History Brings Some Optimism
Should we be worried? Absolutely. Trump’s untrained thugs are in the streets harassing people, abducting and detaining without warrant or just cause, and now committing murder. He creates the chaos, and then when people respond legitimately, uses it as justification for more state repression and violence – straight out of the Tyranny 101 textbook. He’s threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act against people who are absolutely not insurrectionists; or radical; or paid agitators; or any other dishonest term his circle of liars spits out.
He has, with the help of Republican sycophants in Congress, rendered the legislative branch inconsequential, and ignores any judicial rulings that oppose his actions. That means we have a government with one base of power, something that our constitution forbids, and its creators never condoned or allowed.
Everything we said about him before the election was accurate. And when faced with that reality, his strongest supporters cheer, his 2nd tier supporters offer excuses and rationalizations, and the bulk of so-called “regular” Republicans keep quiet like the good 1935 Germans they are so capably impersonating. (Of course, they become angry when that comparison is made, crying that those levelling the charge are mean and divisive. Well, if the muzzle fits…………).
But, despite this sorry and unprecedented state of affairs, I still have some hope that we can beat back this regime’s lurch into authoritarianism. This cautious optimism arises from something that Heather Cox Richardson stated a few months ago. She said, “I don’t predict the future; I predict the past.” Now, HCR has more historical knowledge in her big toe than I have in my brain after 33 years of teaching history. But I like using her formula to make sense and create context.
The reality is that the United States has a very different history than the countries that have degraded into fascist nightmares. Though our democracy is far from perfect, catering first to the wealthy and then to the corporations they formed, giving common people just enough power to keep them relatively satisfied, we still have a democracy; in fact, the world’s longest-lasting experiment in the sharing of power between members of society. I have some faith that democracy still means something to a majority of the American people, and that majority is going to fight for it.
This is in stark contrast to fascist dictatorships that came into being in industrial nations that we could say were most like the U.S. – Germany, Italy, and Spain before WWII. None of those countries had any real history of democracy. Germany, history’s most infamous example of fascism, had virtually no background of democracy for the German people to fight for. Its sad little foray into democracy was known as the Weimar Republic, which lasted for less than 20 years! They were the years between WWI and Hitler’s election in 1933, and that was unfortunate timing. Germany was reeling under the weight of WWI reparations; loss of territory; a horrible economy, with both unemployment and catastrophic inflation (you’ve all heard about the sacks of money needed to buy a loaf of bread); a great deal of political factionalism, rendering the new government unable to get anything accomplished.
When Hitler promised to restore pride, prosperity, and order, and then began to deliver, most Germans bought in. Opposition to growing fascism was sporadic and weak. Those able to organize against it, the socialist and communist parties, were quickly crushed, their members being the very first ones to be locked in Nazi prisons.
No democracy to defend, so little defense!
It was similar in Italy. It had been ruled as a monarchy, with limited powers given to a parliament that was partially elected and partially appointed by the king. After WWI, there was economic and political turmoil, with governments being short lived. Mussolini, like Hitler, promised to restore “order,” and his fascist party was embraced. Opposition was weak and easily quashed.
No democracy to defend, so little defense!
Spain is a bit more complicated, and I may be in over my head, but here’s the cliff note version. It was primarily a monarchy for centuries. At times under the king, there were legislatures that were weak and lacking in power. From 1923 to 1931, the country was a monarchy-approved military dictatorship. When that fell in 1931, there was a period of democratic rule. This was short-lived, as Francisco Franco and a group of generals staged a coup and ushered in a dictatorship that would last from 1936 until his death in 1975. This doesn’t fit into my model of limited resistance, however, as Spanish people did fight back in what turned into a civil war. That war lasted three years, with historians disagreeing on whether or not the progressive forces could ever have defeated the fascists. Some say that they could have won, had Hitler and Mussolini not stepped in to support the right-wing generals; others, however, maintain that Franco’s fascist army was better equipped and better organized, while the progressives were mired in disunity and factionalism.
The Spanish Civil War notwithstanding, my overall point here is that modern industrial, “western” nations that allowed fascism to rise had little to no history of democracy. Neither the German nor the Italian citizens had much notion of what democracy looked like, or what it could be. So, resistance was minimal and easily stamped out. By the time some folks in Germany realized how nasty and repressive fascism could be, the Nazi machinery was humming, ruthlessly suppressing dissident speech and behavior. Same with Italy and its National Fascist Party.
BUT THAT’S NOT US! We have maintained semi-democracy for 240 years! Most people believe in the idea. That’s crucial, because the idea of something can be as important as its actuality. As mentioned earlier, our political system has always been controlled by the wealthy – that upper-class is what almost all of the “founding fathers” represented, and they created a system which allowed the wealthy and their later instruments of wealth to keep power. But, and this a big but, the system they developed also had some room for input by common folks, and there have been times throughout our history when those folks made significant inroads into the landscape of power. And so, the idea of democracy has flourished in the minds of Americans. We believe that our democracy is actually truer than it really is, but what is it that motivates people – truth or what they believe to be true?
My sense is that a majority of Americans believe in the promise of democracy enough to fight for it. There have already been millions of people in U.S. streets protesting his policies – something that never happened in Germany or Italy. Resistance is already strong and vocal. I believe that it will continue, even as Trump’s forces become more violent. People may stop bringing their kids to demonstrations (up to this point, rallies and protests have been family affairs, with kids and sign-bearing dogs making the actions seem like county fairs minus the carnival rides and livestock). So, when it starts to get heavier and more dangerous, kids will be left home, and many parents won’t risk coming out, understandably reluctant to put their own lives on the line. But I optimistically guess that for every protestor hauled off to jail, injured, or even killed, there will be a thousand new demonstrators out to take their places. That’s what belief in the idea of democracy can engender. We may even be able to get the silent Republicans to defend what they claim to want.
Could we go the Spanish route - civil war? Hopefully not. We can hope, as HCR encourages us to do, that our mass resistance will overwhelm Trump’s desire to be a dictator. If he and the truly awful people he’s surrounded himself with may be willing to go to the wall, and start killing citizens at unprecedented rates, I’m not sure how it will end. Maybe at that point, many military leaders, who took an oath to the constitution – not to a man – will say “enough is enough.” Who knows? I hope beyond hope that if we just continue to “predict the past,” we’ll ultimately defeat fascism and usher in something different.
Maybe this optimism grows from my own stubborn unwillingness to accept the defeat that will keep me up at night. Or maybe it’s my knowledge that discouraged, pessimistic people never do anything to change situations for the better, so I steadfastly refuse to be one. Hopefully, however, it really does flow from an understanding that our history gives us a boost in the fight against authoritarianism.
Let’s let historically based optimism lead to the courageous actions that Americans have taken for 240 years, to not only win this thing, but to make the U.S. a better place than it’s ever been.
