Populism, Fascism, Socialism

As populist of the right and left pull American political discourse away from a pragmatic center, we are hearing warnings from each side that many on the opposing side trade in ideas that are fundamentally un-American. Bernie Sanders nearly won the Democratic Party nomination in 2016 while proudly proclaiming himself a democratic socialist. He successfully tugged the base of the party to the left around issues such as taxes, health care and access to higher education. President Trump signaled in his State of the Union address that a creeping socialism is taking over the Democratic Party and that such ideological thinking is un-American. Already we see front-running Dems such as Elizabeth Warren proclaim that she is a capitalist, and Kamala Harris declare that she is not a democratic socialist.

From the left many journalists and activists have called President Trump a racist because of his vitriolic rhetoric toward Latinos and Muslims on immigration issues and his reference to Africa as “shithole countries.”  And recently two newly-elected Democratic congresswomen,  Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, boldly asserted that the president is a racist. No elected official has yet called Trump a fascist, but many voices, not all of them from the far left, have started to do so. According to conventional wisdom, one of the ways that America has been exceptional historically, is that we prefer pragmatism, believing in what works in the everyday world, to abstract and un-American ideologies like fascism and socialism. So hearing our president and leading contenders from the other party be described in such extreme ideological terms is distressing.

The United States is in a period of crisis that is one of the most serious in our history. The twin challenges of the browning of America and the hangover from the Great Recession have shaken the post-Cold War political consensus and severely wounded the establishment of both major parties who signed onto it.  The combined pressures of populist forces such as the Tea Party from the right and the Occupy Movement from left combined to make 2016 a year for shaking up the political establishment. Both sides felt the shock from the Recession and wanted to make corporate America more accountable to the people. The culturally conservative sections of the right were still also smarting from eight years of a Black president and fearful of the oncoming minority majority. The populist left, mobilized by massive pro-immigration rallies in 2006, the Black Lives Matter movement from 2014 and the Standing Rock anti-pipeline movement until 2016, included the imminent majority so feared on the right.

Both parties saw vigorous populist challenges to the status quo in the 2016 primaries. Bernie Sanders loudly proclaimed his socialism and nearly won the Democratic nomination. Donald Trump, who I will say is a fascist, did win the Republican nomination and the presidency. But what is socialism, and what is fascism? And how un-American and dangerous are these ideologies?

Socialism is a system in which the collective welfare is prioritized over the welfare and rights of individuals. It has a rich and wide-ranging history. At one extreme is the state socialism of the communist Soviet Union and Maoist China in which private enterprise is eradicated and the state owns and controls the economy toward the end of the redistribution of wealth. At the other is the social democracies that emerged in Western Europe that created cradle to grave welfare states featuring high levels of taxation, but what most Europeans would say is a higher quality of life than ours. Private enterprise still exists in these systems, but is much more highly regulated than in this country. Bernie Sanders’ version of socialism is parallel to the Western European model, not Soviet-styled communism.

Fascism is an extreme form of nationalism. For fascists, the nation is composed of a mythical “people” who are culturally homogeneous. Those who are not viewed as part of the nation are scapegoated and can be targets of violence. Fascism first appeared between the two world wars in places like Italy and Germany. In differing ways each country was humiliated during World War One and faced severe political crises thereafter. Mussolini and Hitler were able to harness that collective trauma and turn it into a sense of victimhood. Behind the charismatic leadership of those men political elites who were said to be corrupt were targeted and ultimately pushed from power (again in very different ways). Political institutions and established practices were also pushed aside and the only relationship that came to matter was that between “the leader” and “the people.” Fascism as a system of practices is made possible when the political status quo is in crisis. Donald Trump is a fascist and a racist, because he divides the American public between real Americans and the others. From the day he announced his candidacy it has been clear that the others were primarily people of color, though progressive white people are also not his Americans. He is also fascist, because he trashes any traditional institution, practice or politician that opposes him and he seeks to communicate directly, with his people, the real Americans. And he implores them to listen only to him.

