The United States, like other western industrial countries, has always had people promoting violent prejudices, political paranoia, vicious conformity to gender and family structures, and individualist opposition to authority. But why did these tendencies suddenly cohere into an explosive mass movement big and strong enough to so quickly take over one of the two major American political parties?
Within just a few election cycles, the Republican Party has been totally transformed from traditional pro-business-establishment conservatism to an extreme right-wing populism –overtly racist and sexist, religiously fundamentalist, nationalistically isolationist, anti-democratic, anti-government, anti-tax, anti-establishment, and violently insurrectionary. The party is intimately integrated with a movement that considers itself to be the only legitimate embodiment of historic American constitutional values and “at war” with everyone other than themselves – specifically with the corporate liberalism that has dominated the Republican Party and US politics overall since the end of WWII: there is no longer room in the Republican party for Bob Dole-style business conservatives, much less Nelson Rockefeller-style corporate liberals. The movement has the active support of between a third and just under half of the US population, including not merely the expected libertarian billionaires and small businessmen, but also increasing numbers of non-college-educated, mostly (but not exclusively) white, working-class men and women.
As of early 2022, given worrisome inflation and resurging Covid, Biden’s failure to project strong leadership compounded by the Party’s inability to get its agenda through Congress, the huge gap between the enactment of the legislation that has passed and visible impacts in people’s lives, the resulting generally sullen mood and alarming passivity among Democratic voters – it is quite possible that the energized Republicans will retake at least one of the Congressional Houses in the mid-terms and go on to retake the Presidency as well. Even if they don’t win legitimate majorities, the GOP’s active efforts to gerrymander districts and restrict voting, coupled with their clear willingness to use their increasing control of the counting and election certification process to “find a few additional votes” gives them another route to victory. And, the spread of intimidation by often armed men screaming invective at local school and town board meetings across the country suggests that insurgency-style interventions will provide additional, bottom-up pressure on decision-making.
How did we get here? How did this movement gain so much power so quickly? There are lots of 2016 and Donald Trump specifics such as Donald Trump’s reality-TV celebrity skills at attracting attention and the splintering of the Republican Conservatives in the 2014 primary. There are organizational factors such as the role of the Libertarian Party in providing a national network for the Tea Party’s anti-tax revolt to grow. There are lots of longer-term dynamics such as the decades-long effort of right-wing funders to create media, academic institutes, judicial career ladders, and local electoral networks. And many more.
But at the deepest system levels, there are three roads to Trumpism. First, the evolving international economy and the domestic impact of the US corporate response to an increasingly competitive world. Second, the restructuring of white national identity in the context of domestic social-cultural instability and quality-of-life insecurity created by the hollowing out of the US manufacturing base, the growing assertiveness of previously subordinate groups, and the Democratic Party’s Neo-Liberal turn away from labor. And third, the continuing society-shaping power of our country’s institutionally-base, multi-generationally-reinforcing, system-wide racism.
- CHANGING SHAPE OF THE WORLD ORDER
Karl Marx was wrong about a whole of things. But he got some things right: the inherent tendency of capitalism to concentrate wealth, the periodic economic crises it creates that destroy huge amounts of wealth and many people’s lives, and the fact that the ideas of a society’s ruling class are that society’s ruling ideas. Not the only ideas. Not the ideas that everyone agrees with. Just the dominant ideas shaping the main political, economic, and cultural institutional systems of that society.
The 1930s Great Depression deeply discredited both the nation’s business leadership and the GOP. Economic collapse led to working-class upsurge and, coupled with a generation of immigrant stability and adaptation facilitated by the post-WWI restrictions of newcomers, energized the New Deal victory with its strong government-led interventions in both the economy and in providing social safety-net programs. WWII further strengthened the government's hand in raising taxes for social spending and requiring corporations to accept the presence of unions.
