Cross-posted at NotGeniuses.
It's time to face the facts: the United States is a one-party state, and will be for many years to come. For those of us involved in elections and campaigns, those of us who bat about strategies and hypotheses and wedges and frames and the like (even in an armchair capacity), it's tempting to look at the 2004 election from a tactical perspective: i.e., we got beat on issues (a), (b) and (c), and we need to work harder at appealing to constituencies (x), (y) and (z). This is appealing because it simplifies the situation, reducing the scope of the next four years to a few small, targeted goals. It's also a fundamental misunderstanding of what we're up against. Addressing our electoral troubles with this approach would be like seeing Genghis Kahn's army on the horizon and suiting up to play a tennis match against it.
And yet, it's amazing to me how many liberals and Democrats believe that the prudent course would be to do exactly that. They know this game, thanks; they've seen it played for the last century, and the American people are reasonable folks who want a divided government and moderation in their leadership, and besides, the issues are all on our side. All we need is the right candidate/course of events/Republican screw-up, and happy days will be here again. We'll get 'em next time, old chaps.
Friends, this is suicide. It's also insanity - doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. This attitude is understandable among the status quo Dems, who have institutionalized jobs to hold onto and outmoded theories to defend; they have a personal stake in not facing the facts. But for everyone else on the left, there's just no excuse for it.
This radical conservatism is a very coordinated, very distinct movement that has existed in history before, many times. Every manifestation of it is unique to the country it crops up in, and it's the inevitable result of a systematic collusion between corporate power, religiosity, cultural conservatism and a single political party that gains total power over the mechanisms of the state.
Consider this universal definition of radical conservatism: "Radical conservatism demands racial, ethnic, or cultural unity and the collective rebirth of a nation while seeking to purge demonized enemies that are often scapegoated as subversive and parasitic. Radical conservatism is a form of authoritarian ultra-nationalism that glorifies action, violence, and a militarized culture. Radical conservatism can exist as an ideology, a mass movement, or a form of state government. Radical conservatism attacks both liberal democratic pluralism and left-wing revolutionary movements while proposing a totalitarian version of populist mass politics. Radical conservatism parasitizes other ideologies, juggles many internal tensions and contradictions, and produces chameleon-like adaptations based on the specific historic symbols, icons, slogans, traditions, myths, and heroes of the society it wishes to mobilize."
If this sounds like the modern conservative movement which controls all the levers of power in the United States, it is. Only the above definition was written to define radical conservatism by another name: Fascism.
While that word may conjure up images which seem decidedly foreign - brownshirts, Mussolini on horseback - the truth is, here in the United States, fascism looks like fundamentalist, ultra-Americanism. What we have here is a sort of "soft" fascism, or "pseudo-fascism," as the award-winning Seattle journalist David Neiwart has termed it. It is not yet a dictatorship (although the movement is consolidating its power so thoroughly that it's becoming nearly impossible for us to dislodge it), and it does not yet openly use violence to intimidate dissenters.
But consider these universal aspects of fascism, and compare them to what is taking place here in this country, and the tactics that the conservative movement has used to gain its power (via Neiwart's extraordinary 7-part series, The Rise of Pseudo Fascism, emphasis mine):
-- a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions;
-- the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether universal or individual, and the subordination of the individual to it;
-- the belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment which justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against the group's enemies, both internal and external;
-- dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effect of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;
-- the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary;
-- the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny;
-- the superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason;
-- the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success;
-- the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess in a Darwinian struggle.
Let us consider those aspects I have bolded:
A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions. The most frequent phrase we heard from the Republicans, justifying anything and everything, national security or corporate tax cuts, was that "9/11 Changed Everything." The tragedy has been used to push us into a neverending war, a permanent state of emergency, where fear is demanded of our citizens as a virtual patriotic duty.
The belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment which justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against the group's enemies, both internal and external. From Abu Ghraib to enemy combatants, from the USA PATRIOT Act to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, from curtailing our right to privacy to hinting at vast restrictions on our internet access (as was reported today), our victimhood is being used time and time again to justify measures which would have seemed unfathomable 5 years ago.
Dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effect of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences. When Ann Coulter began spewing her filth, many on the left (myself included) believed that her tactics of bullying and demagoguery, mixed with race-baiting and calls for the actual extermination of "liberals," would be seen as reactionary throwbacks to a stone-age mentality, and rejected by the American people. It turns out she was the wave of the future. From Santorum's man-on-dog statements to Bush's wink-wink gay marriage disapproval to more explicit condemnations of "liberal lifestyles" by the likes of Falwell and Robertson to the aggressive testosterone-fueled anti-liberal rants of Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh, the coordinated "culture war" is being waged on dozens of fronts. As with all traditional fascists, these bullies target the "weak" most of all - immigrants, minorities, the poor, homosexuals, intellectuals, artists. The message is clear - if you're not our kind of American, you're no American.
