{"id":31838,"date":"2024-05-21T18:14:18","date_gmt":"2024-05-21T22:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/?p=31838"},"modified":"2024-05-21T18:14:18","modified_gmt":"2024-05-21T22:14:18","slug":"the-rise-of-the-new-fascists-and-their-threat-to-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/the-rise-of-the-new-fascists-and-their-threat-to-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rise of the New Fascists and Their Threat to Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"TrumpI<\/span> wonder if this was how my father felt in England, watching the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1920s and ’30s. By the time of my father’s 20th birthday, Mussolini had already secured his one-party-state in Italy; Hitler was elected and appointed chancellor. He would do the same in Germany within six months. While these two tightened their authoritarian hold on their nations, Stalin in the USSR would begin his Great Purge, and Franco would join the coup that led him to fascist power in Spain.<\/p>\n

Argentina went through a rightwing, military-backed coup in the 1930s. A far-right conspiracy group attempted a coup in France \u2014 the so-called Veterans’ Riot.<\/a> A group of neo-fascists in the USA also attempted a coup \u2014 the Wall Street Putsch<\/a> \u2014 to overthrow the US government. Rightwing dictatorships<\/a> arose \u2014 often as the result of a coup \u2014 in\u00a0 Albania, Austria, Greece, Iran, Manchuria, China, Cuba, El Salvador, and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Even in the UK, fascists were on the rise. Oswald Mosely<\/a>, MP and leader of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), was bringing Hitler’s ideology and brutal street-brawling tactics into British politics and daily life:<\/p>\n

As leader of the BUF, Mosley led Britain\u2019s vitriolic anti-Semitic fascist movement. The BUF embarked on a militant campaign of intimidation, harassment, and violence against Britain\u2019s Jewish population, particularly in London\u2019s East End \u2013 home to around 100,000 Jews at the time… Oswald\u2019s bodyguards \u2013 dubbed \u2018Biff Boys\u2019 and led by the England rugby captain Peter Howard \u2013 damaged the New Party\u2019s reputation with their violence and thuggery. These bodyguards would later become known as Mosley\u2019s Blackshirts… BUF membership was said to have approached a peak of 50,000 by the summer of 1934.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It must have looked bleak to my father, living through the 1930s as democracies fell like dominoes to rightwing authoritarians, minorities were oppressed and jailed, and the world marched inevitably towards war. It was a frightening time, with totalitarian regimes taking over everywhere you looked, and democratic rights and freedoms being repressed.<\/p>\n

My father \u2014 who I always knew as a moderate and centrist, with a slight lean to the left where unions and workers were concerned \u2014 must have felt pretty much how I feel now, looking at the rise of the ardent new fascists under Trump in the USA, PoiLIEvre in Canada, Putin in Russia, Xi in China, Modi in India, Orban in Hungary, and elsewhere. We, as he did, live in frightening times, indeed, when so many rightwing extremists can rule nations. But more scary is that their followers know<\/em> the consequences their leaders represent for freedom and democracy, but still support and empower them.<\/p>\n

You cannot exist in the information-dense, 24-hour-news-cycle, internet-access-everywhere 21st century and not<\/em> know what these people are planning, what they have done, what they stand for. No one who supports them can claim they don’t also support fascism: that would be like a fish claiming it doesn’t live in water.<\/p>\n

Make no mistake: by all reasonable definitions of the word, Trump and his MAGA Repugnicans, and PoiLIEvre and his Maple MAGA CONservatives are<\/em> fascists. There are four basic pillars of fascism<\/a>: xenophobia, propaganda, political violence, and dictatorship. And these two \u2014 as well as those others mentioned above \u2014 fit them all, if not in practice then in well-publicized intent.*<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"TrumpBoth men are serial liars and rage-farmers, spewing a constant stream of disinformation, accusations, insults, and outright lies about any opposition or dissent. Trump alone made more than 30,000 untrue statements<\/a> \u2014 many of them deliberate lies \u2014 during his presidency. At the top of that list of lies, Trump has continued to spread \u2014 and does so at every rally even now \u2014 is that he won the 2020 election, and that the Democrats stole the election from him. This flat-earth-level madness, but his cult-like followers and sycophants believe him.**<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Why We Should be Afraid: Trump<\/h5>\n