After WWII, as the only intact industrial nation, US corporations prospered by selling products to the rebuilding world, leading to a period of growth profitable enough to cover the cost of increased living standards within the US. Both the Democrats and Republicans took the post-New Deal “social compact” as a given, buying into various types of imperialist corporate liberalism. Not that more recalcitrant wings of the business and political worlds didn’t push from the right – Truman began the global Cold War, the Taft Hartley Act undermined unions, the McCarthy-style Red Scares silenced cultural and local progressives. It was the “American Century”, stable enough to create space for an entire cohort of Nelson Rockefeller business liberals to be a powerful wing of the GOP. There was room for all, on an individually-earned basis, to get ahead; overt, personal discrimination that prevented worthy individuals (particularly the female children of the well-off) from their place was not acceptable.
But stability led to a more confident and assertive working class, with the African-American-led Civil Rights movement energizing broader activism as local organizers in communities and workplaces began seeing that protest could bring results. All this rapidly escalated when President Johnson tried to maintain domestic spending while ramping up the war on Vietnam, creating a labor-market shortage that further empowered workers. The threat of middle-class children getting sent to the Southeast Asian swamps, the continued persistence of the Vietnamese fighters, the growing rebellion of African-American soldiers and citizens, and the increasing difficulty controlling the economy overwhelmed the declining New Deal consensus.
Even worse, from a business perspective, was the emergence of Japan, Europe, and to a growing extent the “Asian Tigers” -- Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan – as successful state-led economies. Under the twin economic and ideological squeeze of domestic unrest and global competition, the US business world moved to the right, swinging their support to Nixon who squeezed to victory by tapping into racism through his “Southern Strategy”.
Under Carter and then, drastically, by Reagan, government regulation and labor support (or even neutrality) were cut. Carter cut the federal budget and federal jobs programs, stopped labor law reform efforts, and pulled back from detent with Russia. His willingness to wring inflation out of the economy through a drastic recession enervated the labor movement. Under Reagan the domestic economy was increasingly “financialized”, meaning that profits (and therefore investment) shifted to the banks and other sources of capital and away from domestic manufacturing. Taxes and social programs were cut; Reagan explicitly said that “government is the problem”. Domestically, working class living standards began to stagnate as corporations parasitically used their US base as sources of capital for overseas expansion. Conglomerates (buying control of firms in a range of unrelated fields both domestically and then internationally) and multi-nationals (moving manufacturing and supply lines overseas, through purchase or overpowering contracts or financially-based mechanisms of control over non-US businesses) proliferated. Politically, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the autonomy of its former sphere of influence made the US the world’s only superpower. By 1990, the first Bush president was able to proclaim a “New World Order” of “free markets” and “Free Trade” under US domination. Bill Clinton’s New Democrats (like Tony Blair’s New Labor in the UK) used “triangulation” as a tool for his Neo-Liberal presidency, adapting much of the Republican agenda into the Democratic mainstream both domestically and internationally.
Underlying globalism was the incredible development of information and communication technologies. It was now possible to centrally oversee and coordinate globe-spanning supply, manufacturing, and shipping chains – without the layers of middle management such operations once required. It was possible to move advanced machinery under digit control to low worker-skill areas anywhere – and then quickly move them again if labor or other costs began to rise.
But not even all this prevented global capitalism from trouble. Europe and (especially) China kept growing, taking over increasing amounts of the world economy, including the US market. Anti-US and World Bank movements in Third World countries – both religious and secular – grew in power, contesting both local US-backed elites and US dictates. US social movements – Black, Queer, female, and others -- were reviving and beginning to push anti-discrimination into increasingly intrusive and politically threatening areas of historical structure and institutional policy. US business interests were desperate for a rollback. Rights had to be curtailed. Regulation cut. Taxes lowered.
In the US, the mostly coastal trading and knowledge-based cities were thriving – uplifting the regional professional and financial workforce -- while the mid-west manufacturing base collapse and agriculture’s corporate consolidation reduced living standards. The growing climate crisis threatened extractive industries (mostly located in the South-North corridor down the center of the continent) while Covid disrupted increasingly complex international supply chains.
