Republicans Traditionalist Revival Owes Much to Putin’s Ideas of Russian Fascism…Part 3.
A cult of personality, aspirations of a return to a mythical past, and a state of unreality are the foundations that underpin the Republican vision for America’s future, & it follows Putin’s fascist playbook perfectly…
“We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, a passion. It is not necessary for it to be a reality…our myth is the nation, our myth is the greatness of the nation. And to this myth, this greatness, which we want to translate into a total reality, we subordinate everything.”
Benito Mussolini, speaking at the Fascist Congress in Naples, 1922.
How traditionalism mirrors fascist teachings & theory…
The philosophy of fascist politics invariably begins with a mythical lost past, and depending on how the nation, or to be more precise those in power in the nation, see its’ immediate future that past may dwell on a heritage that is religiously pure, racially pure, culturally pure, or any blend or combination of these; however, this past is constituted it is always tied to an extreme form of the patriarchal family (1).
And the role of the nation, its’ heroic leader and the people within it is to work together to bring the mythical past once again into the reality of the present.
Typically, the past that the future is trying to resurrect, or regain anew, is a glorious one filled with tales of heroic conquest, mythical heroes and utterly loyal warriors and brethren, and in the present the resurrection of these myths become the cement holding the national identity together.
However, the loss of that glorious past has always been a humiliating consequence of some form of global liberalism, decadence and a respect for liberal values, such as universal ‘equality’ (1). These factors served to weaken the state in the face of national existential challenges.
As a rule it is in the large urban areas where the social breakdown is manifest most widely, with rural populations in small towns and villages retaining a stronger connection to the mythical, pure past.
And it is this mythical past, this imagined history, that underpins and supports the attainment of the glorious future-past that now awaits under the present day mythical leader.
The mythical past doesn’t even have to have a time-frame, or date, or facts to solidify the myth; indeed, often times the mythical past is called just that — a myth; witness the words of Mussolini above — because the myth itself is not the point; the point is the raw emotion, the attachment to a mythical nostalgic history that stirs the populace to adopt the central tenets of the fascist ideology: authoritarianism, hierarchy, purity and struggle (1).
Take Trump’s ‘make America great again’ slogan. It has no specific history behind it. It doesn’t tell a story or relate back to any given era. It just presumes that America was great at some mythical, unspecified time in the past, and that the nation has somehow fallen away from those idealistic times under the decadent influence of some form of liberalism, but with Trump’s inspirational leadership that mythical ground can be regained.
As Jason Stanley writes (1), “The strategic aim of these hierarchal constructions of history is displace the truth, and the invention of a glorious past includes the erasure of inconvenient realities. While fascist politics fetishises the past, it is never the actual past that is fetishised. These invented histories also diminish or entirely extinguish the nations past sins. It is typical for fascist politicians to represent a country’s actual history in conspiratorial terms, as a narrative concocted by liberal elites and cosmopolitans to victimise the the people of the ‘true’ nation.”
Truth displacement and a mythical past are much easier to achieve if those equipped to refute the false narrative are demonised and sidelined. Thus, in the first instance, education and the educated become the enemy, and fascist politics looks to devalue education, particularly at Universities, where dissenting voices are often loudest and best equipped to refute the myths.
Fascism dictates that there is only a single voice, a single narrative, a single myth that remains utterly dominant and infuses the ‘us’ tribe with an infectious, single voice and purpose that brooks no dissenters. And once that dominance is achieved and the narrative can be taught in schools, at institutions of higher education, then universities have made the transition from hotbeds of dissension to become pillars of fascist support for the tribal nation.
Thus universities are either subversive, or they are supportive, depending on the political situation in the country at that time.
Right-wing activists typically begin to undermine universities by accusing them of hypocrisy with respect to free speech.
As bastions of free speech and debate, universities are demonised as hypocritical in not allowing voices that express right-wing extremist or fascist views by allowing protests against them on campus. The theory being that protests against right-wing hate speech should be allowed, the protests put down, in order to satisfy right-wingers own hypocritical demands.
For them freedom of speech is a one way street where only one narrative, namely the fascist myth, should be dominant.
