It looks, Michael Harris writes, that Americans are poised to begin a Forced March toward fascism:
The way most pollsters and pundits see it, the Republicans are poised to evict the Democrats from the House of Representatives in the looming midterm elections. It may even turn into a blowout. The GOP stands a better than even chance of winning back the Senate as well. With Americans gasping at gas prices and their skinny wallets, President Joe Biden is about as popular as chewing tobacco.
It is hard to ignore the theatre of the absurd in the current situation. Emotion, and a puerile sense of economics, is ruling the roost south of the border. How could a party that denies the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s presidency, a patently and demonstrably false belief, that has been debunked for two years now in court after court and the bona fide media, win power?
How could a party that supports a twice-impeached ex-president who attempted a coup to retain power and now faces a $250-million fraud suit brought by New York’s attorney general, gain the public trust?
Americans left "normal" behind long ago:
Make no mistake about it, this is no normal election year. There are nightly spectacles on the television news of armed vigilantes who call themselves “observers” setting up camp about 22 metres away from polling drop boxes. Their ostensible purpose is to detect signs of cheating in the early voting and to document it. They are the MAGA militia. They take pictures of voters, follow them back to their cars and take down their license plates. That is not observing. That is the old “we know who you are, and we know what you did” intimidation thing.
Such tactics seem to be working. According to a recent Reuters and Ipsos poll, two out of five U.S. voters are worried about intimidation at polling stations, and even acts of violence if the GOP doesn’t win.
In these post-truth times, it is not just facts that don’t matter. Neither does character. Richard Nixon appealed to an American Silent Majority, and preacher Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority launched the Christian right into U.S. politics. Now America is in the grips of the Immoral Majority, based on a lie so big it would have impressed Joseph Goebbels. Donald Trump has simply super-sized the whopper.
Consider the case of Herschel Walker:
The important thing is not Walker’s lies and hypocrisy. The issue to many Georgia Republicans is Walker’s loyalty to Trump, and his key role in winning back the Senate for the GOP. Fitness for office means nothing. Winning office is the be all and end all. It means control of the system. You know things are upside down when a Liz Cheney is shown the door, and a Herschel Walker gets the GOP establishment’s bear hug.
People get nervous at comparisons with Hitler. But look at the facts:
Hitler banned a free press, and Trump has characterized the media as the “true enemy of the people.”
Hitler had his Brownshirts and Trump has his Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.
Hitler’s Big Lie was that Germany didn’t lose the First World War and was instead stabbed in the back by a cabal that included corrupt politicians. Trump’s Big Lie is that he didn’t actually lose the 2020 election, but that it was stolen from him by corrupt Democrats.
Hitler’s refrain was “one people, one realm, one leader.” Trump’s version as expressed at the 2016 Republican convention was “I am your voice. I alone can fix it. I will restore law and order.”
If you can't -- or won't -- learn from history, you're going to repeat it.
Image: The University of Chicago Press