Just as Hitler and the German fascist movement suddenly took over Germany in 1933, a year after a majority of people voted for leftist parties, by 2015 the business world was willing to get behind an uncouth man whose excited mass base seemed about to push him through the electoral quagmire. Trump took office, in part, because he was invited in. And like the fascists, while he is totally pro-business, he is no friend of the established elites, particularly many parts of the financial world. The businesses he favors are those that he profits from or that support him.
2. COMMUNITY BUILDING AMIDST ETHNIC/RACIAL RECONFIGURATION
Humans are social beings. Without contact and caring, babies die, psyches wither, little gets accomplished. Braided within the primary human drives for survival (food, warmth, shelter, safety) as well as within the emotional/spiritual drives (meaning, purpose, challenge), people have an innate need for connection – with both surrounding individuals and groups. As we grow our circles expand – parents, family, friends, community, tribe, religion, institutions, regions, nations. We are always and by necessity part of, identify with, and mostly live within communities. It is from this innate biological drive that the psychological and sociological overpowering strength of identity politics derives – we need to know and build on “who am I?” in a way that combines our reality with our dreams. Not that most people most of the time are self-conscious of this existential drive, but its impact is nonetheless seen in our self-definitions and our patterns of social connection.
But no matter how large our circle of identity, our community, communities are inevitably limited, both in content and scope. Communities have boundaries; with few exceptions, they define themselves and gather strength by playing on that distinction. Even stronger, feeling threatened or even just challenged by another group is one of the most powerful forces leading to in-group unity – of catalyzing a “we” by being “versus them.” The boundaries and the definition of communities can change. But even as they do, we tend to feel more comfortable and spend more of our choice time with people like ourselves.
The merging of European ethnicities into a national white American identity (previously confined to white Protestants) after the Immigration Restriction Acts of WWI was solidified by mass participation in WWII followed by the post-war move to less ethnically-defined suburbs and workplaces.
At the same time, changes in the Southern economy (primarily expressed through agricultural land consolidation and labor-reducing mechanization) combined with increased unwillingness to tolerate violent racist oppression and expanding industrial opportunities in the North led to the Great Migration of African-Americans to urban areas. The Democratic Party’s New Deal Coalition of urban ethnic machines and small businesses, labor organizations, and non-industrial capitalists had to make room for these newcomers, leading to acceptance of Great Society and Voting Rights initiatives. Taking advantage of these openings, the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black identity movements exploded, catalyzing Brown, Red, women, and gender-identity “Liberation” upsurges – each combining cultural, personal identity, and systemic themes.
The rise in “outsider” identity politics revived feelings of ethnic pride across the American population. But the degree of assimilation among those of European background quickly softened particular ethnic feelings into broader racial identities while reinforcing white Americans’ sensitivity to the boundaries of their own community. And, in the context of national business elite’s increasing pressure on the American workforce, abided by the elite-oriented political alliances of both the established Democratic and Republican Parties, they felt increasing need to protect what they had – and increasingly angry at those who they saw as threatening that status – both those “above” and “below” them in cultural status.
Living standard grievances tend to be specific and material, focused on discrete and definable demands. Status anxiety is more protean and almost always subjective – we compare ourselves to “The Jones” who used to live next door but now enter our consciousness via TV and other media, where envy invoking lifestyles and surroundings are upscaled and pictures of former “outsiders” enjoying that privileged life are increasingly visible. Status insecurity on top of economic instability adds insult to injury, anger to pain. It is a cauldron of fury waiting to overflow.
There is a cultural component to this readjustment. In the past, white families saw themselves reflected in pictures of the nation’s leadership and on the mainstream media. But in recent years, under pressure from demographic changes, civil rights, and the need to expand markets, the picture of America being presented for public display was increasingly multi-racial, multi-gender, multi-sexually oriented – and, in pursuit of advertising-desirable audiences, college-educated and economically comfortable. For many white Americans, this was no longer an image of “us.” All of which made it easier to accept “white replacement” and “cancel culture” conspiracy theories.