Thus, in the beginning the fascist becomes the victim because the protests do not allow for free expression of their views. The victimisation signals the start of the heroic struggle.
In the U.S. one of the most virulent anti-intellectual voices is that of David Horowitz. A long time right-wing activist, he set up the David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC), and took his campaign against universities right into the classroom, naming what he called ‘dangerous professors’ who promoted liberal rights and stood up for the rights of Palestinians, and then later on ‘dangerous courses’ such as gender studies, railing against the use of politically correct language and promoting the hiring of teachers and professors who expressed right-wing views and opinions.
A fringe figure during much of the 90's, he went mainstream when the Trump administration took up Horowitz’s agenda and aggressively promoted it, with then Attorney General Jeff Sessions signalling that the pursuit of free speech across university campuses in America was a priority for the government.
Throughout the Trump Presidency attacks on ‘political correctness’ and this use of free speech rhetoric over-lapped with that of right-wing institutions that sought to delegitimise universities as bastions of liberal free speech and learning (1).
A subsequent investigation by the WaPo investigation found that the DHFC had tried to destabilise Washington politics, and push it to the far right by supporting figures in the Trump administration such as Sessions, senior policy advisor Stephen Miller, and Steve Bannon (see Part’s 1. & 2.) himself.
Moreover, there were at least 11 senior members of Trump’s administration who actively supported the DHFC including V.P. Pence, and those previously mentioned, with the DHFC often serving as a ‘gathering place’ where Trump’s right-wing officials might meet.
The right-wing need to control and limit lines of enquiry to perpetuate the collective ignorance. By attacking institutions and centres of learning that stand up for open public debate under the guise of free speech, they are seeking to smother true opposition and alternative lines of thought beneath a tidal wave of righteous indignation and fascist victimisation.
But this isn’t new. Many white Americans have been portraying themselves as victims for almost as long as America has been America.
In the U.S. most Confederate monuments were erected after the Civil War ended, to portray the Southern resistance as part of an heroic mythologised past in which the horrors and facts of an abiding racist and slave owning culture were de-emphasised.
When President Trump denounced the removal of some Confederate monuments in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd, he was repudiating the task of connecting this mythologised past to slavery as an “an attempt to victimise white Americans for celebrating their ‘heritage (1).’”
A mythologised past only becomes possible once education and the educated are delegitimised; and this only happens once a state of unreality is achieved.
Fascist politics moves populations and nations into the realm of unreality through consistent, regular and repetitive lying.
Hannah Arendt wrote, “What convinces (the) masses are not facts, not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably a part. Repetition…is only important because it convinces them of the consistency in time (2).”
Say something once — like Barack Obama was born in Kenya — and it is a blatant, slanderous lie. Say it ten times and people begin to doubt. Say it 100 times and that lie has become a truth of sorts for some people.
Accuse the press of not giving ‘birtherism’ air time then they become part of a democratic, establishment led cover up, or a conspiracy to obscure the truth from the people. The press become ‘enemies of the state’ peddling ‘fake news.’
Say it once it’s a slanderous, libelous lie. Say it 100 times and the people believe it.
For the press and media this is a conundrum. If they give a conspiracy air time or print space then it becomes an admission that there is some legitimacy or credibility to the conspiracy. All of a sudden there is an issue to be discussed. Birtherism then becomes a dubious fact just because it has been discussed by a legitimate news source.
Either way, fascism wins if there is no legitimate, educated, trusted voice to delegitimise and debunk such invented facts.
Do this on enough fronts — birtherism, all Muslims are terrorists, all Hispanics are drug dealers and rapists, all Democrats are communists, etc — then no one is trustworthy. No one is telling the truth. Everyone has something to hide.
Conspiracy theories are used by fascists to attack those who dismiss their fantasies for what they are; fantasies and nothing more. But by ignoring their existence, the attacked are shown to be biased, untrustworthy and part of a conspiracy to hide the truth from those who ask the question (1).
Conspiracy theories play on what would, at first glance, appear to be irrational or unfounded fears — that, for example, in the wake of 9/11 that all Muslims are terrorists, or follow George Floyd’s murder, that the BLM movement is about subjugating and victimising whites, and has nothing to do with equal rights for blacks.
