Building Fascism, Brick by Brick
That’s the walls, now for the barbed wire.
This section builds on the ideas in my monograph, Narcisso-Fascism: The psychopathology of right wing extremism.
What is happening around the world today is history in the making, fascinating and frightening at the same time. After 80 years of yelling, pushing and slapping its minions into some sort of line, the US has abruptly thrown its hands in the air and is clambering out of the sandpit. Lifelong friends have got the flick, vital alliances have been dumped, yesterday’s mortal enemy is today’s best mate, and everything is reduced to its dollar value. That’s not all bad, perhaps we can move to a genuinely multipolar world where people stay on their turf and mind their Ps and Qs for a change?
Meantime, back on the Home Front USA, things aren’t looking so promising, At about 8.30pm on Saturday, March 8th, a young couple entered the lobby of their apartment building in the student quarters of New York’s prestigious Columbia University. The husband is a graduate student at the university while his 8 month pregnant wife is BSc (Hons) from University of Michigan, one of the top three state universities in the US. An exemplary student, she was chosen to deliver the student address at her graduation in 2018. As they entered the building, a group of men in civilian clothes appeared, grabbed her husband and handcuffed him. They did not identify themselves but bundled him in an unmarked car and he has been moved to Louisiana. Mahmoud Khalil was a student leader and negotiator with the peaceful pro-Palestine demonstrations at Columbia last year. While he has residency on a US “green card,” and is married to a US citizen, he faces deportation even though he has not been charged with any offences.
For anybody with an interest in modern history, this is all-too-familiar. This is precisely how the secret police operated in Mussolini’s Italy, in Nazi Germany, in Stalinist USSR, and during Mao’s Cultural Revolution (see Michael Moore for this incident; for a chilling impression of fascist takeovers, watch Istvan Szabo’s superb Mephisto, from 1981). However, it’s not just student activists who are in the firing line, as Adrian Bott foretold in a tweeted “headline” a decade ago:
“I never thought leopards would eat MY face," sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.
Well now the leopards have arrived for their meal. What were people thinking? Trump said he would be a dictator on Day 1; did they think that on Day 2, he would voluntarily give up the power? That doesn’t happen, as Orwell made clear in 1984:
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
The object of politics is to get to the top and make sure nobody else gets a look in, to crush the opposition by bribing the bribable and frightening everybody else, such as student activists, into submission. Trump got to the top by promising people what they want to hear. This is elementary, it’s Fascist Coups 101, Dictatorships for Dummies, and it’s all playing out on the largest stage in the world. By selectively disenfranchising 4 million Democrat voters, the Plutocrats Stealing People’s Jobs and Wallets Party rigged the election for their man, and now they’re free to indulge their fantasies of building a new polity that will gift them power for as long as they like: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever” (Orwell again).
Just like its progenitor, Mein Kampf, from 1925, the picture of the Trumpian future was set out in great detail in the right wing Heritage Foundation’s plan called Project 2025 (coincidentally 100 years apart, which proves there’s nothing new under the sun). Nobody can say they weren’t warned that social benefits would be shut down, critics silenced, the public service gutted, taxes for the wealthy reduced, and half or more of the regulatory state thrown on a bonfire. Brick by brick, they are building a corporate-fascist state but this is a bit different as, unlike its role models, it will maintain the illusion of a free and democratic state. Whereas the Nazi Enabling Act of March, 1933, gave full dictatorial powers to Hitler’s cabinet, there will still be a Congress with two houses, and elections, and parties, and a judicial system with appeals courts and all the trappings of democracy. However, as Noor Khalil is now finding out, only the trappings remain. All the substance has been hollowed out as, for example, in the Supreme Court.
By subterfuge, Trump was able to appoint three justices to the bench, two of them manifestly unfit, who give a 6 to 3 advantage to the reactionary right wing. So people can still appeal to the solemn majesty of the Court, there will be respectful submissions to the bench and its courteous responses, the judges still get their pay and their perks, but it’s all show as we know in advance what they’re going to say. This one is a very important brick, a keystone: emasculate the courts in order to reduce justice to a charade. Trump’s enforcers were ordered by a court to bring back two planes deporting Venezuelans to Columbia but they ignored the order, falsely claiming the planes were outside US jurisdiction. They knew they could get away with it because even while the courts maintain a degree of independence and find against the new regime, who’s going to enforce their rulings? The Dept of Justice? No, because their independent heads have been replaced by fanatical Trump loyalists. This is how fascism is built, brick by stealthy brick, the boiling frog analogy applied to an entire nation.
At this stage, the world can only sit and watch. It’s my view that matters are now out of control, or nobody is in control, much the same thing, and it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. The process is well and truly under way of rescinding tens of thousands of the regulations that actually implement the laws that Congress passes; of gutting the public service until it is physically unable to supervise and enforce the remaining regulations; of removing all competent inspectors; and of strategically placing seriously unqualified yes men (and quite a few women) in charge of every government department, people who also have their private agendas and vendettas to pursue.