The growth of populist movements is itself evidence of elite failure. It represents the dissolution of the national community led by those elites, tying the bottom to the top by aspiration and respect as much as by pragmatism and acquiescence or even fear and violence. The need for identity and connection doesn’t go away, it just refocuses – and, on the right, the aggressive outreach of the libertarian super-rich to grassroots activism helps shape that process. Still, on both the left and right, the refocusing is energized by the accumulating hurt and fury of those feeling abandoned and disrespected by those with power over them. By 2016, anti-establishment emotions were so high that many people approved of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump – the two candidates expressing the most anger at the status quo.
In the US, this feeling was reinforced by the reawakening of memories of the loss in Vietnam by the endless fiasco of the wars in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. Lost wars always discredit those who ruled over them. It should not be surprising that many among the hundreds of thousands of returned veterans began feeling betrayed – how else could the most powerful country in the world have been repeatedly defeated by such minor foes? Remembering their military experience of comradeship and purpose, veterans began forming groups. Given their origins and the increasing ties between the armed forces and the Republican Party, it’s not surprising that these groups tilted rightward.
But it’s important to remember that this post-American Century dynamic was happening around the world. The collapse of the Soviet Union unleashed regional separatist movements around its periphery; the flood of refugees fleeing climate-related and civil war disasters in Africa and the Middle East sparked nationalist boundary-tightening, leading to a resurgence of authoritarian movements and governments. Similarly, the growing inability of the US to control either the increasingly shaky world economy or its local clients created space for cultural and military insurgency. In the absence of respected progressive alternatives – nearly every 1960-1980 liberation movement has either been defeated or, if victorious, become corrupted, and authoritarian – religious-based populist movements have been the most successful, tilting (particularly in the Islamic world) into fundamentalist fanaticism.
3. THE POWER OF INSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURES
Nearly every large society and social-economic system in human history grew through the massacre, rape, pillage, and enslavement of others at some point in their past. European capitalism was no exception, ramping up the subtleties of economic exploitation to new degrees. English settler colonialism, drawing on its experience of population replacement in Northern Ireland – dealing with trouble in newly conquered Scotland and Ireland by sending Protestants to push out the Catholics – slowly transformed North America as the same group trouped overseas, pushing aside the Indigenous people and becoming (even after subsequent waves of European migration) the nation’s largest cultural-religious group, retaining that distinction into the 21st century in most non-urban parts of the South. And English slavery, again drawing on experience in Ireland and the Caribbean, was particularly totalistic -- creating in the American South stronger color lines and legal ownership systems than in most other forms as it increasingly focused on Africans. We now know that the African slave trade and enslaved labor were essential to the growth of commerce, industry, and finance in both the mother country and its eventually independent offspring.
By the time of the US Civil War, slavery was on the verge of being constitutionally enforceable across the entire country. If it weren’t for the need to undermine the South’s labor-power, it’s not clear that Lincoln would have freed the slaves: while most Northerners saw slaves as unfair competition, few supported racial equality. And the rapid re-imposition of white control after the war raised few objections, particularly as anti-Asian sentiments and imperial aspirations took hold later in the 1800s.
Racism was not the only structural hierarchy built into American society. Despite occasional objections, patriarchy was as assumed here as it was around the rest of the world. Violence and its accompanying male pomposity was a cultural fixture – particularly acute because of the decentralized frontier life that formed and continually re-inspired the new nation. Protestant zealotry followed the Scotts-Irish to the New World, leading to waves of anti-Catholic mobilizations. As the nation industrialized, economic hierarchies solidified and were brutally enforced.