“But once (the) public accepts the comfort of conspiracy thinking as an explanation for irrational fears and resentments, its’ members will cease to be guided by reason in political deliberation (1).”
In such a society, where everything including the truth has been discredited, citizens have nothing left to follow to root themselves by, so they fall back on the residue of what remains of the political system. It has become the sole source of information, the sole source of news, the sole source of entertainment. Reasoned democratic debate has been replaced by worship of the sole hero. He has become their world, because he is the only thing left that they can reply upon.
Yes, he lies, even when he says he’s telling the truth. But he lies consistently. That becomes the only truth there is. They can rely on that truth even when there is nothing else left.
Vladimir Surkov, Putin’s propaganda tsar, wrote a novel, Almost zero (2009), when he was at the height of his powers, that Tim Snyder says amounts to little more than a political confession.
In Surkov’s book “…the only truth was our need for lies, the only freedom our acceptance of this verdict. In a story within the larger plot, the hero was troubled by a flatmate who only slept. An expert issued a report: ‘We will all be gone,’ the expert confided, ‘as soon as he opens his eyes.’ Society’s duty, and yours in particular is to continue his dream (3).”
As Putin’s propaganda tsar it was his job to perpetuate the dream state.
Sometimes burying the truth beneath a cacophony of conflicting truths serves this purpose exactly, by maintaining the idea of victimisation and innocence through the fabrication of lies and misinformation.
On July 17th 2014 Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 left Kuala Lumpur bound for Amsterdam. Flying an authorised route it crossed the southeastern part of Ukraine when a Russian surface to air missile shot it out of the air. The wreckage, passengers, crew and their luggage were scattered over a radius of 50 kms.
All 298 people on board were killed.
The Russian 53rd Air Defence Brigade, operating a Buk anti-aircraft missile system was quickly withdrawn from Ukraine back to Russia. A Colonel in the GRU (Russian military intelligence), Igor Girkin, had just appeared on Russian TV denying the presence of Russian troops on the ground in the Donbas.
When the news broke Girkin boasted publicly how “his people had shot down another plane over ‘our sky’ (3).”
How could a Russian missile have shot a jetliner out of Ukrainian skies when there were no Russian troops present in Ukraine?
Such anomalies are commonplace and help create the state of unreality that Tim Snyder, Harvard historian and Ukraine specialist, calls this the “politics of eternity (3).”
In the politics of eternity a single nation is at “the centre of a cycical story of victimhood.” Linear time, stretching into the future, or back into the past, no longer exists. It now functions as a circle that continually returns to the same issues, with the same eternal enemies, repeat itself, much like Guenon’s adapted Hindu wheel of time in which traditionalists place their faith (see Parts 1. & 2.).
Thus, when Flight 17 was shot out of the sky surely the victims were the passengers? But in a state of unreality nothing is as it seems.
In this case, Surkov’s propaganda department moved swiftly to pave the way for Russian innocence, and not only the innocence of Russian troops in the matter, but of Russia itself. Far from being the perpetrator of such a heinous crime, Russia was in fact the victim.
But how?
In not denying the obvious — that a Russian missile had been responsible — but by burying it beneath layer upon layer of different versions of the truth, the actual truth gets confused and dismissed as just another possibility in a continuum of possibilities, none of which is probably accepted as the actual truth.
Initially, the Ukrainians themselves were blamed, with Russian TV claiming the ‘real target’ had been Putin himself, but they had by accident shot down the wrong plane (3).
Outside Russia this totally implausible explanation was dismissed, but within Russia this had set the stage making Russia once again the victim of a botched Western plot.
The next day multiple other versions were played out all across the Russian media; some versions radically different, others tweaking the Ukrainian story, adding yet more layers. One TV channel dredged up an expert of physiognomy who said that Ihor Kolomois’kyi, the Jewish Ukrainian governor of Ukrainian held Dnipropetrovsk, had a guilty face thereby demonstrating his complicity and guilt in the matter beyond any doubt (3).
Then more reports said that a fighter jet had been present and had been responsible, with different reports suggesting different types of jet. None of them Russian of course.