The need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny. In listening to the rhetoric coming from the Republicans, one would think that George Bush was the best of Winston Churchill, Harry Truman, Jesus Christ and John Wayne. They have urged a blind and inhuman devotion to the actual personage of George Bush himself (one of the creepier aspects of this being the Bush Pledge that supporters have been told to recite). It is not George Bush's policies or his record that demand subservience; it is Bush himself - his strength, his resolve, his moral fiber, his "Americanness".
The superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason. The war on reason and science, facts and accountability, has been waged for some time by the right. From pushing "intelligent design" creationist theory in public schools to the gutting of research funding to the cherry-picking of Iraq intelligence to the ridiculing of academics and artists (and our last two Democratic presidential nominees, whose very intellect somehow made them less than fit for office), reason is on the defensive in this country. One Bush official famously derided the "reality-based community" in Ron Suskind's recent New York Times Magazine article. This war on reason and empirical data is necessary to sustain the alternate reality in any fascist state; the state alone must have the power to dictate what is true and false, right and wrong, real and unreal.
More on the various manifestations of fascism in our country can be found here and here; those two sources are far more exhaustive than I wish to be. But the point is this: the conservative movement has taken over the Republican party, and it is devoted only to maintaining and expanding its own power. This means using explicitly fascist tactics: demonizing and marginalizing the opposition; harassing and disenfranchising groups of voters likely to support the opposition; stripping the opposition of its financial base and access to resources; taking control of vast portions of the media; harassing, intimidating and marginalizing those members of the media who encourage dissenting viewpoints; dismantling the organizing power of the opposition; strengthening their own financial and political base (witness Bush's two major "domestic initiatives," Social Security privatization and an overhaul of the tax code, both bonanzas for the corporations supporting the party financially); keeping the nation in a permanent state of fear and emergency; tagging the opposition as un-American or un-Christian; explicitly or implicitly encouraging the bullying of the weakest elements of our society; and celebrating aggression and violence as part of our national destiny.
This is a party ruled first and foremost by Tom Delay and Grover Norquist; George Bush is the president, but the Republicans are the soldiers of these two men, and they set the agenda. Mussolini once responded to a critic thusly: "The democrats of Il Mondo want to know our program? It is to break the bones of the democrats of Il Mondo." So it is with the modern Republican party; it exists now only to perpetuate itself and demolish the opposition; nothing resembling real solutions to our nations problems will come forth in the next four years.
After the election, I consoled myself with the belief that the Republicans were running the country into the ground, and that a military or financial crisis would finally bring them to their knees and usher in a Democratic president (and maybe even a Democratic Senate). I no longer believe such events would be enough to remove the Republican party from power. Here is why:
No accountability. Scandals require investigations, Congressional hearings, impeachment proceedings, and the like. We cannot hope for these things under the current Justice Department, Senate and Congress.
Financial crisis would inspire fear, which can easily be exploited to benefit the administration. George Bush and the Republican Noise Machine would have little trouble maintaining power for themselves in the event of a financial meltdown. Bush would likely take radical steps to further dismantle our social safety net, repackage it as a recovery plan, and be seen once again as a bold and decisive man of action. It is the same strategy over and over again; it worked in the past and it can work again, no matter what the facts are.
Military crisis, even requiring a draft, will also inspire fear and instinctive ultra-nationalism. Here they would have another opportunity to further clamp down on dissent and brand critics as offering comfort to the enemy.
The public-at-large does not understand that we have a one-party state. This is probably the most difficult obstacle to overcome. I have no empirical data on this, but feel free to take an informal poll of non-political people in your life. Chances are they don't know which party controls Congress. Or which party controls the Senate. Or which party appointed a majority of the Supreme Court Justices. The lack of awareness is very deep, and makes our situation seem far more benign than it is. Particularly confusing is the rhetoric which comes from the Republicans - listening to them speak, it sounds as though liberals hold all the keys and pull all the strings, while conservatives are fighting the evil liberal beast which threatens to engulf us all. For people to blame the Republicans for a national catastrophe on their watch, they must be convinced that the Republicans are indeed the party in power. It sounds insane, but most Americans don't know or understand this.
Here is the bottom line.
September 11 did indeed change everything. It gave the conservative movement the golden opportunity to consolidate power once and for all, to shore up support for what they hope is a permanent reign in Washington. The Democrats must realize that this is no longer politics; we're in a soft war. This is the greatest threat to our republic since the secession of the South. That's what we're fighting for here - America may disappear forever. What we must understand is that whether or not we believe there is a war, it is already being waged by the conservative movement. They will not surrender. They want to obliterate the Democratic party from the face of history, and they've been working toward that goal since the 60's. We will never win unless we fight the war they're fighting.