But racism was the dead weight at the bottom of US socio-political development, the keel that allowed the ship to sail. From slavery to share-cropping to convict labor to mass incarceration, from Slave Patrols to the KKK to the police, from violent oppression to legal and then tracked-opportunity segregation, racism has been structured into the foundation of American socio-economic and cultural systems. Shifts in its methods and base of support have repeatedly reshaped American society and politics. The “Restoration” creation of Jim Crow in the late 1800s led to the racist Dixiecrat regime that dominated Southern states and Congress for the next fifty years, shaping much of the New Deal programs so that segregation and inequality were built into the post-WWII society, adding to the multi-generational disparities.
In the middle of the 20th century, the Civil Rights movement’s exposure of the egregious anti-Black violence of the South, and the decreasing labor needs of increasingly mechanized Southern agriculture, combined with the need for the Democratic Party to include northern African-Americans in the urban coalitions that were a key component the Party’s electoral power, the remaining strands of Republican liberalism, and the Cold War need to burnish the US image as the upholder of freedom. All this made national leaders open to anti-discrimination and voting rights laws. Civil Rights was a bi-partisan issue. However, President Johnson’s identification with the Civil Rights Acts, followed by the Dixiecrat withdrawal from the Party and then Richard Nixon’s implied appeal to segregationists through his “Southern Strategy” suddenly made the Republican Party the primary political home for racism. And, as Ezra Klein and others have described, the enormous weight of that consolidation into one political party set the stage for the shifting of a wide range of other conservative causes into the GOP, making it a more ideologically-coherent force and setting the stage for today’s polarization – in the context of which increasing extremism and Trump-style incitation is an effective strategy for gaining attention.
Systemic racism is a form of institutional violence on the well-being of the oppressed. But it also leads to the projection of that violence into day-to-day inter-racial relationships. In the early years of the Republic, particularly in the majority of states economically dependent on slavery, the purpose of gun ownership (beyond hunting for food in rural areas) quickly shifted from defense against foreign invasion to slave control: every white male had the right (and often the legal obligation) to personally enforce black subjugation. Catching run-aways was the bottom-line job of local sheriffs and vigilantes. The contemporary version of that function is performed by urban police forces, who have been killing people across the US, disproportionately non-whites, at a rate of nearly three a day for years.
The Black Lives Matter uprising raised the stakes. There were months of multi-racial, Black-led demonstrations in dozens of cities demanding not only the total replacement of current policing practices but also the dismantling of the institutional systems that while officially committed to “race neutral” operations actually work to replicate and expand historic inequality. Black Lives Matter was probably the largest and most radical push for system-wide racial justice since Reconstruction. And pushed by both the national shock at the media-visibility of continuing police atrocities and the presence of the continuing demonstrations, these demands were beginning to prompt self-examination in a variety of organizations.
Coming after the to-white-America-shocking ascension of a Black man to the White House, the Black Lives Movement sparked a powerful counter-attack. The rapid rise of armed vigilante groups – tens of thousands of people have now signed up for one or another of the “Patriotic” gun-carrying networks – and the escalation of “open carry” demands are an effort to re-assert the white right to dominate the streets. Rather than being the embarrassing finale of the Trump years, the January 6th insurrection has become a rallying cry and inspiration for the far right. Incidents of intimidation have spread around the country as belligerent men storm into town and school board meetings and voting-control offices. At least one member of the CIA’s Political Instability Task Force has applied its analytic tools to the US and sees the strong potential for “civil war” similar to Northern Ireland, Palestine, and elsewhere. “It’s going to look more like a siege of terror,” says Professor Barbara F. Walter of UC San Diego, “fought by lots of small factions, militias, paramilitary groups who use different types of tactics — insurgency, guerrilla warfare, terrorism.”
The multi-generational impact of racially disparate treatment built into nearly every American institution created a system-wide coherence that shaped American culture and consciousness as much as its hierarchy of income and wealth. The in-your-face experience of personal prejudice is one result. (Even though individual acts of discrimination are the limit of what most people think of as racism, and even though the “micro-aggressions” of everyday life can be humiliatingly and infuriatingly emotionally damaging to its victims, it’s important to remember that this is mostly a secondary aspect of the underlying societal patterns of racially-segregated employment, housing, and educational opportunity.)