People are asking: “How could this happen to the most powerful nation on earth? Why did they vote for him?” They voted for him because he promised everybody what they wanted to hear. He pandered to their prejudices because he has exactly the same prejudices. But now that he has power, people are suddenly realising that the democratic state rests entirely on a foundation of good will. If people of good will are replaced by a rabble of power-hungry, venal and vengeful racists, scoundrels and idiots, then it’s Good night democracy. Not that their democracy was ever healthy but that’s a separate matter. The right wing has been planning this process since the Powell Memo set out the path for corporate/plutocratic control in 1971. The time to head it off was decades ago: you don’t let the leopards out then wait until they’re drooling at your door before you decide they need to go back to their cage.
That’s the bad news, any good news? That depends. And what does it depend on? That depends, too. At this stage, we can identify a number of forces raging around the country. First one is Trump himself, his health and his personality. I’ve said before there is clear evidence in many videos and reports consistent with early dementia. Stories of his incontinence are widespread and are also consistent. While his condition should proceed slowly, the swarms of people lusting to touch the hem of his trousers will also see that it doesn’t become public. However, that depends entirely on Trump himself as nobody is able to control him, least of all Trump himself. I’d say that at this stage, it’s a race between his neurons dropping out and his acolytes trying to complete their various demolition projects before they are forced to invoke the 25th Amendment (presidential health). More likely, they would simply prop him up with sunglasses and heaps of fake tan until his term expires.
As for what we can tell of his personality without an assessment, his need to be worshipped as the ubermale is writ clear. This is the only value in his life. All the rest, honesty, integrity, friendship, patriotism, diligence and devotion to duty, you name it, they’re far down his list of priorities – if he even knows they exist at all. So he promises the various constituencies in his audience whatever they want, thereby creating a storm of conflicting forces in which each group will expect to be satisfied first. To the working classes he promised his tariffs would bring jobs back to the US and control inflation: “All I know is we’re going to take in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs, and we’re going to become so rich you’re not going to know where to spend all that money.” The resultant looming recession he dismisses as a bit of an inconvenience. Of course, he had no idea that the tariffs would be paid by the working classes, he thought the foreign devils paid them – but he wouldn’t care anyway. As all the bankers who donated to him know, tariffs produce inflation and reduce the spending power of workers’ salaries even as the jobs dry up, but they convinced themselves he wasn’t serious. As for jobs, it would take at least fifteen years to bring American industry to China’s level today but, by then, the wily Chinese would have used their DeepSeek and Manus AI to get twenty years ahead. Who could have guessed?
To please his nativist base, Trump promises to get rid of 11million illegal immigrants, but migrant workers keep the farming and construction and hospitality industries going, all of whom have been major financial backers and they’re not going to be happy. If he gives in to them, he will offend the anti-immigrant voters. People love it when he hits China and other countries with tariffs but they hit back, selectively targeting the farming, vehicle and IT industries, who were strong supporters. Oh dear. He promises to get rid of government waste but his idiot deputies start by cancelling huge sections of Medicaid and Medicare, which causes panic among the elderly who voted for him (“But I didn’t think he meant MY wheelchair.” Pathetic short video here). He stops giving money to undeserving foreigners by cancelling USAID but none of his crew knew that USAID was also a cover for America’s vast propaganda machine. He bans Chinese electric vehicles to protect Detroit, but the family’s money has been spent on medical bills so they can’t afford a new gas guzzler anyway. He gives unlimited support and money and weapons to Israel and persecutes anybody who voices disapproval, but the country is on a path to another Vietnam moment over Israel’s demonic destruction of Gaza. It’s now 55 years since Kent State but a rerun is only a matter of time. He forces Russia and China into a partnership, NATO falls apart, Germany says “FU” and aligns with Russia, Britain goes broke as he calls in its debts, AUKUS sinks when he finds out how far away Australia is, on and on.
Trump has got where he is by appealing to people’s prejudices and greed, by promising different sectors of the community opposing things. Eventually, they’ll all want their payoffs – the leopards will be hungry, as they say, but who could reconcile the contradictions? Trump doesn’t have the intellectual capacity or the political skills, not the personality resources nor the patience (especially patience), to resolve the exploding conflicts. Even when he issues orders, it won’t work as his various cronies and corrupt political appointments will be at each other’s throats. He will have expended the last of any remaining international good will; Wall St. bankers and industrialists will be screaming blue murder; his financial backers will want their pound of flesh; farmers and unions will go on strike; hospitals seize up because all their supplies from China are under tariff; and the whole f…g shit show will come down on Uncle Sam’s head. Not the rich, of course, but the poor stiffs who thought fascism would make their lives better.
Ach Schadenfreude, ohne dich wo wären wir? Where would we be without you?
I’d say there two chances in three Trump will not complete his term. If and when he leaves, the bricks of a solid fascist state will still not be cemented in place and the leopards will be running wild. The forces he has unleashed will be boiling over as the contradictions become too great for anybody to manage, and it will all come crashing down. For this is the fate of the fascist state: once built, it cannot be unbuilt, it cannot be carefully dismantled because the support of the people is conditional upon more, not less, brutality. If your sales pitch is repression, you can’t suddenly say “Well, that’s enough, folks, now let’s go back to being nice to each other.” How do you unwind the lies about Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets? You can’t, but Trump and company never think that far ahead.
Eventually the fascist state must implode and devour itself, but not before a lot of people have been hurt. Then there will be a period of calm and sanity before, ever so slowly, the seeds of fascism begin to stir and grow again and the cycle repeats itself. Either we stop it in this generation or the coming Götterdämmerung could well be our last.
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