View this post on the web at [link removed]

As the presidential election currently underway lumbers to its culmination next Tuesday, writers across the political spectrum are issuing what some have described as “closing arguments [ [link removed] ].” Many make important points. I write today to observe a few that seem to remain widely overlooked. 
To imagine that the United States can save itself from fascism with an election among candidates handpicked by corporate elites, who agree on continuing a genocide and escalating human rights abuses at our nation’s borders, and whose only disagreements appear to relate to personal epithets and lofty rhetoric about supposed rights that Democrats cynically abandoned even before Republicans, is worse than a cruel joke. It verges on public gaslighting…. 
Thanks for reading Chronicles of a Dying Empire! You can help inform your friends by sharing this post.
A fascist rally in New York City
Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday was replete with racist rhetoric [ [link removed] ], and fairly described by journalists who covered it as a fascist rally, evoking an earlier one [ [link removed] ] held in the same venue in 1939.
But the 2024 version was more than just a rally on the eve of a critical election declaring one side’s support for fascism. It was a reflection of the bipartisan state of American politics.
Marshall Curry, an observer of last Sunday’s rally who previously directed a short documentary film [ [link removed] ] about its precursor in 1939, shared some pointed reflections in its wake. Speaking with Forward magazine, he reported [ [link removed] ] that:
[S]uddenly all of these same people who are like my friends and family and neighbors seemed swept up by a lot of the dark stuff that was being spouted at them from the stage….you see this audience of Americans in their hats and their suits and their dresses, and they’ve dropped their kids off with the babysitter and gone out for an evening to cheer and laugh as somebody attacks people who will be killed by the millions in the next couple of years.
…
[People] don’t need to listen to liberals like me about whether [Trump is] a fascist; his own chief of staff and his own chairman of the joint chiefs and Liz Cheney…all three of those people have said he’s a fascist. His own vice president, who served with him, will not endorse him because…he put himself over the Constitution.
Trump’s rally was orchestrated by figures calculating that the racist perspectives featured by speakers would serve them, rather than alienate potential supporters. The mere fact that anyone would seriously embrace that calculation in 2024 is a reflection of how far our country has retreated from the vision of a post-racial society [ [link removed] ] imagined by Barack Obama and his supporters nearly 20 years ago.
Liberals wring their hands while refusing to look in the mirror
Kamala Harris has correctly labeled Trump a fascist, while refusing to look in the mirror or acknowledge that fascism is as structural and cultural as it is political [ [link removed] ], and a more apt description of a system than any particular politician produced by it. Put simply, Democrats now claim to fear fascism after having long enabled it.
Biden was chosen through back room deals in 2020 [ [link removed] ], and before that in 2008 [ [link removed] ]. Like him, Harris was chosen through backroom deals in 2024 [ [link removed] ] after withdrawing from the 2020 primary [ [link removed] ], in which she failed to win a single state primary, including the one in her home state. Neither of them can claim any democratically defensible pathway to their current positions, let alone the mantle they claim of defenders of democracy.
The United States has never embodied democracy at any point in its history, and to imagine it to have done so sadly does a disservice to both history and the concept of democracy.
Chronicles of a Dying Empire is a publication supported by readers, rather than advertisers. To receive new posts, sign up for a free subscription! To support my work documenting what professional journalists lack the independence to observe, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
To imagine that the United States can save itself from fascism with an election among candidates handpicked by corporate elites, who agree on continuing a genocide and escalating human rights abuses at our nation’s borders, and whose only disagreements appear to relate to personal epithets and lofty rhetoric about supposed rights that Democrats cynically abandoned even before Republicans, is worse than a cruel joke. It verges on public gaslighting, which is precisely what propagandists get paid to do. 
What is fascism?
Kamala’s description of Trump as a fascist takes some inspiration from his own former appointees. Many [ [link removed] ] have described him, his mannerisms, and his policies, as similar to those embraced by Adolf Hitler in the last century.
But to reduce fascism to an aesthetic overlooks the extent to which it is actually rooted in particular principles which both Democrats and Republicans have widely come to embrace. Fascism is defined [ [link removed] ] by specific and particular elements, including the fusion of the public and private spheres; xenophobia towards immigrants and foreigners; international belligerence and militarism; and a disregard for human rights. Every one of those factors suggests that fascism is not only a threat under a future Trump presidency, but has been a defining feature of the United States for at least the past generation [ [link removed] ]. 