4. THE WHOLE VERSUS THE PARTS
History is always open for interpretation. The values and vision expressed by a society’s cultural symbols are always open to change. In recent years, the far-right has been repeatedly able to claim ownership of America’s past – its key ideas and symbols – from the flag to the constitution, from the idea of freedom and liberty to personal empowerment and responsibility, from family stability and mutual respect to spiritual community and national pride.
Part of their success comes from the complexity of America’s past. In the midst of our country’s oppression and exploitative practices, the American experience also created a set of ideals that were revolutionary and expressed in universal language capable of inspiring the oppressed as much as the privileged. Yes, the Founding Fathers only meant themselves when they wrote “We the People” – an arrogance based on their assumption that their authority and personhood embodied the entire population, including their “inferiors.” Yes, the waves of radical egalitarianism that swept both the North and South were wrapped in anti-Catholicism or pro-slavery racism. Nonetheless, the slogans and concepts were expandable and applicable even by those who were originally excluded. And that has made a profound difference: almost every movement in American history has been energized by the desire to be allowed into the American mainstream rather than to break away. (Even the Garveyites and Mormons ended up abandoning their separatist visions.) Yes, government at every level has generally helped keep labor subservient. Yet, the dispersed and constantly evolving entrepreneurial openness of the economy supported a cultural affirmation of self-empowerment that freed individuals from their family, ethnic, or class history. Yes, Liberal opposition to discrimination generally was limited to interpersonal barriers that prevented individual advancement rather than the systemic and structural multi-generational disparities that shaped the playing field. Yet, the idea of equal opportunity was broad enough to create space for more expansive analyses and demands.
It should not be surprising that religious fundamentalism and anti-science sentiment loom so large in American culture today; it always has. Rejection of science in favor of Bible literalism has been part of evangelical theology since Darwin. Even today, nearly half of the population considers itself “born again” into Christ, or belongs to a conservative Catholic diose. And a large majority of the population believes in the guiding presence of a higher power.
It should not be surprising that the rejection by the economic establishment of large-scale blue-collar employment as part of their strategy for profitable growth -- coupled with loss of the traditional elite’s cultural status as formerly “outsider” groups get increased representation – has led to a redefinition of nationalism within narrower boundaries. People retreat into smaller defensive positions when confronted with hard times and bleak futures.
It should not be surprising that going along with the status quo, wanting change but not too much too quickly – being conservative – is the default attitude of most people who know life is tough and the bumps that can stumble us from ok to in-trouble can appear without warning. As recently as 2019 the percentage of Americans who call themselves conservative was nearly a third larger than those self-describing as liberal (35 to 26). A year earlier, well into the Trump Presidency, “by a margin of 57-37, Republicans wanted their party to become more conservative; by a margin of 54-41, Democrats wanted their part to become more moderate.” (from “Why We’re Polarized” by Ezra Klein -- an excellent discussion of the polarizing processes in our political and cultural lives.)
It should not be surprising that the hard truths of the “1619 Project” proclaiming that our entire history is based on racism and that all progress towards our ideals has come from the efforts of African-Americans should be opposed by a “1776 Project” that re-affirms the role of other actors in the growth of this country’s ideals and prosperity. The path to today’s historically high standards of living and life spans was paved by the labor of Africans. But that path was also coated with the blood, sweat, and painful lives of white children and their parents toiling in mines, cotton mills, and farm fields whose suffering also deserves recognition and appreciation. Progressives seeking a broader base are going to have to find ways to build on the alternative narrative so well-articulated by President Obama – that we are a diverse nation with amazingly inclusive values towards which everyone has contributed and whose progress towards its highest ideals has been driven by the heroes who have fought to realize them.
