Popular Tyrannics: Smashing Trumpism

From The Blast

It goes without saying that most anarchists greet the electoral cycle currently subsuming the US with a combination of dread and apathy. Aside from a misguided contingent who seem to believe in voting when they believe it stands to enhance their direct interests, the majority of anarchists believe in the truth of the dictum “voting only encourages them”. Elections are typically viewed as a spectacular form of puppet theater with the aim of getting individuals to relinquish their autonomy and entrust their interests to the support of a privileged elite with a direct interest in the continued exploitation and repression of the population they govern. Indeed, even many of those who do not consider themselves anarchists also find elections cause for little more than ambivalence.

But the 2016 elections have galvanized many anarchists and antiauthoritarians who would usually remain characteristically ambivalent to mainstream politics due to a particularly noxious whiff of fascism in the air. Donald Trump’s incendiary, oppressive rhetoric – alternately defaming immigrants, people of color, women, the disabled, and other marginalized groups – carries with it strong sentiments of nativism, white nationalism, and militarism that has left many people wondering how this compares to the way the populace of the Weimar Republic felt as Hitler began his rise to power.

The sheer audacity of Trump’s inflammatory style has concretized in a litany of highly offensive statements, all delivered with the characteristically boastful and unapologetic style that supporters relish. Among the Don’s most offensive pronouncements are statements focusing on high immigrant birth rates and calling Mexicans “killers” and “rapists”; a speech delivered before the Republican Jewish Coalition in which he perpetuated anti-Semitic tropes of Jewish people as natural negotiators and deal-makers (the same image he repeatedly uses to characterize himself); numerous misogynistic statements claiming that the most important aspect of a woman is her appearance; and a call for the “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” as well as the expanded monitoring of Muslims domestically, up to and including a specialized database and ID cards.

The presence of these ostensibly fascist sentiments has led to a number of articles from commentators wary to reflexively resort to the the oh-so-common reductio ad Hitlerum analyzing the Don’s discourse and asking where exactly the line between fascism and other radical right-wing ideologies lies. The best of these, by Matthew Lyons and Alexander Reid Ross come to contradictory conclusions about whether or not Trump is an explicit fascist or just a radical right-wing populist, but the substantive difference in these analyses is mainly a matter of semantic distinctions and overly-narrow taxonomy. Many tropes of fascist discourse are indeed present in Trump’s presentation, including a diagnosis of society as decadent and in a state of decay, a condemnation of the political status quo, a cult of personality demanding absolute fealty to the leader and his cronies, and a nativist ultranationalism that creates a clear dichotomy between a disenfranchised ‘us’ and a parasitical ‘them’. Whether or not he qualifies as an official fascist, such repugnant (and frankly terrifying) indicators clearly demonstrates that Trump is something more dangerous than the standard breed of conservative politician, and must be responded to accordingly.

Tellingly, another index of the potentially fascistic nature of the Trump campaign is the behavior of his supporters. Numerous protestors and minority audience members have been expelled, verbally abused, and even assaulted at his rallies – many times seemingly at the behest of the candidate, or at least with his tacit approval. Exclamations of “White Power!” and “Seig Heil” regularly emanate from the crowds, who typically respond with jocular approval to his discriminatory bombast. At a recent campaign stop in Orlando, Trump asked his supporters to raise their right hands and swear allegiance to him at the polls. The resulting photo op appeared to show the intolerant demagogue leading his followers in a mass fascist salute; an image whose impact is not soften by clarifications that he was merely asking the audience to pledge an oath of fealty.

The groundswell of popular support for the Don from ‘Middle America’ is indicative of a constituency frustrated by what they see as a crippled, stagnating nation moving away from its traditional values. His supporters perceive an epidemic of multiculturalism subsuming whiteness through a lack of economic opportunity due to the effects of a ‘parasitic’ (as opposed to ‘productivist’) capitalism turned inward and an erosion of their traditional ways of life under the onslaught of a vapid liberal society. The primacy of God, family, and flag as the foundation of the nation has been undermined in their mind, and with it their rightful cultural hegemony has been lost. Trump plays directly into these notions of rehabilitating the nation with his slogan, “Make America Great Again”. The trope of appeals to resuscitate an ailing nation under siege from dominant non-native interests is a defining feature of historical fascism which has permeated the American radical right.

For whites who see themselves in this perceived state of abjection, Trump’s campaign represents a chance to not only regain their hegemony in society, but to exact vengeance on the groups that have supposedly brought about this state of affairs. Reflected by the candidate’s “mad as hell” vitriol on his anger toward Washington insiders, Muslims, and morally corrupt liberalism (among other targets), Trump gives voice to the resentment of a constituency who believe the nation they supposedly built has been stolen away and set on a path of decay. Crucially, these voters abstain from any class-based analysis of their exploitation. Their frustration is misdirected away from a draconian state and capitalist economy founded on the immiseration of the working class, and instead aimed at groups the radical right has historically demonized – a strategy which largely mirrors the reductive analysis of the problems plaguing Weimar Germany which led to the rise of National Socialism. This helps to shed some light on the continuing appeal of fascism, which allows individuals to transition from feeling like prey to feeling like predators simply by virtue of their political affiliation.

