[Calling out fascism after it succeeds would be like finally
agreeing to be vaccinated while they’re hooking you up to a
ventilator. Say. Its. Name.] [[link removed]]

NONE DARE CALL IT “FASCISM.” WHY NOT?  
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Mark Green
September 3, 2021
Washington Spectator
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_ Calling out fascism after it succeeds would be like finally
agreeing to be vaccinated while they’re hooking you up to a
ventilator. Say. Its. Name. _

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While Republicans routinely call Democrats “Marxists,” it’s been
taboo for Democrats and the American mainstream media to brand Trump
and his followers “fascists.”

Why is that?

The _F_-word is widely considered over-the-top name-calling, too
redolent of Hitler, and risks triggering white-right Twitter trolls or
even vigilantism . . . as Democrats instead usually confine their
critique of the right to more academic words
like _authoritarian_ and stick to their preference for policy over
polemics.

Still, how did “fascism hesitancy” survive the tone of Trump’s
apocalyptic 2017 inaugural address and later the “Jews will not
replace us” march of “good” neo-Nazis in Charlottesville,
Virginia? Fast-forward to 2020 and 2021 . . . when Trump incited a
violent insurrection to stop the peaceful transfer of power, pursued a
failed conspiracy with his own Justice Department to reverse state
election results (“just say [the election] was corrupt”), and
spread two lethal Big Lies—Covid “will magically disappear” and
“I won in a landslide.” Now his political progeny are engaging in
modern book-burning by trying to forbid teaching about the history of
racism in the United States. (_Tulsa Riots?_ “That
was _nothing. _. . . ”)

Actually, Trump engaged in a slow-motion sedition from day one of his
presidency, somehow managing to arouse only occasional public obloquy
until January 6. Yet the entire time, he closely followed the
playbooks of Mussolini, Salazar, Putin, and Bolsonaro: propaganda
packaged as reality, extreme nationalism, delegitimization of the
media, erosion of public confidence in elections, glorification of the
military, self-enrichment and nepotism, relentless lying and
systematic corruption, incitement to violence, Nuremberg-like rallies,
a creed-of-greed over the common good, admiration of fellow dictators,
scapegoating immigrants, vilification of “the other,” and the
provoking of constant crises that “I alone can fix.”

Add to that a constant blur of hyperbole, disinformation, and
gaslighting that undermines policymaking based on agreed-on truth (see
astonishing controversies over vaccines, masks, horse deworming pills,
and insurrection denial).

No, Trump et al. obviously aren’t genocidal Nazis, but that is a
lazy benchmark. Instead, just connect the dots above, and the pattern
emerges: If openly cheating to install permanent minority rule
doesn’t spell out “fascism,” it’s hard to see what would.

The GOP has settled on a consolidated strategy to win elections after
its 2020 losses: hold back the majority tide of a more urban, diverse
population with extreme gerrymandering and voter nullification. In
this, it is aided by senators like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who
ironically pretend that keeping the Jim Crow filibuster is the key to
saving Democracy. (That sound we hear is Mitch McConnell laughing.)

It’s now past time for Democratic opinion leaders to expose
Republican extremism so that credulous five-minute voters don’t keep
reciting reactionary talking points. With some exceptions, Democrats
have largely lamented that they are “very concerned, troubled,
worried” by the new radical Republicans. That’s pretty lame after
January 6, which President Biden accurately called “the worst attack
on our democracy since the Civil War.” Or as author Mary Trump
explained, “[My uncle] is an instinctive Fascist . . . but
pulling punches and using polite language isn’t going to [work].
Republicans haven’t lost their way. It has led them straight toward
unabashed white supremacy and fascism.”

So here we are: the fringe right controls the GOP and is getting
closer to taking over the other two branches of the federal
government, having already packed the Supreme Court with its
disciples. Timothy Snyder, historian at Yale and expert on
authoritarianism, has concluded, “We’re looking almost certainly
at an attempt in 2024 to take power without winning the election.”

Unilateral polemical surrender here is not a formula for success.

  *   *   *   *  *

There is another way. Blunt honesty.