Incorporating both 1619 and 1776 perspectives is a Democratic Party imperative. The GOP has a relatively homogeneous ideology and demographic that is supported by key local institutions such as their Church, veterans’ group, business associations, and active local Party committees. A better Democratic Party narrative will not convince the polarized Republican voters nor make much impact on the few remaining “undecided” swing voters. But the Democratic Party has a very diverse constituency – holding its base together is a much more complicated task and lacks a local institutional base – primarily as a result of the integration of unionized blue-collar families into the middle-class mainstream, the decline of the labor movement into bureaucratic self-preservation, and the New Democrat’s Neo-Liberal turning away from union partnerships. Furthermore, African-Americans are only 14% of the population, a steadily declining percentage from a high of 20% at the nation’s founding 300 years ago. And, like most Americans, most African-Americans have only marginal interest in electoral politics; getting significant percentages to vote takes enormous effort – money, people, organization – within a highly motivating context and a low-barrier process to raise the group’s election turnout. African-Americans can provide the margin of victory in tight elections where their numbers are large, particularly when the Democratic candidate is a person of color seeking to end years of white dominance. Nonetheless, it is predicted that whites will remain a majority of voters until at least 2050 – and long after that in rural areas and states where Republican control allows voting restrictions.
The reality of a polarized and increasingly radicalized Republican Party is not going away anytime soon, if ever. There is no longer much room for a “middle ground” at the federal level and, as the polarization spreads across issues and down to daily life, increasingly at the state or local levels. This is, as the far-right realized and began preparing for decades ago, a vicious and all-out battle. And there are few viable methods available in our government, social media, or culture to end it. At best, we are in for an extended time of national-level gridlock. At worst, there is going to be ruthless Republican consolidation of power and imposition of much of their rabid agenda.
There are some possible positive paths forward. We have to keep believing in their validity in order to motivate ourselves, and others, to stay engaged. But we also need to acknowledge that the political momentum tilts far-right these days. And we should have no illusion about how many Americans will go with the flow into “Good German” accommodation to the Republican regime, no matter how extreme it gets. It’s only a three-step process:
…the far-right comes to power promising the strong action that a rapidly deteriorating situation requires, running against “those who have betrayed us." Surrounding their “respect for the Constitution and the law” rhetoric is a national movement of violent intimidation conducted by “unofficial” actors. But the ambiguous language of the leadership allows most people to continue believing that "life goes on" and the deeper rules of our society will continue to be followed.
…Once in authority, the rightists use their legitimacy to escalate tensions and then find ways to conduct massive and repeated waves of repression against expanding layers of opponents, seriously weakening the networks capable of mounting a serious fightback ("and then they came for...and then they came for....until there was no one…”) and narrowing the political space for the rest of the population who quickly come to understand that "going along" is the best chance for safety and to share the improvements that the fascists are using their control of government to provide.
…Then, even though their power is fully secure, the fascist aspects of the new regime continue whipping up action against "internal enemies,” and increasing numbers of people realize that they have to join up and express enthusiasm in order to get ahead. Not everyone is a full-blooded true believer, but almost everyone knows that rejection of the new normal will leave them isolated and vulnerable and is unlikely to have any impact anyway.
It's no accident that so many of the January 6 rioters said something like "My President told me to come" -- people tend to obey "official" authority, if only because we all live within the society that the leaders are in charge of. From the other direction, it is very significant that almost the entire GOP today accommodates the party’s fanatic base’s rejection of the legitimacy of the election that replaced Trump: it opens the door for anything they want to do.
Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high” rule can no longer shape Democratic strategy. There is a difference between being unethical and being viciously tough. It’s time to fight. Progressives have to play to win, and then use whatever power they have to maximize continued political power and policy implementation. So far, the most successful Progressive races are those featuring a charismatic younger person capable of articulating a locally-focused “we are all in this together” message with an anti-establishment undertone and labor-friendly populist platform points in a demographically-changed district backed up by years of community-based organizing and abundant funding. There aren’t a whole lot of districts that meet those criteria. We have to continue fighting back at every level and in every way we can. At the same time, we need to begin figuring out how to survive the coming disasters. Good luck.