In the morning, after our disastrous elections of 2016, I wrote in an open letter to a Polish friend: “We must accept the fact that a immense part of American voters truly She wanted to That fascist. I have never been a peculiar patriot, I have always felt more like an uprooted cosmopolitan, but these elections have broken my heart.”
At the time, 8 years ago, many thought that the usage of the word "fascist" was an expression of hysteria. Historical comparisons – mainly until the 1930s and German Nazism – frequently caused discomfort to various groups, e.g. Americans, Germans, Jews, for various reasons. The reaction of many Americans I knew at the time was: “Ourself, this is simply a very bad thing, but someway we will survive. American democratic institutions are the strongest in the world; we have our division of power, our “brakes and balance”. For liberals, it became a kind of mantra: Inhale. "Brakes and balance". Breathe out. "Brakes and balance".
I had the overwhelming feeling that we Americans were like passengers on Titanic who inactive stressed: “Our ship cannot sink!” As a storyteller, I never know what's gonna happen. I know – due to the fact that the past gives us any insight – what can happen. And I knew then, like today, that there was no specified thing as a ship that could not sink.
After the November 2016 election, our kitchen in fresh Haven, Connecticut turned into a russian cuisine: friends come, stunned, with vague looks, open bottles of wine, cry. They constantly ask these questions, as the Russians say, eternal questions: “What to do?”, “Who should?”. In the following weeks and months, in this kitchen, with wine and lots of Newhave pizza, our fellow philosopher Jason Stanley He wrote a book How Fascism Works, while 4 of our small children – 2 of ours and 2 of his – ran around, holding pillow battles, building towers from Lego blocks and stealing cookies, while learning much more about the 1930s than children should know.
Jason's book, designed for a wider audience, explained very clearly classical fascist motives: the mythology of the past, the naturalization of the hierarchy, the cult of sacrifice, the uncertain position of manhood, the fictional world, social Darwinism, the rhetoric of us against them.
Liberals debated: are we allowed to evoke the concept of “fascism”? Yes or no? How many bars do you gotta check to justify utilizing that word? but Kierkegaard or-or it's an apparent trap. Nothing is always precisely the same as something else, but specified concepts and historical analogues aid us to mediate between the individual and the universal.
Either way, we all – not only Jason, my husband Tim Snyder and myself, but besides many of us who survey the past of totalitarianism and propaganda languages – have done quite a few work trying to bring to the American consciousness the knowing of what Fascism was, how it acted, how it could appear, and then reappear in different forms and intensity, and that is why we Americans, like another nations, are susceptible to it.
In the past weeks, I saw that, on the 1 hand, these efforts have had an effect: Americans mostly accepted fascism as a hermeneutic tool to realize Trumpism. On the another hand, about half of Americans do not view Fascism as a bad thing. 8 years ago, I felt that many Trump supporters simply did not realize what was going on. present I feel much worse: I think that they realize as much as possible who Trump is, what Trump stands for and what they want exactly.
The White home chief of staff in Trump's erstwhile cabinet, John Kelly, said publically that Trump felt “only contempt for the regulation of law”; his Secretary of defence Mark Esper called him “incapable to service the office”, 1 of his most crucial generals Mark Milley said that “no 1 has always been as dangerous to this country as Donald Trump. This is simply a full fascist.” In November 2020 Trump made a telephone call – recorded and published – to Secretary of State Georgia Brad Raffensperger, asking him to “find” him 11780 more votes. 2 months later, the full country watched Trump incite violent riots in the capital and applaud the crowd who calls for the hanging of Vice president Mike Pence.
And it is no coincidence that before Trump's run the vice president's seat on his ballot was empty – Trump threw Pence to the wolves, and J.D. Vance appeared behind him.
There is simply a concept that exists in many Slavic languages, specified as “disdain”. It was a motive for avant-garde poesy before age (the “disaster”). Today, it is an crucial component of postmodern neo-totalitarianism. Nothing's hidden. The spindoctor Putin himself, Władysław Surkow, described putinism in this way: “The most brutal structures of scaffolding power go consecutive through the facade of the building, the architect does not hide them under any unnecessary additives.”
Trump does not even effort to hide that for him all relation is simply a transaction. He does not claim to have any rules or to treat another people's lives as values. There are no attempts to hide racism, misogyny or violence. So his at Madison Square Garden at the end of the election run was consciously modeled at a Nazi rally in the same place in 1939. The speakers there called the advisers Kamala Harris "a pimp", Hillary Clinton "a sick bitch", Puerto Rico "a floating waste island", and Kamala Harris "antychrist". "America is for Americans – and only for Americans," said Trump's advisor Stephen Miller, like the echo of the 1939 talker who vowed to "bring America back to the actual Americans"
It was no longer "dog whistles". Now the Trumpists are saying loudly what utilized to be muted, promising white supremacy, force and proscription letters. Trump openly talks about utilizing the American military against "internal enemies", and his supporters very much like it. There will so be violence.
Civilization, as Sigismund Freud says in Culture as a origin of Suffering – is built on repression. "It must make the top effort to set limits to the aggressive urges of man". Fascism – and Trump – promises liberation from repression. This is simply a real liberation, but as Freud says, we pay the modest price of destroying civilization. And it is we who pay – and we will pay – this price.
Of course, there is no specified thing as a perfect man, a perfect candidate or messiah. But these elections differed from 2016 besides in terms of the Democratic organization campaign. 8 years ago there was besides much complacency with the Democrats; it seemed besides incomprehensible that Trump could win. This time Joe Biden made a historical move, and with all his mistakes the resignation was clearly due to his authentic sense of work for the country.
After he announced that he would retreat from the campaign, the Democratic organization united in an unprecedented way. Hillary Clinton spoke at the national convention wisely and generously, without a shadow of resentation, but with the absolute will to aid Kamala Harris play a historical role—the 1 that could have been her share 8 years earlier. Very different men – from Doug Emhoff by Tim Walz and Pete Buttigig to Jamie Raskin – did a fantastic job, giving a show of caring, unthreatening masculinity, to that full of vigor, so the antidote to Trump and Putin's toxic masculinity.
Michelle Obama, about 10 days before the election, truly gave 1 of the top feminist speeches in history. She explored the issue of the price that women pay for restrictions on reproductive wellness – it was a superb and courageous performance in which she was a class for herself. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz campaigned with extraordinary energy and heat, not letting themselves be provoked by Trump's infantilism, refusing to lower themselves to its level, maintaining reasonableness, dignity and self-control.
They blame us for the fact that the Americans have voluntarily turned us all into an incalculable fascist, you can't blame Kamala Harris' weak campaign. It was neither a weak run nor a weak candidate. We are the weak species.
The war is over. Hanna Arendt She wrote about how “for many years we met Germans who declared themselves ashamed of being Germans. I was frequently tempted to answer them that I am ashamed that I am human.”
The terrible fact is that any 72 million Americans voted for Trump not despite the fact that he was specified an erratic narcissist, but precisely for that reason. There was no subtlety in his campaign. We cannot say that the Americans did not realize or realize who he was: he told us exactly, day by day.
Today I'm ashamed to be American and human at the same time.
**
Text originally published in ‘Die Tageszeitung’. Thank you for the reprint.
Michał Sutowski translated from German.
**
Marci Shore – prof. of Yale University past Department, historian of Central and east Europe. Author of books, among others Caviar and ash. past of a Generation Enchanted and Disappointed by Marxism and issued by Political Criticism Ukrainian night.