Indeed, the burgeoning extremist currents on the right are not something new to US politics. Explicitly fascist groups have represented something of an ‘invisible hand’ in shaping the politics of the United States. The KKK first emerged as an attempt to overthrow state governments during the Reconstruction period in the South, re-emerging in the 1920’s as a mass movement, at one time claiming up to 5 million members. The lead-up to World War II saw something of a renaissance for American fascisti, represented by groups such as the paramilitary Black Legion (itself an offshoot of the Klan), and the German American Bund (essentially the American branch of the Nazi Party). Following the war, fascism was the driving force behind the anti-communist hysteria spearheaded by Senator Joe McCarthy with the collusion of anti-semitic Jewish columnist George Sokolsky and fascist agent Francis Parker Yockey. At the same time, the US military helped orchestrate the ‘Ratlines’, escape routes by which Nazis were smuggled out of Europe with the assistance of Allied forces. Thousands of these Nazi emigres were given new identities and employed in US government programs under the infamous Operation Paperclip. Later groups like the John Birch Society began the trend of minimizing the explicitly fascist trappings of their predecessors, instead playing up their ‘patriotic’ elements and attempting to establish a foothold in mainstream conservative politics.

It is as an extension of this history of white nationalist and fascist currents in right-wing politics that Trump is able to position himself as a ‘conservative revolutionary’. His base sees him as a Washington outsider promising to wage war on career politicians and overthrow the existing order while restoring respectability and hegemony to the traditions of jingoistic patriotism and white supremacy in America. The ‘glory days’ these bigots seek to return to are a time before the Civil Rights movement, and even before the Reconstruction of the South following the Civil War. That Trump’s vision to “make America great again” has explicitly included calls to repeal the 14th Amendment provokes a near-Pavlovian response for many of these extremists. Placed in the historical context of the American far-right, it is clear that Trump’s populism is an attempt to capitalize on a base that has been around far longer than many would like to admit and who have played a crucial role in shaping the character and discourses of certain strands of conservative US politics.

But is all this vitriol just a more extremist version of the empty rhetoric spouted by every politician seeking to capture hearts and minds on the campaign trail; promises which are made to mobilize voters but inevitably fail to come to fruition? Isn’t it unlikely for such seemingly incoherent and acerbic pronouncements to manifest in a coherent political platform? Perhaps. For example, an attempt to engineer the forced relocation of 11 million undocumented immigrants would require massive infrastructure, tight coordination between military and government agencies, and would assuredly generate widespread resistance and social unrest. But such projects are not without precedent in the bloody history of these colonies, with the Trail of Tears and Japanese internment camps standing as just two examples of such atrocities in US history.

It is not entirely clear if this is just extremist hyperbole intended to spark a mobilization in his base or the tentative pronouncements of a modern-day Il Duce. Unfortunately, only time will tell. Though it is easier, and perhaps more comforting, to remain dismissive of the horrifying vision of Trump and his supporters, we must take these provocations seriously and confront this increasingly mainstream, Americanized brand of (proto-)fascism wherever it manifests. Furthermore, as anarchists, we must not allow our focus on the incendiary nature of Trump’s campaign to give a pass to the equally authoritarian and exploitative nature of all candidates for office under representative democracy. In the spectacle of electoral politics, there is never a ‘lesser of two evils’; there are simply multiple faces to the same enemy. All candidates, whether neoliberal, ultranationalist, or social democrat, represent the same implicit affirmation of authority and oppression, no matter how they dress themselves up to appeal to varied constituents. However, what makes the radical right particularly dangerous, and thus especially deserving of our antagonism, is not only the tyrannical goals they seek to realize but the way they channel the immiseration which is immanent to capitalist exploitation and statist repression into counter-revolutionary forms which work directly against struggles for autonomy.

Our efforts to destroy fascism and the radical right cannot only take the form of a mere frontal clash between opposing forces. While the street brawl tactic has a place in the antifascist repertoire, we should be aware of how agents of the state frequently provide passive support and protection for authoritarian forces in these encounters, while stepping in once fists have begun to fly to administer handcuffs and court dates where they deem appropriate. This approach also places us in a consistently reactive role, responding to displays of the hate-fueled ideas of our enemies without creating spaces within capitalist space-time where our own practices can develop and generalize. In taking an active role we should not limit ourselves to mere demonstrative activism, nor single-minded destructive negation, but instead seek to create insurrectional ruptures where we can not only put our values and ideals into practice, but where we can also demonstrate the expansive capacity of anarchist struggles to meet the material and social needs of communities.

Our project of smashing fascism is simultaneously the project of creating anarchy and realizing communism. As we keep an eye firmly fixed on the gambit of the radical right in this election, we refuse to lapse into a purely oppositional stance, but continue our struggle to prefigure the world we desire in the ruins of the old; regardless of who claims to govern it.