A week later they claimed Ukrainian forces had apparently shot the jet down in error during training exercises, of which there were none at that time. Then Girkin himself suggested that it had in fact been a Russian missile after all, but “that no crime had been committed, since the CIA had filled the plane with corpses and sent it over Ukraine to provoke Russia (3).”
I mean, seriously?
Sergei Lavrov even went international with some of these ‘explanations,’ without providing any proof, facts or evidence of any kind. Because of course, there was none.
There are no gays in Russia, only victims…
In 2010 Lyosha presented at a conference at Moscow State University. His paper was titled, “Gender gaps in Political Science.” Only one person — a professor from St. Petersburg — had a question for him.
“Are you aware,” the professor asked, “that there are no lesbians in Russia?”
“I’ve also heard,” said Lyosha, “that there was no sex in the Soviet Union. Yet you are here! (4)”
Given religious backing by Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, and political weight by Svetlana Medvedeva, the wife of then President, Dmitri Medvedev, whose Foundation for Social and Cultural Initiatives promoted Russian family values, began a push to restrict access to abortion across Russia.
Indeed, this turn towards a more draconian and strict view of Russian social society could be seen in an interview published in Foreign Policy with Orthodox Church spokesman, Vsevolod Chaplin, who was speaking in the weeks following the mid-air break up of a Russian passenger jet in 2015 shortly after leaving the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh killing all 224 people on board.
“Society saw death,” he said, “and realized that life in pursuit of entertainment, material well-being, holidays, and so on, is the incorrect way to live. This is an absurd way to live. If a person does not understand this, then God will remind him of it.”
Later on directly addressing the West, Chaplin said, “The main problem between Russia and the West is not political, but something more serious — it is spiritual.” In a blistering condemnation of what he called the West’s “ungodly” belief in rationalism and secularism, he continued, “Rationality is one of the most monstrous cases of stupidity known to man. We cannot know life through the intellect alone. The West must change or a worse catastrophe than that which has just befallen Russia is in store.”
Almost echoing comments made earlier by Putin at a meeting of foreign experts and political analysts in 2013, such controversial and highly religiously conservative messaging has struck a chord with America’s far-right and many who call themselves Christian evangelists.
“Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots,” Putin said, “including Christian values. Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation.”
And for Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, the source of that degradation is clear. Speaking in a sermon on March 6th this year he framed his comments as a battle between good and evil, a metaphysical clash between the innocence of the Russo-Slavic culture and the corrupting, liberalising influences of the West he said,
“Today there is a test for the loyalty to this new world order (of Russia against the West) , a kind of pass to that ‘happy’ world, the world of excess consumption, the world of false ‘freedom,’ ” he said. “Do you know what this test is? The test is very simple and at the same time terrible — it is the gay pride parade.”
In contrast, Russia’s version of ‘freedom’ is a series of endless cycles of fear and elation, crisis and triumph, with nothing in between, which creates a sense of morbid desperation among the populace that has been a problem for dictators and authoritarian leaders throughout recent history.
Motivating a population that believes there is no chance of improving their position in life, no matter how hard they work, or how hard they study, is a well known one (5).
Unlike democratic leaders, authoritarians need to be inventive to give cause and reason to the suffering of their people. In Russia’s case, and in particular, in Putin’s Russia, the reason for their pain and despair is given as the hypocritical, Satanic West.
Infected by the disease of liberalism, that gives rise to rampant decadence, homosexuality, AIDS, corruption, and Nazism (otherwise known as Russophobia, which, by the way, bears no relation whatsoever to Hitler’s Nazism)(3), all of which the West has exported to an unfairly victimised Russia because, so the narrative goes, the West’s sole reason for existing is the destruction of Russia and Russian culture.
So in shifting the blame for his incompetency and rampant criminality Putin needed a stooge to head off the vision of a future Russian collapse, and like Stalin before him, he turned democracy and the West into Russia’s enduring and permanent threat.
Russia was re-imagined by invoking the memory and teachings of Ivan Ilyin, Putin’s fascist inspiration, as a “virginal organism troubled only by the threat of foreign penetration,” (3) as personified in the satanic forms of the EU and the U.S., who, Putin says, both use gay rights as a weapon in a global sodomite conspiracy to infect innocent nations.