So Trump is a fascist and America is in the midst of a political crisis. But unlike interwar Germany and Italy, the United States has a set of political institutions featuring checks and balances that have endured for over 200 years. They are democratic institutions. So Trump may be a fascist, but the system is not. The push back that he has received from the media, the courts and most recently, the mid-term elections are proof of that.

Bernie Sanders is a democratic socialist. America is also not a socialist system. Despite our penchant for pragmatism and what works, most students of intellectual history and political philosophy would say that our dominant ideology is liberalism: a set of ideas advancing individual rights and equality of individuals before the law. There are right and left versions of liberalism, which approximate the principles behind our Republican and Democratic parties. The left version of liberalism, or what philosophers call social liberalism, promotes the regulatory welfare state and favors high taxation very much like democratic socialism. In fact, in terms of real policy preferences the two are almost indistinguishable. Then there is the fact that we have had a state that regulates capitalism, offers minimum wages and the 40 hour work week and delivers socialized K-12 education. Most American conservatives as well as liberals support these policies today, but beginning in the 19^th century, socialist were some of the earliest proponents of these policies. So we have long had elements of socialism embedded in our socio-economic system.

So I ask my fellow Americans which ideology is most un-American, and which is most dangerous to the stability of the country?

Trump and Hitler: and Pelosi

Trump and Hitler: and Pelosi

In the recent government shutdown Donald Trump revealed himself to be a right-wing populist. Populists believe there’s a “people” out there that they alone cater to. And once in political power they try to govern as if only those they cater to matter. They are willing to side-step or usurp normal governmental practices, laws and the constitution itself to give those “people” what they want. In his lovely little book On Tyranny, Timothy Snyder cautions us to “be calm when the unthinkable arrives.” He talks about how the fire at the German Parliament in 1933 became the cause for Hitler to declare a state of emergency that would last through World War Two, until 1945.

What Snyder means by being calm is to calmly and soberly assess the danger and to stand up and push back immediately and forcefully. In the parliamentary elections that where held less than a week after the fire the Nazis won a majority. Less than a year after those events Germany was effectively, a one-party state. Who set fire to the parliament was never determined. But Hitler declared that it was Germany’s internal enemies. Germany lacked the kind of robust but deliberate civil society in which people might openly say “well let’s investigate who set the fire,” or we don’t really know who set it. So let’s go to the street to oppose martial law.” Instead the German people, reeling from post-World War One malaise, the Great Depression and more than a decade of unstable governments rolled over before “Der Fuhrer.”

Populism is troubling for the political establishment. But populism on the right trends toward fascism. Fascist populist not only purport to despise big government and big capital. They also fear and scapegoat ”foreign” elements in the population: Jews and Gypsies in 1930s Germany; and people of color in contemporary America. They thus, also become white nationalists. Fascist in power are much more troubling than garden variety populists.

Donald Trump is a populist, a fascist and a white nationalist. The people he seeks to scapegoat are people of color; and especially immigrants. Snyder says be calm when the unthinkable occurs. He then describes the creation of a climate of crisis, which induces hysteria in the citizenry, and justifies a state of emergency. This is what Trump has done over the issue of the border wall. Those living along the border, including most Republican congress members would not describe the border situation as a crisis. Fewer undocumented people are coming across now than before 9-11. Many of those arriving at the border today are seeking asylum. They aren’t trying to enter illegally. And, many of those in the country illegally, are people who came legally and overstayed their visas. Incidentally, many of those people, if not most are white people from places like Canada and Ireland. So there is no crisis, except that manufactured in Trump’s head and sold to his base.

