Some Truth About American Fascism
It’s time to confront reality
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George Orwell famously complained that the word “Fascist” had become meaningless. It was a curse that everyone applied to someone, just not the same ones. Groups that were so different they might have attacked each other on sight were called Fascists: Conservatives, Nationalists, Catholics, Communists, Zionists, Anarchists, you name them. “Fascist” has never amounted to more that a general term of abuse, although most people believe it has a precise meaning and are fairly sure they know what it is. Orwell joked that most people would accept “bully” as a synonym, and I’d agree. “Authoritarian bootlicker” works for me too. Now, let me assure you that the people you think of as Fascists probably are dangerous and ought to be stopped. I’m only going to argue that we can and should use the label “Fascist” with greater care.
Behold those two specimens. Both were dictators of totalitarian regimes but the societies they led could hardly have been more different. Italy and Germany? Please. The two men look alike because the people who follow them are alike. They’re both dressed for success among submissive bootlickers. These costumes attract people eager to venerate someone who appears strong and sexy: someone who radiates paternalistic authority, someone who will humiliate them in style, someone with epaulets and medals and riding crops and dress swords and daggers, and above all, leather — lots of shiny, shiny leather.
Which of our American contemporaries can you imagine kneeling and licking those boots [1]? I can see Stephen Miller and Mike Pompeo; on Capitol Hill, Lindsey Graham, Matt Gaetz, and Jim Jordan. In the media, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Lou Dobbs. I know those uniforms give guys like them a special feeling. I sense they’re submissive bootlickers. I can smell it. Any one of them would sacrifice a testicle to have a Dommed-up AOC humiliate them with a whip and a wooden stool and a dog bowl. I’d be surprised to learn that none of them maintains — or socializes regularly with someone who maintains — a Nazi shrine in their basement.
I am not making light of anything here: of course the German Nazi party was real, as were its myriad inexpressible horrors. The Italian Fascist Party was real and quite loathsome too, but my point is this: we’re talking about two radically different social climates, systems of government, and economic ecospheres. What Italy and Germany held in common was totalitarian leadership with a Fascist style. To speak of a Fascist system of government is as silly as speaking of a Goth system of government:
Fascists seek continuity, regularity, uniformity; they’re militaristic in the most boring way possible. Chesterton nailed it when he observed that Progressives make big mistakes on the public’s behalf, while Conservatives ensure that they never get fixed. Fascists are the ones looking at society’s greatest failures and praising them as honored traditions.
Most people try to exchange kindness with their fellow citizens and save their hostility for outsiders. Fascists want to be used and oppressed by their own bosses and public officials while manhandling their neighbors in kind. They eagerly submit to anyone they think is superior and mistakenly assume that those whom they see as inferior wish to submit to them. Fascists are useful idiots because they’re easily wound up and set marching off to help keep the little people in line while plutocrats and corrupt politicians feast greedily and sloppily on the public’s dime.
Again, I’m not describing a Fascist government; I’m speaking of an authoritarian system that uses Fascists, and might, therefore, encourage them by adopting their style and mannerisms, even subtly. Ronald Reagan did just that. He wore suit jackets with extra shoulder padding, quietly suggestive of dress blues with epaulets. He returned hand salutes out of uniform, with his head uncovered, a violation of military courtesy that his Fascist-leaning fans adored.
The U.S. armed forces themselves retain the institutional memory of bloody sacrifices made confronting Fascism — or what was believed to be Fascism — in Europe and Asia, so they remain a formidable brake on any American domestic movement in that direction (although their involvement in recent and current overseas missions deserves an article of its own).
A credible threat
So now we arrive at the big question: is Trump a Fascist president as many people assume? That’s easy: No. Fascists crave order and tidiness. Donald is an embarrassment.
His xenophobia also fails to move them; few Fascists care about foreigners; they don’t want to beat up Arabs and Mexicans; they’re traditionalists: they’re looking to beat up hippies and blacks and gays like their fathers and uncles before them. But they’re not necessarily evil; some Fascist groups, like the Boy Scouts, the Knights of Columbus, and the Guardian Angels, emphasize service to one’s community. These groups might attract a certain percentage of bullies, but they are far from domestic terrorists.
Whom should we fear, then? If the Fascist is a submissive military cosplayer with (often false) memories of a better America, today’s police are an actual paramilitary organization untempered by nostalgia or neighborly concern. They’re largely above the law and they tend to be racist and sadistic. And they play with live ammo. I wouldn’t call them Fascists because they’re not trying to preserve or restore anything. They just want to torment the public by pursuing petty infractions with relish, cracking skulls as often as possible, and shooting black men whenever they can get away with it.
Then there are the terrorists among us whom we mistakenly call Fascists. The greater domestic threat has always resided in misfits and social rejects: people like Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh; Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad; Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza; Orlando nightclub killer Omar Mateen; Las Vegas sniper Stephen Paddock. We should worry about shattered individuals who can emerge anywhere at any moment, and small groups of failed humans splintering away from larger, and largely unhealthy, fringe outfits like the Sovereign Citizens, Three Percenters, and Boogaloo Boys.
Domestic terror comes from domestic horror. We should fear a society that nourishes the injustices and grievances that inspire such people, that uses its criminal justice system to dispose of the destitute and the mentally ill, that will gladly arm those in pain but will not treat them, thereby inviting them to seek chaos and destruction as a magnum opus — as some final, virtuoso atrocity bursting from a corroded, malformed soul ground to paste by the contemptuous indifference of America, Incorporated.
Fascism, seriously, is not the problem.
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[1] Mussolini is wearing gaiters, but you see my point.
