I struggled over whether to publish this post here because I want to make sure that this newsletter stays focused. But even though this newsletter is called Margin of Error it is not strictly about polling. It is about civic engagement in the political process. Considering the events of January 6th, I think it’s necessary to call out fascism in our country. So, I have decided to publish this post here.
“Human history is one long struggle against fascism.”
Many years ago, chatting over a pitcher of terrible beer at the Spoke, my dear late friend and comrade Tim Smith challenged me to sum up human history in one simple sentence. The above quote was my response. Sure, I am using the term fascism in a broad sense, but I stand by it after all these years. Yesterday was just one of many reminders we’ve seen since that drunken evening in Amherst, MA more than 25 years ago. No matter how much progress we make, fascism is always peering around the corner looking to ruin it and subjugate us.
Of course, fascism doesn’t work without fascists. It’s not some passive system imposed on unwilling participants. And the fascists who attempted a coup yesterday were as responsible for what they did as Trump, Giuliani, Hawley, Gohmert, and the other Republican leaders who called them up and incited them to act. What we saw yesterday had all the elements of the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. Nazi leaders incited street gangs, invented and amplified grievances, targeted the BLM and antifa of that day (communists, Jews, etc.) as the “real” aggressors and threats, and used elections as a tool both to air grievances about unfair political treatment and to legitimate their ascension to power (the Nazi Party never garnered more than about a third of support from the public in national elections). There were three other things that likely mattered the most for the Nazis coming to power.
First, the mainstream conservative party and conservatives generally supported the Nazis when it became clear that they could not form a government without either them or the Socialists (which was a social democracy party in the Western European tradition). Hitler was absolutely uncompromising in his negotiations with the conservatives. He refused to accept anything less than the Chancellorship – a bluff that the conservatives should have called him on. The Nazis were losing support at the time and if the conservatives had rebuffed Hitler and called another election that might have been the end of them.
Second, Germany’s institutions were weak – at least compared to ours. If you think about how much damage has been done to American institutions in the past four years and we have still been able to vote out the proto-fascist Trump regime and defeat his coup attempt to stay in power, then you get a sense of how much weaker Germany’s institution and its civil society really were. Hitler went from being on the verge of a footnote in German history on January 1, 1933 to having complete power by the summer.
Third, even that might not have happened if one other thing – that was out of anyone’s control – had not occurred. President Paul von Hindenburg died soon after Hitler became Chancellor. Hindenburg despised Hitler, but preferred working with him because he hated the Left more and he arrogantly thought he could control Hitler (who Hindenburg, a war hero, dismissed as a mere corporal – Hitler's rank in the army during WW1). Hindenburg sounds an awful lot like so many Republicans who insisted to us all in 2016 (and later) that Trump would just be a normal president and they would keep him in check.
Power in the US is decentralized vertically and horizontally, which was not the case in Germany. Our institutions have, thus far, saved us from a total fascist takeover. But any stress test carried out to its extreme will result in breaking the thing being tested. Even the US is not immune from that.
There are some things in life for which there is no middle ground. I can already hear the self-appointed “independent thinkers” and “moderates” scoffing. But once again, these folks are wrong about something that is actually very important. Let’s take murder. Is there a middle ground? If you are not anti-murder then what are you? Neutral on murder? I suppose someone can think that, but they are only fooling themselves. If you are not anti-murder, you are pro-murder. This is because murderers will succeed where people just don’t oppose murder. So, if you don’t consider yourself anti-murder, you ought to just call yourself pro-murder because you will be enabling murder. Likewise, there is no middle ground with fascism. No one is neutral on fascism. If you are not anti-fascist, you are pro-fascist. If you think you are neutral on fascism you are a fascist sympathizer and, as I have said many times, a fascist sympathizer is functionally a fascist.
Fascists depend on good people to do nothing. It is why Popper articulated the Paradox of Tolerance. A free, tolerant, and democratic society depends on not tolerating those who would destroy it.
What we are seeing today in the dust of the coup attempt is fascists on social media and regular media doing two things: (1) claiming that the fascists storming the Capitol yesterday were actually anti-fascists pretending to be fascists and (2) claiming that they oppose violence, but the problem is that anti-fascists will not engage in a dialogue with them. You are probably seeing on your own FB pages people making very similar comments. Both statements are classic fascist manipulation tactics. The former is a type of projection that we have seen Trump and his supporters doing for years. It is how the Nazis seized power when Hitler declared an emergency after blaming communists for setting fire to the Reichstag. The latter is another tactic: double-downing on grievance when blowback comes while trying to guilt good people into thinking they are being unfair.
Don’t let any of them get away with it. There are no neutrals or moderates when it comes to fascism. I’ll close with a quote from my dear friend April (who is thankfully still with us):
“If you’re not anti-fascist then WTF are you?”