The real difference between Germany in the 1930s the United States today is the durability of our political institutions, specifically, our system of checks and balances. Heralded as some of the strongest institutions in the world, they are under supreme challenge from Trumpism and the long-frustrated white Americans who see the country they’ve known historically slipping away. Trump has been continually frustrated by the media, the courts, blue state attorney generals and local officials who won’t do his bidding. And then the American people sent a thunderous rebuke to his manner of governance in the 2018 federal elections. The government shutdown over a border wall that he couldn’t get when Republicans completely controlled Congress was Trump’s latest desperate attempt to side-step the normal processes of government and get his way in the name of his “American people.” The steadfast leadership of Nancy Pelosi and the decline of Trump’s strategy in the polls is the calm in the face of the unthinkable that Snyder talks about, and the determination to use our institutions to push back hard that I’m calling for here.

Round One goes to Pelosi and the Democrats in the House. But Trump may not be finished. He may declare a state of emergency if this three weeks of negotiations fail. He probably won’t shut down the government again, but if he does, average citizens must be prepared to take direct action in myriad ways to send him and his feckless Republican minions in Congress the message that we’re not going down without a fight. In fact, we have no intention of going down period!

The Intersection of Race,Sex and class in the Culture Wars

The Intersection of Race, Sex and Class in the Culture Wars

Since the killing of Michael Brown by a policeman in Ferguson, Missouri in August of 2014, we have seen an unprecedented push for racial justice in the way that black and brown communities are policed in this country. Aided by cellphone cameras, the Black Lives Matter movement is revealing the insularity, indifference, and outright institutional racism that characterizes our criminal justice system.  As one diversity trainer I heard put it, despite the other identities that feel marginalized in our country, in 2015 we were “in a racial moment.”

In a similar vein, declarations by women of widespread sexual misconduct by powerful men unleashed by the claims against Harvey Weinstein, have placed us in “a sexual moment,” when what society has long known is true can no longer be suppressed. The impact has been startling. We may be undergoing a revolution in sexual relations as male icons have fallen from grace, power and sometimes any position in society. The “#MeToo” movement is emboldening women to go public with any instance of sexual misconduct they’ve ever encountered.

As a male who has long championed gender equality I am gratified by the rapidity with which the landscape is shifting on this issue today. But as an African American I feel compelled to raise this question. What would this society look like if people of color could take down powerful white people (mostly men) by making claims of racial discrimination? Like women, most of the time POC suffer racial micro and macro-aggressions in humiliation and silence. Like women, when we do share our experience with white colleagues, we are often met with incredulity. That’s the equivalent of saying “get over it, that’s just the way the world works.”

Of course, women of color working as domestic servants or farmworkers are the most vulnerable of all to powerful male transgressions. As Sarah Leonard pointed out in a recent New York Times op-ed, collective action, often through trade unions, can be an effective way of achieving redress for workplace sexual misconduct. Leonard makes an important point. As white middle-class women take individual actions to bring down the most powerful men in society, don’t forget your working class and brown-skinned sisters who often suffer in silence unless they find the resolve to organize collectively. And don’t overlook the women and men of color who still face intransigence as they take collective action against institutional racism in our criminal justice system. If all of these identity movements work together, we could be living in an “intersectional moment,” when advocates of justice along sex, race and class lines can build the kind of long-term movement that will make this society the kind of humane and decent place in which we all want to live.

                                                  Conservatives, Brothers and the Flag

Vice President Mike Pence walked out during the National Anthem at the Indianapolis Colts game on Sunday because some of the players were continuing their protests by kneeling or locking arms. Pence said that he wouldn't hang around for any action "that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National anthem. 

Let me just say that the flag is about more than the US military. It' about the the American national ideas --- life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; liberty and justice for all --- stuff like that. It's also about equality before the law. People who felt that they've been left out of these great ideals have frequently embraced the flag as they fought for inclusion. Martin Luther King was a great example of that. 

When the anthem is playing, its meant to be a time for reflection about those ideals and our love for them. It's a solemn moment, and I believe it's perfectly justifiable to use that moment to make symbolic statements that suggest that the republic is not living up to its ideals. Regarding the Black Lives Matter Movement, pro athletes protesting during the anthem is a brilliant way to make America pay attention to an issue that it has consistently ignored. If we don't get it right, we could lose the sport that more of us spend more time and money supporting than any other. That 70% of the NFL that's African American are not unaffected by what goes on in their communities. They have a lot of power in the market place to push for concessions from society and government that they like to see.

