unity and energy that transcend reason.
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Sitting behind the curtain, smugly orchestrating a vast organizational infrastructure designed to foment partisan “deadlocks” that inflame culture wars born of identity politics, are brothers Charles and David Koch and the billionaires in league.
They are not a conspiracy. They constitute the monetized voice of corporate personhood enshrined by the Citizens United Supreme Court decision into a monolith of unaccountable influence unparalleled in U.S. history.
It is a status quo that took decades to achieve, and Charles Koch has been its architect. Having founded the Cato Institute in 1977, a think tank dedicated to fomenting a “libertarian revolution,” Koch began what is now a 40-year career of right-wing philanthropy committed to shrinking the civil state while bolstering the national security state, a process documented in Nancy MacLean's book Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America.
Koch's money is the substratum upon which have been built such diverse groups as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Americans for Prosperity, the Federalist Society, and the George Mason School of Economics, to name only a few.
Out of these institutions have come voter-restriction laws, gerrymandering tactics, judicial decisions against union rights, and the Koch-sponsored herd of Republicans.
These politicians, from Newt Gingrich to Paul Ryan, denounce all government programs for the commonwealth, including public education, Social Security, environmental protection, and health care as profligate and corrupt.
Meanwhile, they advocate militarizing police, vastly expanding incarceration, and massively growing both the Pentagon's reach and resources.
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To add insult to all this injury, on Sept. 10, Koch announced the formation of still another super PAC, Americans for Prosperity Action, into which he will dump $400 million over 55 days to shape the outcomes of the midterm elections.
These are neither the goals of the American dream nor are they the goals of the American people. Koch knows that. “Since we are greatly outnumbered,” Koch remarked in a 1997 address, deception and disguise must be employed, according to MacLean's book.
Hence, Koch's minions in the Republican Party have harangued for decades that Social Security needs “reform” to prevent bankruptcy when, in fact, their vaunted reform, privatization, will by definition destroy the guarantee that is the bedrock of the system itself.
Mendacity has become the rule, and its ubiquity furthers the divisions, distrust, and festering rage that insidiously advance Koch's endgame. And that endgame is to abandon democratic liberties without ethical or legal restraints in the pursuit of corporatist libertarianism.
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Initially, Trump's rise in 2016 presented problems for Koch and the Republican elites.
The then-candidate achieved the Republican nomination for president through endless insult, wacky grandstanding, and xenophobic prescriptions. His cant, bile, and blasphemy alienated the Koch constituency.
But as the campaign proceeded, Koch adjusted. During the summer that year, allies promoted a signed-and-sealed Koch clone, Mike Pence, into Trump's inner circle.
Read Jane Mayer's New Yorker article “The Danger of President Pence.” She quotes Steve Bannon as having been worried that should Trump pick Pence for his vice president, he would be an insider “that the Kochs would own.”
Nevertheless, when Trump did choose Pence, Bannon called the decision “an unfortunate necessity,” Mayer writes.
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Here we close the circle of Paxton's warning.
What makes Pence a necessity? Clearly, he is the main plank of a bridge to “uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites.”
But these are not truly traditional elites. These are a cadre of billionaire libertarians whose goal is to upend the ability of government to act for the common good while simultaneously multiplying government powers to suppress all dissent.
With only himself in his mind's eye, Donald Trump is the perfect chump to advance the Koch program. In short, we are very close to a brave new fascism, Americanized in its peculiar, if not exceptional, trajectory.
There is only one way to stop this march to unfreedom: rally the American majority to action.
In his first political speech as an ex-president, Barack Obama called the midterm elections the most important in his lifetime. He's right, and they are.
Of course, we must also think beyond them. But for now, Nov. 6 could well determine America's fate.