A rally for Donald Trump and the Republican Party. (photo: Guardian UK)
By Patrick Cockburn, The Intercept
26 June 21
readersupportednews.org
By taking control of elections and voter suppression, Republicans are destroying American democracy
he G7
meeting focused attention on many challenges facing the world, but it
did not address the most dangerous threat of them all, which is the
transformation of the Republican Party in the US into a fascist movement.
When Donald Trump
was in the White House there was much debate about whether or not he
could be called a fascist in the full sense of the word, and not merely
as a political insult. His presidency showed many of the characteristics
of a fascist dictatorship, except the crucial one of automatic
re-election.
But Trump or Trump-like leaders may not have to face
this democratic impediment in future. It was only this year that the
final building blocks have been put in place by Republicans as they
replicate the structure of fascist movements in Europe in the 1920s and
1930s.
Two strategies, though never entirely absent from
Republican behaviour in the past, have become far more central to their
approach. One is a greater willingness to use or tolerate violence
against their opponents, something that became notorious during the
invasion of the Capitol by pro-Trump rioters on 6 January.
The other change among Republicans is much less
commented on, but is more sinister and significant. This is the
systematic Republican takeover of the electoral machinery that oversees
elections and makes sure that they are fair. Minor officials in charge
of them have suddenly become vital to the future of American democracy.
Remember that it was only the refusal of these functionaries to cave in
to Trump’s threats and blandishments that stopped him stealing the
presidential election last November.
Many of them will be unable to perform the same duty
in future elections. The Republican Party across the country is
replacing or intimidating them so they are giving up their jobs or are
being forced from their posts. In Pennsylvania, a state which played a
crucial role in Trump’s defeat, a third of county election officials
have changed as have numerous others in swing states like Michigan and
Wisconsin. Their places are frequently being taken by conspiracy theory
zealots who will have the power to nullify election results that are not
to their liking. A survey by the Brennan Center for Justice shows that
one in three local election officials say that they are being subjected
to harassment and other pressures.
Speeding up this exodus are Republican state
legislatures that have passed laws mandating heavy fines – $10,000 in
Iowa, $25,000 in Florida – for election supervisors who make minor
technical mistakes. Republican officials who refused to say that Trump
won the election are being removed by their party. The Republicans
should be able to do in 2022 and 2024 what they failed to do in 2020,
which is to nullify election results at will so the true outcome of a
poll can be ignored. Put simply, the will of the people will no longer
count for anything.
Authoritarian regimes across the world have found that
it is much easier and more certain to announce the election result they
would like than to go to all the trouble of suppressing votes and
gerrymandering constituencies. Once control of the electoral machinery
is obtained then democracy poses no threat to those in power. Fascist
leaders may use democratic processes to obtain office, but once there,
their instinct is to pull up the ladder and let nobody else climb up it.
Nullification of elections is only the latest step in
the Republican Party’s strange voyage towards becoming a genuine fascist
party. Other steps have a much longer history, notably the moment half a
century ago when President Nixon adopted his “Southern Strategy”
whereby the Republicans capitalised on the Civil Rights acts to make a
political takeover of the American South. The old slave states became
the strongholds of the Republican Party which had once freed the slaves
and defeated the Confederacy.
It is worth listing the chief characteristics of
fascist movements in order to assess how far they are now shared by the
Republicans. Exploitation of ethnic, religious and cultural hatreds is
probably the most universal feature of fascism. Others include a
demagogic leader with a cult of personality who makes messianic but
vague promises to deliver a golden future; appeals to law-and-order but a
practical contempt for legality; the use, manipulation and ultimate
marginalisation of democratic procedures; a willingness to use physical
force; demonising the educated elite – and the media in particular;
shady relations with plutocrats seeking profit from regime change.
One by one these boxes have been ticked by the
Republicans until the list is complete. The Tea Party movement was an
important staging post on the road to Trumpism. Trump himself possesses
all the classic features of a fascist leader, though he was somewhat
hemmed in by the institutional and political divisions of power. Yet
these impediments will be less in future as local legislatures, courts,
electoral machinery and Congress itself are colonised by Trumpian
Republicans. This erosion of democracy has a precedent, given that Al
Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 were denied the presidency
though each won a majority of the popular vote, but it is becoming all
pervasive
American fascism differs from its European, Middle
Eastern and Latin American variants because of the history of America,
with its legacy of slavery, and the Civil War still remaining as a great
divider. Slavery was abolished, the Confederacy lost the war, but in
many respects the civil war never ended.
The civil rights legislation of the 1960s provoked a
white counteroffensive that still goes on. Opposition to racial equality
has never ceased. The key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,
which declared that changes in state election laws must have federal
approval, was invalidated by Republican appointed judges on the Supreme
Court in 2013. “Our country has changed,” said chief Justice John G
Roberts in a majority opinion, which declared that racial minorities no
longer faced barriers to voting in states with a history of
discrimination. The absurdity of this was immediately demonstrated as
Texas introduced a previously blocked voter ID law.
Voter suppression has ballooned ever since, but never
more than this year. Some 14 Republican controlled states have passed 24
laws criminalising, politicising and interfering in elections to their
own advantage.
What explains the descent of the Republican Party into
fascism? Racial division explains much. The division of American
culture along the same geographical lines as the civil war explains
more. Add to this the frightening dislocation imposed on white working-
and middle-class Americans by technological change and globalisation.
Powerful forces are let loose similar to those that once propelled the
rise of European fascism and is now doing the same in America.
Those were the good old days. But after what they did to Black Wall Street, Tulsa deserved to host this Trump rally flop.
