No Forward Progress on Can’t You Read (Link)
No Forward Progress
Well, that’s that isn’t it? So long and thanks for all the fascism, you gutless pigf*cking cracker scumbag – in the immortal words of some third-rate nazi TV show host, buddy “you’re fired.”
Yes ladies and gentlemen; despite his protestations otherwise, swine emperor Trump has effectively conceded the 2020 U.S. Presidential election – a mere three weeks after a ballot battle he unquestionably lost long before the contest was officially called for Joe Biden. Furthermore, while it’s still possible (but increasingly unlikely) that the Klepto Kaiser may try to unleash a wave of brownshirt chud violence before Biden’s inauguration, Trump is already bleeding too much of the institutional support any fascist coup needs to succeed. In other words, the coup phase of the Trump presidency has unofficially ended.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this has touched off an altogether puerile online debate driven by reactionary contrarians, faux-left libertarians and grifter accelerationists, about whether or not Trump had just attempted a coup at all. I won’t waste time recounting my thoughts on the issue in this space, but if you want to read more about them you can check out the Twitter thread linked here – suffice to say, I would describe that argument as “wrong,” overtly simplistic, and “horribly misguided.”
So time to crack a cold one and wave buh-bye to American fascism, right? Well unfortunately, and as I’ve been trying to explain over the course of four years worth of articles and a five part No Fugazi Podcast series – no, it isn’t.
The simple truth is that American fascism long predates the rise of Trump, it will unquestionably survive the fall of Trump and as the recommended reading link I shared last time so aptly demonstrates, even a “stupid coup” doomed to fail is likely to have devastating consequences for any liberal democracy – America is no exception. As I have written time and time again, Trump himself is both a product of and an accelerant for this preexisting American fascism.
Even if he were to drop stone dead tomorrow morning, the swine emperor would leave behind a burgeoning white nationalist movement in mainstream politics. The Joe Biden presidency will do nothing to address an openly conspiratorial, homicidally obstructionist and yes objectively fascist Republican Party that just signaled its willingness to sanctify a coup to overturn an election result; let the Constitution be damned. Perhaps most importantly however, the Klepto Kaiser’s failed coup won’t stop billionaire-backed right wing astroturf “media” from riling up the cultists, encouraging stochastic terrorism and reloading for another shot at the White House in 2024.
Oh yeah, and with, or without Trump – the planet is still going to boil us all to death if we don’t destroy capitalism; a fact that is clearly not lost on the ruling class capitalists backing the spread of fascism across the entire Pig Empire. The billionaire class isn’t ready to die for the money, but they’ll certainly kill for it.
And that dear readers, is where Pacific Standard, Noah Berlatsky and today’s recommended reading selection come into our story – to explain (in a round about sort of way) part of why fascism is here to stay and it’s never a good idea to take your eyes off violent revanchist nazis; because if you’re reading this, they probably want you dead. Click on the title header below to find out more:
“The Far Right Doesn’t Want to Beat the Left; It Wants to Exterminate It” by Noah Berlatsky, April 16, 2019
– nina illingworth
