Column 09/05/22: We Are All Fascists Now

We Are All Fascists Now

The funny thing about contemporary American politics is that everyone seems to watch and read news constantly but no one actually seems to process and remember it.

The President of the United States traveled to a historical patriotic site and delivered a rousing speech, on the eve of an important election to rally the base against his radical, violent opponents, miscreants opposed to American Democracy and all the principles and values and traditions this country is based on: freedom, liberty, truth, and justice for all. Accompanied prominently by members of the military, he described these monsters' wicked refusal to accept their election losses and willingness to resort to political violence and rioting and conspiracy--in the process demonizing and committing acts of violence and intimidation against law enforcement and government officials. Most fundamentally, he accused them of doubting the essential goodness of America and the American people and the American government and openly denying the crucial dogma that "America is the greatest nation on earth" by attacking the heroes and accomplishments of American history and tradition. To support these people and their beliefs and their efforts, the President declared, was to attack the very basis of American identity and Democracy and so for all intents and purposes to cease to be an American. Against this existential threat, the President promised to fight with all his might and all the power of the American government and law enforcement--so long, of course, as you vote for him and his party in the upcoming elections. 

(ahem)

Yes, I'm of course talking about President Trump's July 4th, 2020 Mount Rushmore rally against the "Radical Left" and Black Lives Matters protesters.

And yes, I'm also talking about President Biden's September 1st, 2022 Philadelphia speech against "MAGA Republicans" and Stop the Steal protesters. 

The similarities between the two speeches show, more clearly than anything else could, that we have entered into a new phase of American electoral politics: one absolutely defined by (1) a widespread crisis of legitimacy, (2) an incoherent, reactionary, nationalism, and (3) the amoral appeal to State power and violence against one's enemies. 

To recognize this symmetry is not to hold that the two sides are simply the same, in fundamental beliefs, principles, or goals. It is rather to acknowledge that, at least in mass-media electoral politics, both sides are responding to the same basic circumstances, and being shepherded, to the degree that each side loses its principles and is led and embodied by incoherent amoral media figures like Trump and Biden, toward the use of the same methods in response to these circumstances. 

Crisis of Legitimacy

(1) It has been exceptionally amusing to see progressives and Democrats reacting with shock and horror to anyone denying the legitimacy of elections or calling for recounts and redoes, given the exceptionally widespread refusal, after the 2020 election, to accept the legitimacy of Trump's election due to "Russian interference" and Trump's alleged crimes and unfitness, and the numerous attempts over the four years of his term in office to find some way, any way, to replace him. Recently, Trump published a tweet insisting that there had been "interference" in the 2020 election, and arguing that the fairest thing to do would be to simply redo the whole election. I have a good memory, and so can recall with equal clearness a tweet passed around by progressives after the 2016 election insisting that their had been "Russian interference" in that election and arguing that the fairest thing to do would be to simply redo that whole election. And indeed, in the 2020 rally, Trump made his opponents' refusal to accept his election and continuing attempts to undo the election or remove or impeach him a key part of his complaint against their attacks on American values. 

I have thought for many years now that America is deep into a crisis of legitimacy: which, as I define it and have used it in my scholarship, is not really the same as current media waffle on the Supreme Court's loss of legitimacy. Essentially, by legitimacy I mean the widespread, compelling sense that government actions and decisions have, not just legal, but binding moral force on ordinary people. In the logical extreme of legitimacy in this sense, every government action would be simply accepted as morally right and absolutely morally binding to such an extent that even minor transgressions were rightly punishable with the most extreme punishments--but thankfully, no government in history has possessed legitimacy to this degree. People generally relate to governments and government actions with a complicated mix of moral agreement, moral disagreement, limited moral compliance, moral protest, and resigned acceptance. 

