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Unity with Fascists Undermines Liberal Antifascism

While it’s certainly a little strange commenting on the impeachment of Downmarket Mussolini now that he’s actually out of office, the fact is I do support impeaching Trump for pretty much all the reasons I supported impeaching him last time. Although I should add that in this case I think those reasons are, at least in my mind, so obvious that objections from people who self-identify on the left border on juvenile contrarianism, or worse. Factually, Trump is guilty. He’s guilty of not only of inciting a fascist insurrection attempt that if not for a spot of luck, would have ended in the murder of both a Vice President and a Speaker of the House, but a metric f*ck ton of other fascist crap as well; and that’s not even counting what percentage of the half a million dead from Covid he’s directly responsible for – a figure that is clearly NOT an insignificant number. Sometimes, you get Al Capone on tax evasion, and the real culprit here is Presidential impunity.

Ultimately, the Trump presidency and the not-Russia parts of the Mueller investigation prove that Nixon was right, and folks who write long essays about constitutional law were wrong. The President is effectively immune from the law; which of course makes any argument that “this impeachment is all political” obtuse. The system, which is clearly useless against fascism as presently constructed, is designed to make the only punishments a President can be forced to endure, inherently political.

Additionally there is some small amount of merit in barring Trump from running for public office again; even if it’s only to stop his lucrative political grift in the interim. Although, let’s be clear on this; the Democrats don’t have sixty votes in the Senate, and in light of the issues I’m going to discuss in the rest of this thread, there is virtually no reason to believe anyone is going to bring enough pressure to bear on an explicitly fascist, pro-Trump GOP, to force them to vote for impeachment.

Still, even given the pathetic reality that you cannot punish a fascist President for inciting an insurrection, a reasonable person can still buy the argument that this is about the bigger picture, and that the importance of establishing a precedent that a President cannot literally try to use political violence to overturn an election, without someone at least trying to impeach you, I guess. If I’m a Democratic Party strategist, what I’m telling myself is that we’ll show voters we’re against fascism by doing the right thing, even when it’s not easy. The problem with that line of reasoning however, is that liberals objectively suck at antifascism and have effectively already lost even the loftier moral arguments involved here – before these impeachment proceedings even began, frankly.

Now before I go too far forward, I want to make it clear that this is ultimately a liberal establishment problem, and while the Democratic Party is certainly a significant part of the issue here, they’re also constrained by that establishment to a degree. Obviously party leadership certainly has a lot of sway in the larger liberal sphere of influence, but also we’re also talking about rich liberals, giant media corporations, business owners who vote for (and donate to) the Democratic Party, and even to some degree, the affluent professional class types who represent the only thing resembling a popular base the party itself is ever interested in listening to. And at this point, I think it’s safe to say these folks have collectively screwed the pooch.

There is a deep, culturally ingrained, and institutionally reinforced lack of accountability, and craving for normalcy (for capital accumulation, but I digress) at work here among our ruling classes that fundamentally makes them incapable of fighting fascism, even if they wanted to. This perspective is so entrenched, it even makes just acknowledging that the Republican Party as a collective entity, has adopted fascist political techniques and theories wholeheartedly at this point, impossible.

Part of this is a byproduct of the liberal tendency to fetishize rules and process; there is no playbook in American history for dealing with a broadly supported (among the reactionary elite) fascist coup attempt, or for that matter a President who ruled according fascist political principles. Once you factor in say, 50 years, of actively corroding the checks on power and the system’s ability to punish the wealthy for even blatantly criminal activities, it’s not hard to see why our “standards and norms” led us to this moment in American history; on the eve of acquitting a clearly guilty, fascist former President who objectively tried to overthrow democracy with a violent chud coup attempt.

Further complicating the matter of course, is that the majority of rich (and therefore, powerful) Americans, liberal or otherwise, genuinely prefer fascism to sharing wealth and power with the labor class. Indeed, the hubris and relative comfort of rich liberals seems to allow most of them to believe, like so many deluded “liberal” capitalists in history, that they can use and control fascism to suppress and silence their own left flank, politically. How can you fight your own scarecrow?