And in this Putin has a willing, vocal and complicit ally in the West in the person of Marine Le Pen, head of the right-wing French political party, Front Nationale, who said in 2013 that “homophilia is one of the elements of globalisation,” insisting at that time that France and Russia join forces to resist “a new international empire infected by the virus of commercialisation,” and that Russia was indeed the victim of a “new cold war that the EU is carrying on against Russia (3).”
And yes, it is ridiculous. Yes, it is preposterous. Yes, it is sublimely untrue. But for most Russians (and perhaps even some French…?) this is their day to day life. Their suffering, their hardships, their hunger, their lack of hope is not the fault of inept Russian leaders (go back as far as you like — Putin in his 2021 essay took this argument back a 1000 years) but is the direct consequence of an eternal cyclical struggle between a corrupt, dissolute, homophilic West, and a pure, virginal, innocent, tradition-loving Russia.
Tim Snyder explains all this (3) in lavish, almost unbelievably shocking, even terrifying, detail. Russia, he says, arrived at the “politics of eternity,” which “places one nation (i.e. Russia) at the centre of a cyclical story of victimhood,” where “time is no longer a line into the future, but a circle that endlessly returns the same threats from the past…/… Eternity politicians spread the conviction that government cannot aid society as a whole, but can only guard against threats,” and that cyclical, endless threat comes solely from the West.
And because the government cannot help, basic services such as education, health, social care and more get neglected, because to do otherwise would be to confirm that the West isn’t actually to blame, and that something could, in fact, be done to stop the early deaths, the poor education, the failing institutions, etc, etc.
Propaganda perpetuates this dream-like state for the Russian people where confusion and chaos rules; where the only truth is the absence of truth, and where the liars who perpetuate these untruths are honourable servants of Russia, like Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov who, amazingly, still insists Russia has not invaded Ukraine at all.
As Tim explains: “To end factuality is to begin eternity. If citizens doubt everything, they cannot see alternative models beyond Russia’s borders, cannot carry out sensible discussions about reform, and cannot trust one another enough to organise for political change. A plausible future requires a factual present…/…(If) Russian’s were to be loved for their ignorance; loving them meant perfecting that ignorance. The future held only more ignorance about the more distant future (3).”
And as Surkov wrote in his book, “Knowledge gives only knowledge, but uncertainty gives hope,” the hope that, conversely life in Russia under Putin has removed completely and utterly.
Thus, education becomes sidelined in favour of propaganda and ignorance — so the West is evil; the West is out to destroy a victimised Russia; Western leaders are inherently corrupt and are out to get Russia any way they can; the West is pushing non-traditional relationships onto innocent Russians to corrupt their children, to break up their families, to spread irreligiosity, disease, corruption and immorality.
So the proponents of Western ideology in Russia; the gays, the lesbians, the trans individuals, anyone working for a western company, those seeking to abort their children, or indulge in other decadent Western practices are demonised, banned, isolated and criminalised, thereby promoting the traditional family, promoting the fascist hierarchy, promoting ignorance of anything outside of the legitimised, Russian tradition as given to them from above.
And where once, in the years before Putin when that glimmer of hope still lived and beckoned to the Russian people, the West used movies, newspapers, magazines, and more recently, social media, to highlight the advantages of a free, democratic way of life.
But now the messaging comes in the other direction, via laboratories of Russian state sponsored disinformation and misinformation designed to weaken our democracies, undermine confidence in our governments and foment distrust in our institutions, our leaders, our neighbours.
In Russia, and more especially since the onset of the war with Ukraine, where Putin has cracked down on public access to free media and to ‘Western propaganda,’ the glimmer of Russian hope has dulled, the light of freedom has been blocked out by the black clouds of a highly retroactive conservatism, an oppressive state media that rewrites the facts, alters history, and has ushers in the politics of eternity where ignorance is king, and the only hope for the people rises from the despair of endless uncertainty.
