By Steven Jonas
I began Part 1 of this two part series by
noting that the legal and political walls are closing around Trump. In
just the week since the publication of that column, the ring has closed
even moreso. As an indicator of that state of affairs, Team Trump has
taken to making ever wilder claims, such as his second most prominent
mouthpiece after Sean Hannity, Rudy Giuliani, claiming that Mueller and his staff are out to frame Trump.
(For what, they don't bother to tell us. But one must suppose that it
is some crime for which Trump could employ his claimed right to pardon
himself --- pardons, of course, being granted only to convicted
criminals.) Giuliani has once again illustrated one of the first
principles of litigation one learns when one goes to law school: "If you
don't have the facts, argue the law. If you don't have the law, argue
the facts. If you have neither the law nor the facts, argue ad hominem."
As
the ring tightens --- and given the indictments and guilty pleas
already obtained, it would seem to be based on more than a frame-up job
--- Trump and the Trumpites creep ever closer, step by step, to
establishing a form of 21st century fascism, even within the
U.S. Constitutional system. As I noted in part 1, I have previously
written much on fascism, especially the potential for its rise in the
United States. My book, The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022,
was originally published in 1996. In that "fictional history" the RRR
used Constitutional means to eventually establish a very
non-Constitutional apartheid state, and most certainly a fascist one.
"Fascism,"
as applied to the Trumpites, is becoming more widely used, from a
center-right Democrat like Madeline Albright to a center-left Democrat
like Paul Krugman, and a left-Democrat like Robert Reich talks about a
coming Second Civil War. As noted, I like to work from definitions. I
have offered longer and medium-length versions in previous work.
Here is a still shorter one:
"A
single, all powerful executive branch of government, in service of a
capitalist ruling class. No independent judicial or legislative
branches, at any level. No independent media. Single national ideology,
based on some combination of racism, misogyny, religious bigotry and
authoritarianism, homophobia, and xenophobia. A State propaganda
machine, massively using the Big Lie Technique. May have: full-blown
dictatorship, a charismatic leader, engagement in foreign wars, use of
the mob/private armies. May have transitional forms.
Most
important is that fascism is a feature of capitalism. When installed,
it is chosen by the nation's ruling class or the dominant sector of it
as the means of control of the state apparatus when bourgeois democratic
forms have failed to keep that control, or the danger is perceived that
they might lose it because of rising militancy on the part of the
middle and working classes against capitalist excesses that they are
experiencing.
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