Among the issues where Democrats have shamelessly moved towards the right wing, in both rhetoric and policy, is immigration. The United States has long prided itself on being a nation composed of immigrants. Poems inviting immigrants to come to our shores are literally inscribed in stone [ [link removed] ] at the base of national monuments.
Yet, across political parties, Americans have turned their backs on themselves and their own histories, demonizing migrant laborers and their families as everything from “rapists and murderers” (to borrow Donald Trump’s phrasing) to threats to American jobs and prosperity, ignoring the fact that immigrants typically work harder [ [link removed] ] than people born in the United States and are more often job creators then competitors for working class jobs.
Help inform your friends!
Meanwhile, international belligerence and militarism have become firmly entrenched under both political parties. In fact, Harris’ greatest electoral threat is the possibility that so many voters, particularly in the pivotal state of Michigan, stand aside rather than support her given her complicity in an escalating genocide in Gaza [ [link removed] ].
American foreign policy remains defined [ [link removed] ] by any opportunity to sell weapons to any particular dictator abroad. That is a defining factor of not only fascism, but of an international role in spreading it across the globe. That role, meanwhile, has been firmly entrenched for the past 75 years, even though oblivious journalists and editors lack the independence to observe the reality under their feet that compromised their independence a long time ago.
To counter their complicity in international human rights abuses, Democrats claim to care a great deal about the inclusion of domestic minority communities. Yet they have actively leveraged white supremacy as an election strategy [ [link removed] ] when threatened by voices from within the communities they claim to defend. To imagine the Democratic Party as anything but fascist requires profound ignorance, which has grown unfortunately widespread through the co-opted work of journalists.
Billionaires wield capital as a weapon louder than any vote
[N]ewspapers across the country have announced their unapologetic abandonment of journalism at the behest of wealthy owners putting their financial interests before the ethical interests of journalism, and the role of journalism in what Americans imagine to be a functional democracy.
…
The loss of an independent press is as much an indication of fascism as bipartisan fealty to Israel.
“One person, one vote” is a great vision. The Supreme Court relied on it [ [link removed] ] when striking down an earlier era of unapologetically skewed representation. Yet no one seems to blink today, as wealthy capitalists demonstrate unprecedented influence making a mockery of the political equality on which democracy relies. 
For instance, consider the vastly different levels of political power enjoyed by essential workers forced to work [ [link removed] ]—even at the risk of their own health in the middle of a global pandemic—and billionaire tech bros whose whims threaten to shift the election. One is entirely funding the ground game of one of the candidates, which appears to have revealed predictable gaps [ [link removed] ] when trying to mobilizing a workforce without even telling workers what they’re working on [ [link removed] ] until after they’ve been hired and signed nondisclosure agreements.
As if billionaires personally funding presidential turnout campaigns were not enough,  newspapers across the country have announced their unapologetic abandonment of journalism at the behest of wealthy owners putting their financial interests before the ethical interests of journalism, and the role of journalism in what Americans imagine to be a functional democracy.
Both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post have been forced by their respective owners, both billionaires, not to endorse a presidential candidate. On the one hand, this doesn’t particularly bother me, since both of the candidates nominated by the major political parties have been complicit in the rise of fascism, and there isn’t much meaningful daylight between them for the legions of precarious people challenged by existential risks, such as homelessness, police violence, Washington-backed state terrorism, or the operation of markets that relentlessly prey on working people.
On the other hand, newspapers refusing to do their jobs at the behest of their wealthy owners reflect a structural problem beyond the circumstances of any particular election. Journalists at both the Post and the Times have ridiculed their respective owners, while subscribers have been defecting from both publications en masse.
The point remains, however, that these news organizations have abandoned the project of reporting on current events and opining about electoral options, more or less, because they are intimidated by the prospect of being held accountable by a future administration. That is the quintessence of timidity, the abdication of an ethical role to which journalism is institutionally committed, and for which it is granted substantial protection under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The loss of an independent press is as much an indication of fascism as bipartisan fealty to Israel. Imagining a non-fascist future for the United States requires a wholesale revolution. One was offered in 2016, and again 2020, but suppressed by Democrats shamelessly willing to undermine, marginalize, and even deploy false accusations against their own strongest standard bearers.
Musk’s role at Twitter, and Bezos’s role at the Washington Post, demonstrate all of the predictable and gross realities of oligarchy. Any number of people have observed them, while continuing to pretend that a presidential election can avoid the fascism that has already structurally consolidated itself. When the world’s richest men co-opt critical institutions of mass communication and unapologetically bend them to serve their whims, we can all rest assured that any pretense of democracy faded a long time ago.

Unsubscribe [link removed]?