Is Trump really the best<\/em> person the Repugnicans can put forward as their choice to be the nation’s leader? Their best<\/em> role model? Their standard for ethical and moral behaviour to which they aspire?<\/p>\n

After all, they know quite well he’s a serial liar; a serial adulterer who bragged about sexually assaulting women; a con man who has more business failures than successes;<\/a>\u00a0whose charity was fined and dissolved as a result of fraudulent transactions<\/a> to benefit his political ambitions; who was convicted in court of sexual abuse and defamation<\/a>, who faces 91 felony counts<\/a> in several US states; who has been found guilty of ten counts of contempt<\/a> for violating court orders, whose “university” conned students with false advertising, was fined $25 million<\/a> and closed; who stole classified documents from the White House<\/a>, kept them in a bathroom in his golf course, and showed them to visitors; who peddles tawdry commercial goods like gold-plated running shoes and tacky bibles to raise money; who paid money to cover up an affair with a porn star he compared to his daughter; who lavishly praised dictators when he was in office while publicly insulting and denigrating his own civil servants, generals, and administrators, and who attempted to overthrow the legally elected government…<\/p>\n

Repugnicans are not supporting Trump for his morals, ethics, or business acumen: he has none<\/em>. They’re doing it because he promises to implement a violently repressive, totalitarian regime and they eagerly want to participate in punishing women, opponents, dissenters, the poor, the vulnerable, and anyone else they demean and dislike. They intend to make Gilead a reality<\/a> (MAGA Trumpists in several US states like Florida, North Carolina, Texas, and Alabama have already made great strides in implementing a misogynist, Talibangelist rule akin to Gilead).***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Trump has stated he intends to revoke the US Constitution, send the military into Democratic American cities to enforce his aims, sign a nationwide ban on abortion (he bragged about overturning Roe v Wade), supporting a nationwide pregnancy registry, deport 11 million immigrants, he used Hitler’s words from Mein Kampf<\/a> about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of the nation. Trump himself warned there would be a “bloodbath”<\/a> if he was not elected, clearly letting voters know he was prepared to unleash violence if he did not get elected. That lie is being spread by all of Trump’s abject sycophants, including his daughter-in-law, the tune-deaf C&W singer who now heads the RNC, Lara Trump<\/a>. Her appointment was part of Trump’s final push to absolutely and utterly control the Repugnican Party.<\/p>\n

Trump has been recorded as recently as April trying to grift $1 billion from oil and gas executives<\/a> by promising them he would repeal environmental protections and regulatory controls if they paid for his campaign.\u00a0Meanwhile, Trump has gutted the finances of the RNC<\/a> to pay for his own legal bills, even before he is the official party nominee. His followers know<\/em> he’s abusing their donations to the party for his own personal gain.<\/p>\n

Trump, who has used the phrase “I am your retribution” in his campaign rallies, was asked by Fox Newz sycophant Sean Hannity if he intended to be a dictator if re-elected.<\/a> “Instead of a straightforward denial, Trump said he would be a dictator only on “Day 1″ of his tenure.” But like all of his lies, it’s not true: Trump has made and continues to make statements at rallies and on social media that make it clear he intends to be a dictator throughout his term and possibly for life if he can change or eliminate the US Constitution<\/a>:<\/p>\n