In his final speech of the 1936 presidential campaign, for example,
FDR called out the American Liberty Lobby for trying to impose a
“fascist” government that would merge corporate and state power.

General Mark Milley last December worried that Trump might exploit
some “Reichstag fire” to send federal troops into American cities
(which he nearly attempted). Representative Jamie Raskin called those
who violently attacked the Capitol “fascist thugs.” Last month,
Joy Reid began one of her MSNBC shows wondering why “we haven’t
seen the fascists right in front of us?” A handful of prominent
authors and advocates—from David Frum, Masha Gessen and Sarah
Kendzior to Robert Reich, Malcolm Nance, Michelle Goldberg, David Corn
and Steve Schmidt—have also concluded that “fascism” is an apt
description for what Trump and his devotees want.

Since calling out fascism _after_ it succeeds would be like finally
agreeing to be vaccinated while they’re hooking you up to a
ventilator, ideally more voices will join this candid cadre to make it
part of the 2022 election conversation—say, people such as the
Democratic National Committee chair, major newspaper editors-in-chief
and editorial boards, those who book the Sunday shows and write copy
for national news anchors, Bill Kristol Republicans, scholars and
lawyers, plus more politicians like the straight-talking Elizabeth
Warren.

But if applying the word to a political party is still considered
un-P.C.—despite nearly all GOP electeds blaming nonexistent voter
fraud in order to steal the franchise from hundreds of thousands of
minorities—then at least leading Democrats should call out the very
worst examples of politicians who abuse their office to stay in power.
Most obviously, there is the “depraved indifference to human
life”—the legal standard for negligent homicide—shown by
governors DeSantis and Abbott, whose pro-Covid, anti-mask, and
anti-vaccine posturing is aimed at bolstering their presidential
prospects with extremists in the Republican base, no matter how many
die. In a bid to win this race-to-the-bottom, Abbott then took the
extra step of effectively banning abortions by enacting a law that
deputizes millions of citizens to earn bounties by outing women
seeking the procedure. What could possibly go wrong with a system of
Stasi-like snitches?

To counter such creeping fascism, the Biden-Harris team’s smart
focus on positive programs to help families plus a name-and-shame
campaign by other Democrats would help prod weak Republicans and
Independents to think twice—“Mom, Dad, are you really going to
throw in with these fascists?” It can break through the fog of
culture-war distractions to put FOX and the GOP on the defensive—let
them try to normalize the growing volume of big lies, lawlessness, and
“patriotic violence” (in the phrase of scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat).
Make it like smoking and gay-bashing, which went from casual
acceptance to uncool.

People who have long assumed that “it can’t happen here” need to
be warned about extremists who wear flag pins while undermining the
values the flag represents. Unlike in the past few thousand years of
politics and persuasion, violent men with guns can now effortlessly
pass around digital screeds on the internet about “stolen
elections,” “masks equal freedom,” and a martyred Ashli Babbitt,
while openly talking about triggering a new civil war. For now, they
appear in videos screaming at mask-wearers in stores, but with
Trump-driven hate crimes skyrocketing, they could well evolve into
American Blackshirts roaming around like Kyle Rittenhouse and those
nuts convicted of trying to kidnap Michigan’s Governor Gretchen
Whitmer.

Homegrown terrorism is already regarded by the Department of Homeland
Security as the top terrorism threat, worse than the Taliban and Al
Qaeda. Demagogues like Tucker Carlson, Rand Paul, and Madison
Cawthorn seem only too eager to light their fuse. The looming
political choice now is not the traditional left versus right, so much
as democracy versus fascism—governance by the many or by the few;
voting versus violence. What’s alarming is that most people aren’t
alarmed.

_Say. Its. Name._ That may appear to be impolite, but then, fascism
itself is neither polite nor patriotic. It is, instead, an existential
threat to America’s 240-year history of democracy.

_Mark Green, the first public advocate for New York City, has
published 25 books, including Who Runs Congress? and, most recently
(with Ralph Nader),Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and
Lies Betray All._

_Examine. Engage. Expand the public discourse. Subscribe to the
Washington Spectator.
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