Links: Liberal Anti-Fascism in “Alt-America” and Malcolm Nance’s Russiagate Grift – New Review and Essay
Alt-America & Failures of Liberal Anti-Fascism
Today’s post goes out to regular readers who have been teasing me on social media for refusing to review books I don’t like here on Can’t You Read; you’re in for a special treat because this edition of “Quickshot Quotations” finally features a book I’m unable to recommend without so many caveats as to call into question its value even for antifascist scholars – David Neiwert’s “Alt-America: the Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump.”
In complete fairness, I should start by pointing out that I don’t think Alt-America is a bad book by any stretch of the imagination, and indeed there are some things about Neiwert’s magnum opus expose of American reactionary movements that cast a fresh light on the disastrous election of Donald Trump and the ongoing fallout from that event in our society.
Although Neiwert is hardly an engaging writer, his style is fairly accessible and comparable to the everyday journalism you’ll find in ostensibly “liberal” corporate media like say, The New Republic, or the US edition of The Guardian. Furthermore, the material presented in Alt-America is thoroughly researched and Neiwert’s two decades worth of tracking the reactionary right affords him some keen insights about seemingly divergent elements of the preexisting right wing revanchist movements that would coalesce around Downmarket Mussolini and improbably (or perhaps not so improbably) propel Trump to victory over Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election. In particular, the author’s examination of the (recently resurgent) decades-old American militia movement is the type of far-reaching analysis that has been otherwise so lacking in the mainstream liberal conception of anti-fascism and the Trump moment.
Unfortunately however, it is precisely this “mainstream liberal conception of anti-fascism” that seemingly blinds Neiwert to the true nature of the problem and ultimately makes it impossible for me to recommend Alt-America to readers who are not already familiar with the class dynamics, market forces and crisis of confidence in our institutions, that is driving the rise of so-called “right wing populism.”
In Niewert’s telling of the tale behind the Klepto Kaiser’s ascendance to the Oval Office, the devil in the details is not “economic stagnation in the northern Midwest, but… a far-right racist movement had been growing since the early 90s, which both enabled Trump’s victory and has been legitimized by it.” Tracing a line from the reactionary American militia movements of the 1990′s, through the (largely Astroturfed) fusion of the “black helicopter” right and pro-banking conservatives under the auspices of the Tea Party and finally to the “basket full of deplorables” who form what is commonly known as “Trumpism”, the author paints a compelling picture of an irresponsible media driven by untested technology, a crass opportunistic Republican Party happy to trade in conspiracy theories for votes and good old fashioned white supremacy, working together to put Donald Trump over Clinton and into the White House.
There is even some merit in these arguments. After all, Neiwert is probably correct in defining Trump’s presidency as both a logical byproduct of and an accelerant for a preexisting, uniquely American brand of fascism. Furthermore, the author is hardly the only expert to argue that U.S. media played a crucial (and tragic) role in electing Downmarket Mussolini. Finally, while it may be absurd to say that all Trump supporters are white supremacists, it’s also utterly impossible to deny that none of them had a problem voting for one.
The problem of course is that Donald Trump didn’t magically draw a bunch of voting nazis out of the woodwork to overwhelm an innocent and unsuspecting Democratic Party at the ballot box. In fact, if you look at the raw numbers it’s pretty clear that Trump’s final share of the vote looks an awful lot like Mitt Romney’s doomed 2012 run against incumbent Democrat president Barack Obama, with a moderate increase for overall population growth in the United States. By contrast, Hillary Clinton (who still won the popular vote) finished with slightly fewer votes than Obama did in 2012 – which, when you factor in the same population growth that put Trump above Romney, clearly indicates that the problem wasn’t fascists coming out to vote, but some combination of Democratic Party voters staying home and the American Electoral College system.
About Clinton’s inability to turn out voters and disastrous campaign, Neiwert has little to say; choosing to focus on the Alt-Right’s ability to weaponize social media through conspiracy theories instead of attempting to square the circle found in the argument that Midwestern racism prevented registered Democrats who voted for Obama, from casting a ballot in favor of a 69 year old white multi-millionaire whose husband had already been elected president, twice. Nor does the author have much to offer on the subject of the devastation wrought by neofeudalism in the very states Clinton lost due to low turnout, or the profound distrust American society has developed in its mainstream media, or the Democratic Party’s wholesale abandonment of the labor class in favor of the numerically smaller “professional managerial class” that now dominates most of the party’s rank and file concerns.
In other words, while Neiwert has a lot to offer on the subject of how Republican voters could easily reconcile themselves with an unhinged fascist like Trump, he has very little to offer (besides platitudes about “talking to Trump voters more”) on the subject of how the liberal mainstream consensus has contributed to their own demise by alienating (presumably) non-fascist, Democrat voters. For all of its positive qualities, Alt America never quite gets down to accepting that healthy societies don’t elect fascists and that the crumbling edifice of our openly corrupt institutions had as much to do with the election of a con artist like Trump, as America’s longstanding love affair with conspiracy theories and white supremacy. In the end you’re left with a book that tries to explain American fascism without discussing class tensions and in doing so, provides an excellent examination of the “what” but not the “why” behind the political ascendance of the reactionary US right and their chosen avatar, Donald Trump.
– nina illingworth
Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.
You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, and on Mastodon.
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