Most of all however, the attempts to bring someone to justice for the events of January 6th, are hampered by the widespread liberal delusion that Trump himself is the problem, and indeed the source of fascism in America; which they regard as essentially a symptom of Trump’s cult of personality approach to politics. Although Biden didn’t start it, this ideology is best typified by his ludicrous statement that after Trump is gone, Republicans would “have an epiphany” and want bipartisan decorum. Garbage-tier liberal spin doctors can cluck at me that he walked that back later all they like, clearly if you look at the actions of Biden and his administration, they still believe that nonsense. That’s why he put Islamophobic conspiracy theorist Cindy McCain on his transition team, that’s why Biden World floated adding a Republican to the cabinet as a show of good intentions to the right, and that’s why the President gave a bullsh*t “unity” speech a mere fourteen days after a goddamn fascist coup attempt.

Naturally of course, Biden is not alone in this suicidal craving for bipartisanship. Nancy Pelosi, who literally came out of the coup attempt breathing fire and seemed to have dimly realized the fascists meant to kill her, has also spent a solid month talking about finding ways to work with Republicans and move past Trump, like the party he’s leaving behind isn’t explicitly fascist at this point. Moving beyond the party, this same bipartisan disease dominates the private sector, and is also clearly found in a media class that happily shouted “fascism” and “coup” on the January 6th, but went right back to comparing and conflating fascist street gangs, with antifascist activists, a week later.

Do you “very important” folks think Americans are in a coma? Do you not realize they’re aware that Trump didn’t do this by himself? Can you not see that voters know full damn well that all the things you’re (rightfully) accusing Trump of doing and saying, have been repeated by virtually every single member of the right wing establishment in America? From GOP politicians, to “conservative” corporate media, and on down to rich reactionary corporate CEOs that paid for Trump’s reality TV fascist political career?

Take for example Republican Senators Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley; two high profile fascists who have done every bit as much to contribute to the insurrection attempt in the Capitol as Donald Trump, or anyone in his inner circle. From having a constitutional lawyer like Cruz spread conspiracy theories about a rigged election, to Josh Hawley’s open support of a fascist mob right before both of them voted to try and overturn a sanctioned, legally valid, democratic election, both of these men have also served as key drivers of the events Trump is now being impeached for. Frankly, even that’s probably still minimizing how responsible Cruz and Hawley really are; after the sh*t they pulled in the lead up to the coup attempt and on January 6th itself, those two pigf*ckers should be fleeing the country. The only thing keeping either of their actions from being treason, is the fact that the chud rioters who tried to pull off the coup, were all Americans; there are absolutely places on Earth where they’ll hang you for that sort of sh*t, my friends.

Naturally however, because the American political system is a rich man’s joke and we all collectively live on the worst possible timeline, they both went back to work the next day like nothing happened at all; and not only will they not be punished for what they’ve done, but both Hawley and Cruz actually get to vote in the damn impeachment trial their fascist scheming ultimately produced. I guess that’s why Hawley was laughing his backside off, with his feet up, while they played footage of fascist mobs trying to chase down his political enemies in the Capitol. Is that what you folks in the liberal establishment mean by “holding those who would destroy our democracy accountable?”

Were those examples a little too on the nose for you? Fine, let’s examine Mitch McConnell for a moment. Here we have a guy who spent every waking moment of the Trump presidency talking out of both sides of his mouth while he actively, and fervently supported every single aspect of Downmarket Mussolini’s fascist agenda. Then, on the January the 6th, he vomits up some blather about respecting democracy and refuses to vote to try and overturn a fucking obviously legal election, and suddenly he’s a Hashtag Resistance hero.

So what happens next? Nothing unpredictable, that’s for certain; Mitch McConnell then proceeds to successfully argue that it’s necessary to delay Trump’s impeachment trial until after Biden is inaugurated, then turns around and votes that it’s unconstitutional to impeach Trump now that he’s no longer president. Will Mitch be punished for aiding and abetting a fascist who conducted a coup? Hell no, thanks to Joe Manchin’s filibuster blubbering, he’s sharing power in the Senate despite losing!