Where a crisis of legitimacy sets in, though, is at the point at which fundamental, crucial government actions and personnel and structural features of the government itself begin to be perceived as not even minimally morally binding to the point of compliance and/or even as requiring moral rejection. Governments have, of course, recourse to force and coercion as well as moral force--but no government in history has ever possessed the capacity to govern merely by universal coercion and violence. Where this happens, to the degree this happens, a government ceases to function properly and becomes actively harmful to the society it governs, and eventually, usually is either overthrown, replaced, or drastically altered. Still, the latter aspect is dependent, not just on the government itself or its legitimacy, but by the existence of a real, compelling moral alternative; in the absence of a "more legitimate" competitor, governments can function for quite some time in crises of legitimacy, stumbling from crisis to crisis in a downward spiral of disorder. 

Fundamentally, both sides of American politics no longer view central American institutions and central, structural features of American government as compelling even minimal moral compliance--or rather, they view them as requiring moral resistance and rejection. The entire suburbanite progressive wing of the Democratic adopted "Resistance" as their mantra in 2016--and now, a large subset of Republicans have adopted "Stop the Steal" as their mantra. Given the moral case increasingly made by both sides against their enemies--based around an urgent threat to absolutely essential moral and societal values and identities--it is difficult to see how it could be otherwise. 

Reactionary Nationalisms

(2) The most interesting aspect of watching both Right and Left since 2016 has been the vast increase in something that I, at least, am totally incapable of sharing or even respecting: a reactionary, incoherent nationalism. This began in 2016, when Hilary Clinton tried to capture disaffected Republicans by making a CAR recruitment speech about the wonders of American tradition and the Founding Fathers and the threat to them posed by Trump the centerpiece of her campaign. Trump, of course, was already making use of a related, but competing nationalist narrative to garner his support. In the years since then, though, this nationalism has mutated and taken on increasingly bizarre and violent overtones.

America is not a nation, and is not bound together by any of the basic values or communal goods that nations or commonwealths are usually constituted by. Because of this, a quasi-religious cult of the American state itself, imagined as a uniquely blessed, utopian, eschatological fulfillment of all of world history, has from the beginning played a key role in cementing American legitimacy and keeping all the various peoples in America loyal and committed to the state. As a general rule, in periods of relative prosperity and peace, this cult has been held lightly, while at times of crisis and conflict, it has been insisted upon and fought over with more violence. 

In the increasingly unstable post-2010 world, with less peace and less prosperity on the table and various existential threats to the American Empire popping up on every side, this cult has taken on truly apocalyptic dimensions in the rhetoric of both Right and Left. I have been fascinated to observe how many of my own peers really and truly did believe that America was the best and most just nation in the history of the world and the only hope for the eschatological fulfillment and salvation of humanity--and therefore how many have been driven to despair or worse by the increasingly visible reality that it is not and never has been. 

The overwhelming majority of the present threats to American global hegemony, American economic prosperity, and even belief in the American cult have had nothing at all to do with American electoral politics, Right or Left: these threats are simply the result of historical forces, basic economic and social realities, and the general, shared incompetence of the American political class, Right and Left. Nevertheless, as faith in American Imperial greatness and utopian perfection has faded and been threatened, both sides have taken the obvious step of simply blaming the other as the reason for this loss of faith. Apparently, all was well in America until some inchoate combination of Obamacare and Critical Race Theory destroyed our faith and prosperity; or rather, apparently all was well in America until Trump was elected President and singlehandedly wrecked the world and destroyed our faith in the perfect progressive goodness of America under Obama. Both sides, I guess, have plenty to blame the other for: but both narratives are nonetheless pernicious and destructive lies.

In history, such brittle, reactionary nationalisms have always been destructive. Belief that one's nation must be the most prosperous or the most Imperially hegemonic or the most progressive or the most just and good, and that the existence of said nation and one's identity as a member of that nation are existentially threatened by any suggestion that it is not, naturally produce violence both foreign and domestic. Such beliefs are also thin and brittle and unsatisfying as sources of meaning and value for people's lives. They arise only when genuine religious belief and genuine community is undermined and destroyed, and predictably drive individuals to despair, and cultures to war and destruction. America is the most atomistic society in the world, and one of the least religious; and we are reaping the predictable consequences. 

This cult must be checked, on both Right and Left, wherever it appears, if things are not to continue spiraling downwards.

Amoral State Violence

(3) The most immediate products of our crisis of legitimacy and reactionary nationalism, thus far, have been a growth of political violence.

