Two years after the 2016 presidential election, the Fascist Reality Show now emanating from the White House is very real. Yet, too many “liberals” and moderate Americans are complacent, if bemused. Most Americans see it in one of two ways. First, the “moderate” liberals especially enjoy scoffing with Rachael Maddow at the absurd and bombastic lying about almost everything, and the gross display of ignorance and incompetence. Others, some of whom even voted for the narcissistic sociopath (who I have called “the empty clown suit”) have reached a level of disgust that they have turned off politics entirely.
Michael Moore had predicted the Trump win because he understands the plight of the American worker and his anger. Moore recognized that many Americans desperately needed to express their frustration with the two-party monopoly exploiting them from the nation’s capital. So, they threw a political “Molotov cocktail” at the electoral process that represented the corrupt system that failed to represent them. Once the Dem’s took out Bernie, they voted for the only remaining candidate who claimed to be an outsider.
Electoral Breakdown
However, Trump’s status as an outsider was one-dimensional as well as an economic lie. The New York financial elite from whom he had desperately sought acceptance for decades despised him. The Republican Party elite did not take him seriously until the primary voters changed their minds. The Democratic Party corporatist insiders cut off the only progressive populist challenger from outside of their establishment-controlled nomination process. So, populist tendencies turned to the only remaining claimant to the hopes of the ignored white working former middle class.
Many who would have voted for Bernie, instead chose the man who, back in the 1980s, investigative reporter David Kay Johnson had called the modern-day P.T. Barnum. But Trump’s demagoguery expertly played upon a sore spot in the psyche of racists, white nationalists, and outright neo-Nazis across America. He consciously ignited a spark of legitimacy for scapegoating and bigotry to build his base and win the primary election.
Then the maximal leader of the resentful and hate filled economic outsiders upped the ante. He recognized the growing population of former middle-class white males “and the women who loved them.” He callously exploited their growing resentment of lost aspirations and that of the much younger crowd who had already lost any hope of ever reaching the economic security their parents once had.
Trump incited violence in those who attended his rallies. He encouraged the racism and resentment against minorities and immigrants beginning to explode among formerly fringe groups of violent right-wing alienated youth in America. It is its striking and should be terrifying to see the parallel to similar risings of bullyboys in Europe.
Recognizing Fascism in the Making
The exact same forces of fear, resentment, and hatred fomented by Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s are at work and growing in the U.S. and Europe today. These are the leading indicators of growing instability of the mass society of alienated individuals that the corporate growth economy has created and failed to support in its relentless quest for the profits of expansion. Timothy Snyder in his small but powerful book, Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, offers a guide for citizen action to restore our democracy.
All the warning signs are all there.
Yes, it can happen here. The Fascist Reality Show is real. We must take up the fight for democracy, or we will lose it.
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 