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**JANUARY 8, 2021**

Kuttner on TAP

When Trump's Gone, Will Fascism Live On?

****

American democracy has demonstrated-barely-that it's possible to
oust a fascist leader. But it's harder to oust a fascist populace when
fascism lives on in the hearts of too many people.

A

**Newsweek** poll found that 45 percent of Republican voters supported
the storming

of the Capitol, and 68 percent said they were no threat to democracy.
Large majorities of Republicans still accept Trump's lies that the
election was stolen.

That's why the glee at the fracturing of the Republican elite is
premature. Republican elected officials cross Trump voters at their
peril. That will persist whether Trump survives as a politician or the
movement is led by a shrewder, less demented authoritarian like Sen.
Josh Hawley.

At rare moments that show the right's true face, the Republican elite
distances itself from flagrant excess. However Trumpism, with or without
Trump personally, remains depressingly popular. The naked violence at
the Capitol was merely the extreme edge of a steady slide to
authoritarianism that has been embraced all too willingly by most
Republican leaders-and voters.

The great German ironist Berthold Brecht, a leftist who chose to live in
communist East Germany, could not abide the stupid tyranny of the
regime. In a famous poem, written in 1953 after bureaucratic complaints
of popular resistance to the official program, he wrote that perhaps the
government should dissolve the people
and elect a new one.

In a doubly ironic variant on Brecht, this is the challenge that now
faces Americans. Trump will be gone, but fascist popular sentiments live
on. And there is no 25th Amendment for replacing the people.

What there is, however, is a long-term effort whose seeds were planted
in Georgia and Arizona. In those states, a ten-year organizing campaign
not only roused Americans of color. It began the process of winning back
decent white people. Both efforts were Black- and Latino-led, but were
increasingly broad coalitions.

Dispatching Trump is only the beginning of a long road to what America
was supposed to be, and must be, and never quite was.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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Why Is Trump Still President?

The failure of rapid action places democracy at risk. BY DAVID DAYEN

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My Life as a Virtual Companion

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clients, over Zoom BY BECCA WILLOW MOSS

Unsanitized: Oh Yeah, That Other Crisis

The pandemic is burning through America right now. This is The COVID-19
Daily Report for January 8, 2021. BY DAVID DAYEN

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