THE STAIN OF FASCISM AND WHITE NATIONALISM

President Joe Biden’s nationally televised speech in early September warning Americans of a rising tide of “semi-fascism” is appropriate and long overdue except for one thing—I would have dropped the “semi.” Ever since Donald Trump came down those golden escalator stairs in 2015, I recognized his candidacy for what it was: a demagogic attempt at white nationalism of the ugliest kind, the one that conjures up the worst of U.S. and world history like Woodrow Wilson’s racist presidency; the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and the America First Movement of the 1930s and 1940s; the ascent of fascism (Mussolini) in Italy and Nazism (Hitler) in Germany; McCarthy’s witch hunts in the 1950s; J. Edgar Hoover’s attacks on the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Panthers in the 1960s; and, since the late 1970s, the advent of neo-Nazism and militia groups, white Christian evangelicals involving themselves in politics, and the demonization of many minority groups, immigrants and Muslims.

The appeal of fascism has also increased in other countries, including Brazil, Germany, Italy (which just elected a fascist as its prime minister), Hungary, Turkey, and the Philippines, just to name a few.

I am alarmed because I know what fascism will lead to: destruction and death. Such hatred has inspired concentration camps, genocide (also called “ethnic cleansing”), political assassinations, terrorist bombings and shootings, and bitter divisions that last decades, even centuries. What has happened abroad is now here, in the United States, something not experienced since the racial strife of the 1960s and the Civil War of the 1860s.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Is America breaking apart? Maybe. I hear talk of secession, in states as diverse as California, Oregon and Texas. The Republican Party is rapidly turning itself into something akin to a Christian Taliban, intolerant of anyone who would deviate from their narrow-minded and intolerant view of the world and spurred on by propaganda platforms like Fox News and Newsmax that spout something called the “white replacement theory,” an evil ideology that in part inspired the killers of innocent black people in a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket and, before that, Jewish worshippers in a Pittsburgh, Pa., synagogue. During the notorious neo-Nazi/white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, then-President Trump had the temerity to find good and bad points “on both sides.” Goebbels would envy the persuasive skills and media apparatus of the worldwide right-wing. I don’t leave the Democrats off the hook either, not only for their timidness in standing up to looming fascism, but because they too are susceptible to the temptation of hatred and authoritarianism. Lest we forget, the Democrats were the party of segregationist southerners up until the mid-1960s.

There are clear warning signs of fascism, and I am sorry to report that the USA in 2022 is checking off the boxes on nearly all of them. BAVUAL will have gone to press by the time the results of the November 8 midterm election are known, but I am hoping that the majority who still believe in America’s best ideals vote in numbers great enough to counteract the very vocal minority who have fallen in love with fascism.