This is to say nothing of Trump’s objectively fascist administration itself. What will become of Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s white nationalist immigration policies? He’s free to go. How about Chad Wolf, Trump’s personally selected pick to take over the American Gestapo and conduct a reign of terror on activists in Portland? He’s already on a beach somewhere laughing it up. What about Bill Barr, Trump’s corrupted fundie fascist Attorney General, and the guy who sanctioned the political assassination of an antifascist activist ACCUSED of a crime? He’ll face no consequences at all; I guess the effectiveness of the “I was just following orders” defense increases as you scale up the ladders of power in the Pig Empire.

Speaking of “upscale,” what about the corporate donors who literally gave money to an organized fascist coup; what will happen to them? What about Bob and Becky Mercer, who’ve dumped an infinite amount of money into both mainstreaming fascism, and selling the whackjob online psyops that gave you the Trump presidency, and ultimately, his fascist cult of personality in QAnon? They’re not going to face any consequences at all. Ditto for guys like Peter Thiel, Rupert Murdoch and even minions like Tucker Carlson.

I could obviously keep going, but I think the picture should be clear to you by now; all the rich fascists behind not only the coup attempt on January 6th, but also the entire fascist movement that propelled Trump to the White House, are going to walk away from this free and clear, without suffering any consequences. Hell, except for some very dumb people who made the FBI’s job too easy for ignorant pigs to screw up by posting evidence of their crimes all over social media, even the street chud rioters will mostly escape punishment for this.

So when Ted Liu is on my TV screen, passionately declaring that Trump must be impeached because even if he loses in 2024 he could just do another coup attempt, I want to scream “you’ve lost the plot” at his disembodied head – because stopping Trump, who will be like eighty years old in 2024, isn’t stopping fascism, and the goal of everyone in government who isn’t a bloody fascist, should be to stop all future fascist coup attempts and the fascist creep, period. Frankly, letting all the rich nazis who did this go, while you focus on a futile attempt to deny Trump some privileges, isn’t going to do a damn thing to stop fascism in America; and the only message it sends is “next time, pick a smarter fascist to lead your violent coup attempt.”

Look I’m not an idiot, and I for one certainly didn’t expect Joe Biden and his Department of Justice to go full “Bobby Kennedy versus The Mob” on rich fascists and their elected puppets; but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s the right move for a society that doesn’t want to be overrun by reactionary thugs, and purging fascism from American public life is necessary, if we’re actually going to learn a damn thing from Trump and the coup attempt on Capitol Hill. Nobody said it would be easy, but the fact that you aren’t even trying to root out anti-democratic, ethno-nationalist reactionaries in the highest seats of power, undermines the fight against fascism entirely

The liberal establishment has made a choice to make Trump (who is again, clearly guilty of inciting an insurrection attempt, among other crimes) a singular scapegoat for the larger fascist thread in our society; a thread that ultimately made the Trump presidency possible in the first place. They’ve made that choice not only because they lack the courage, conviction, and desire to engage in proper antifascism, but also because they really do want to get this over with and go back to f*cking over poor people over six martini lunches with their sh*theel fascist friends “across the aisle” and I’m sorry, as much as nobody who owns a West Wing boxed set wants to hear this, people can smell the bullsh*t in that position.

You can say “this is not normal” and “we must protect our democracy” until you’re blue in the face; the fact that rich liberals are eager to go back to bipartisan power sharing with rich nazis who just organized a coup attempt, lends an air of unreality and make believe to the entire proceedings that is only broken when someone like AOC shouts out “hello, they tried to have us murdered” and no amount of babbling on CNN is gonna change that. Either it’s fascism, or it’s not. Either it’s an existential threat to our democracy, or it’s not. And when the entire sum total of the liberal establishment’s response to a full f*cking Seven Days in May fascist coup attempt (with attempted political assassinations, widespread institutional support, and even clearly some backing from the Pentagon,) is to expel Donald f*cking Trump from the magic kingdom without dessert, and then go back to brunch? The message you’re clearly sending is that it’s not fascism, and it’s not serious.

And mark my words, that is a mistake that will come back to haunt us all.

This impeachment is a farce; but not because Trump hasn’t earned this moment, and far more punishment than the system could ever hope to levy on him. It’s a farce because the only purpose of this trial is to put the neonazi toothpaste back in the tube and pretend it’s 1996 again; the Democrats might as well impeach the moon for all the f*cking good it’ll do in the long run.

 

– nina illingworth

 

Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, and on Mastodon.

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