...and you’re not going to like them. Far-right gains in European elections are a warning. Even today, after four years of Trump and an attempted autogolpe, there are political leaders and thought leaders who treat the Republican Party as a legitimate democratic partner in the government of the country.
To be fair, there are reasons so many politicians and pundits are reluctant to call out the GOP as the anti-democratic cult of personality it is. Because Republicans tell outrageous lies about Democrats, if Democrats tell outrageous truths about Republicans—especially with political media still committed to a both-sides narrative—it’s not unreasonable to worry that voters may dismiss anything they hear. After all, in the 2012 presidential election, when informed of the details of the Republican budget plan (ending Medicare to fund tax cuts for the rich), participants in a focus group “refused to believe any politician would do such a thing”. Repeated warnings that Republicans were going to use the Supreme Court to curtail civil rights went ignored. People wanted to believe that it—the big it—couldn’t happen here, but this overlooks the fact that it has happened here already.
By “it”, I mean fascism, and by “fascism” I mean...well, it’s complicated. Fascism is not an either/or binary. I’ve come to regard fascism not as something one believes or something one is, but as something one does. Asserting that the Republican Party is fascist is not as useful as pointing out that Republican leaders are doing fascisms. It’s easy to look at American history and see groups and individuals who have done what we today consider fascisms, from enforcing single-party rule to embracing violent paramilitaries to state-sponsored expulsions and pogroms. So fascism is a spectrum: Do one or two fascisms and you’re a standard Jim-Crow-era politician; do a few and you’re a populist demagogue or authoritarian; do a bunch and you’re Mussolini.
But our national myth, American exceptionalism, won’t let us believe extremism can take root here, or that hard-won rights—and democracy itself—can be lost. Warnings, even from President Biden himself, are often drowned out by reassurances that everything is all right. Nancy Pelosi saying “this country needs a strong Republican Party.” David French arguing in The Atlantic that the overturning of Roe doesn’t threaten Obergefell because Alito pinky-swears it. Kathleen Parker, who once reassured her Washington Post readers that Roe was in no danger but now has seamlessly shifted to it’s-not-that-bad.
It’s pretty much up to all of us to push back against these kinds of narratives, and sound the warning.
Anyway, I had all this in the back of my mind while I was watching a lotta film noir, and the result of this creative fusion is a video in which I address these topics in the guise of a femme fatale. If you’ve got forty minutes to spare, come take a look.