Ever the opportunists, Russian elites saw how their propaganda narrative was taken up with so much gusto by the American right-wing, so it turned the tables on the U.S., and now bombards its eternal enemy its own version of a hopeless, uncertain American future; replete with its own alternative reality, the politics of eternity a la Americana, intravenously inserted into the mainstream courtesy of Donald Trump and his power hungry Republican acolytes who seek to bury American factuality beneath a constant stream of misinformation, disinformation and lies, in the process ushering in an implausible American future where confusion, chaos and ignorance replace democratic institutions that have been derailed, diminished and discredited, because for Trump’s highly conservative, traditionalist right, the enemy cannot be the West; it is, and has always been the demonic left-wing, the progressives, the immigrant sympathisers, the decadent liberals who protect and harbour the child molesting LBGTQ lobbies, and seek to break up the traditional family unit, and all for the purposes of gaining electoral favour.
For Americans it began before Trump, but Trump has magnified it all; he has taken America’s ‘plausible future’ apart by abolishing its ‘factual present,’ and Russia’s ignorance is now being fed anew to the American people by a new breed of eternity politicians who seek to sow America’s version of confusion and chaos, whose only truth is the absence of an American truth.
By attacking long standing allies and friends alike, by repainting long standing partners as untrustworthy and undeserving of American support…by calling the legitimate press — who point out the lies, the inaccuracies, the mistruths and altered realities — illegitimate and enemies of the state…by vilifying ethnic minorities, immigrants, people of colour, pro-abortionists, non-Christians and people who have adopted an alternative lifestyle, Trump and the GOP are sowing the seeds of chaos and confusion, creating an implausible future where enemies abound, both within America and without, where only they, and more particularly Trump himself, can be trusted with America’s well-being, just as Putin had done before in Russia.
For the Russian people Putin is the ultimate redeemer who can protect them from the eternal threat of the West, while in America Trump is using the same strategy by making everyone who does not follow his line an enemy, not just of the Trump regime, but of America itself.
Abortion is the top of a very slippery slope…
Indeed, in the wake of the Roe debacle, and with the mid-terms fast approaching, and fears of political violence brewing, the issue of abortion remains front and centre for many voters, and may yet still prove to be a winning ticket for either side as the electoral fight hots up.
Whilst the right may have won this round, and the left may be reeling from the legalised uppercut SCOTUS delivered when it overturned Roe, the coming election is in some parts, for me, another reminder of the low moral bar today’s Republicans have set themselves.
Herschel Walker, a one time sportsman (and not, I admit, a name I am overly familiar in that respect, not being American myself), and now a candidate for Senate seat in the state of Georgia, has been accused of paying for a girlfriend to have an abortion — the NYT posted the receipt — after he’d been campaigning for ‘a no exceptions’ ban on all abortions in Georgia, and even the production of overwhelming evidence against him he still has the Trump like temerity to deny it all.
And like Trump, lying seems to be a daily occurrence for Walker. Lying about being a good family man. Lying about being an educated man. Lying about being a successful businessman. Even lying about being in the FBI! Walker has shown himself to be an habitual liar time and time again. Even his son, who Walker has had nothing to do with, chipped in with the Tweet (below) and tried to bring Georgia voters to their senses.
Walker is a man so painfully ill-equipped to be in government that of evolution he once said drily observed, “Why are there still apes? Think about it,”— well, yes, as a Zoologist, I have. And can I suggest Mr Walker, that you should try doing the same!
This is a man, much like Trump, who has all the moral authority of a Komodo dragon insisting ‘but I like cute bunny rabbits,’ as it sinks its bacteria sodden jaws into its victim, before letting it hobble off to die as the bacteria rots it from within.
With 4 children from 4 different women, none of whom he has any contact with, this climate change denier, who says things that are so dumb they should be, as Karen Attiah wrote in a WaPo Op-Ed, election disqualifying, found that after the abortion revelations emerged saw the money raised by his campaign increase dramatically!
I’m dumb-founded…! Just how low can Republicans go?
It seems that idiocy, hypocrisy, poor judgement, a penchant for repeated lying, and being a poor, poor example of a family man is sufficient to gain Trump’s recommendation in the race for the Senate.
Of course, it’s not all Walker’s fault.
