Hard Truth: You Can’t Vote Out Fascism. You Have to Drive It From Power!

 

By Perry Hoberman
Counterpunch (7/20/18)

I’ve been noticing a increasing phenomena on MSNBC and other mainstream media outlets: as the Trump/Pence regime resorts to ever more outrageous behavior, the various pundits — when asked to explain this or that monstrous action or statement — just shake their heads and admit that they’re simply baffled as to why anyone would do something so irrational, so clueless, so counterproductive, so cruel. There’s an unspoken implication that the regime can’t possibly understand what they’re actually doing — which in turn suggests that this can’t go on forever, that the whole thing will implode due to their painfully evident incompetence and/or thoughtlessness.

The first thing to point out is that the regime’s words and actions, insane as they might appear to any rational human being, are not arbitrary, and they’re not just bluster. These guys mean exactly what they say. From the very beginning, we’ve been told to take Trump’s words “seriously but not literally”, that he’s just “communicating with his base”, and that he’ll be reined in by the “adults in the room”, or maybe by our (increasingly mythical) “checks and balances”. These lines of reasoning start from the premise that Trump is just another corrupt far-right politician, deploying exagerrated rhetoric merely to get attention, while in fact staying within the boundaries of agreed-upon norms of civilized behavior. If we’ve learned anything in the last year and a half, it’s that this regime has no shame, no scruples, and no limits.

They will continue until we force them to stop. And that’s not going to happen through normal channels.

Fascist tendencies in right-wing politics are of course nothing new; it’s just that they were usually (mildly) disguised by coded language and “dog whistles”, allowing plausible deniability for politicians and their racist, xenophobic followers. But this regime is different. They’re not hiding it any more. This allows them to keep upping the ante. One consequence of this is that it leaves no middle ground: this is because anything short of driving them from power essentially means acquiescence and acceptance, and paves the ground for further atrocities.

The media’s failure to recognize these obvious facts points to some glaring limitations of their blinkered world view: they can’t understand, because they can’t let themselves understand. If they did, they would have to grapple with two simple facts: first, that the country is headed inexorably into full-on fascism; and second, that a massive sustained public uprising is the only thing that could stop this nightmare.

Huh, maybe these guys really are fascists

I know, I know: the midterms are only four months away, the blue wave, take back the house, that’s what we have to focus on. I’m sorry, but that’s bullshit. There’s five simple words that refute this course: You can’t vote out fascism. While it’s true that some of our commentariat are finally admitting that, hey, maybe these guys really are fascists, none of them can seem to make the mental leap to what that might imply as far as a viable strategy.

Look around, and ask yourself: what are these dirtbags willing to do to stay in power? The answer is obvious: anything. How did they achieve power in the first place? By cheating: gerrymandering, fraud, hacking, disenfranchisement, etc. Now they’ve been there for nearly two years. The Democrats won the 2016 election by three million votes, and look at where we are; do you really think 2018 is going to be any better? (And I won’t get into how ineffective the Democratic leadership has been; that’s a whole other can of worms.)

You know what a ratchet is, right? It’s got teeth that only allow motion in one direction. Try to go the other way, and nothing happens. That’s how fascist politics work. As long as everything is headed in the direction they want, they can keep up the pretense that nothing has changed, that this is still business as usual. But the minute that they start losing — in the courts, in the media, in elections, whatever — they pull out every trick in the book — and nothing is off limits. …

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RefuseFascism.org

We REFUSE To Accept A Fascist America

RefuseFascism.org is a movement of people coming from diverse perspectives, united in our recognition that the Trump/Pence Regime poses a catastrophic danger to humanity and the planet, and that it is our responsibility to drive them from power through non-violent protests that grow every day until our demand is met. This means working and organizing with all our creativity and determination to bring thousands, eventually millions of people into the streets of cities and towns, to demand:

This Nightmare Must End:
The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!

RefuseFascism.org welcomes individuals and organizations from many different points of view who share our determination to refuse to accept a fascist America, to join and/or partner with us in this great cause.

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