David Neiwert posts here at Daily Kos from time to time. (He’s a Daily Kos Staff Emeritus) He’s a published author and investigative journalist. I first ran across him thanks to Digby, if I recall correctly, who pointed to his website Orcinus. Although he hasn’t posted anything new there in a while, I still keep it bookmarked because it’s an extremely useful resource if you want to know how the right wing in this country has been steadily moving us towards Fascism.
If you scroll down the Orcinus web page (if you are using a smart phone, click on the link to see the web version), you will find a number of links on the left margin. The ones at the top are links to his books; below that you will find a number of essays, from roughly 2 decades ago.
This was the era of Rush Limbaugh and the rise of Fox News. It’s when the road to Trump was really getting paved with not-so-good intentions (David Corn has a must-read analysis of how far back that road goes), and it was a time when charges of Fascism were being bandied about — by the Right directed at the Left.
Neiwert has several essays at Orcinus discussing what the nature of Fascism is, and how back then the Right was approaching it, but wasn’t quite there yet. Newt Gingrich had ‘gifted’ the right with selected words and phrases intended to shape the way people think about the right versus the left; if anything it’s only gotten more extreme. Today Fascism is increasingly in the news and opinion pieces, so it is well worth taking a look at what Neiwert had to say back then in light of where we are now.
Rush, Newspeak and Fascism: An Exegesis wrestles with defining Fascism. It’s harder than you might think because Fascism is not an organized system of principles and ideas — it’s based more on emotional, non-rational beliefs. Neiwert looks at a number of different authors on the subject; it’s a resource just for that alone. Fascism doesn’t necessarily come in brown shirts and Nazi salutes (although we’re seeing them more and more.)
For an example of how Fascism can manifest, one need only look at a subscriber-only newsletter from Ross Douthat at the New York Times: The Roots of Trump Nostalgia. Read his appeals to ‘populism’, his alternative facts, reflex attacks on Biden and liberals, his minimization of Trump’s bad behavior, his concerns about ‘decadence’. Is Douthat a Fascist? I don’t think he would so identify himself, but he’s certainly manifesting characteristic elements of it. (Full access for those who can stand it.)
Look at Douthat, then look at the two quotes below Neiwert cites from Robert O. Paxton, Mellon Professor of Social Sciences Emeritus at Columbia University. They are taken from Paxton’s essay “The Five Stages of Fascism,” March 1998 edition of The Journal of Modern History.
...[E]ach national variant of fascism draws its legitimacy, as we shall see, not from some universal scripture but from what it considers the most authentic elements of its own community identity. Religion, for example, would certainly play a much larger role in an authentic fascism in the United States than in the first European fascisms, which were pagan for contingent historical reasons.
... The great “isms” of nineteenth-century Europe — conservatism, liberalism, socialism — were associated with notable rule, characterized by deference to educated leaders, learned debates, and (even in some forms of socialism) limited popular authority. Fascism is a political practice appropriate to the mass politics of the twentieth century. Moreover, it bears a different relationship to thought than do the nineteenth-century “isms.” Unlike them, fascism does not rest on formal philosophical positions with claims to universal validity. There was no “Fascist Manifesto,” no founding fascist thinker. Although one can deduce from fascist language implicit Social Darwinist assumptions about human nature, the need for community and authority in human society, and the destiny of nations in history, fascism does not base its claims to validity on their truth. Fascists despise thought and reason, abandon intellectual positions casually, and cast aside many intellectual fellow-travelers. They subordinate thought and reason not to faith, as did the traditional Right, but to the promptings of the blood and the historic destiny of the group. Their only moral yardstick is the prowess of the race, of the nation, of the community. They claim legitimacy by no universal standard except a Darwinian triumph of the strongest community. [Emphasis mine]10
Neiwert’s essay is dense reading, but instructive. Even 20 years ago you could begin to see how things were progressing. Those were the George W. Bush years — 911, the invasion of Iraq, Katrina, the Great Recession — yet it seems like a less fraught time now, after the shock of January 6 and the continuing miasma of Trumpism over the land. Neiwert quotes Paxton again:
... Feelings propel fascism more than thought does. We might call them mobilizing passions, since they function in fascist movements to recruit followers in fascist movements to recruit followers and in fascist regimes to “weld” the fascist “tribe” to its leader. The following mobilizing passions are present in fascisms, though they may sometimes be articulated only implicitly:
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The primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether universal or individual.
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The belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment which justifies any action against the group’s enemies, internal as well as external.
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Dread of the group’s decadence under the corrosive effect of individualistic and cosmopolitan liberalism.
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Closer integration of the community within a brotherhood (fascio) whose unity and purity are forged by common conviction, if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary.