What a great Achilles Heel the players have revealed. A society that continues to operate on the basis of institutional racism, being pushed to the wall by Black gladiator class, at pain of losing it most precious leisure time activity. I can't wait to see whee this goes ... I'm all in with the brothers!

The NFL Players versus Donald Trump

The NFL Players versus Donald Trump

Donald Trump knew he was stepping into the “culture wars” that are at the heart of our political polarization. He has benefitted greatly from taking the right-wing side in these wars since he began questioning President Obama’s citizenship several years ago. His call for the border wall and the Muslim ban are the foremost of many examples of how Trump has consciously to divide our country and forged a conservative majority that does things their way without compromise with the millions of Americans who don’t agree with them.

But when Trump referred to NFL players protesting police brutality as “sons of bitches,” he unknowingly stepped into a quagmire, because he doesn’t possess the social capital to know how that would play among a workforce which is 70% African American. Many African American players grow up in communities that are predominantly Black, in which single-female-headed households are prominent. Though I don’t know the number of NFL players themselves who are from such households, I’m guessing many are. And even those who aren’t are familiar with the phenomenon.

Black youngsters on the streets in those communities play a word game we used to called “the Dozens.” It is a contest of insults waged between two people and continues until one is left speechless. When it gets intense, frequently one person will turn the insult toward the other’s mother. “Your mama is so (this or that) that she can’t even (whatever).” You fill in the blanks!

Sometimes when one goes down that “your mama” path, it ends in good humor, but it can go badly, if the loser is particularly stung by an insult. Sometime fistfights can result, or those watching have to intervene to keep the two parties from fighting. 

In any event African American mothers are especially revered in communities where fathers may not be consistently present in young people’s lives. So when Trump called the players “sons of bitches,” he was calling their mothers bitches. I recall in the day or two after his remark a couple of players tweeted things like “my mother isn’t a bitch. She’s a queen!” From the anecdotal evidence out there, we know that large numbers, if not most African American pro athletes don’t like President Trump. I’m sure they think he’s a racist. But most of them aren’t political activist either. Some are, and the protest that began with Colin Kaepernick last season had continued, but with only a handful of players participating. Some of the most serious ones, like Malcolm Jenkins of the Eagles and Michael Bennett of the Seahawks had begun talks with the league over how to build racial justice work into the community service that all NFL players are required to do.  

Then Trump opened his mouth, and in doing so created a legion of players ready to go to the wall out of a sense of personal injury. Although Jerry Jones of the Cowboys has said he’d fire any players who continue to protest, a unified team could force him to backdown. After all, does anyone want to watch an NFL, with no Black players? I believe the league and the players should continue their negotiation around community service and ignore the President. If the league can come up with a worthwhile program, the tit for tat might involve the players once again standing for the anthem.

The Battle for the Soul of White America

The United States continues to be two nations, not one. Donald Trump is a traditional American nationalist. At the historic core of that nationalism is racism and white supremacy. The Republican Party, the quintessential party of capitalism and the bourgeois class, has had a problem since the time of the New Deal. With the issue of slavery no longer around to build a grass roots base, the party of capital has struggled to build a majoritarian base since the 1930s,

Beginning with Barry Goldwater, who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and “Richard Nixon, whose “law and order” slogan mobilized many whites against the black rebellions in the late 60s, the Republican Party has found its grassroots base among whites of all classes who opposed assertive measures to achieve true racial equality before the law. That faction has been melded to an economic conservative wing, which supports free markets and opposes taxes. Add to that another cultural conservative faction, the Christian Right, and you have the majoritarian coalition which has dominated American politics since the time of Ronald Reagan.