I should be clear here: I do not regard all political force as bad. In particular, I do not regard mob action and rioting as necessarily or intrinsically wicked, whether that mob action is carried out in support of Black Lives Matter (which I broadly supported) or in protest against an allegedly crooked American election (which I do not think was a worthy cause). A mob is a political entity, and its ability to express its wishes strongly in the face of other forms of government power has been a corrective and stabilizing feature of many governments throughout history. Likewise, naturally government has at its disposal some degree of force to enforce laws and punish wrongdoers: and this is all for the good.

However, what we are now seeing in American life is an increasingly dominant cultural and social and political fixation on a wild seesaw between "authorized" and "unauthorized" acts of violence and repression committed by both sides depending on who happens to be in power at the moment, an increasingly unhinged obsession with and competition over the "technologies of punishment" and the "technologies of violence" that is unstable by its very nature.

The thing that makes this game work is that, depending on the moment, depending on the person, all such violence can be "authorized" and "unauthorized" on a whim, at a moment's notice. If your side is out of power, the acts of violence committed by your "patriots" are noble, heroic resistance, while the violence committed by law enforcement and military spurred on by the other side are tyrannical repression. Once you are in (temporary) power, though, law enforcement personnel are heroic bastions of goodness, any attack on them is a threat to our freedom, and acts of violence committed by private citizens are terrorism and insurrection. 

So far as this goes, I admit that I am enough of an old-fashioned democrat that my own basic sympathies in clashes between the overwhelming law enforcement/security state apparatus and private citizens organized in mob action are almost always in favor of the latter. I found Trump's gleeful insistence on his power and desire to arrest and prosecute BLM protestors as terrorists utterly disgusting; and I have found the moralistic Left's insistence on demonizing and punishing to the full extent of the law each and every so-called "insurrectionist" to be disgusting also. In a political clash between our latter-day state security apparatus and a private citizen, it is obvious to me that it is the latter that is in the weaker position, less responsible, and in more need of protection. 

Of course, morally and in itself, what matters most are the individual acts and intentions of the people involved--and no act of genuine violence can ever be tolerated, whoever commits it. In every functional society, some balance must be found between the need of the state to be able to wield punishment and coercion and the need of the people to have some ability to act and operate on and even against the state. 

The fundamental problem with the present gyrating situation, however, is how absolutist and all-or-nothing it is. Every act of force falling into a particular class, wielded by your side against their wicked enemies, must be authorized, and every authorized act of violence must be blameless; while every act of force wielded by your enemies against you must be totally and absolutely unauthorized and thereby absolutely wicked and worthy of punishment. Such a gyrating system naturally and inevitably creates a greater and greater demand for violence by your side against the enemy: since, as Girard pointed out, each act of violence demands reprisal, and each reprisal in turn demands a further act of violence. The greater the pressure mounts for reprisal and punishment on each side, the more political conflicts and competitions start to center, not on moral or principled disagreements, but rather on an all-or-nothing competition for the state resources and technologies of punishment, violence, and repression. 

Without some kind of moral system capable of bridging the gap and judging acts and persons apart from this symmetrical see-saw of violence, continuing breakdown is all but inevitable.

We Are All Fascists Now

The title of this post is deliberately imprecise. I personally prefer to avoid the vague, broad, pejorative useage of the word "fascist" in favor of a narrower historical referent. In this sense, fascism has not come to America, though it might. Fascism in the narrow sense is produced by widespread political breakdown and violence, and relies, in such an environment, on the increasing willingness of people to not only explicitly authorize, but actually sacralize non-state violence by private organizations--one of which ultimately succeeds in enacting violence more effectively against the others, repressing them totally and cruelly, and seizing control of the state. We are obviously very far from this situation.

Nonetheless, in our fundamental, underlying mindset--lacking any base sense of state legitimacy, recklessly authorizing repressive violence by both state and non-state actors, demanding escalating violence and punishment of our enemies, and appealing to incoherent, reactionary nationalisms to do so--Americans across the political spectrum are more fascist than they have ever been.

The next phase of American electoral politics will not be fascist in the narrow sense; nonetheless, it looks to be very ugly indeed.