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An enhanced sense of identity and belonging, in which the grandeur of the group reinforces individual self-esteem.
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Authority of natural leaders (always male) throughout society, culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s destiny.
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The beauty of violence and of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success in a Darwinian struggle.11
Going down Paxton’s list, it is fairly easy to identify these “passions” at play today, particularly in the debate over the Iraq war and the attacks on dissenters that occurred during it.
These words were written in 2003. It reads like a spot-on description of Trumpism and the MAGA movement. Anyone who tells you “No one could have seen this coming” has not been paying attention.
Neiwert’s concluding observations are prescient. It’s important to understand how Fascism manifests according to the circumstances in which it arises, so that it cannot go unnoticed and unchallenged.
My deeper purpose, though, was to sound a call to arms for Americans of every stripe who believe in democracy, because ultimately those are the institutions that are most endangered by fascism. Until the strands of far-right extremism that have insinuated themselves into the fabric of mainstream conservatism are properly identified and exposed, they will continue to wrap themselves around it and through it until its corruption is complete. And when that befalls us, it will probably be too late to stop it.
As the War on Terror, instead of combating the rise of fascimentalism, transforms itself into a War on Liberals; as conservatives increasingly identify themselves as the only “true” Americans; as Bush continues to depict himself as divinely inspired, and the leader of a great national spiritual renewal; as the political bullying that has sprung up in defense of Bush takes on an increasingly righteous religious and violent cast; and as free speech rights and other democratic institutions that interfere with complete political control by conservatives come increasingly under fire, then the conditions for fascimentalism will almost certainly rise to the surface.
These conditions remain latent for now, but the rising tide of proto-fascist memes and behaviors indicates that the danger is very real, especially as fascimentalist terrorist attacks take their toll on the national sense of well-being and security. It may take fully another generation for it to take root and blossom, but its presence cannot be ignored or dismissed.
European fascism was a terrible thing. An American fascism, though, could very well devastate the world.
If you want to understand how so many Americans can fall prey to this, why supposedly Christian people are ready to anoint Donald Trump as God’s chosen tool to redeem America, continue down the left margin at Orcinus, and find Sara Robinson’s key essays on authoritarian leaders and their followers. Drawn from the research of Professor Bob Altemeyer and The Authoritarians, Robinson spells out in plain language why they seem impervious to facts and reason to the point of harming themselves.
Cracks in the Wall:
Part I Defining the Authoritarian Personality
II, Listening to the Leavers
III. Escape Ladders
Tunnels and Bridges:
Part I Divide and Conquer,
II , Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself
III, A Bigger World
IV, Landing Zones
plus a Short Detour.
I realize there’s a lot to assimilate here. I have to revisit it periodically myself, but each time I do I have to mourn about the missed opportunities to recognize what has been coming for some time now. The media hasn’t yet fully acknowledged it; denial is still a reflex. “It can’t happen here” — to the point that people reactively try to put January 6 behind them and deny what’s happening in plain sight in the Republican Party.
Here’s Douthat, who after doing his own part to gloss over the horrors of the Trump presidency, comes up with this:
...Then there’s the nostalgia of those establishment Republicans who dislike Trump but also don’t want Democrats in power. For them, much of the Trump presidency was experienced as a pleasant policy surprise. Throughout the 2016 campaign they recoiled from his demagoguery, but they also worried that he wouldn’t govern as their kind of conservative, that he would make unpredictable judicial picks, abandon American military commitments and cut big bipartisan deals with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. But instead, Trump was a weak chief executive who let Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell run domestic policy, and who staffed his foreign policy offices with military men and traditional hawks like John Bolton.
This meant that no matter what Trump tweeted or what corrupt things he tried to do, for much of his presidency, establishment and business-class Republicans felt as if they were — to some degree, at least — in charge of the American government, getting exactly the judges they wanted, arming Ukraine and supporting Israel, passing a very traditional Republican tax cut. (And if they didn’t get sweeping spending cuts or dramatic entitlement reform, well, they didn’t get those with George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan, either.) Throughout, Trump’s general haplessness eased their fears about his authoritarianism, helping convince them that he was dangerous, sure, but also ultimately under their control.
The shock of Jan. 6, 2021, temporarily undid this conviction, temporarily reminded this faction of Republicans of Trump’s unfitness for the job. But like the left’s subconscious, the Republican establishment’s selective memory is a powerful force. And as the difficulty of preventing Trump from regaining the nomination has become apparent, many Republican elites have consoled themselves by remembering the years when they felt like they were running the Trump presidency — as opposed to the postelection months and the January day when they were definitely not.
That he can get paid for writing this and have it run in a major news outlet like The NY Times is a sign of how close to the edge we are sailing.