Republicans have needed whites who are uncomfortable with racial equality to build winning coalitions in electoral politics, but the demographics of this century are not in their favor. So they have expertly used gerrymandering and voter suppression to forestall the day when the emerging majority can take political power. The Republican Party has been trading in racial indifference and outright racial hostility for the last half-century. Law and order, Reagan announcing his presidential bid in 1980 in Philadelphia Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were killed in 1964 … nasty welfare reform and draconian immigration positions in the 1990s … anti-government militias which helped propel many Republicans to office … the “war on terror … Minute Men on the borders after 9-11 … birtherism … racist police forces.

People on the far right who voted, voted Republican. Those of us who were anti-militia activists in the Northwest Coalition for Human Dignity in the 90s, tracked the mainstreaming of far right thinking into the Republican Party. That mainstreaming produced the Tea Party, the Freedom Caucus in Congress, and now, the Trump Presidency.

I have two points to make here. First, Donald Trump is a fascist. He is racist, sexist, homophobic, and if we look at his business dealings over the decades, he doesn’t care much about the working class either. Fascism is rooted in ethnocentrism and bigotry, but in order to be successful, fascist must undermine the liberal institutions of democratic society. Trump has gone a long way down that path by disparaging the press, the judiciary, our electoral system, and even the establishment of “his own” Republican Party. Trump implores his followers to listen only to him for the truth … Sounds like Der Furhrer to me! But so far our institutions have pushed back. If they hold up, Trump’s fascist movement will be defeated by an enduring democratic system.

Secondly, and in a related vein, institutions can only hold up if citizens continue to believe in them. Most Americans continue to be white. And white people will control institutional and political power in this country for a long time. What we are witnessing is a battle for the soul of America, a battle for the soul of white America, and a battle for the soul of Republicans, the party of Lincoln. Most white people have voted for every Republican presidential candidate since Barry Goldwater in 1964. 95% of the people who voted for the moderate Mitt Romney in 2012 voted for Donald Trump in 2016.

White people who care about limited government and free markets have coalesced with white racist for the last half-century to build a conservative coalition that could be an electoral majority. That coalition produced the Trump presidency. Conservatives, mostly white, must now decide if they like their capitalism with fascism, or if they aspire to a future of American liberal capitalism, without racism and bigotry. Our country, and the whole world, is watching breathlessly.

Ode to the Generations of 1967/2017

Ode to the Generations of 1967/2017

Yo Logan,

I had read A.O. Scott's review of the movie Detroit in the New York Times a week earlier.  I can quibble with a lot of things he had to say (not enough character development, etc.). But one big concluding point he made was that American film isn't good at dealing with "division and real-world problems that have yet to be solved. It made me wonder if European, or Chinese films are any better at that. I suspect that you've consumed more serious film than I. So I put that question to you?

He also says that in the film, "the white men, the decent ones, as much as the brutes, have answers, agency," ... not the Black folks. I guess Kathryn Bigelow is a big time director ... liberal ... and Scott talks about how she tried to give us some agency back in the end.

But anyway, as I sat there, getting more and more depressed, I realized two things .... Our generation was some bad MFs, cause in ‘67 and ‘68, we literally kicked the walls down and came storming through. The young kids today, as outraged as they seem, haven't done what was done back then. We got everybody's attention!

But as I salved my wounds from the disrespect I've gotten from the kids post-Ferguson, because we didn't change enough, I realized that the kids are right. The shit the went down at the Algiers Hotel ain't that different than Michael Brown or Tamir Rice, etc. The white boys and their institutions are still holding all the cards ... body cameras, indictments against cops ... ain't worked yet! What can I tell the young to do?

Maybe it is time to for them/us to throw themselves in waves at the barricades, until, like Czar Nicholas' security police in Petrograd in 1917, the gendarmerie refused to continue the carnage, and the moment of transformation is at hand.

We took it ask far as we could brother, back in our day. Maybe, especially in the time of Trump, the next more awful surge is now needed.

Wes