I am reliably told by virtually everyone that mentioning fascism is off the menu and that we need to only talk about kitchen table issues. But Jeff Sharlet makes a good point about how we have also decided to oppose Trump nominees on matters of character rather than ideology which doesn’t seem to be working:
Problems with Pete Hegseth ranked from very bad to way, way worse: 6. drunkenness (common); 5. incompetence (common); 4. corruption (common); 3. raving bigotry (common); 2. alleged rape (less common); 1. Proposing military attack on US cities to exterminate all enemies. (That’s a new one).
And yet focus has been winnowed down to drunkenness and incompetence, which probably describes a good 1/4 of cabinet secretaries in history. It’s framed as outrage—“he’s a drunk!”—but it functions as normalization.
Not normalization via some insidious media plot to sanewash fascism. Rather, a much broader subconscious desire to frame problems in a fashion that lets us belittle actual threats. Just a dumb drunk. Ha, ha, incompetent. Not existential risk.
When Hegseth was first announced there was a flurry of attention paid to the wildly violent fascist statements in his books; but that got pushed aside for his personal failings. Which are profound. But that provided fascism a very old path forward…
Hegseth’s defenders could deal with drunkenness and even alleged rape with the old story of “I was lost, now I’m found.” Some us noticed that story began for Hegseth after the allegations; and that his “found” involved far more violent Christian Reconstructionism.
But both the press and a public conditioned to understand the threats of fascism in individual terms preferred to make the case against Hegseth as those of bad character. As if a sober man w/ no assault allegations calling for civil war would be ok?
And surprise: the old methods haven’t worked to stop 8Hegseth and his defenders as they’ve used the familiar narrative designed long ago to defang such critiques. It shldnt work, no. But we shldnt be so witlessly naive to imagine it couldn’t. And yet here we are.
I don’t know if what I and others started proposing the night Hegseth was nominated—that we oppose his fascism by researching & talking about his fascism—would have worked any better. Maybe not. But, to quote Homer Simpson, “We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas.”
People don’t seem to care much about the threat of authoritarianism. Maybe that’s the way it always is — until it happens.
For some reason this makes me think of this article in this week’s Atlantic about how Hitler dismantled democracy in 53 days. (gift link)
Ninety-two years ago this month, on Monday morning, January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed the 15th chancellor of the Weimar Republic. In one of the most astonishing political transformations in the history of democracy, Hitler set about destroying a constitutional republic through constitutional means. What follows is a step-by-step account of how Hitler systematically disabled and then dismantled his country’s democratic structures and processes in less than two months’ time—specifically, one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours, and 40 minutes. The minutes, as we will see, mattered.
Hans Frank served as Hitler’s private attorney and chief legal strategist in the early years of the Nazi movement. While later awaiting execution at Nuremberg for his complicity in Nazi atrocities, Frank commented on his client’s uncanny capacity for sensing “the potential weakness inherent in every formal form of law” and then ruthlessly exploiting that weakness. Following his failed Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923, Hitler had renounced trying to overthrow the Weimar Republic by violent means but not his commitment to destroying the country’s democratic system, a determination he reiterated in a Legalitätseid—“legality oath”—before the Constitutional Court in September 1930. Invoking Article 1 of the Weimar constitution, which stated that the government was an expression of the will of the people, Hitler informed the court that once he had achieved power through legal means, he intended to mold the government as he saw fit. It was an astonishingly brazen statement.
“So, through constitutional means?” the presiding judge asked.
“Jawohl!” Hitler replied.
Yes.
Update: If you want to know exactly what Sharlet is talking about with respect to Hegseth, his article about it is here. He is as extreme as it gets which I think I knew when he worked to persuade Trump to pardon war criminals. And, of course, Trump loved him for it. He’s a man of peace dontcha know.