Walker has become an unfortunate symbol of the political, moral and educational rot within the Republican Party. Playing the small town, innocent boy just trying to do his best, he’s up against the supremely competent and thoroughly decent incumbent Raphael Warnock.
The anti-black, anti-intellectual Republicans are using Walker as the personification of the poorly educated, muscle bound black man who fits their image of non-white incompetence perfectly. If Walker wins his benefit to the party would be his inability to argue against anything or any policy he would be asked to endorse. He’s usefulness lies in his ability to be manipulated by other, more ruthless, better equipped Republicans.
Walker’s very blackness is being used as a tool against his own race, so Republicans can say ‘look, this is the sort of black man we can deal with. He’s one of the good ones.’
Whereas Warnock is demonised for being the very antithesis of everything that Walker is, and ever will be. Since when did being qualified to do the job at hand become a handicap?
The fact that Walker, despite his many, many shortcomings, has been coached to tow the line, to promote family values and the patriarchal hierarchy, is apparently enough for the Republicans, and may even prove to be enough for the electorate.
His blatantly hypocritical anti-abortion stance is almost beside the point, so long as he parrots the right lines at the right times. And if Walker, and his other fascist leaning, Republican colleagues have their way it won’t stop there.
Which brings me full circle, back to where I began in Part 1. of this saga.
The decision to overturn Roe gives weight then to the patriarchal hierarchy that is so fundamental to fascist thinking and, as the SCOTUS dissenters wrote with respect to the vastly diminished role of women in American society, that individual states may now decide that “from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of…”
Just like the U.S., Poland too has taken large steps backwards in their abortion laws, where all abortions are banned, except where the foetus is severely and irreversibly damaged, for serious risk to the mother, and in cases of rape and incest.
In 2015 the flamboyantly and misleadingly called Law and Justice Party (PiS) in Poland tried to ban the rape and incest exceptions, but were stalled only after massive, nationwide protests broke out (1).
In Hungary too, Orban has enshrined the patriarchal family in the Constitution, which he rewrote in 2011, and like Putin he drew on the nations mythical past as a guide to its’ future.
Hungary, he said, has been “…a part of Christian Europe (for) 1000 years…/…our people have over the centuries defended Europe in a series of struggles (against the Ottomans)” and that in the new Constitution Hungary is fulfilling its’ “…abiding need for spiritual and intellectual renewal…” and that it will provide a future path to “…make Hungary great again!”
Oh, the common refrain…
The Hungarian Constitution goes on to enshrine the patriarchal ‘family’ as the basic unit of Hungarian society based on the ‘union of a man and a woman,’ then later on bans abortion (1), sending a message that a virtuous patriarchal past and present will help protect against sexual liberalism and the choice of any ‘alternative lifestyle,’ which would thereafter run contrary to constitutional law.
Methinks America is not so far away…
What will 2024 bring? Hope or unreality?
Back in 2016 When Donald Trump won the Presidency I don’t recall many commentators talking about autocracy. There was a lot of fear. There was an awful lot of uncertainty about what a Trump Presidency might bring. But autocracy?
No!
But Masha Gessen has seen it all before.
They wrote in the days after that unlikely win, “Trump will be only the fourth candidate in history and the second in more than a century to win the presidency after losing the popular vote. He is also probably the first candidate in history to win the presidency despite having been shown repeatedly by the national media to be a chronic liar, sexual predator, serial tax-avoider, and race-baiter who has attracted the likes of the Ku Klux Klan. Most important, Trump is the first candidate in memory who ran not for president but for autocrat — and won.”
That last line is worth saying again…Trump is the first candidate in memory who ran not for president but autocrat — and won!
And then just think about that for a second. America’s first autocratic president.
You may, or may not agree with that statement, either wholly or in part; and perhaps that was a stretch back then. But come 2024 would that still be the case?
Even I was able to see beyond Trump’s 2016 win to the general direction the Republican Party had taken. I wrote in a (now defunct) blog how a Republican Congress had stifled Obama’s legislative agenda, effectively voiding the final 2 years of his Presidency, observing that “…now we can see the direct result of that policy of nullification: disenchantment, disenfranchisement and a population that has turned its’ head away from the political mid-line to face, more or less directly, to the right.”
