Be Brave, Don't Cave to Trump

Since January, I have not been an encouraging anti-fascist voice, preoccupied with how most people who see themselves as anti-fascist do not realize the effort needed to resist fascism. We simply must expect Trump for four years, as long as Nazis occupied France. Imagine the Red Scare if Senator Joe McCarthy was President McCarthy and you can see what is coming. So prepare accordingly.

However, we do have resources no other country facing fascism ever had.

Defense in depth for democracy

Germany did succumb to Hitler in weeks. But Germany was not a very functioning democracy—only 14 years old, unable to form stable parliaments and chancellors already ruling by Hindenberg’s presidential decrees well before Hitler took office. Tired of chaos, voters in the final Wiemar election cast 60% of their ballots for either Nazis or Communists—parties with little regard for parliaments. Hitler took over quickly, but Wiemar had little law, tradition or even popular support to oppose him with.

It is not Pollanna to say the United States has a more resilient democracy with 250 years’ experience. No guarantee for defeating fascism, but does buy time to resist and tools to fight back…

Viktor Orbán’s Hungary is similar. Little experience with parliamentary governance before WWII and definitely no experience as a Cold War Soviet satellite. A dictator amassing power looks way more business as usual to a Hungarian than it would to people from a longer-lived democracy. We in the west have a conceit that people will “just get” democracy and do not understand political cultures must change and constant effort is required to keep a new democracy on course. A democracy like Hungary’s was fragile because a country may democratically end its democracy, if no safeguards are in place.

It is not Pollanna to say the United States is a more resilient democracy with 250 years’ experience. No guarantee for defeating fascism, but does buy time to resist and provide tools to fight back that no one in Wiemar or Hungary had. There are many more hurdles for fascism to overcome at the federal and state level in the United States than other countries had before losing their democracies. We have a defense in depth—pillboxes, trenches and tank traps of law and tradition. Lines we can fall back to after a loss to then rally forward from once again—if we create the resistance to fight.

Freedom’s challenge

Jean-Paul Sartre said of his resistance days in Nazi-occupied Paris “Never were we freer than under the German occupation.” Resist the Nazi venom and every correct thought is a conquest. Knowing who you are, resisting because you choose to hold your beliefs against great pressure to abandon them, that is a freedom.

This may sound like smoke-filled parisien cafe sophistry—the occupation was a brutal time of deportations and oppression, when all of France literally learned who would resist or collaborate. But a fight for your life focuses the mind on what matters. To wake up every day and say—not today. I am not going to let the bastards win, today. I am going to do everything I can do, today, to get our country through this occupation. It would be so easy to say you had no choice and just fade into the fascist background. Resistance to oppression is its own freedom. Difficult work that could get you killed by Gestapo interrogators in Occupied France. But freedom.

Trump’s forces will never organize as a Nazi machine because that requires work and planning. It is easier to destroy and rule through a post-apocalyptic feral government incapable of denying whims or prosecuting friends, all while following some vague yearning for a 1950’s America when white men ruled, minorities knew their place and women kept pregnant. And theft. There will be much thievery and bribery.

Horrible, wasteful and venal acts will continue these coming four years. In a very real way, Trump leads an occupation of our country, intent to harm us and steal our public wealth, that will only be driven out with a great, concerted effort. Our problem is if Trump destroys faster than we can prevent destruction and picks off anti-fascist forces faster than we can gather them up over the next four years. Then our country will face its apocalypse.

Hope

If focused as in an occupation, we will all see exactly what needs doing to protect what is possible and drive off the occupiers to end fascism. We have the resources, we just must understand the challenge and gather the will. Our country will persevere, but irreparable harm will be done to so many people and our substantial investments in vital public goods and services will be stolen. But, we will get to the other side. How quickly depends on the ferocity of our response.

My hope, the idea consoling me daily, is when we reach the other side, we will all finally understand that a government of, by and for the people is what matters and must never perish from the earth.