We will never win by merely altering stances on issues. We will never win by merely coming up with good ideas. We will never win by merely running a charismatic candidate, or debating more effectively than the Republicans. We will never win by making deals with them. We will never win by respecting their point of view (which is rootless and devoid of principle). We will never win with moderation. In short, we will never win by using the tactics that have won for us in the past. Whatever we say into large microphones can be twisted by those with larger ones. Whatever we claim to stand for can be twisted into an endorsement of the enemies of America. Whatever candidate runs will be mercilessly smeared over the airwaves of the most powerful message infrastructure in human history.
I believe our only hope is in local organizing. The Republicans know this; it's why Mussolini, Hitler, Franco and other Fascist leaders focused so much energy on breaking the backs of organized labor. Small-group, local, one-on-one organizing is the only way we will (a) educate enough people as to the source of the problems in our country and (b) break the grip of the conservative movement on our centers of power. This will, frankly, take years, but we must do it everywhere, in every community. But the Democrats can't do it with the message they have now. They need to realize certain things, preach them over and over, and field candidates who say the same things on the stump as the organized small-groups are saying to one another.
The Democratic Party must:
Oppose corporate power with all our might. Mussolini once said that Fascism should be more accurately called "Corporatism," since it was the economics of letting corporations control all aspects of the state. We are not the party of large corporations, and we never will be. Entrenched corporate power is our enemy, and the enemy of all who may vote for us. We must stop making friends with it. Vast corporate power is deeply hurting Americans, and Americans will listen, because they instinctively know it to be true. We need to remind every small business owner that large corporations are colluding with Republicans to rewrite regulations to squeeze out small businesses. We need to remind every farmer that large corporations are colluding with the Republicans to decimate their farms. We need to remind every low-wage employee that large corporations are working as hard as they can to keep workers impoverished. We need to remind every mother that large corporations are raising the cost of medical care by thousands of dollars per family, each year. We need to remind every senior that large corporations are colluding with the Republicans to raise the price of prescription drugs by hundreds of dollars per senior each year. We need to remind every student that large corporations are colluding with the Republicans to destroy their opportunity to build a life for themselves, to become entrepreneurs, to work in any capacity but the capacity they dictate. This can work, but it will take diligence, effort, unity of message, relentless discipline, and near-evangelical recruiting.
Stand for liberty and democracy first. This means jettisoning our position on guns. It is a price we must pay, but we must be the party of liberty. Short of the assault weapons ban, we must stand up for the right to bear arms. This also means that we must relentlessly champion freedom and individual rights (with less emphasis on group rights, rights of certain constituencies and not others, etc.). Think of it as a civil rights movement for every single American. This must be color-blind, for the oppression and disenfranchisement spans all races. Preach the words of Lincoln like they are our gospel. Lincoln, who sacrificed everything to keep our union together. This is the language we must use.
Organize unions. We must organize unions. Union members are instinctively more in tune with the economic ramifications of their political choices; even white male union members vote Democratic in vastly greater numbers than their non-union counterparts. But we must organize more than just labor and trade unions; we must organize unions based on values, as the Republicans have done. Organize moderate Christians in every church, Christians who believe in the moral issues of fighting poverty and oppression. Organize students who don't want corporations to plummet our environment or raid the treasury while bankrupting future generations. Organize unions of mothers, small business owners, hunters, ranchers, supermarket workers, restaurant employees - and do it with local people that they know and trust. We must go back to the tactics of Cesar Chavez, who organized impoverished, non-English-speaking farm workers against overwhelming odds, by appealing to their values and their human dignity.
Disassociate ourselves with the Washington establishment completely. This is a must, not only because of a failure of leadership, but because we must make the Republicans the party of power. We must place the blame for every awful thing that goes on in America squarely on their shoulders.
Force greater scrutiny of our elections. Whether by us or by members of the international community, we must see not only how the voting is conducted, but how the counting is conducted. We must force the Republicans to defend secrecy, to defend possible fraud, to oppose transparency, to oppose legitimacy.
I'm not sure how long this will take, but we will only regain power and begin to repair the damage to our country if we recognize what we're up against. We must start thinking less like politicians and more like members of an organized resistance. The machine we're up against is ruthless, and will not surrender power willingly. It will do everything possible, legal and illegal, ethical and indefensible, to hold onto its power. We cannot lull ourselves into thinking that in 2006 or 2008 or 2010 or 2012, everything will return to how it was in the good old days. We must fight. We must organize. We must preserve the nation bequeathed to us by our founders. We must deny their attempts to install their fundamentalist, ultranationalist regime where our republic used to be. And we must realize that in 2008, they will run the same campaign with the same traditionally fascist themes: military hyperagression and cultural purity. It will look, sound and feel the same. We must be ready for it. The time for Neville Chamberlains is past; we must have the courage to resist this movement; for it will get worse, and the actions we've seen from the likes of John Ashcroft, James Dobson, Michael Powell are only a precursor to what is to come. As Winston Churchill once said, this is not the end, or even the beginning of the end. It is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.