And should Trump decide to run again in 2024, and should he win, then we can expect the authoritarian turn will be that much smarter, far more illegitimate, far more brutal, far more violent and far more destructive than before.
Should A.N.Other win the Republican nomination, such as Ron DeSantis, then we may be dealing with a slightly different kettle of fish. My first thought is, that Trump would likely sulk rather than offer full throttle support of anyone chosen ahead of him, and this may slow the alternative candidate down somewhat.
But realistically, it’s going to be Trump…again. The Republican Party has invested far too much skin; they have burned far too many bridges; buried far too many lifelong political scruples to ever consider turning away from their leader now.
And what might we expect should Trump win again?
Expect to see troops on the street as early as Inauguration Day 2025 to provide security against the deposed, seething, criminal ranks of radical left. Expect to see bodies in the gutters shortly thereafter. By the end of February 2025 expect the FBI to have been gutted, and any remaining positions to have been filled by inexperienced loyalists who put loyalty to Trump before loyalty to the United States. The same will come at the CIA, all arms of the military, the intelligence agencies, national security, law enforcement and the judiciary. Environmental protections will be trashed, with any agencies having their funding severely slashed or just plain stopped. Expect to see Trump’s political opponents up in court on — and forgive the pun — trumped up charges. Jail time would be the least of their worries. Executions may well become public affairs again shortly thereafter, as ‘drug dealers, terrorists, rioters, traitors and seditious rabble-rousers’ are routinely culled. Education establishments will be forced to retire any liberals and employ under qualified right-wingers or lose their funding. Being gay or trans will be made illegal. The free press will be hounded legally, verbally and personally, and eventually forced to tow the Trump line or go out of business.
Expect to see the Trump Organisation grow out of all proportion, swallowing other businesses, stamping on competitors, and running riot across the planet using American troops to secure their interests.
Immigrants and the homeless will be shunted off to ‘camps’ somewhere quiet, somewhere isolated, away from prying eyes and never heard of again.
NATO will be finished. Europe will be finished. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Trump start supplying Putin with weapons. In the longer term, expect the U.S. to be involved in many more wars, often times to protect Trump’s personal interests.
Elections thereafter will be markedly different affairs; highly restricted voting processes with loyalists in charge of election organisation, administration and counting. Gerrymandering won’t be an issue any longer because results will be highly managed and controlled, much like they are in Russia. Outcomes will very soon become predictable. Any semblance of true democracy will have died long before that stage.
The secession of California would be very likely. Other states may try to follow. Civil disturbances will become commonplace, as will the overly vicious put-downs by nameless, unmarked, unknown law enforcement bullies.
Come 2028, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Trump change the rules of the game, or just plain ignore them, and run again against a selected opponent, one picked to fall on his Democratic Party sword without compunction.
Because, for Republicans, it’s not about doing the right thing anymore, for their country, or for their party, or for their people, because they turned away from that in 2016. It’s now solely about the power, and the all-consuming desire to wield that power to crush their opponents in the name of anti-corruption, to destroy voting rights in the name of democracy, to trample on free speech in the name of defending free speech, to punish any dissenters from whatever direction they may arise in the name of protecting the citizenry and the nation, to wreck any remaining semblance of judicial oversight, to blame economic failures and social problems on immigrants, non-whites and non-Christians, to dismantle any democratic oversight institutions that might try to stand in their way under the guise of ‘draining the swamp,’ and to make sure that Democrats never, ever win another election ever again.
Whatever else they say it is about, is a lie.
Tim Snyder sums it up perfectly in a recent WaPo magazine article when he says, “If Trump wins, I don’t imagine some kind of normal inauguration in ’29. If we want a normal inauguration in ’29, we need one in ’25 which involves somebody else.”
Thanks for reading.
- How Fascism Work: The politics of us and them; Jason Stanley, 2018.
- The Origins of Totalitarianism; Hannah Arendt, 1951.
- The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America; Timothy Snyder, 2018.
- The Future is History: How totalitarianism reclaimed Russia; Masha Gessen, 2017.
- Putin’s People: How the KGB took back Russia and then took on the West; Catherine Belton, 2020.
