A Newsletter With An Eye On Political Media from The American Prospect
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A NEWSLETTER WITH AN EYE ON POLITICAL MEDIA
Ron DeSantis Is an Honest-to-God Semi-Fascist
And it’s past time for the mainstream media to say so.
One of the problems with accurately describing Donald Trump’s weird brand of fascism is the ridiculousness of the man’s personality in so many other respects. There is nothing more on-brand than Trump ranting, endlessly and incoherently, for a new election, or being the alleged victim of unfair persecution for his own lying on his for-profit social network designed to bilk his own idiotic MAGA fans that is in the process of going broke as it stiffs all its suppliers. (All that is missing are new rape allegations.) It would all be entertaining were it not for the slow-motion destruction of democracy it entails.

There’s nothing entertaining, however, about Ron DeSantis. As Trump’s apparent descent into madness becomes ever more evident to those who’ve tried for years to ignore it, the Republican most likely to win the party’s 2024 presidential nomination rules Florida the way a fascist would, if that fascist were an American politician without access to his own military force who did not (yet) enjoy the power to shut down media he did not like. That won’t be the case should he become president.

Members of the mainstream media have long been wary of applying the term “fascist” to any American politician. They say it is not their job to characterize Republicans; they just “report the news,” even when what they are actually doing is passing along Republican lies and deliberate misinformation. Joe Biden has therefore done them a favor by referring to the ideology of Donald Trump and his followers as “semi-fascism.” The word is now, as journalists say, “in play.” (And by the way, while it may have been off-the-cuff, “semi-fascism” is a good term for employing fascist-like tactics at every available opportunity in a country that has not yet turned its institutions over to a fascist leader.)

Now, take a look at just a few of DeSantis’s recent moves:


How does the MSM tend to characterize DeSantis? As Dan Froomkin notes, we tend to get stories like DeSantis “raised his national profile over his handling of the pandemic and is widely considered a potential 2024 presidential candidate” (Wall Street Journal) or “has relished stoking cultural battles, even going to war with Disney, a storied company with deep ties to his state” (New York Times). Do these read like accurate descriptions of the above actions and what they may portend for the future? Charlie Crist “has already made it clear that he intends to make the election a referendum on DeSantis, adopting the slogan ‘Defeat fascism, defeat DeSantis.’” It’s long past time that American journalism caught up.

It’s been hard to keep up with all of Trump’s crimes, together with the crimes committed by his underlings on behalf of these crimes. It would be a shame if Bill Barr retained a shred of the reputation that led so many journalists to foolishly trust him when he lied about the Mueller report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and helped Trump cover up the crimes related to that investigation. (It’s also a shame that Mueller let him get away with it.) Charlie Savage has a lengthy Twitter thread explaining what Barr did, and Neal Katyal has penned this strong op-ed.

Thing is, this was obvious at the time, but almost all the news coverage of the time credulously took Barr’s lies at face value and allowed Trump and the Trump-friendly media to implant the idea of a “Russia Hoax,” which continues to pervert our politics today. As I wrote in my 2020 book, Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie—and Why Trump Is Worse:

The Mueller Report’s release was initially confused by the fact that Trump’s handpicked attorney general, William Barr, purposely misled the public about its contents before its publication. According to Barr’s false assertions, the report exonerated Trump on virtually all matters. In fact, Mueller’s report laid out at least ten instances in which Trump had attempted to obstruct justice and specified explicitly that it was not “exonerating” him of any of them.

Barr, who appeared to view himself as Trump’s personal attorney and protector rather than the nation’s top law-enforcement official, also claimed that Trump and his advisers had “fully cooperated with the special counsel’s investigation, providing unfettered access to campaign and White House documents, directing senior aides to testify freely, and asserting no privilege claims.” This was all false as well. Trump, the report noted, “engaged in efforts” to “prevent the disclosure of evidence to [the special counsel], including through public and private contacts with potential witnesses.”

Then there were the lies from Trump’s associates that the report documented. CNN found what it termed “77 specific instances where President Donald Trump’s campaign staff, administration officials and family members, Republican backers and his associates lied or made false assertions (sometimes unintentionally) to the public.” But it all worked, at least for a while. There ought to be lesson there, alas.

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A Personal Note: This past Wednesday, I was forced to stop frantically making improvements, corrections, and additions, etc., and send the final version of my 12th book, We Are Not One: A History of America’s Fight Over Israel, to the printers. (Its pub date is November 22.) Coincidentally, my first one, Sound and Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy, was published almost exactly 30 years ago this week (with a second, updated version published eight years later) and is apparently available at a criminally low price.
Back in the early 1970s, Loudon Wainwright III was considered by critics to be part of a crop of “New Dylans,” and lumped together with Leonard Cohen, John Prine, Steve Forbert, and some fellow from New Jersey. (You can hear him singing about Dylan and the bard’s other “dumb-ass kid brothers” in this song.) Now, after another 31 albums, he’s released Lifetime Achievement, which is simultaneously a look back and a look forward, particularly at his own mistakes and mortality. This is actually true of most of Wainwright’s 30 previous albums, also of his book, his show about his relationship with his dad, and his concerts as well. I caught one this week at City Winery in which he was joined by the ace musicians Chaim Tannenbaum, David Mansfield, and Suzzy Roche, with whom Loudon shares a daughter and is about to share a grandchild. (Weirdly, he already shares a grandchild, together with an obsession with death, with another “new Dylan”—the late, great Leonard Cohen.) Among the highlights were the two—count ’em, two—songs he sang about his partner (and my friend of four decades), New Yorker editor Susan Morrison. It was, as always with Loudon, a moving affair—one where much of the audience felt like they were part of one of folk music’s most interesting (and dysfunctional) extended families. I caught Roger Waters’s impressively over-the-top extravaganza at the Garden one night later (absent any antisemitism, I should add). It required a crew of 140 people and it showed. But I left Loudon’s show a much happier fellow.

This Just In: Bruce Springsteen and Woody Allen have somehow morphed into the same person. (Sorry, Woody haters.)

See you next week.
~ ERIC ALTERMAN
Eric Alterman is a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College, an award-winning journalist, and the author of 11 books, most recently Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie—and Why Trump Is Worse (Basic, 2020). Previously, he wrote The Nation’s “Liberal Media” column for 25 years. Follow him on Twitter @eric_alterman
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