At a\u00a0New Hampshire\u00a0campaign event,\u00a0he vowed to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.” We have debunked the notion that the 2020 election was\u00a0stolen\u00a0or\u00a0rigged.
\nTrump has made\u00a0several promises\u00a0to fire local prosecutors; investigate Comcast, NBC and MSNBC for treason and remove them from the airwaves; and terminate the U.S. Constitution.
\nAnd in a\u00a0Truth Social post, Trump implied that former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley should be executed for treason. Trump criticized Milley, a U.S. Army general, for calling his Chinese counterpart to reassure him after the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol. Trump wrote on the social media platform that it was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"STeve<\/a>Trump’s toxic pitbull, Steve Bannon<\/a>, spoke at CPAC 2024 (Conservative Political Action Committee), spewing far-right “rising storm” conspiracy talk taken directly from the cesspool of disinformation and racism, Qanon. This was part of the online system that empowered and encouraged the attempted coup by Trump supporters in Washington (the Jan. 6 insurrection).<\/p>\n

In 2017 while he was still on Trump’s White House team, Bannon warned Americans that he was intent on “deconstructing the administrative state”<\/a> which observers said paralleled earlier fascist ideologies about destroying a nation’s bureaucracy and government institutions.****<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Another Trump loyalist at CPAC, Jack Posobiec<\/a>, stated the Repugnican agenda: “Welcome to the end of democracy, we’re here to overthrow it completely. We didn\u2019t get all the way there on Jan. 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it.”\u00a0Furthering the totalitarian, pseudo-Christian Talibangelist ideology that underlies the Repugnican platform, Posobiec raised his fist and proclaimed<\/a>, “All glory is not to government. All glory to God.” He was met with cheers from the audience.<\/p>\n

Trump has called the criminal Jan. 6 insurrectionists “patriots” and “hostages.” He has repeatedly promised to free them all with full pardons and apologies, subverting the law<\/a>. He has also promised to charge the police who attempted to protect the capital from the rioters. As noted on NPR, the insurrectionists are Trump’s Brownshirts and he intends to use their rage and violence for his own agenda:<\/p>\n

Jan. 6 defendants and their families have celebrated Trump’s promise. Experts on extremism, however, fear that Trump’s agenda will embolden extremists and encourage political violence. Police officers who were assaulted in the riot say they continue to receive violent threats from Trump supporters, underscoring the ongoing threat.
\n“You can’t support law enforcement and call the mob that attacked the police on Jan. 6 in the United States Capitol ‘patriots,'” [President] Biden said…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And then there’s Project 2025<\/a>: a 1,000-page master plan for a fascist America following a Trump win and “packing the next GOP administration with extreme loyalists to former President Donald Trump.” It would also require a loyalty pledge to Trump from civil servants (and fire those who refused to sign, as the Nazis did when they took power), handicap and undercut Congress, and install “top allies in acting administrative roles… to bypass the Senate confirmation process.” Project 2025 is a frightening, extremist document<\/a> for anyone with even the slightest concern for democracy or the rule of law. But it’s the agenda for the next Trump presidency. And Repugnicans are open about their fascist aims.<\/p>\n

As Claudia Long noted on Substack<\/a>, Project 2025 is “American Fascism, coming to a government near you… Republicans have a plan \u2014 to dismantle the federal government and replace it with \u201cDonald Trump\u2019s vision:”<\/p>\n

…the idea is to have the civic infrastructure in place on Day One to commandeer, reshape and do away with what Republicans deride as the \u201cdeep state\u201d.
\n\u201cWe need to flood the zone with conservatives,\u201d said Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project and a former Trump administration official…
\n\u201cThe president\u2019s Day One will be a wrecking ball,\u201d said Russ Vought, a former Trump administration official…
\nBut if they can\u2019t win at the ballot box, they\u2019ll just use the bullet box, they promise \u2014over and over and over again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Trump’s followers are comfortable with Project 2025 because it feeds into their violent fantasies about repressing their opponents. Long adds, “The history of the world is replete with deranged authoritarians eager and willing to commit any crime, excuse any atrocity, destroy any institution and step over the bodies, in a mad quest for raw power.”<\/p>\n

Trump followers have even stopped hiding their love of dictator Vladimir Putin and are now openly praising him and his authoritarian government to the media. And, of course, Putin’s agenda to destabilize the West will be greatly advanced if Trump wins:<\/p>\n